Opening the door, he poked his head out to get a glance, but the strikingly familiar face caught his attention and enough to open it completely. The person who had knocked resembled Jimmy to a large degree, only this person was slightly shorter but still unusually tall for a…woman? Yes, it was a woman, yet she had a masculine build and was even wearing men's clothing—on the top she wore a brown shirt that was only buttoned up to below where her extremely flat breasts were, and her pants consisted of blue bell-bottom jeans that led down to her Birkenstock-covered shoes. Her hair, only reaching to her shoulders, was disheveled and a strawberry-blonde color, and over her eyes were a pair of sunglasses. A bunch of necklaces hung down from her neck, but he could only distinguish a few pendants.

"Hello, can I help you?" Jimmy asked, noticing a box being held in her arm. The other hand reached up to take off her glasses, and it all became clear to Jimmy who it was.

"Annika?" he asked in shock.

"Yeah, dad," she replied. "You don't remember me?"

"Oh my God! Of course I do! What a surprise, though!" Jimmy exclaimed, hugging his daughter roughly and patting her back; she smiled and laughed.

"It's good to be home," she replied. "I came for Elina's birthday. Uh…" She spaced out and looked up at the porch ceiling, guessing her age. "Twelve?"

"Thirteen," her father corrected, in shock of how masculine she looked; she was not the most attractive of their children, but she was his child and he loved her unconditionally. Annika looked at him, noticing the age in his face and hair, and chuckled.

"So…" Jimmy began, looking at her clothing. "Come on in. Elina would be happy to see you. You've been gone so long."

"I know, I know," she said nonchalantly in her lax, low-pitched voice.

She entered her family home to a bunch of gasps, looks and even snickers as she made her way toward the gift table to place the wrapped box with the other gifts lefts by the guests. Jimmy made his way over to his daughter and tapped her on one of her unusually broad but lanky shoulders.

"There's cake and stuff in the dining room," he told her.

"Yeah? What kind?"

"Angel food…uh…I think it's vanilla bean," Jimmy replied, following his daughter to the dining room to join the rest for cake. He watched his wife's shocked facial expression upon seeing the "stranger" enter the room, and as soon as Annika approached her mother, she gazed up at her, somewhat intimidated by her unnatural height.

"Mamma, it's me, Annika," she said in flawless Swedish. Britta looked at what her daughter was wearing, shocked by her selection. She never raised Annika and Elina to wear pants or dress like the opposite sex, but then she remembered that her eldest had been a tomboy growing up.

"Annika, where have you been?" she asked.

"New York state," Annika replied. "Remember? I moved there?"

Jimmy made his way over to his wife and eldest child, seeing their awkward interaction—he could easily sense Britta was intensely uncomfortable being with their unattractive, masculine daughter. The Swede's lips had parted and her eyes looked blank as piece of fresh copy paper; Jimmy was not bothered one bit by her choice of dress, as it was something he had grown used to during her childhood, but it bothered him to see Britta that way.

"What a nice surprise," Jimmy reiterated with a smile, winking at his wife. She was unswayed. "Don't you agree with me? She came all the way from New York for her sister's party…Elina should be here somewhere."

Annika, who turned her head to get a glance of Elina and her fair features, walked over to her but stopped just enough so that her little sister would stop talking with Lily and glance over at her. When she did, the girl gasped, remembering her distinctive face and intensely wavy strawberry-blonde hair all too well; Lily also caught sight of the stranger, and looked at her with surprise, believing her to be a male.

"That another brother? He's so cute," Lily crooned.

"No, that's my sister," Elina said with joy as she hopped up from her seat and walked rapidly over to Annika, looking up at her with her intense, fiery hazel-green eyes. In return, the woman stared down at Elina's heavenly, unearthly face in shock; how she had grown since she last saw her.

"Wow! Elina!"

"Annika, is that really you?" the young girl asked as she looked her older sister up and down; she was fascinated by her choice of dress.

"Yeah, it's me," Annika said with a smile that reminded her so much of her father's. She held her arms out, crouching slightly. "Come and give me a hug."

Without hesitation, Elina wrapped her arms around her sister, who embraced her tightly with one arm around her upper torso and a hand on the top of her long, wavy platinum hair. She felt her heart smile as she couldn't believe how much her sister had grown up over the years of her being gone. She remembered Elina being just five when she left for up north with a few select childhood friends. Jimmy smiled as he watched the two bond, while Britta, looking at her eldest daughter's clothing choice in disgust, felt worried for some reason.

"It's so good to see you again," Elina muttered, letting go of her older sister as she stood upright to her normal stance.

"You too, kiddo," Annika replied casually. Walking to the table and getting the serving knife, the girl cut a piece of the delicious, homemade angel food vanilla cake with pink and white frosting topped with strawberries and put it on a saucer before taking a fork and handing it graciously to her sister.

"Here," Elina said with an ethereal, pearly-white smile. "For you."

It took everyone over a half an hour before they were ready to see the birthday girl open her presents, and they all relocated to the living room after a short clean-up session of removing paper plates and plastic utensils with crumbs and traces of thick, creamy frosting. Elina sat on the sofa with Jimmy and Lily sitting next to her, while Britta sat in her chair adjacent to the couch. Christopher, Toby, and Jules all came in last, and before entering, they saw Annika and were shocked at how manly she looked. Toby snickered before making a snide remark at his eldest sibling.

"You hidin' a ding-dong under there?" he joked.

"I see your lips moving, but are you really saying anything?" she asked cynically. "No, not really. Shut up." As she walked away into the living room the join the other guests, Toby looked at his brothers and shook his head.

"You just got burned," Christopher said, walking into the living room.

"Well, she's always been a butchie," Toby sneered.

Elina began her gift-unwrapping session by first opening the present from her mother and father, revealing it to be a gold heart necklace with a pair of matching pearl earrings. She gasped upon seeing the gift, and looked to both her parents with a bright smile of gratitude.

"Thank you," she said to her father. Then she turned to her mother, who sat up straight in her chair, watching her daughter's reaction with a subtle, serene grin. "Tack så mycket."

Each box was filled with a wide range of gifts, from clothing to jewelry, from money in cards to a bottle of perfume courtesy of Dot and Bette, who wanted to get something extra special for the girl. Eve had given her some candy, and Paul gave a generous gift of $100 in a specially-made card. Several boxes and thank you's later, she came to Annika's gift, which was wrapped in rainbow wrapping paper—looking before her at all the guests who had generously given presents, she saw her sister who smiled and giggled.

"My gift is the best! Glad you saved it for last!" she shouted, her low-pitched voice shocking the rest of the guests and embarrassing Britta.

"Well, let's see here," Elina replied, tearing into the flimsy, colorful paper to reveal a medium-sized box with a lid; opening it, she saw a brand new pair—no, two pairs—of bell-bottom jeans that were much more feminine than her sister's and what she had worn that evening. Holding them out of the box, Jimmy and Annika both smiled joyfully; Britta, however, gasped in shock—Elina was never allowed to wear pants; it just was unfeminine in her eyes.

"Wow! Oh…my…gosh!" the young girl exclaimed, glancing down in the box to find other things which included three albums: Pink Floyd's The Wall, Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, and Blondie's Eat to the Beat, as well as a few candy bars and three strings of love beads. Elina smiled; Annika had very good taste even if she was a masculine woman.

"I love them, sis," she said with a smile. The woman made her way over to the young girl and patted her platinum head before leaning to give her a hug.

Elina was so happy—it had been the best birthday ever with so many surprises and unexpected arrivals…literally.

Later that night after all the guests had left, Jimmy sat out on the front steps of his home, overlooking the stretch of land that connected to the main dirt road that led directly to town a few miles down the way. He was smoking a cigarette, taking slow drags as he allowed himself to relax. In the distance to his right was a large, sky blue Volkswagen camper that had been parked there for a few hours at the very least. The lights were on inside it, and he had assumed it belonged to Annika, who he saw coming out of it as she dragged on a cigarette. She walked toward the house, getting a better vision of her father on the front steps as he put out his cigarette. She continued to drag, her bare feet on the tan, dirt terrain.

"Heya," she said.

"Oh, hi, Annika," Jimmy said, relaxed but weary from the day. She took a seat next to her father. "Is that yours?"

"Yup."

"You're staying in it?" he asked.

"Yeah, I drove all the way down from New York in it," Annika replied, dragging on her cigarette and puffing out the smoke.

"When are you going back?" he asked, taking a breath of fresh air as the cool, warm Southern breeze came among the two. Annika sighed, breathing out the nicotine-filled smoke from her recent drag.

"Well…" She thought for a moment. "I don't think I am going back to New York."

"What?" Jimmy couldn't believe what he was hearing. "But…didn't you like it up there? It sure as hell probably was better than sticking around on the farm."

"Oh no, it was nice," Annika said. "I…I guess I just needed to come back and realize…"

"Realize what, Annika?"

"That…I'm not all that great…" she muttered sadly.

"What? Don't say that," Jimmy said sadly, putting an arm around his eldest daughter's shoulder. "Is it your ma?"

"Well, when I walked in, she looked at me like I had three heads, dad," she said, shaking her head as her strawberry-blonde frizz moved in sync with it. "Yeah, she tried to help me fit in, but if you put lipstick on a pig it's still a pig. After tonight, I don't even know if she will accept the fact that…" She trailed off and sighed sadly.

"What is it?" he asked with deep concern. She sighed and hesitated before answering, sighing.

"I'm a lesbian," she said, tearing up as she dragged on her cigarette. "There, I said it. Even though I don't think you—"

"Annika," he said, pushing his hair back and looking at her calmly with deep, dark eyes. "It doesn't matter to me who you love. I love you just the same."

"R-Really?" she asked.

"Yeah, I always have loved you guys," Jimmy said with a smile, giving her an emotional hug.

"But…mamma…she won't be too happy about it. That why I was afraid to come out to anyone," she said, her low-pitched voice crooning in her father's ear. He let her go and looked into her eyes, so identical to his own and sighed.

"Your mother has always been very traditional. You got to understand that she was raised like that, and in her country, it's different," he told her.

"This is not Sweden, dad," she stated forcefully. "She's been here for how long?"

"I know, Annika, but…" He trailed off, holding her perfectly normal hand in his own deformed one. "You can't always change how people feel. I learned that a long time ago. People made fun of me until the cows came home because of my deformity."

"And people made fun of me for looking like a boy," Annika said, relating her own experiences to his statement. "Hell, I even took up looking like a boy. It was the only thing that made me feel happy. I fit in with the boys in the neighborhood. It's like I belonged. Yeah, I wasn't like the other girls. Come to think of it, maybe I wasn't meant to be a woman at all. Look at me!"

Jimmy looked at his daughter and remembered her as a child. Up until the age of seven or so, Annika had been forced into cute, frilly dresses; at least until she could be able to express the fact that she didn't like wearing girly clothing. Being friends with the neighboring boys gave her the opportunity to dress in plainer clothing and even wearing full-out boys' ensembles. He remembered the first day she came home wearing boy's clothing, Britta lectured the girl telling her it was not acceptable for her to wear clothes of the opposite sex. As she got older, she wanted to redo her wardrobe, but both of her parents ignored her pleas, at least until she hit age twelve—she let her daughter wear pants; Jimmy was finally happy that his daughter was happy, and that was all that mattered to him. What she said right then and there made sense to a degree.

"So…tell me more about New York. Not when you went to that music festival—"\

"You mean Woodstock?" she corrected.

"Yeah, you know. I meant when you left to live there for the past eight years," Jimmy said.

"Well, it's a long story," Annika said, trying to dig into her mind for the right things to say. "Here goes…"