andy rienbeck

There was always something about a uniform that attracted Barbabra McKinley. Something about the buttons and perfectly creased pants that just got to her. As she got older she would even claim that her fondest memories involved waking up before dawn just watch her father place each of his metals perfectly across his chest. The only daughter of a JAG officer, it came to no one's surprise that she would eventually follow in her father's footsteps and join the army. Barely days after graduation, she left for boot camp and began her life as a CBRN specialist. It would be six years before she would return to the Geogia base she called home for much of her life. When she returned it would be the day that would change her life forever. The trip was only meant to celebrate forty years of service her father had given to his country, but when it came time for her to ship off to Germany she left with so much more.

Philip Rienbeck wasn't like most of the boys on base. More often than naught he was the ringleader of the group of kids who constantly found themselves rebelling against the military way of life. There was never a prank on the base that he wasn't behind... assuming he was back from a night of sneaking out to party with the locals. While most of the families looked down upon the Rienbeck family and their inability to control their son, Barbara would always catch herself dreaming of the day the Rienbeck boy would ask her to leave in the middle of the night with him. It would take almost thirteen years before that day would finally come. As luck would have it, Phil was on base to help his parents pack up for the move into retirement while Barbara was there. Now a aviation logistics for the 3rd Marine Regiment, Philip's rebellious streak was long behind him, but from the moment he saw she outside her parent's home, the wheels were already turning in his head on just how he could get her to go out with him that night. Before he could finish his question, Barbara had agreed to do whatever he wanted. For the rest of her week the two were inseparable.

One week turned into them spending the better part of two years writing letters to one another. With each one Barbara received, the more she knew that he was the man she was suppose to marry. It was something she never told anyone out of fear of being mocked. After eight years of service she was about to let herself be discharged on the hope that the feelings she had for Phil would be returned. Growing up Barbara's mother warned her daughter to never let her future in the hands of another person, but upon her return to the states that was what she did. She had been back from Germany less than a few hours when she decided to meet up with Phil and lay all her cards on the table. All of it came as a shock to him, but as surprising as it was to him, there was no denying that he felt the same. The two soon married and the children followed shortly after. There were four in total, with the boy Philip always wanted stuck right in the middle of all of it.

Born on May 14, 1992, Andy would soon find that his life would be short of typical, at least in the eyes of most children his age. On the outside, it was all average. He would go to school and come home to spend hours playing outside with the rest of the children on base. Everyday was another fight with his sisters to see just who got to watch tv when or got to have the last cookie. He loved playing football and going to the beach come summer break. The only difference between him and most children was he did all of this on a Marine base in Hawaii. Before he was able to even walk, his father was stationed at Kaneohe Bay in Oahu until Andrew was thirteen. And just like his father, he got older he began to adopt his father's rebellious streak thanks to all the stringent life and rules the base had for everyone living on it. Only difference between him and his father was Andy started his streak at an earlier age. Before he was even in middle school, Andrew had a knack for sneaking off base at all hours just so he could play baseball with the local boys older than him. While getting caught was never part of the plan, disciplinary action was usually in the cards at the end of his adventures. Still, no matter the trouble he faced when he got home, it didn't stop Andy from having fun. Around the time he was to start eighth grade that those all night games of ball and sneaking around came to an end. On July 16, 2005 his father finally returned to civilian life after a fifteen year career with the U.S. Army and moved his family across the globe to Irvington, New York.

While his sisters all adapted to life off base rather easily, Andy couldn't. Sure he loved the hunting and fishing trips and visits to the gun range with his father. Hell, he even liked the idea visiting the Catskills and climbing the mountians that surrounded it, but it was everything else that was new and hard for him. Back in Japan, all the kids knew what it was like being the "new" kid so there was never a learning curve or the teenage politics civilian kids faced. And all that made him distant around his peers. So while his sisters became social butterflies, he became more and more of a social outcast who spent too much time at home with his mom. This continued through Andrew's the rest of his eighth grade yea, until the day word got back to his mother about how the other boys teased and taunted her baby. Between the fishing trips that littered his summer, his mother planted the seeds of different ideas on how her son could start to fit in. One of those ideas was him to try out for football team when they held their summer walk-ons.

Just like every other red-blooded American boy, Andy once had dreams of playing for the Cowboys growing up, but after quickly becoming the shortest boy in his class the dream faded. Still, at the behest of his mother, he went to the walk-ons and gave it his all. Amazingly enough, he surprised everyone and made the cut and started his freshman year on Lanier High's junior varsity team. While he was still just as awkward, the idea of being part of something gave the boy an ego boost he sorely needed. Sure some of the older boys still picked on him, but instead of running away, he stood up for himself (it didn't hurt that he had his own gang of players to back him up if things got too rough). By the time he was sixteen, he made it to varsity and no one would have ever guessed he was outcast everyone picked on. And now that he had popularity, there was no way he was going to lose it. His attention quickly shifted from schoolwork that year to girls, practice and parties.

That was around the same time Lorelai came into his life. She was a slightly younger girl, one year and three months younger to be exact, and best friends with one of his sister. Even though he was too busy chasing other girls when they first met, she still managed to catch his eye. After all, she was different then the girls that ran in his circle. Less prim and proper, not scared to stand her ground and a bit of a firecracker. It was exciting to him when she eventually started to show interest in him but it took him awhile to show it. Sure he would flirt with her every now once in awhile and on a few occasions even drive her home after parties in hopes of possibly getting to second base in the cab of his truck. It was a game of cat and mouse that went on so long that Andy eventually found himself spending more time with the girl than his own sister. Him being the reason his sister lost her best friend caused a huge riff in his family. While his father tried to defend him as just being a boy, either his mother nor sisters were buying it. Per his sister's request, his mother soon banned Lorelai from stepping foot in their house again and forbade her son from seeing the girl. Not that it stopped him, he just got sneakier about it.

His senior year of high school came and went with nothing too exciting to show for it. He never had the grades to get into college so he opted to just go to a technical school to make his mother happy. Everything they had to offer seemed boring and half the time he didn't show up for his classes. Instead he spent most of his days hanging out with the other future townies that opted to stay in Irvington as well. They all made plans for road trips and taking over their parents businesses but never once did they talk about leaving the tiny town. This was the sort of thing that killed Andy's parents. They had always wanted so much more for their boy than Sleepy Hollow could offer. Just about every night there was a fight in their household about how he was wasting away his life and every time it ended with his heading to Lorelai's completely unaware that she was having her own crisis to deal with. It wasn't until she showed up at his house in tears that he learned she had found out about her adoption. He spent the rest of that spring comforting her and helping with her search for her birth mother. When she finally did locate her in Nashville, he joked about moving there together and helping her reconnect. But soon that joke became a plan. The moment Lorelai turned eighteen, the two loaded up Andy's truck and headed north to start the next chapter of their lives; a chapter that was very short lived. One year later Andy found himself back in the place it all began.