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There is a plastic princess crown covered in rhinestones on Dad’s head.

He’s doing a stiff and uncomfortable looking version of the electric slide.

And everyone is laughing at him.

Including himself.

He’s probably drunk.

The electric slide finally ends but the next song is that damn song from Frozen. Dad holds his arms out to Grady, the birthday girl, who sprints towards him excitedly. He picks her up and waltzes around the backyard with her tightly in his arms.

All of the other little kids get excited by the song too and start singing along. Dad mouths the words too. Grady loves the attention Dad’s giving her and is in a fit of giggles. The adults love it.

Fuck him.

Noah Presley nudges my shoulder and hands the princess themed paper cup back to me. The edge is all stained with dark pink lip gloss now. I quickly take a small sip from the opposite side he drank from and hide the cup in the tall unkept grass we were sitting on.

Noah  and I are were under the cover of the big willow tree in the Grady's backyard, our backs against the rotting storage shed in the far corner of the small backyard. With all the little kids running around nobody had been paying attention to the liquor table and I’d quickly filled the princess cup  with whatever I could.

It turns out it tastes like ass all mixed up.

The Frozen song ends and changes to this horrible country love song and Grady loses all  interest in dancing with Dad. When he puts Grady down she runs off, tutu flailing, towards where her grandmother, Mrs. Grady, was opening a box of bright pink cupcakes from Food City. 

Aunt Savannah told me the pink frosting was so shiny because it was made with dead animal fat.

Dad joked it was better than live animal fat and Gran told him to leave his baby sister alone. 

“Where’s my next partner ?,” Dad calls out, swaying to the country song. He didn’t even like country music.

“Sit down before you hurt yourself!” Aunt Savannah yells from the grill. She’s burning something called mahi mahi on it. She insisted it would change our lives when we tried it and even went into the city to find fresh filets.

“Come on, J,” Dad cat calls, extending a hand to where Mom is sitting with some of the other Moms near the backporch. She’s cross legged on the ground,  blowing bubbles with my baby sisters, Carter and Anabelle Grace.

Mom rolls her eyes and shakes her head at Dad. He clutches his faded Marlin’s t-shirt near his heart and pretends to look hurt.

“Come on baby...” Dad says slowly. Loudly. He walks over,  takes Mom’s hand and pulls her off the ground.

She gives in and  starts slow dancing with him, he whispers something to her and she pretends to knee him in the groin.

Anabelle Grace, who is the baby of our family at only a little over a year old, isn’t happy that Mom isn't blowing her bubbles anymore, Annabelle Grace had ended up with a slew of princess-themed names because Mom had to go to the ICU when Anabelle Grace was born and left her naming to my three princess obsessed sisters. Ana and Belle were from Frozen and Beauty and the Beast. Grace was a real American princess according to my 14-year-old know-it-all sister Spencer.

Anabelle Grace crawls after Mom and tangles herself between Mom’s dress and Dad’s legs. They start kissing and  the other people start to make that aw noise.

There was no one else dancing.

There wasn’t even a dance floor.

This was a 6-year-old’s birthday party.

But Dad just had to be the center of attention. He couldn’t just stand by the grill, play cards or spit tobacco on the front porch with the other Dads.

“Mase, Mase, Mase--,” a small voice chants

I gladly look away from Dad’s spectacle and see Grady bounding towards me, her face covered in the pink Food City frosting. I still couldn’t believe she was turning 6-years-old already, I remember when Grady was first born.

She was all squished up and bald when she was a newborn. Now she’s got  this crazy spiral blonde hair that curls up tighter in the humidity and an endless supply of energy. Grady holds a napkin to me.

“I bought you a cupcake!,” Grady squeals handing me a smashed cupcake.

“Hey, what about Noah ?,” I ask and she quickly looks guilty before running off  and coming back with another cupcake.

“Record time,” I say high fiving her.

“Thanks, Tennessee,” Noah Presley smiles when Grady shyly gives the cupcake to him. 

Grady throws herself in my lap and buries her head in my chest. She absently grabs at the cross  under my shirt and pulls on it.

“Hey, stop,” I say softly, before she accidentally broke the chain.

 “Can we open presents now, Mason ?,” she asks, twisting in my lap.

“I don’t know. I think you should  ask your grandma,” I tell her and she runs off again at full speed towards Mrs. Grady who still looked really overwhelmed by this whole party going down in her backyard.

“That kid is going to be even more hyper today,” I laugh as she takes off.

“It’s all the sugar,” Noah said. He'd finished off his cupcake and going for mine. I let him have it because all I can think about it is the pink frosting and Aunt Savannah’s dead animal fat.

The little kids jump and  squeal when Mrs. Grady announces they can open the gifts. She tries to balance her cane and iPad to take a picture, Dad comes out of nowhere to swoop in and help her.

Grady rips into my gift  first---it was a big pack of 48 markers and coloring books I’d gotten at the discount store. It only cost me like $5 but she looks excited about them, which makes me happy.  

God knows she deserved to have something to be happy about for once.

Most people already thought my family was a bunch of weirdos because Mom used to be in a cult. When they find out I’m the oldest of five they assume we’re starting a new cult. Now we were up to six kids.  

Or we’d kind of always been six.

Tennessee Grady had always kind of been the sixth Clark kid. Her Dad, Mr. Cody, was my Dad's best friend and while they'd always tried to sugarcoat stuff about Grady to us, Spencer and I had put together that she was probably born addicted to drugs and her mom didn't know how to take care of her right. 

Spencer and I didn’t  know Grady’s mom, but I'd overheard Mom says she was closer in age to Spencer and I.

Mr. Cody took Grady away from her mom , even though he didn’t have custody, and when the police found out Grady had to go to a foster family before he did what he needed to legally.

It all seemed fine for a year or two until the police went to Mr. Cody’s trailer and found drugs. I looked it up in the local news website  later; it was a lot of drugs. Mr. Cody and Grady’s mom were both in the trailer and they both got 37 months in prison. 

Neither of Grady’s grandparents had the energy to care for her full time. Mom decided to make it official and took Grady in as our foster sibling a few months ago.

“Ready to ditch ?,” I ask my Noah as I see Grady going for her big gift.

He nods.

Dad had fixed up and repainted Spencer’s old bike for Grady. When she goes to open it all the adults rush to take pictures, I tap Noah's shoulder and we sneak out the backyard and to my car.

---

A/N

Is this thing on ? Did I post this ? I started working on this short story around the time when LiLe was talking about "pushing" the world of Bellum to create New Aeterna and how creating an AU allowed her to try things she wouldn't have done. In some ways this was me messing with how far I could push UL. I really started work on this in February 2016 and it was interesting writing this and UL3 at the same time. I wrote this novella in Google Docs, so it's  been fun to go back and see how this serial morphed and changed as I wrote more of UL3 and I'll talk about some of this in the blog post. I wanted to just give you a taste to set up the world.

You: Wait so Rhett didn't die ? What was all that then  ?

SHV: We will get there...