A/N: Thanks for the reviews. I'm honestly surprised people like this. Your all giving me a lot of confidence so thank you so much. I'll try my hardest to keep you all interested and reviewing and everything else. Anyway.. Writers block.. Did my best with all the ideas floating around in my head.. And sorry for the delay. :]
The Velvet Onion wasn't exactly the massive dance club Molly had pictured. There weren't any flashing lights or music pounding out the door. In fact it was sort of small and almost run down. The entrance was surrounded by a small crowd of people dressed in all varieties of bright colors and crazy outfits.
"This is going to be so much fun!" Vince had a spring in his step as his wide eyes scanned the crowd.
She tried to smile as they got closer and closer to the open door of the Velvet Onion. However, with every step she grew more uncertain. Had she been right to ignore the now silent voice in her head? Too late now. She told herself.
" .. Now just like I promised we'll get you a chair." Vince was saying when she was snapped out of her thoughts. "No dancing. Unless you change your mind later." He added with a friendly smile.
Molly responded with an awkward laugh.
"We should go check in with Fossil.." Howard told Vince, who nodded in agreement. They made their way through the crowd and into the Velvet Onion.
"Go take a seat Molly." The smaller man pointed to the bar area. "Just stay put until the shows over. You don't even have to move. We'll come get you after and-"
Howard was already gone, obviously the more responsible of the two.
"-Howard? Gotta go Molly. Just stay put and enjoy the show!" Vince grinned, before he too disappeared into the quickly growing crowd.
Molly smiled then took a deep breath and plopped herself down onto the barstool in the farthest corner of the club. Her hesitant eyes took in her new surroundings. Scattered groups of people gathered on the cement floor in front of the small stage, talking over the softly playing dance music that radiated from the speakers. Her hands fidgeted with her fraying pocket. Inside was her camera, hesitantly placed there before she'd run out of her hotel room. She traced the outline of the lens through the faded denim as her mind began to drift.
Molly's father had given her the camera as a graduation gift. Not directly, but the gift had gotten to her. She didn't remember her parents ever being home for major events or holidays or birthdays or at all for that matter. Her parents were very wealthy and owned a very nice house in the most expensive part of San Francisco. It was big, to be modest and Molly could see the bay from her bedroom window. She had everything a young girl could ever want inside the house, and as she grew she only got more, but she wasn't happy. Her parents were rarely around in the giant house to play with her toys with her.
Any other kid would have been begged to be in her situation, she had thought. No parents to tell you what to do and all the things you could ever dream of. But, Molly had never been happy alone in the big empty house. She would have much rather traveled the world with her jet-set parents.
It was a rare event when Molly was thirteen years old that her parents had made it home for her birthday that she had told them how unhappy she was. They seemed shocked.
"But why?" Her mother had asked, her eyes wide with surprise. "You have everything you could ever want here."
"I don't have parents.." She had practically whispered.
"I don't understand honey." Her father looked equally confused.
Molly rose her eyes to her baffled parents. "All the other kids at school talk about hating their parents because they make them go on family trips and family picnics and they have family reunions.. I wish I had stories about you.." She found it hard to admit these things. Were they really that tuned out of their daughters emotions that they had no idea? "I want to go to on a vacation.. All of us." A small, hopeful smile appeared on her lips.
"Why would you want to do that?" Her mother still looked lost.
Molly sighed. "Nevermind."
That had been the first and last time she had spoken to her parents about her feelings. They didn't stop living their successful lifestyle and Molly continued to wish for a family. She spent a lot of time in the window of her bedroom, watching the rough waves break against the rocky coastline. She tried to imagine what the rest of the world must be like. There must have been so many amazing places and things out there, waiting to be seen. She wanted to see them preferably without her parents.
As Molly got older, her dreams only got bigger and better. The walls of her room became lined with pictures of places she wanted to visit someday. She didn't have a lot of friends in high school. And not even the giant mansion she lived in could attract friends anymore, not that it mattered to her. She was the girl with her head in the clouds and was quite content with that. People could be mean. She found that mostly she couldn't trust them, and they left her when she needed them most. She wasn't going to let anyone else hurt her the way her parents had.
Molly barely graduated out of high school, but her parents weren't in attendance and almost immediately after she'd decided she would make her traveling dreams reality. She packed all the things she needed, those things being a few shirts, a few pairs of jeans, some snacks and of course the camera that had arrived the week before her graduation ceremony from her parents, into an old back pack. She would leave the city and not come back until she was ready to face the world she was preparing to leave behind.
The morning came that she planned to set off. Molly stood for one last time in the window of her bedroom, watching the white capped waves crash into the rocks. She pulled out the camera and snapped the first shot.
A loud knock on the front door interrupted the moment. It sounded frantic. Molly grabbed her backpack and said goodbye to her room and the remaining items in it before running down the stairs. The frantic knocking came again and impatiently Molly threw the door open.
"What?" She asked the man she recognized as her parents personal assistant, Sam.
"Your parents!" He shouted at her.
"Aren't here?" Molly added stepping out of the door and pulling it shut behind her. "Which reminds me, could you let them know I won't be around for a while? I'm going traveling. Isn't it exciting?" She smiled as the key clicked the lock into place.
Sam's eyes fell to the cement step. "That's just the thing Moll."
"What happened?" She tried to sound concerned.
"They're dead.. Plane crash over the pacific ocean. They were on their way home from a business conference in Hawaii."
Molly knew somewhere deep inside this should have been crippling. She should have broke down into tears and not left the house. She should have been looking at old family pictures and crying her eyes out, but she didn't. She couldn't mourn complete strangers; however, She did stay in San Francisco a little longer. All her parents assets were given to her, seeing as how there was no one else. The house, all the money, cars and anything and everything else.
After a month or so of legal negotiations, Molly said goodbye to the house again. This time in a car. She headed out to the nearest freeway and turned her back on the city she'd grown up in. Using her newly acquired fortune, Molly made her way across and around America and Canada, then down into Mexico for a short while. She was never lonely like she'd been all alone in the mansion, in the city, by the bay and so she never looked back.
"-Molly? You in there?" A voice snapped her back to the club. Vince and Howard now both stood over her, watching her with concerned eyes.
"Are you feeling alright?" Howard asked.
Molly laughed quietly. "Oh yeah. I was just.. Lost in my thoughts there for a minute."
"Well, make sure you stay awake, the shows about to start." Vince flashed a smile, which Molly returned, as he and Howard made their way to the stage.
Quite a crowd had gathered in Molly's lapse and seeing this she then pulled out her camera in anticipation for the coming show.
