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One: Cake.
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It's 1986, June 1st. Gracie Greene is sixteen. Sierra Greene is eighteen. The biological clock is ticking. (Gracie follows Sierra? The Reaper follows Sierra? Steve follows Sierra? She's tired of being chased.)
Tick tock tick tock.
Church bells ring. Steve Harrington feels sick. Last night he dreamt he woke up to Sierra Greene chewing his heart, her lips plump and bleeding. Or maybe he was somebody else and she was chewing another person's heart?
Happy birthday Gracie. In a few weeks she will not talk to anyone except the boy sitting on her windowsill. She does not know yet that turning sixteen in the same house as her sister is a death signal. She does not know any of this yet.
But it's June 1st and Gracie is sixteen and Sierra has to put her things away and bring her other thing out. Gracie is still wishing her daddy is here. Sierra couldn't care less anymore. Sierra makes eyes at Charlie Everett, Steve might be watching, might be throwing up. Gracie makes eyes at Gabriel McHugh. He is illegal now. She will lose her virginity to him tonight, his half-hearted attempt of trying to make her feel better. The cake is a mess, Aimee Greene's health insurance doesn't cover enough to refill her trazodone. Sierra just barely managed to get sixteen candles on the ice cream cake. Awkward chorus. Gracie wishes for California. Gracie wishes for true love. Gracie wishes for true love with Gabriel McHugh. She is the opposite of her sister, until she is not. She does make it to California, but it isn't as dreamy as she imagined when she was sixteen. You can change a lot in four years. She did not get to blow out her candles.
When Sierra turned sixteen, she also wished for true love with Gabriel McHugh. It's weird, isn't it? Gabriel loves his Greene girls.
She thinks she remembers him being the first to fuck her. Yes, that's right. It was in Darling Hunter's basement with the linoleum floor with the blood stain (from our beloved) and the mold smell. Sierra was fifteen, he was seventeen. One time he said he was afraid of fucking her "too passionately" because he didn't want to break her heart. So he fucked her efficiently, selfishly, and when he was done, he combed his hair out, kissed Sierra's forehead, and left. Darling Hunter squirmed around in her sleeping bag fifteen feet away. Her next boyfriend was far more sensual and interested in how the clitoris "works", but not quite patient enough to really interact with Sierra's successfully. But Gabriel is six foot two. He rolled his own cigarettes, didn't brush his teeth enough, and spent a hundred dollars a week on coffee. He drank whiskey. He loved Sierra back the way a child loves candy; greedy and clumsy. He was tall with coffee bean eyes and eyelashes longer than hers, he walked with his head up and his hands deep in his pockets. He kissed her ten minutes after they met. He was broken pinky promises and chocolate ice cream. He was a good liar; made her forget that her skin was her own and not his. He had walls that Sierra spent months trying to measure. She made it over them once, and then he was gone.
