A/N: CW: major character death alluded to, mention of suicide.
Robyn Shepard & Casey Kencaide
We can barely hear the boys over the wind and Van Halen crackling on their transistor radios. They are flies. The horizon gulps them up then the dust belches from their back tires and we're still laughing because they're lame dweebs. And we've felt the muscles of a 1,000 pound beautiful beast underneath us. We're best friends and love horses and each other.
We are 10, 11, and for the next three years we'll wear each other's clothes. Casey no longer wants to be a barrel racer–she wants–no NEEDS to jump. Robyn and her parents fly in from New York, this time for good. Later a guy will call her 'hey New York' while selling her cocaine in Crutchfield Park, in Mohawk Park, near the turnpike just off Admiral.
The other pony moms look at Robyn's mom, thin with eyes like green lights and Casey, thin with eyes like green lights and take them for mom and daughter.
Our moms, Betty Kencaide and Sherri Shepard barrel raced back in the years when the Oklahoma girls in blue jeans and satin blouses dominated the circuit, but we hunger for more.
We are 11, 12 and eat 7-Up cake at Ms. Quincy's birthday party. Casey's dad disappears without a note or evidence of foul play and we think he might be trapped in one of Garyville's million unused fallout shelters until Casey overhears her mom saying without a trace of self-pity how, 'ain't no Winston man by blood or marriage sticks around.'
We marvel that a full grown adult could just choose to vanish. Our fingers web under Robyn's Go-Go Girls comforter, "don't worry Case. We can share my dad, he'll be your dad too. Hell, I'll be your Daddy."
In the beginning Robyn told Casey that her real last name is Quinn because she and her whole family are in the witness protection program. But when the truth comes out it's even more fantastical and unbelievable.
Robyn tells Casey that her grandfather disappeared before she was born. He was last seen in Hawke's Harbor, Delaware and we both agree that it's not the same as a dad who taught you how to mount your first horse walking out on you.
Talking about our vanished grandfathers and daddys makes us want to huddle close for warmth and think of our future–together.
We'll get a house together and start our own riding school and Robyn wants to build a retirement ranch for older horses so they aren't put down. "Do you know they make glue out of horses Casey? It's evil." Robyn then relaxes her shoulders and adds we'll get a penthouse in NYC and stay there in the winter.
Casey wants to know how we're going to afford everything but Robyn's rich and Robyn's already talking about how great NYC is in the winter. "Though it's really sleazy and Times Square's like a jungle with hos and pimps, that's why we left and how I met you!" Robyn's always changing our origin story but this version is probably closest to the truth.
Andy Warhol's Robyn's unofficial godfather, her mom one of his last muses. Robyn jumped and moshed at punk concerts in her eyelet trimmed nightgowns and pigtails. She banged her scooter outside Sylvain Sylvain's basement apartment while Tim Shepard and Cherry Valance went to Studio 54 to be seen. Now they live in Garyville, Oklahoma.
Robyn's grandfather was in with the IRA and Irish mob and had a bunch of wives, bank accounts and aliases of which Delmar 'Sammy' Shepard was but one. Robyn's grandfather's real name was Kellen Quinn and later when Robyn's doing something stupid and illegal she'll tell the arresting officer her name is Kell Quinn, too.
Robyn has her own horse, a canopy bed, the world's largest Matt Dillon poster collection and a real shrunken head she inherited from her dad who inherited it from her possibly-dead grandfather. Before they moved to New York her mom was a famous cheerleader who killed her boyfriend when they were in high school and doesn't get her periods anymore.
Robyn knows everything about everyone and isn't afraid to share: like Ms. Quincy being a lesbian, her dad being an ex-con, her parents terrified that someone would take her like they took Etan Patz and that's why they had to leave New York and Etan told Robyn via ESP that he's in Barbados now, but he's okay. "He has a pet iguana, so that's cool."
Casey goes to public school in Garyville and Robyn goes to Catholic school in Tulsa but we spend every moment we can with each other and with our horses. "I wish a cute boy–no wait! Two of them–no! Another set of twins–cute twin boys will ride by us," Robyn says while we saddle up our horses, forgetting that we aren't twins either.
In the evenings if we aren't having an overnight we are tying each other's phone lines up until Robyn's mom relents and buys her a private line. We tell each other all of our deepest darkest secrets and fantasies and some of them might even be true.
"Scrape harder Casey, it doesn't hurt, like for real it's just my evil twin. She's a bitch anyways. Fucking cunt," Robyn grins and grabs Casey's sweaty hand just above her hip.
Robyn swallowed her twin sister in utero. Robyn calls her Ramona. Ramona makes Robyn do horrible things, Robyn shudders, "like bad Casey."
Robyn holds Casey's hand tight when she says this so it feels that we are one possessed body.
"You can feel it," Robyn says with the casual command of someone used to getting her way. "Like for real Case, she's not going to hurt YOU. I'm the one Ramona wants to snuff out." For the first time Casey hears a meanness in Robyn's voice.
Casey's worried that she'll touch Robyn's body and feel nothing but unremarkable flesh and bone. Like Robyn's just a girl and not the one person in the world who makes Katherine Caroline Kencaide want to believe in an evil fetal twin-sister.
That's when Casey feels it, slippery and rubbery and ticking like an exposed heart underneath and then inside her hand.
We still don't hear anything from Tracey Kencaide. Robyn thinks he has a pretty Senorita on the side down in Texas and she's tied him up with cattle rope and is doing all sorts of hot, dirty, tantalizing things to him and making his dick go real hard and that's why he can't let his family know that he's still alive. But Casey thinks maybe he's dead rolled over in a ditch someplace. Or a hunter mistook him for a wild animal and shot him. Robyn suggests he could have an STD that caused his dick to fall off and he keeps on lifting his dick off the ground thinking it's the phone. "T.K. Phone Hoooomee!"
"Don't worry Case, he'll get what's coming to him. I promise you." Robyn holds the crucifix dangling around her neck up to the light. Her prophesy is a prayer, her face eerie and serene.
Casey misses Tex McCormick. Tex helped her dad out with the horses back when Casey was too small. He was like a big brother to her and her first crush even though when Casey, Betty and Tex were in the same room together it felt like they were being squeezed too tight.
Casey's thirteen, smokes Kools and rides horses. Her hair's in a mullet, she uses an inhaler and is second in the State junior equestrian show jumping championships behind her best friend Robyn Shepard who is already being talked about as a future Olympian, if we count Robyn's dad.
Robyn's the gutsiest, most insane, most naturally talented rider Casey knows. Casey warns Robyn about a nasty curve just after the second fence. After our 1-2 finish Robyn's dad takes us to Disney World to celebrate and Casey tries not to feel bitter about how much Robyn has, how easy everything is for you when you're rich. Then guilt creeps on her like a hundred mosquitoes when she remembers how much more enthusiastically Robyn cheered for her than the other way around.
Robyn's parents go to the new Epcot Center theme park while we run wild in the Magic Kingdom like it's ours. We hold hands and run through Cinderella's Castle before the fireworks start. Under the glow of Cinderella's Castle Casey lights up Robyn's first cigarette.
Robyn's seeing a psychiatrist in Dallas but tells Casey she's training for the Arizona Circuit. After Tracey ran out on them Betty Kencaide was forced to sell Kencaide Quarter Horse Ranch at no profit. They're on food stamps and everyone knows Casey gets free lunches at school and Ms. Quincy gives Casey free lessons in exchange for cleaning the stalls.
Robyn yanks a bloody Always pad out of her underwear and hurls it at Samantha Seaborne who is a horse girl in the worst possible way. Robyn's the only one who doesn't laugh when Samantha wants to know if Casey's crossed-eyed from staring at her horse's butt all the time.
Casey pleads Robyn's case but Ms. Quincy suspends Robyn for two-weeks. It should be more Casey thinks, but Robyn's just someone who can get away with anything. Everyone, Ms. Quincy included, likes Robyn Shepard.
Casey can't shake the feeling that Robyn relishes getting in trouble. "I threw a bloody pad at that skank's face OF course I'm getting suspended. The only reason I'm not expelled is because my parents pay for half of the cost of running this place. Casey, I love you. I told you I'd always look out for you." Robyn's cheerful as always. She holds her hands up like a phone and mouths 'call me!'
"Wait!" Casey calls out when she notices a blood stained heart spread across Robyn's white jeans but it's too late. Mr. Shepard's already swinging the passenger door of his Firebird wide open. "Sit your ass down." They whip out of Ms. Quincy's place like a bat out of hell.
Casey goes back into the barn and wants to get revenge for Robyn, the way Robyn got revenge for her. She hoses Samantha Seaborne who screams like the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz and shrieks about getting her new riding outfit all ruined.
Casey doesn't see what the big deal is about Tim Shepard knowing Dallas Winston, but Robyn's freaking out over her dad knowing Mrs. Kencaide's cousin, dead before either of us were born. Later we'll understand, there are some people you can't escape. No matter how hard you try.
Robyn's hanging out with her cousin Anthony in Tulsa, snorting cocaine and selling baggies to the other Monte Cassino girls too scared to go downtown for their fix. Robyn, Tony and their cousin LeRoy bark at roadkill and climb the water when Robyn closes her eyes and thinks how much her mom and Casey would miss her if she jumped.
If Robyn's not scoring drugs she'll drag Casey to Tulsa with her. But they no longer spend every waking hour together the way they did when they were a year younger.
There are her dad's rifles, the keepsake salt and pepper shakers, the cowboys and Indian paintings, the crocheted blankets and sometimes Casey feels like her mom is at least 3 decades older than her actual age.
The years since Tracey left them Casey and her mom are thick as thieves.
Betty tells Casey about how she ditched school and rode her horse all the way to Windrixville to sneak a visit to Tracey. How they 'made whoopie' in an abandoned church and Casey's never even kissed a boy yet, but her momma tells her that it will happen when it happens.
Betty and her cousin hung out at roadhouses with the drifters and cowboys (like Betty's daddy Zane and Casey's daddy's Tracey). Casey cuts her mom's hair in their kitchen and Betty will laugh about her long ago broken bones and busted ribs in the rodeo even though as a girl she was limited to barrel racing and not much else. Casey suspects that Betty Winston Kencaide understands her primal need to ride on the edge of danger even more than Robyn does.
"Light me up honey," Betty will say, touching her newly cut hair. Mom and daughter will share a cigarette and watch the sunset over Garyville. "Tomorrow's not promised to nobody, sugar," Betty tells her daughter. They're Winstons which means they don't feel sorry for themselves, live like there's no tomorrow, fight like hell and let the chips fall where they may.
High school, and Casey's on her way to being the youngest pro rider in the whole state and already has her own business–a riding school and uses homeroom to sneak out into the lobby to call prospective clients on the payphone.
Robyn's expelled from Catholic school and for the first time the girls both attend the same school. They find each other at the smoking hole and Robyn laughs exuberantly and friendly and Casey's heart skips a beat. In a few minutes she'll ask Casey for a job and it isn't just nostalgia that has Casey saying yes. But first Robyn beams her beautiful grin and says, "light me up Case."
1984
"Hey, honey honey," Chrissy Jones says and Robyn screams and leaps into her cousin's outstretched arms.
Meanwhile, Chrissy's giving her boyfriend Patrick a shrug and he shoves the unused pipe in the glove compartment and jumps out of the driver's seat of his dad's pickup truck. Soda won't mind the pot long as no one does anything stupid and they don't get caught.
Robyn bought her friend Casey from Garyville, or as Chrissy calls it, Hicksville.
The four of them climb on the truck bed lined with blankets. The last night of the state fair and the fireworks show is supposed to be even bigger than last year or the year before that.
Casey's fourteen and offers sixteen year old Patrick a cigarette and he smiles and says politely "no thank you," and tries to reach Chrissy's gaze with his raised eyebrows.
But Robyn has her cornered and she's talking a mile a minute and her hands are all over Chrissy's arms and back. Patrick asks Casey how she likes the fair, and Casey's only here for the horses and because of Robyn.
Chrissy's got the new Metallica cassette, "y'all want to listen?"
Today Robyn became a Metallica fan. Tonight Chrissy will be more drunk and stoned than she ever has in her life. Patrick will feel his erection and sidle out of her grasp and draw his finger down her forehead and stop where her eyebrows come together like the light at the end of a tunnel. "Not tonight, babe," he'll speak gently but firmly and Chrissy wants to cry.
"What the hell?!" Chrissy will say and feel humiliated and rejected. She'll ignore him at her locker on Monday. Later she'll feel embarrassed, then grateful. Much later still when she's a mom to a son and then two daughters she'll think how much it fucking sucks that this is a world where she felt genuinely grateful that her boyfriend didn't take advantage of her when she was so wasted she couldn't tell the ceiling from the floor.
Three years after Patrick will tell Chrissy 'not tonight' they'll have a son and a divorce. Eight years and now it's Patrick and Casey married and with a son.
When she's seventeen Robyn's baked, fried and topless around the horses and a boy named Travis and she understands why Casey has to fire her. She's not even mad. But when Casey starts dating Chrissy's ex Robyn's apoplectic.
Robyn tells everyone that Patrick started having sex with Casey when Casey was fourteen and that he beat up Chrissy. Chrissy calls her a "fucking psychopath," and despite being family they won't speak until Robyn's mom commits suicide.
Then Robyn does a complete 180, gets clean, joins the Army and for the first time finds her bravery, recklessness and ride or die loyalty paying off. She's a good soldier. She loves the Army and her fellow soldiers like she's never loved anything or anyone in her whole life.
Later she'll be neck deep in conspiracy theories and memes. She and her cousin C.D. will have screaming matches over politics and despite years of therapy and a cocktail of SSRIs C.D. will turn beet red and call Robyn a FUCKING FASCIST in all caps. Robyn texts back, "sorry cuz I call it like it is. Don't like it? Kiss my ass and join ISIS," before C.D. blocks her.
Meanwhile Casey and Patrick Nguyen meditate and Patrick is a practicing Buddhist belonging to the Tam Bao Temple.
But that's all a long way from now and no one would believe you if you said this in 1984 anyways.
Because right now it's still the afternoon. Here's Casey, Robyn, Chrissy and Patrick. Patrick's got his finger under Chrissy's bra strap and feels her warm skin under his middle finger. Robyn's in a mosh pit of one then she smiles with glee when Casey joins her.
Patrick will be saying something to Chrissy, like flirting with her, then Chrissy will hold up a finger shhh him, "hold on baby, this is a good one," and on will come Fade to Black.
A/N: um Robyn Shepard everyone ;)
And another crazy connecting everyone in Hintonverse to each other like getting a round peg in a square hole. (I have about a gazillion more connections/reveals, but I'm trying to keep in relatively manageable) ;)
Robyn, Casey, Travis, Mrs. Kencaide, Ms. Quincy are characters in Taming the Star Runner. In my world Mrs. Kencaide is also Dally's cousin who told him about Windrixville, while Robyn's also Tim & Cherry's daughter.
I've been ridiculously excited to reveal this (okay I know I'm the only one!) but Kellen Quinn of Hawke's Harbor is Delmar 'Sammy' Shepard aka Tim, Curly and Angela's dad (he's also the dad of Ed & Joe (Shepard) who are background characters in Rumble Fish, a middle aged Ed makes an appearance in Some of Tim's Stories), as well as the dad of Elenore Carmichael of Taming the Star Runner.
Cousin LeRoy is Joe's son, he's the little boy in Rumble Fish who threatens to 'tell mama' when Patty (Shepard) and Rusty-James (Sheldon) make out. Later he's the guy in SOTS that Terry MacIntosh sells drugs to.
Etan Patz was tragically a young boy kidnapped and murdered in 1979, his disappearance was a watershed case for New Yorkers-especially of Robyn's generation and galvanized the missing children movement. For decades Etan's whereabouts were unknown and hoaxers and others claimed to know where Etan was.
Sylvain Sylvain was a musician in the New York Dolls.
Fade to Black is a Metallica song.
