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1 Whose performance am I watching?
Gracie has the bad habit of sleeping with her window open whether it was a midday nap or the dead of night. When she was a kid, she'd sleep by it and prepare herself to jump at any given moment. Back when she was an only child, it wasn't uncommon for her parents to shake the house awake with their violent screams. They settled as she got older, as they got more kids, too. Maybe it was a reflex, then.
The case of Gracie Cedar's mind should be fucking studied.
It was both an escape and a way in, either for John B who hasn't been able to sleep alone in his room since his father went missing or JJ whose own hands were too rough to patch himself up after his father was done with him.
The older they get, the easier it is to jump in and out of the ledge. If Gracie ever brings her hookups to her own room, she makes sure they don't make a sound. That way nobody sees them and her parents can't call her a slut; that way, she's not as lonely anymore in her house of glass. She feels trapped even with the window open.
She's shaken out of her nap by her little brother's voice. He's small but his vocals carry. He yells "I'm home!" loud enough to startle her awake, and she groans as she falls off the bed and onto the floor.
Gracie can hear him laughing in the kitchen and already starts plotting her retaliation. She's half-hungover and half-sad and, as she looks around, she grimaces at the sight of her room. It looks like some tornado went through it, ravaging the small space. There were clothes and books on the floor, all hand-me-downs from her cousins that she had to separate. The good stuff goes to her siblings and the less good stuff, to her. She dreads it.
For a second, she curses their existence. It's okay, she does it all the time. Gracie is a great sister, but she wishes regularly that she wasn't. Then hits herself with the palms of her hands for the thought. It's an hourly reoccurrence.
It smells odd when she leaves her room, like home-cooked food a thirteen year old boy definitely can't manage from the scraps they have in the refrigerator. She frowns and fixes her hair, long enough to pass her shoulders but too short to be pinned back effortlessly. She knows it's useless because, as soon as John B sees her, he'll mess her hair up anyway. He does it all the time, especially when he picks up Cody from his summer practice all exited from the waves in the morning.
So, when she rounds the corner and a pair of arms doesn't immediately grab ahold of her shoulders, it's enough to put a frown on her face.
"Cods?"
A tuff of brown hair peaks from the dining room. "Here!" She finds her brother sitting on the chair, arms folded on the table and chin resting atop, watching as a figure parades around the kitchen.
