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Curly and Angela. Angela and Curly.
Sometimes just Curly and just Angela, but they’ve always been seen as a unit. It comes with the territory of being twins, of course, but it’s more with those two.
Now that they’re teenagers, they’ve both made names for themselves. Curly as a JD, following in his brother’s footsteps. Mean, tough, cold. Angela as a proper greaser girl, who has no trouble two-timing, backstabbing, or gossiping about anyone. She can fit in with the worst of them.
Any words that can be said about Curly and Angela, have been. People have called him dangerous, mean, cruel. People have called her bitchy, slutty, catty.
The odd teacher or friend had called them “not that bad” or on a rare occasion, filled with potential and funny.
But the thing that makes them truly become the terror twins of Tulsa is their uncanny ability to completely ignore what anyone says.
They’ve gotten good at it over the years. When they were younger, they would be able to brush off the rumors and whispers that Curly was going to go to prison early just like his brother did and Angela was going to turn into a good-for-nothing teen mom just like her mom was.
Now that they were older, they had grown out of childish nicknames like “the terror twins” or “twinjas” or any other stupid nickname they had thought made them seem cool.
At heart, they were still the same little dumbasses who ran around and annoyed Tim to no end, with no clue what the world was actually like.
They were loyal to each other before anyone else, even their other family.
So, when, one day, they came back home to find all of Curly’s shit taken from his room and thrown carelessly into the hallway; they hadn’t bothered to be nice about confronting their mother.
“Why the hell is Curly’s stuff in the hallway?” Angela shouted from the doorway to her mother’s room.
She had been knocked out cold, but was quick to wake at the sound of her daughter’s harsh voice.
“Hello, Angie.”
“Don’t give me that shit, Ma. Why isn’t Curly’s stuff in his room?”
She smiled at Angela; eyes glassed over. “Leo is staying with us now. He needed somewhere to sleep.”
“Where’s Curly supposed to sleep?” she was quick to shoot back. Curly subtly tried to drag her away. Of everyone, Angela was most likely to fight with her mother of any of her siblings.
“He has friends.”
Curly could tell when Angela was about to lose it. He had picked up on her body language years ago, which is why it was so easy for him to spot her anger growing and drag her away before she could start a screaming match.
“C’mon, we both know that this Leo dude will be out in a couple months at most. Nothin’ to worry about. We got a couch, don’t we?”
That was one of the biggest differences between Curly and Angela.
Curly had no problem fighting anyone as long as they were out in public, but as soon as he got home, you would think he was soft. Angela didn’t like fighting in public, preferring to rip people to shreds subtly rather than give them the satisfaction of a screaming match, as soon as she entered the house though, it’s like she’s transformed into a different version of herself that can’t talk unless it’s through screaming.
“It ain’t right. He shouldn’t get your bed just because our mom latches onto any man that looks at her.”
“Like you’re any better.”
She throws a pillow at his face before he can even finish the joke.
“Don’t get on my bad side when I’m tryin’ ta help ya.”
He grinned, tossing the pillow back over to her.
“Don’t throw things at your sister, Curly.” He suddenly hears a voice from the doorway.
Both he and Angela are quick to direct their attention to the newcomer.
“Hey there, Tim.”
He nods at them, walking over, taking the pillow from Angela’s loose grasp and putting it back where it belongs.
He looks tired. He’s been doing that more, staying at Buck’s bar overnight.
Neither of them knew if it had anything to do with his blossoming friendship with Dallas or if he just liked getting drunk more now that he was an adult.
“What’re y’all talkin’ about?”
“Ma threw all of Curly’s shit out of his room. She’s got a new boyfriend.”
Tim, who was just about to sit down suddenly becomes much more alert, standing at his full 6’3”.
“Who is it?”
“This dude named Leo.”
Tim is quick to stalk out of the room, no doubt hunting down their mother.
They both know the yelling will start up any minute.
“You didn’t have to do that, Angel.”
She doesn’t respond, just nudges his foot with hers. He gets the message loud and clear. “Yes, I did.”
Sure enough, it’s only a few minutes later they hear raised voices from the hallway.
“You kick your thirteen-year-old son out of his room to make room for a guy you met at the sleaziest bar in town?”
“Me and Leo have something special. He’s different than the others, Timmy, I swear.”
They can tell that there’s no changing her mind now. As soon as she gets all lovey, there’s no changing her mind about anything.
They just sit there, ankles still touching, until Tim comes back in the room a couple minutes later.
“Looks like you’re gonna be sleeping on the couch for a few weeks, kid.”
He just nods, staring mindlessly at the ceiling.
Tim sighs, leaving them both in the living room as he goes into his own room, probably to catch up on the sleep he missed last night.
Angela stays there, her ankle touching Curly’s, even as her leg starts to fall asleep, until he finally moves his eyes from where they had been staring at the ceiling.
“Back alive?”
He nods, getting up, and making a move to go right to his room before trying to play it off by heading to the kitchen.
Angela gets up, going to her own room.
She doesn’t say anything, but she leaves the door open.
Once Curly is done drinking the glass of water he had never meant to get, he moves to go back to the living room before seeing her door. It’s the closest thing to an invitation he’ll get, so he finds himself changing course and going into Angela’s room. She doesn’t have an actual bedframe. She hadn’t wanted to bother switching everything out once Tim got enough money to buy some actual furniture, so her bed stayed propped up on milk crates.
She had always insisted it was storage and because she didn’t want to go through the extra effort, but Curly knew she had been worried about money.
It made it easier to slip into her bed, though. Nothing but the floor creaked, though the mattress dipped.
She stayed facing the wall as he laid down next to her. She didn’t even comment on the fact he was laying in her bed without first taking off his jeans and outside short and switching them for pajamas.
Usually, she hated outside clothes. It was a testament to how bothered she was about the whole Leo situation that she didn’t even sigh condescendingly.
He stayed there, lying next to her.
It was only 7:00 PM. It was the dead of winter, so the sun had gone down already but it wasn’t actually night yet.
Finally, she spoke up.
“Did you hear what Carrie Richards was saying earlier?”
“No.” he responded.
“She was going around saying that I slept with her boyfriend. Apparently, he’s been talking about how me and him got down at Darla Linson’s big birthday party last week. He forgot to take into account the fact that me and Darla Linson haven’t been on speaking terms since second grade, so now he’s got to deal with being called a liar by everyone on top of his girlfriend breaking things off.”
One thing about Angela, she knew how to fill the silence.
“You need me to beat his head in for lying about somethin’ like that?” Curly asked, lazily.
He was almost disappointed when Angela sighed and said no. He needed something else to focus on. He wanted to be able to focus on the crack of Carrie Richards’ boyfriend’s skull under his hand. He wanted to be able to focus on the blood and pain of a fight instead of the fact he had to share a bed with his sister because his mom had a new boyfriend.
Angela could tell, like she always could, that his head was filled with thoughts of blood and fights and violence.
She tried her best to chase it away with her stories of the girls from school, who was cheating on who, who had gotten together, and if they’d last.
It was all such mindless talk she must have repeated a thousand times, but it did its job and put Curly right to sleep.
Once he was finally breathing evenly and slowly next to her, she could turn towards the wall and fall asleep, comforted by her brother lying next to her for what must be the first time in years.