Silent Star

Chapter 1: Skinny

Small. Tiny. Fragile.
Weird. Misfit. Anti-social.
Pretty. Adorable. Cute.
Anorexic. Slut. Pot head.
Synonyms used to describe her, still; words that others used to define her. She was used to it. From the time she had started the sixth grade and others noticed that she was different, she had forced herself to grow used to both the positive and negative names. She didn’t notice that neither names called out to her from the rolled-down windows of trucks were ‘positive’…both simply defined her as a piece of meat.
Her eyes were dark brown, almost black in certain lighting. Her hair was wavy to curly that she would straighten until it was flat. Nobody really remembered its natural color, dirty blonde, either. It had been bleached, dyed auburn, candy red, strawberry blonde, and copper. She’d gauged her ears to an unimpressive eight. She had tattooed three burns and seventeen scars onto her arms, one of each a reminder of how things get when she lost control.
Black eyeliner circled her eyes, nearly always applied far too thick. She used three kinds of mascara to make her eyelashes extend far past their natural tips. A few spots of liquid foundation, a pound of pale white powder, and a painting of dark lip gloss completed her inorganic mask.
She was nearly always in an intimate, love-hate relationship with herself.
She lived in San Pedro, California, and went to Long Beach High School. But the kids in Long Beach weren’t the shit. Hippies. Skinheads. Stoners. Thugs.
She was almost grateful she would soon be leaving for Texas.
Her father, a large retired Marine working border patrol, had gotten a promotion for a job located in Houston. Her mother and father had already picked out and purchased the new house. It was a strange situation to the girl. Her father would need to stay in the house sometimes, for small side jobs in his new office-building. Most often he would simply need to appear for simple formalities, but sometimes he would have to work on cases, which would take a week. Every time he needed to go out of state, he would bring a few boxes to ultimately make the move easier on his family. He would also bring his children, so they could get better acquainted with their new surroundings.
There were three children: Liam, the youngest boy, at ten. Charlie, the middle brother, at thirteen. And Molly, the oldest at fifteen and the only girl. The boys didn’t mind and thought constantly being shifted around was fun; a boy roughly their age lived on their new pristine, chemically treated street.
Her room was virtually escape-proof, with only two windows. One overlooked the back yard, forty feet above short-cropped emerald grass. The other window looked at the front yard with less of a drop, perhaps twenty feet. The other drawback was that directly under it was and ugly, brittle purple bush with burnt-plum colored leaves that would stick to any soft surface like Velcro.
Her room was that largest bedroom upstairs. It was, in fact, the largest in the house. It had a closet, a large walk-in, which contained a hidden door into a four-by-eight storage room, where the front window was. Some of her stuff was already inside: a mattress, a chest of drawers, one of her radios, a few choice CDs, and some clothes.
The walls were still bare and boring, but when she brought her clipped-out articles, posters, and artwork to Texas, she would remedy that. But they needed a fresh coat of paint first.
She needed to get out of the house. There was nothing to do there, unless you liked cooking or cleaning; plenty of which there always seemed to be available.
She left her empty room, closing the door after her. She descended the staircase, counting each step as she went down, a habit she developed quickly.
One, two, three, four, five.
She looked over the banister at the huge, empty white space that was the living room.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
Idly, she wondered where her father was. She needed to wheedle some money out of him for the entertainment of the afternoon.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen.
She was on the first floor. The living room had a Sony radio sitting on the sun bar, and below it, on the floor, was a tall CD rack. On and around it was a horde of tapes and CDs, appealing to both her and her father’s unique and almost extinct taste in music. She paused and bent down in front of it, picking up a handful of tapes. On the labels, scrawled in messy handwriting, were only the names of artists.
David Bowie. Motorhead. Red 40 (demo). The Who.
She put these down and turned her attention to the CDs, organized alphabetically.
NoFX. Black Flag. The Misfits. Dropkick Murpheys. Nirvana. Sex Pistols.
She slid Nevermind into her shirt to bring into her room later, and she turned her attention to finding her father.
She walked into the kitchen, the white tile floor cold on her bare feet. He had his head buried in the pantry. He turned to look at her as she neared him.
“Do we have any queso?” he asked, a bag of Tostidos Scoops in hand.
“Yeah. Little individual size cans. Or at least, I think. I saw them. I dunno,” Molly answered.
“Um. Yeah, here they are,” he said, grabbing one from a middle shelf and straightening up. He turned around. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” she said. She fidgeted. “Dad, can I go to the movies?”
“Do you have money?” he asked, attempting to pull open the tab on the can. He placed the bag of chips on the granite-topped island and went back to work on the can.
“No…” she said. She watched him step back in bewilderment; with a small pop, the tab had been pulled off of the can, but the lid itself had stayed in place. “But you do…” she continued.
“Molly…” he looked at her, a pained expression on his face.
“Dad, come on…This place is…” Dead, she finished mentally.
He sighed. “I know what you’re thinking. Yeah, fine,” he said. “But you’re going with Liam and Charlie, to the cheap one.”
“Fine. I like that one,” she said, smiling. He abandoned his project of opening the impossible little can of liquid cheese and dug around in the pocket of his cameo shorts for his wallet. He pulled it out and unfolded it, extracting a twenty dollar bill. He held it out to his daughter. She reached for it, but he snatched his hand back at the last moment. She looked at him.
“You’re all going to see the same thing, in the same room.”
“Okay.” She reached for the bill again, but he held tight to it.
“I also want change. You know, money back? The part of the twenty you didn’t spend? That thing.”
“Yes, dad. Okay.”
“Go get your brothers. And hey!” he called as she turned her back to start walking away.
“What?”
“The maximum rating is PG-13. No rated R crap. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
Molly went outside, tucking the bill into her front pocket. She looked across the street to the house with the slutty girl and her obese little brother. The girl, perhaps a year or two older than Molly, was smoking a cigarette with her dumpy mother.
The boy and Molly’s brothers were playing basketball. She’d have to go across the street.
She was loathe to do it.
She checked her reflection in the deep blue suburban. She was wearing painted-on black skinny jeans, a v-necked Ramones T-shirt, and Vans skate shoes with vivid green laces. She preened for a moment, running her fingers through her shoulder length auburn hair and popping the earbuds of her iPod in. She turned it on, put it on shuffle, and turned the dial until NoFX’s Please Play This Song On The Radio could be heard, quite clearly, two feet away from her. She turned from the car and walked across the street and halfway up the driveway.
Charlie and Liam stopped and looked up at her.
“What?” Charlie asked in a rough voice, presumably to impress the whores in the garage.
“What movie do you wanna see?” Molly asked.
“Um…” Liam said. The fat boy held the basketball, eyeing her with obvious dislike. She crossed her arms, warding off his negative judgment.
“I don’t wanna go,” snarked Charlie with as much contempt as he could muster. Molly didn’t flinch. He was only thirteen, and had been aggressive ever since his pituitary had awoken. He didn’t scare her, she could still kick his ass back in line if she needed to.
“I want to,” Liam growled, glaring at his brother. “I wanna go see…What’s the movie with the monkeys called?”
“Rise of the Planet of the Apes.”
“Yeah, that!” His face lit up. “When?”
“Come on home, I’ll look up movie times,” said his sister.

Their father drove them to the Cinema 6, the first movie theatre in Tomball. It had been surpassed by the restaurant/bar/movie theatre that was Santikos 19: Silverado. The Cinema certainly did not have all the bells and whistles the Silverado did, but it was dirt cheap and nearly always deserted.
The two got out of the car and their dad sped off. They walked across the parking lot where a single black Dodge Avalanche was parked. The two siblings approached the marquee, the floor around it turned a mottled white and black from years of built up pigeon shit. The sign on the marquee windows told whoever needed tickets to go inside for purchase.
Molly and her brother walked inside the building that smelled of stale popcorn and old soda.
She pretended no to notice him, the male dressed in black, loitering over in the arcade. But he didn’t put on any such charade. His eyes, gray, moved over her face and body shamelessly. She chanced a look at him and their eyes met. He smiled at her, and she returned it. He tilted his head back in a ‘come here’ gesture. Molly mouthed the word ‘wait’ and bought two tickets for Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
“Go find a couple seats,” she muttered to Liam.
He nodded. “Okay.” He walked through a pair of wooden double doors to their right. Molly strolled casually over to the teenager who seemed to take such an interest in her. He had shoulder length, thick dark brown hair that had probably been straightened, but it was now slightly wavy. His lips were pretty, his skin pale. He wore black Vans and black shorts, an Invictus shirt under an unzipped black-and-gray striped hoodie, holes cut out for his thumbs. He was sitting in a virtual racing game, arms resting casually on the steering wheel, and right foot tapping the gas pedal rhythmically.
“Hi,” he said, still smiling. He had a low, deep voice that sounded slightly hoarse, as if he’d been yelling or screaming recently.
“Hi.”
“What’s your name?”
“Molly Brandon.” She smiled. “Yours?”
“Travis Decker.” His eyes trailed over her once more. She knew he was taking in her good points: long legs, skinny, average height and bust.
But with that he was also seeing her bad points: curved spine that created a concave hump in her left side, the start of dirty blonde roots, smeared eyeliner, spatters of acne. Suddenly, she was incredibly self-conscious.
“Take a seat,: he said, gesturing towards the other virtual reality racing game. She sat next to him as the door to the men’s room opened, two guys emerging from it.
Both had long hair. One was white, the other a Mexican. The Caucasian had black hair that hung around his face, a grey name brand jacket over a white crew neck t-shirt, blue denim pants, and blood red Vans slip-ons.
The Mexican had his dark brown shoulder length hair straightened more effectively than Travis. His bangs hung over his right eye. He wore a black hoodie, zipped halfway up over a maroon shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His shorts were khaki cargo, his shoes black Chuck Taylor’s high tops.
Both guys were laughing and talking and gesturing, but stopped when they saw the pretty girl next to their friend.
“Molly, this is Bounces on Dick and Senor Blanco,” Travis said. The two laughed, paused, and punched at him. The Mexican loudly suggested he go fuck himself. Travis regarded his right hand sarcastically for a moment before correcting himself. “Naw, naw,” he amended, laughing, “That’s Jack, and that’s Rob.”
Jack wore the labels, and Rob was the Mexican. Molly smiled at them, and they grinned back. Jack eyed her, a near hunger in his eyes. Both boys smelled faintly like pot smoke.
“What movie are we sitting in today, kids?” Jack asked, clapping his hands together.
Travis looked at Molly, then at the ticket stub in her hand.
“Planet of the Apes?” she suggested.
“Sounds good,” said Rob quietly.
The four walked through the double doors, and into the already started movie.