notes: i want to say i'm back but i never really left! reading "voir dire" will make this story make a lot more sense. some general warnings for this fic include, but are not limited to: drug use, gang activity, and referenced character deaths; i will post warnings at the beginning of chapters as is needed! thank you for reading :)

I AM TASTING MYSELF
IN THE MOUTH OF THE SUN

june jordan

February, 1960

June's birthday that year is on a Monday. That afternoon, after she's been picked up from school by her mother, her father sweeps into the home where they live with two bouquets of flowers.

At the door her mother says, "You brought me flowers already," and it's true. There's a vase of roses at the table in the kitchen, brought on the thirteenth. Fridays are for Faye Blue Thunder without fail; that this one aligned very closely with Valentine's Day doesn't make a difference.

Darrel Curtis grins at her. His eyes are dancing, and he has a bouquet of lilies in each hand, one white and one purple. He says, "And I got you more, darlin'," and June comes into the hallway as he's gifting her mother a kiss. He says, "Hi Junie," afterwards, Stargazers in hand while her mother slips away to find more vases. He gathers her up in his arms, no matter that soon she'll be too big to carry around like that, and says, "Happy birthday!"

She smiles, arms around his neck. She says, "Thank you," and accepts the flowers she's been brought with great care. Every year he brings her a bouquet for her birthday, and he stays a long time to tell her stories about Texas and the parents he left, the mother who lives there with her extended family now that Patrick Curtis is gone. They called him Pato, her father's told her, for the way he walked as a child, no matter that he outgrew it and became a father eventually himself.

Darrel always says he wished he had the chance to take her to meet him. Later, June will wonder why he didn't, and guess very closely to the truth. For now, she lets her father sit in his grief with her, though maybe he shouldn't have. Maybe he shouldn't have done a lot of things. This year, as he does every year, he's brought her gifts she'll forget about as adolescence and then adulthood stretch before her, but in that moment she adores them. The Barbie doll is her favorite—her hair blonde and beautiful.

Before the night ends they cut cake, not a party but just a little celebration for their family. Sonny comes by with his ma, who blinks owlishly at Darrel and seems quieter than usual. June remembers her uncle but just barely; Sonny's memories will only fade as the years come. Jim Blue Thunder was killed walking out of his own home, where he and his girl and their son lived. Sonny's ma, in the aftermath, was so worked up she lost the baby they were expecting, a girl that ended up buried with her father soon after they laid him to rest.

She's a quiet woman as is, Sonny's momma. The older he gets the more he looks like her. She's what some might call pliant—easy to push around, maybe, hands clearly full with Sonny and trying to keep a roof over their heads. But June at ten and Sonny at eleven are only beginning to understand what that means, and tonight they revel in as much cake as they can manage, June's mother convinced by her father and Sonny's just as easy to sway.

They play outside, no snow but the temperatures just starting to dip below freezing as the sun sets. On the back porch, their parents watch them. They don't bother keeping their voices down, not that either June or Sonny care much, building a fort out of cardboard boxes and arguing about who has to play at the dragon they've decided to battle for the night.

At some point Sonny's ma disappears into the house again. June will remember this later—the creak of the porch and the click of the door shutting behind her. Her father's voice, low and familiar in the evening light, her mother next to him, half-turned, like she's trying to watch him at the same time as she watches over June. In the moment in meant nothing to her. If she had remembered, the news she learned five years later wouldn't have been as much of a surprise.

Her mother asks, "And the boys?"

"Good." Darrel has always been a tall man. He's a menacing figure in the dark, but it doesn't stop Faye from looking up at him like he might have an answer for anything she might ask of him.

"Good Valentine's Day?"

"Faye."

"It's a question."

"D'you like the flowers?"

"Which?"

"Both."

"Of course I did." Faye looks towards the kids again. When June waves, she smiles and waves right back. "I put them in a vase, didn't I?"

"Don't mean you like 'em, darlin'."

"Well I do," she says. Her arms are crossed. She says, voice nearly void of emotion, "Thank you."

Darrel hums, not an answer but close. "Who all's comin' by next weekend?"

"A few of the kids at school," Faye says. Darrel moves closer to her. "Sonny, again. Celeste is driving down with the boys and my ma."

"She gonna wanna see me?"

"Who?"

"You know," Darrel says, and there's something like laughter in his voice. It makes Faye stiffen, her silhouette a smudge besides Darrel. "Your ma's never gonna like me, huh."

June plays at the dragon while Sonny tries to slay her. They run in circles, unconcerned, two children on the Eastside, while her mother pretends at something June won't be able to put a name to for a good ten years.

That night, Faye says, "It don't really matter, not really." Her hair is long, that year, longer than she usually keeps it. Full and dark and soft when June reaches out to touch.

"It should. It should bother you, that your ma don't like her only granddaughter's daddy."

"You give her a reason to like you, lately?"

"I think a little bit'a respect goes a long way. Ain't like Junie's got a grandma nearby besides her, after all."

Faye doesn't bother looking at him. Looks straight at June when she answers, instead, and June will wake up remembering it like a nightmare, six years from now: "She's got one grandma and it's 'cause of me. And I think you oughta remember you got June 'cause of me, too."

June waves again, blind to what's in front of her, and Faye waves right back.

She calls out, "C'mon, baby, it's cold out already," and doesn't wait for Darrel to follow when she heads back inside.

May, 1970

The first thing she does is head to the old Shepard house.

June hasn't been there in years, not since she was eighteen years old and Soda barely buried. There should be a word for someone who has to bury their sibling, but as far as she knows, there ain't. She even tried asking Ponyboy, considering all that reading he was up to when she was still living in Tulsa, but he didn't know any, either. Last they spoke June told him to come on down to Sacramento, and he just laughed. She had been sober a month by then, that day, and thought she finally kicked the habit.

Two days later she was shooting up in her ex-boyfriend's cockroach-infested apartment in Folsom, which is why she stops by to see Curly Shepard as soon as she hitches a ride. He's a sight for sore eyes, though that might be the dope calling for her already. The Shepards are stupid good-looking, though, and Curly knows it.

"Blue," he says, a name she ain't used in years, and she scowls. She's feeling a little shaky, and she's never been one for tolerating his flirting, besides. "Ain't you a pretty picture."

She rolls her eyes. In her grip she's got several dirty bills. "How much you charging these days, Curly?"

"No one calls me that anymore," he says, and his hands drop from his hips. He looks twenty even when he's trying to put on a front, hair curling over his ears and neck like Morrison's. He says, sounding more like he did two years ago, the last she saw him, "Less than what they must be charging you out West, looks like. You spend all your money on dope now, huh?"

"Better'n food and sex," she drawls, "now take my damn money."

He clicks his tongue at her like she imagines her mother would. They speak by phone, sometimes, but long-distance is expensive and June hates to think of disappointing her with the truth of who she really is. The year her daddy died was rough on all of them and it hardly let up come the New Year, but for a little while there, it seemed like things were getting better.

Then 'Nam made a bed their home, and things, like most, only got worse.

June's been to the Shepard house exactly once, shortly before she left town. She showed up shaking, half-put together like she'd been rolling around with someone and hadn't cared to hide it. Truth was that she threw herself into a set of bushes trying to avoid Marcelo Alcaraz, who in addition to having an unhealthy preoccupation with her since she was fifteen, also happened to have sold her drugs without actually receiving payment. June was aware, vaguely, that she could use the former to solve the latter, but she'd never liked Alcaraz and didn't want to give him any sort of satisfaction.

It meant she was shit out of luck, though, when it came to getting a hit, which was why she was banging on the door like she was looking for someone. That someone being Tim Shepard, who promptly told her to go the fuck home.

"I ain't selling you shit," he said. He looked pissed. "Last thing I need is one'a your brothers coming out here thinking I got you hooked on this shit. You oughta quit while you have the chance."

"Right," June had said, and scratched at her collarbone, a movement that Tim watched carefully. June, eighteen years old by then, still had not learned how to purposely manipulate a man that was not related to her, and so she didn't try. Tim was good-looking, objectively, but their interactions were limited to the handful of times he found her in places she shouldn't have been in—Buck's, wandering the Eastside, once outside Rogers while she was waiting for Ponyboy to get out of class and he was waiting on his siblings. She doubted she would be able to overcome the image he must have had of her at fifteen, when she was prone to stomping when denied what she desired. She said, instead, not sure she could bring herself to make it home in one piece, "Is Curly around."

The look on his face was unimpressed. "He ain't selling you nothing, either."

That fact is thankfully no longer true, and not just because Curly has no qualms selling her whatever drug she asks for—before she left town, it was usually weed or sometimes sass, when the boyfriend she snagged at sixteen wanted to act up on the weekends. She's moved beyond that, though, in the years since Soda's death; meanwhile, Curly's street presence has clearly only increased since Tim's arrest earlier this year.

He brings this up as she follows him inside his home, the same house the three Shepards grew up in. His ma's nowhere to be found. "You gone to see Tim yet?"

June thinks of the handful of letters she's tried writing and couldn't bring herself to mail, and the one or two she has. Says instead, "Just got off the bus, Shepard. He taking visitors?"

"'Course," Curly says. "Should be out in the next seven, eight months if he plays his cards right. Maybe even six."

"What's the charge again?" It's May, already. She was under the impression he was serving two years, but Pony's air-headed enough she should know better than to take his words for fact.

"Intent to distribute." Curly over-pronounces the words, not that June's going to correct him. She ain't here for small talk, even if she'll admit to some interest in what's going on with Tim. If she remembers correctly, this is the first and only time it's ever been Curly in charge of Shepard territory; she wonders what he thinks of it. "How much you want?"

June's on limited income, meaning she's got nothing coming in now that she's left her job housekeeping, cash on her like she's always got. There's also a cashier's check folded up carefully in the bag slung over her shoulder, but it's meant to get her through her time in Tulsa, not get wasted on enough heroin for her to overdose her first night there.

She's also, in theory, trying to cut back at least a little. This is not the first time she's told herself that, and she doesn't want to think about it not being the last, nor the fact that her current actions suggest the exact opposite. Fact is she's got a little over three weeks until the wedding, and she hasn't figured out where she's sleeping yet. The second Darry catches sight of her he'll be trying to send her to a halfway house. Sneaking around seems passé, even if she's already nauseous at the thought of toughing it out through withdrawal again.

She's hoping Curly lets her smoke out back before kicking her out. Mostly, though, she wants him to shut up—she told him how much she wanted and he's still jabbering, some story about Tim around the time they grabbed him morphing into an update on Angela. It's when he says Milagros that she stiffens.

"What was that?" Curly doesn't seem bothered by the interruption. She only ever tracked him down for a hit; despite that, she knows an uncomfortable amount of information about him, the Shepards, and whatever it is that goes on in their territory. He's the one who told her that Ponyboy was running around with that Carlson girl, a fact that had June hollering with laughter when she called him out on it the next time she was over for dinner. At least then Darry thought it funny, too. He probably won't be too happy to find her like this, though.

But Angela marrying into the Milagros line is bad news for June. Alcaraz, as far as she knows, hasn't kicked the bucket yet; she lost track of how long she went without paying him, but if Jax were dead she would have heard something. Last she knew he was still with that girl of his, the one who gave him a son. She doesn't like where this is going.

"Her and Joey," Curly says, and she calms a little. Jackson and Joseph—Jax and Joey, the former with his eyes on the prize and the youngest always more interested in chasing skirts. "Got married in the fall. Big wedding, he went all out for her."

"He don't care he's her second husband then, huh?" June feigns interest in her nails, filed short like they always are; rubber gloves just aren't comfortable otherwise.

"That wasn't a Church wedding," Curly shrugs. He's lounging on one of his couches, product ready for June to disappear with it, if only he'd let her get close enough to throw some bills down. "Plus, after she lost the baby, you know. She ain't even divorced, they had a—what's it called?"

"Annulment," June says, and squints at him. She's pretty sure those are hard to come by.

"Right," Curly says, and snaps his fingers. "Angie said she was coerced, and since they didn't have no proof she was even pregnant in the first place, well. Ex-husband split town, anyway. Joey's real nice."

Joey's a failed dope-dealer, June knows, but she's not in the mood for conversation besides this. All Angela's news means that she'll have to be sneakier, which already seems like a lost cause—Curly's what the ladies she works with call chismoso, which means if he sees his sister at any point in the future he'll spill the beans. Odds are Angela stays out of men's business, but if she's anything like June was, running around with Sonny and then calling on Alcaraz for pot or pills or powder, then she might have some vested interest in dragging June back to the River Kings.

She's also not sure how Curly's so comfortable talking about miscarriages but, well. June's not here for that discussion, either. She says, instead, "Good to hear. I'll get outta your hair now."

"Next time Tim calls, I'll tell him you're back in town," he offers, and the smile she flashes is a clear grimace.

"Thanks, Shepard," she says, and hustles out of there as fast as she can.

It just so happens that someone else she knows had the same idea as she did, though, because when she walks out of the Shepard house there's Ponyboy—clearly surprised to see her, but he's grinning about as big as June must be, too, no matter the shock that lingers underneath.