Serenity rolls over on her side and her dress bunches and tangles up between her knees, when an unexpected voice, hoarse, comes out of her own throat. "Gimme that." She tries to snatch his tiger striped pipe but grabs his hair and scalp instead. She's not used to his hair being this short and thinks it gives him a menacing look that's not all for show when he stares her head on.
His eyes, bloodshot and swollen, milk chocolate brown, are their dad's and Serenity feels another knot form in her throat. "Please Hawk," she pleads. She tries to make her voice not sound so whiny and expects Hawk to laugh at her, or give her the riot act, the way he knows that pushing her buttons is as easy as knocking down a row of dominoes. But he glances up at his baby sister like he's actually considering listening to her.
She's the only one on this side of her family with blue eyes and she wonders what Hawk sees when he looks at her that way. He's a hypocrite, her big brother. Hawk bragged about blunts in middle school. Hawk has always acted as her minder and bodyguard, nobody ever asked him to take her on as his project. He just did.
Prison guard, she thinks.
It pisses her off, the way he interrogated her over her dates or what she's wearing and acted like her personal business was any of his goddamned own, as if he wasn't doing and acting a hell of a lot worse when he was even younger.
It had something to do, she thought sometimes, with being a boy. Or older. Or a brother.
At the time it seemed funny that Hawk acted more aggressive than Daddy. Hawk acted like he actually had weight to throw around. Cajones. Anyways acting like he was a tough thug or hot shit and not her brother their sister Hazer teasingly called 'Stimpy' to her Ren.
At the time it could almost seem like her dad and brother were in on it together, a good cop/bad cop thing. Though Hawk, she thinks, is too disheveled to plan anything in advanced. Or follow any plan at all.
In the end it doesn't matter. She never listened to him anyways.
And that's when she yanks the pipe out of his hand like it's an inhaler and she's having an asthma attack.
She tries to look like she's been doing this all her life, tries to look as cool and nonplussed as Hawk, and really high is the only time she's really seen him look as mellow and cool as Patrick.
"Two puffs Ren," Hawk says, his voice suddenly taking a don't fuck with me if you know what's good for you tone. His two authoritative fingers are a little bit too close to her face when she slaps them down.
Who the hell do you think you are, Dad? She wants to laugh darkly and blow smoke in his face. Because our Daddy's six feet under and all this posturing and dick waving don't mean shit Hawk Curtis. In her head she says this in a fierce, unwavering voice. In reality she grips the pipe tighter.
Closing her eyes Serenity takes a third drag, the longest one yet. The one she wishes could take her all the way into not having hear the sound of the casket lowering. That echo that now thuds inside her chest and drops in her gut. A gut punch. She's been hit before, but never punched. This is what it feels like, her stomach caving in.
Maybe Hawk picks it up, because his voice is full of surprise and strange warm tenderness that blankets over her. She thinks it's not just the weed. "This your first time?" He asks her like this is a family bonding moment, which maybe it is.
She shakes her head no, and tilts towards him, just a little, but he picks up the cue and leans against her, his collared shirt rubbing strong against her bare shoulder.
He's bragging about how high quality his stash is, and it almost makes her laugh when she starts to cough. It's the kind of cough that gets caught in her throat, at first a little tickle, then chest feels like it inhaled a cloud of dust. She feels Hawk's hand on her back. Her cheeks feel hot. She thought she was doing a pretty decent job, for her first time and all.
They don't hear the knock at the door.
"Fuck!" It would be funny, maybe, the way their voices join together like two kids being caught red handed.
She tries to subtly pass it back to Hawk, but Patrick lasers on their hands, the way Hawk and Serenity Curtis's fingers interlace with each other. Not that he needs too, the pipe and the bowl not to mention the weed and as their dad used to sing that smell gives them away. She should have opened her window, vent some of it out. But she thinks of all the little kids in the yard and nixes that idea. People never give Ren enough credit she thinks.
They're out in the yard, playing, tossing a Frisbee and running around and it feels weird, the disconnect of it all. The devastation trapped in her small room only a window away from playful shouts and squeals from outside. They may all be family but she lost her Daddy.
Turning to face her brothers she almost wishes for fireworks, something, anything, so she won't have to think about her own sadness, which is already thicker, more suffocating than heat.
But Patrick isn't a fighter, isn't geared up for action like she and Hawk always seem to be. Even if he wasn't old enough to be Hawk's dad, Serenity gets the feeling he still wouldn't go ape shit on Hawk. He's more patient than anyone Ren knows. Zen like. Hawk on the other hand goes ape shit on anyone. They're both Soda's sons.
Who knows? Maybe that explains the ugly bruises and cuts that mysteriously appear on Hawk's body, the ones that can't be explained away by the handful of stray cats he had taken in.
She gets it, she's combustible too, at least that's what all those detentions she earned in middle school seemed to be about. Or maybe it's her mom teaching her girls not to take shit from anyone. And junior high kids are assholes. The boys never bothered her, the girls who talked in feigned whispers about pro-ana and pro-mia tumblr whenever she was in earshot, were something cruel. So she got in fights, not so much against the Greek Chorus of Mean Girls, but against girls lower on the pecking order who stared at her funny. Or ones who popped off at her cause they though she was giving them nasty looks. She'd cop easily though, that the scale of giving vs taking shit was always sort of lopsided in her favor. It's not bragging if it's true, her mom taught her that too.
"Really?" he says and glances back and the door, the one Hawk left ajar is now shut tight behind him. It physically hurts to look at her oldest sibling, the weight of the weeks held in the thick dark circles underneath his eyes.
With Mary lurching between breaking apart and a sort of mania (Serenity has never seen so much of her stepmom's teeth and before Mary smiled more than all of them put together, save maybe Serenity when she's happy) Patrick and Casey have been the ones trying to hold everything and everyone together. Her family helped pay for the service too, but it was Patrick that the funeral director talked to, so too did the guy from the VFW who came by with the flag and kept on addressing a deferential Patrick as 'Mr. Curtis' even though his last name is Nguyen.
Patrick of course, was too polite to correct him.
Her own grief is thick and directionless and she mostly feels it on her chest. Like the New Year's Eve ball before it drops. This grief is already sprouting these new emotions underneath, like resentment towards Patrick and Hazer for getting their dad (her dad) for all those years that she never got and now will never get. Hawk's got their dad for more years too, but that doesn't rankle her as much.
Maybe because she can feel this pain oozing out of Hawk, it joins her own pain, like a long lost twin.
Hazer and Patrick keep everything inside, not like Daddy did. So, it's easier to look at them with a mix of envy and resentment, and pretend they're not really suffering.
But right now her grief is still so fresh and raw that it smothers over the uglier feelings too and leaves her feeling more numb than anything. Maybe that's a good thing, feeling numb. She cried at the funeral and now she can feel like she's being swallowed inside an amorphous cloud, just floating.
"Hawk, Mary's asking about you," Is all Patrick says and guilt fills Hawk's eyes before he snorts. "Sure bro, that makes sense me goin' out there reekin' like pot. Aunt Cathy gonna have an aneurysm. We goin' for a family discount on burial plots, dawg?"
Serenity laughs out loud, it doesn't really sound like Hawk, the sarcasm, the tone.
But Patrick doesn't take the bait, he doesn't seem the type to take any bait, "Today is the one day you could probably get away with anything," he says with a calm, sensitive, tired expression. Serenity feels a twinge of guilt that makes her eyelids heavy and she wants to close them. Still, she kind of wants to hit him. It's not his fault, but he's nothing like their father.
"It was my idea. Don't be blamin' Hawk."
"No one's blaming anyone." He sounds like her guidance counselor who gave her a suicide evaluation the first and last time she mentioned Natalie A. making a purging sound when she passed Ren's locker. She resents him for that more than not shedding a tear.
"Hazer's with her," Hawk says low and removed and doesn't meet anyone's eyes, which is a good thing because if Serenity sees her dad's eyes right now she might just break.
Neither Hawk nor Serenity like silences or dead spaces so the minute Patrick leaves Serenity's mouth opens. "So, you and Adrienne, y'all have any names picked out for the baby?" She already has two nephews on her father's side but both of them are a lot older than her. She's got no desire to have a baby herself for a long time, but she's excited about a little niece or nephew around. It's another reason she can't be envious of Hawk, she feels so sorry when she thinks of Hawk's little baby that will never know their grandpa.
"Haven's a real pretty name for a girl, if you're having a girl. Are you having a girl?" She likes Ryker or Bentley for a little boy.
Ren's sister Sage is a lesbian and still in high school so Hawk's baby was the only little niece or nephew Ren figures she's having for a while. When she asked Hazer about babies once, she told Ren about this haunted house with baby dolls with stuffed rat heads where their own heads should be broken and hung from the ceiling. She loved Hazer, but there was no way around it, Haze is weird.
"Don't," Hawk says sharply, he squeezes his eyes shut.
"Don't what? I thought you were happy about it?" Not that Hawk's going to share his personal life with her on top of his weed. But Ren really does want to know.
"Yeah, course I am, I just wanna sleep now," Hawk yawns.
Maybe in other circumstances it would piss her off, Hawk commandeering her room, already unbuttoning his dress shirt, but maybe that weed really mellowed her out, or maybe she's tired too because Serenity just nods, "okay, think I'm gonna go back out there anyways... Please don't set my room on fire."
When she stands up her head feels like a lead bowling ball, as if all the center of gravity shifted upwards. Her mom took her to an upscale salon to get hair done but by now the soft waves, the ones that look something from a 1940s pinup poster, is frayed and damp with sweat.
She really should have opened that window. Fuck them little brats.
She looks at her brother, sprawled on her floor, legs wide apart. He feebly lifts his thumb and first two fingers off the ground and Serenity can't tell if he's trying to give her a thumbs up, a finger gun or a middle finger. Maybe cause with Hawk all three are possible.
She twists the knob and feels Hawk's arms wrap around her. "I love you," he says kissing the top of her head with nothing but tenderness. His kiss smells like the school parking lot and like her boyfriend. Like Hawk. Like their Dad did sometimes. Like her now.
"Love you too," she says quietly and opens the door.
The post funeral get together is at Soda and Mary's house even though one of them isn't here anymore. Serenity feels dizzy overhearing the stories, about Daddy and his brothers. Her daddy acted like a damn fool when he was her age. It was a miracle he didn't die at 17, 16, 15.
Her daddy never told her about him like that. He was worse than Hawk she thinks, the story she's hearing now, though in a few days she'd readjust that assessment. It's just all a shock to her now.
She sees Steve who had some sort of falling out with her dad, something to do with Hawk, now red eyed and crying on the front porch. It feels like all the men here are old. There's these great bursts of emphysemic laughter breaking out from different corners of the yard with the name Soda, Soda, Soda, wheezing through it all.
There are a lot more people here than at the service itself and Serenity barely knows half of them and even the ones she loves and knows fade into an amorphous cloud except for a few people she can see with crystal clarity. She glances at the mass of people. She wonders who the hell are these people and did they know her dad? And if so, how?
There's tons of food and drinks and with Mary's blessing, her insistence really, loud music playing. There's a lot of Lynyrd Skynyrd –songs not really good for mourning–except maybe Simple Man, but songs her daddy loved.
This house feels lopsided without her dad. Like Serenity felt like she was gonna fall over the moment she stepped inside. And though she loves Mary and Hawk, there's this dread in her chest just thinking about coming here over and over again and not seeing her dad. Not being able to fold into the safety of his arms and feel the stubble of his chin on her head.
"Soda would love this party," she hears some woman with tight leather pants, wrinkles and heavy mascara say.
She is violently snatched from her daydream. She wants to scream in her face that she's pretty sure her daddy would prefer to be alive.
She weaves her way through the crowd. She's one of Soda's kids, the only one still a child and people ask how she's doing, offering water or pop or something to eat. Does she look faint? She really hasn't eaten all that much this week. She's too numb to picture Natalie A's. smug expression at that revelation.
Serenity's also pretty sure at least a few people scrunch their noses up. She wants to blow a smoke ring right in their judgmental faces. My dad just died, choke on dick. She wants to say, batting her navy blue tinged eyelashes. She's got falsies on.
"Where are you going all glammed up?" the way too cheerful stylist asked her yesterday. Her cheerfulness make Serenity want to break her in two. "Got a big date planned, hun?"
"Oh, ya know just to my Daddy's funeral," she replied nonchalantly. She didn't recognize the voice pushing out of her mouth as her own. Didn't sound like her's and if it didn't sound like her's than maybe it wasn't her and maybe her Dad isn't dead. The lie works for maybe five seconds before her chest aches again.
She looked at the stylist and didn't even feel one bit sorry when the stylist clasped her hand to her mouth in guilt and began tripping over an apology.
She doesn't know why she likes stirring up shit for no good reason, except if she thinks about it, it isn't hard to figure out.
"I cannot wait for you to have kids of your own one day 'cause that attitude of yours is gonna come back and bite you in the butt," he mom used to tell her when she acted up, (what Daddy used to call her lil' Miss. Sassafras days) the crow practically spewing from Val's balls to the wall tone.
She didn't feel bad but it also didn't make her feel good, making the hairdresser embarrassed like that, not when she had her dad's funeral to attend the next morning. Anyways she should mind her own damn business.
Part of this crowd, she decides scanning the room, looks like the type to smoke a blunt off her daddy's headstone and pour a Bud in his honor.
Serenity stares at her sister. When Ren found out Hazer got a nose ring she begged her parents for one and was shocked when both her parents said no. Hazer was a grown woman, Soda said when Ren asked what the difference was, besides she didn't live at home. Ren's pretty sure that's bullshit and Soda wouldn't mind Hazer getting her nose pierced at any age. Somehow Daddy decided to parent Ren differently. "I'm not a damn baby!" Ren screamed, like a little kid, right in her dad's face.
Mary's been hooked to Hazer like a drug. The past few days Serenity has hardly seen one without the other and a few times she's seen Mary lean over on Hazer like she's about to topple over. Maybe it's not just Serenity that feels this house is all jacked up without Soda.
The two of them have the same body, though Hazer's a bit taller and weighs a bit more. But while Mary's body is all electric impulses and frantic energy even when she's not in manic grief, Hazer is more solid, more grounded.
"Serenity, Serenity," she feels a hand on her shoulder and turns around and sees James, Paige's son and somehow even skinnier than he was the last time she saw him, though he could be taller too. "I am really sorry about your dad." She's at a point in the day where she almost wants to shrug.
A lot of people are sorry about her dad, everyone is sorry about her dad and nothing anyone can do about it. But James goes on, "I'm sorry. I know I'm sorry is the last thing you want to hear."
"Yup."
James nods. He always looks more serious than he needs to be and Serenity thinks now this is a kid who could use some weed.
She saw James when they were little. James is Pony's only grandchild. He's younger and it was so easy to push him around, to bend him to her will. But now all she can see is how really sweet he is and she feels tears itch her eyelashes. Small moments of kindness on the darkest day can cause tears to flow as much as the waves of sorrow.
Unlike her own dad, James's dad ran out on him. It didn't seem like a big deal, lots of kids don't have their daddies around. Serenity had two dads, her real one and her step dad, but that wasn't her fault.
But years ago Serenity offered to help James track Drake down and James gave her his entire allowance he was saving up to buy a new hockey stick which Serenity told him was dumb. After all, if they found Drake he could buy all the hockey equipment he ever wanted, especially when you factor in the accrued interest on back payments. She got the idea from an episode of some Disney channel show, she can barely recall now.
She went online and with all James' money and hopes and hired a private investigator. When her dad found out he blew up at her, almost the way he blows up at Hawk, so she knows she did something real wrong. But it didn't take long for him to tease, "I better make sure there ain't no skeletons in my closet, huh Ren? Don't want you to sic a private detective on me," he said with a wink.
It made Serenity feel good, like she could do anything.
That's what she would tell people if she wanted to share one thing about her dad, that he made her feel powerful.
The hem of Mary's black dress inches up and Serenity can see up close her stepmom's scratched, discolored knees. It takes her a minute to realize that they are bruised from kneeling in prayer, for intercession on her dad's behalf. Serenity never thought of her stepmom as being fragile before. But she remembers earlier when she overheard Hazer, her tone no-nonsense, "Hawk, I don't think mom's changed her underwear all week."
She thinks about that now, her stepmom wearing the same underwear she wore that God awful last day. Hazer couldn't bring their daddy back of course but she would make sure that her mom had on a fresh pair of underwear.
Her hand is still on Mary's bird like thigh when Mary's brother says gruffly 'scuse me ma'am' to Mrs. Kencaide, Patrick's mother-in-law.
He has a walrus mustache and dark sunglasses. Serenity stares at his bicep, which is huge. Stares at the tattoo sneaking out under his shirt: 'Respect Few, Fear None,' as he leans over Hazer and whispers in Mary's ear. He smells like alcohol and weed, but Ren doubts anyone gave him a dirty look.
Something about 'who the fuck's taking our damn picture?' Serenity follows Mary's quick head turn to a corner of the backyard snatched up by the bikers and empty bottles of beer littered underneath them. It doesn't bother Serenity, if her Daddy was here she figures he'd go right out and join them. Though her daddy, she thinks, would pick up after himself.
But he's not here. He ain't coming back. And once again she intakes a rapid shallow breath and digs her fingernails into Mary's thigh.
Earlier Serenity watched Mary chatting with Ricky, one of the bikers, and one of her two brothers. The other one, Jimmy, dying in a motorcycle crash a few years back. She watches her stepmom's whole persona change when it's her and Rick. She could almost physically see her become tougher, more razor like and guarded. Her mouth usually running like sand through the hourglass turned taciturn and narrow.
They're close, the Hernandez siblings. Mary casually placed her knee on her brother's thigh and draped her arms around his neck. But it was hard to reconcile the steal blade stare with her stepmom who wears a ruffled Edward Scissorhands apron and sings "Put a Ring On It" while stirring the brownie mix after Hawk told her Adrienne was pregnant.
That hard look is back on her face when Mary peers into the yard and sure enough an older woman is snapping photos. Mary mutters under her breath, "Fucking Donna Mathews, you fuckin' kidding me." She's loud enough for Mrs. Kencaide to hear her, but Mrs. K doesn't look the least bit offended or put off.
Mary's brother apologizes again to Mrs. Kencaide and gives Hazer a quick peck on the cheek before he ambles away, his salt and pepper hair tied in a tight braid bouncing down the length of his back.
"Cash, baby," she cups her hands around Cash's leaned in ear, but her voice is still loud enough to make out without Serenity needing to tilt her ear, "go over to Mizz. Donna with that camera around her neck and tell her as sweet as you possibly can, baby, that if she don't stop shootin' her damn camera in people — and by people I mean those grizzly looking gentlemen – faces there's gonna be another shooting and she won't like what comes after the flash. There are warrants out for some of these gentlemen. They don't want their picture taken."
Mary shoots her step-grandson a humorless flash of teeth.
"Yes ma'am," and with a resigned but dutiful sigh Cash heads towards the yard.
Ren wonders if Rick is one of the ones with the police hot on his ass. Still, they traveled all the way to California for the service.
Hawk talked, before Adrienne got pregnant, about moving to California to work at Rick's bike shop. It makes Serenity's mouth open thinking about L.A. She imagines sandy beaches, blue oceans and beautiful people. She imagines eating cake the color of sand and feeling the waves on her feet.
But now, with his baby coming, Hawk can't just up and leave and Serenity's happier about that than she might have expected.
Her dad was 66, almost 67 when died but Ren is only 15, and thinks without irony that 30 is old.
When she was little she used to worry about her daddy dying early, and here she is, with only a learner's permit and now it happened. Things are slightly off kilter, it's the reason Steve and Soda were the same age, but Soda's grandchild is going to be Steve's great-grandchild.
Val came to the funeral of course, but she seemed hurt that Ren told her that she didn't need her at the post-gathering. She was 15, not some little girl no more. Anyways, these were her people too, her blood, as much as her mom liked to pretend otherwise. She tells herself she wasn't being a brat, just defining her boundaries. If anyone should respect that it's her mom, Ren learned it from her.
Val's not here, but Steve and Evie and their three kids, Levi, Stevie, and Darlene are here. Levi's a few years younger than Patrick and the grandfather of Hawk's baby. Levi Randle's got on a cowboy hat, stands guard over the picnic table where his wife and his four daughters, all a mass of black hair -stare at one another. Then they all take out their phones and stare down at the screens.
Hawk hasn't talked to Adrienne since the burial, barely said one word to her the past few days. Then again he's been shutting out Cash and Mary too. She's on Hawk's side, on today, and all days, still it's a pretty low thing to abandon your pregnant girlfriend and hide out in your baby's sister room to get high.
When everyone finally leaves Hawk comes out of Ren's room. He's got his head on Hazer's lap and she strokes his hair, drawing little squiggly lines with her finger on his forehead and temples. Serenity loves them and Patrick, but Hazer and Hawk will never love any of their siblings or even their parents the way they love each other.
On her mom's side she's got two sisters, half, if you want to be technical about it though in Ren's mind, there ain't no half-about it, they're her sisters, no matter that Ren used to call Shelby stupid-baby-Shelby and used to drive Sage nuts with her late night karaoke with underwear crowning her head.
It's a testament to Soda, Val, Mary and Mike, Ren will think much later when she's a mom to two little boys, that she always felt like she belonged at both her houses, with both her families. Stupid-baby-Shelby is now something of a minor country musician. She's Shelby Jade now, and the fact that she's missing a few fingers is finally getting less attention than her sweet, strong voice. Of course the fact that Shelby is pretty and knows how to play up her drawl doesn't hurt.
Ren got it wrong about Sage. She married and had a daughter with her wife much earlier than anyone expected. Sage Webb and Alexis Scott talk sometimes about another baby but they don't have the money right now. That Jude is her only niece only makes it a no brainer that she's Auntie Ren's favorite.
Hawk Curtis and Adrienne Randle were as combustible as anyone with half a brain predicted, but that didn't stop them from getting pregnant a second time. Adrienne's got the boys, Maverick and Javi, with her down in Texas near her family. The last time Ren saw the boys little Javi ran over her foot with big wheels. His love of wheels –he comes by it naturally.
Val's first Oklahoma girl lives in the northwest now, with her man and their two little boys. Soda would approve. She would think about Soda. A lot. How the dad who raised him wasn't his dad. How Soda never knew or met his real daddy. She knows her daddy wasn't perfect, if you think about it, she's exhibit A, but when it came down to it, her dad loved her, loved his family and his friends. He was a good man. He'll never know Lincoln and Dakota and that hurts even more than losing him, and she misses him.
"See, that's one of the cool things 'bout you Ren, you get to be the youngest in one family and the middle kid in the other."
"Oh there are a lot cool things 'bout me."
Pfft. Her Daddy crossed his arms, his voice growling with fake menace, "prove it to me girl, what's cool 'bout you?"
"umm... I can take a fruit roll up put in 'tween my toes and pretend I'm smokin' it. Hawk teached me how."
"Shoooot, you are cool. How the heck you get so cool Miss. Ren?"
"I dunno. Guess I was born this way."
"You ain't tellin' me no lies there baby girl. You know when I was a kid they had this candy that was shaped like a cigarette, me n' Pony used kick our shoes off, lie on the back porch and pretend like we was smokin'."
"Glitter's my favorite color in the whole wide world."
Her Daddy laughs, "huh? Say what? Well now that's gonna be my favorite color too."
If she talked about her Daddy, she would tell that too, that he made her feel special.