Faded Stars

The house was quiet, but that quiet was a lie. It always was. Downstairs, the TV hummed—probably Leni watching some reality show. Next door, Luan’s ventriloquist dummy hit the floor for the fifth time tonight. Across the hall, Lynn’s springs squeaked as she tossed in her sleep, dreaming of whatever sport was in season.

Lincoln lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars he’d stuck up years ago had faded. Just plastic blobs now, glued to the paint like dead fireflies. He used to think they were constellations, a map to somewhere else. Now they just reminded him he was still here.

Tears slid from the corners of his eyes, down his temples, into his hair. He didn’t bother wiping them. What was the point? Nobody would see. Nobody ever saw.

He was the middle child. The only boy. Born into a house of ten girls—a statistical anomaly, a footnote in the Loud family tree. Mom and Dad tried to make him feel special. You’re our only son, Linka! His sisters tried too, in their chaotic, overlapping way. But special didn’t last. Special was a candle in a hurricane.

He thought of Lori—the perfect firstborn, bossy but brilliant, already in college with a boyfriend who worshipped her. Leni—so sweet and beautiful people forgave her every empty-headed moment. Luna—a rock star in the making, all leather and raw talent. Luan—funny, tireless, never at a loss for a punchline. Lynn—the athlete, the warrior, the one who gritted her teeth and never backed down. Lola and Lana—twin sisters, one a pageant queen, one a tomboy, both winners in their own worlds. Lisa—a genius who could talk about quantum physics before she lost her baby teeth. And Lucy—the quiet one, but even her gothic gloom had an artistic edge. She wrote poetry that made his spine tingle.

And then there was him. Lincoln. The one who liked comics and video games and had a few friends. Average in school, average at sports, average at everything. The one who was supposed to be special because he was the only boy, but instead felt like a placeholder, a blank space on a page full of color.

They’re all going to be amazing, he thought. And I’m going to be… nothing.

His stomach churned. He pressed his palm against his mouth to stifle the sound of his weeping, but it came out anyway—a wet, ugly sob that seemed to echo in the dark.

The door creaked open.

Lincoln froze, hand still clamped over his mouth. Hallway light spilled in, and two silhouettes stood in the doorway. One tall, with a cascade of hair. The other shorter, with jagged edges of a jacket and messy curls.

“Lincoln?” Lori’s voice, sharp with concern. “Were you crying?”

He tried to sit up, wiping his face with the back of his hand. “No. I’m fine. Go back to bed.”

“Don’t lie to me, bro.” Luna stepped closer, her platform boots clicking softly on the floor. She flicked on the small lamp on his desk. The light was harsh, yellow, exposing the tear tracks gleaming on his cheeks.

Lori sighed, crossing her arms. But her expression softened. “Lin, we heard you from down the hall. That wasn’t a happy sound.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You’re not,” Luna said. She sat on the edge of his bed, her knee pressing into the mattress. Her earring caught the light, a little silver skull. She looked at him with those piercing eyes, the ones that saw through everyone. “Talk to us.”

Lincoln’s throat tightened. He wanted to say something, but the words felt like broken glass. Instead, he looked down at his hands, at the chipped nail polish he’d tried to paint on three days ago. It was a disaster. Just like everything.

“I don’t know why you care,” he whispered.

Lori’s arms dropped. She sat on the other side of the bed, the springs groaning under her weight. “Because you’re our brother, dummy. Of course we care.”

“That’s the thing,” he said, his voice cracking. “I don’t feel like your brother. I feel like… a ghost. Like I’m just here, and everyone walks through me. You’re all so… so much. And I’m nothing.”

Luna’s hand found his. Her fingers were cold, but she held tight. “That’s not true.”

“It is.” He looked up, and the tears came faster now. He didn’t try to hide them. “Do you know what it’s like? Every single day, someone accomplishes something. Leni gets a new modeling gig. Lynn breaks a school record. Luan gets a standing ovation at the open mic. Lisa patents something I can’t even pronounce. And me? I got a B-minus on my history test. I almost made the soccer team. I did a funny dance in the living room. That’s it. That’s my whole life. A funny dance and a B-minus.”

Lori’s jaw tightened. “Lincoln…”

“I hate myself,” he said, the words tumbling out like a confession. “I hate looking in the mirror. I hate who I am. I feel wrong, like my body is a joke. Like I was supposed to be someone else, but I got stuck in this… this broken shell.”

He was shaking now. Luna pulled him into a hug, and he collapsed against her, his sobs muffled against the leather of her jacket. Lori hesitated, then wrapped her arms around both of them.

“You’re not broken,” Luna murmured into his hair. “You’re just… you’re hurting. And that’s okay. We can fix this. Together.”

But even as she said it, Lincoln knew she didn’t understand. They couldn’t fix the hole inside him. Nobody could.

That night, they stayed with him until he fell asleep. They left the lamp on, and he heard them whisper in the hallway—we need to talk to Mom and Dad—but their voices faded into the static of his exhaustion.

When he woke again, the lamp was still on. The house was quiet. His phone buzzed on the nightstand—a message from an unknown number. Tonight? Same place.

He looked at it for a long moment. Then he deleted the notification and rolled over, but the thought lingered like a splinter under his skin.

The next few weeks blurred into a haze of secrets.

Lincoln started wearing baggier clothes to hide what he was doing to his hips. At first, it was just a nail, pressing hard enough to leave a red mark. Then a pair of scissors, the blunt edge dragged across his skin until it burned. Then the sharp point, just a tiny prick, enough to draw a bead of blood. He told himself it was punishment. His body was wrong, so he had to correct it. He had to make it hurt like he hurt.

But the marks healed, and the anger didn’t. So he changed tactics.

He stole some of Leni’s old clothes—a tube top that was too small, a tiny skirt that barely covered his thighs. He wore them in the middle of the night, standing in front of the bathroom mirror, trying to see someone desirable. Someone worth noticing.

He caked on makeup, thick eyeliner, red lipstick. He posed like the girls on the internet. He tilted his head, pouted his lips, tried to make himself look older. And when he looked in the mirror, he saw a stranger. A pretty stranger. A stranger that people might want.

He started messaging older boys. Boys from high school, boys he’d never met in person. They sent him compliments, asked for pictures. He sent them. They called him pretty, called him sexy. For the first time, he felt seen.

The first time he snuck out, he was shaking so badly he almost fell off the drainpipe. He met a boy named Derek behind the convenience store on Main Street. Derek was seventeen, with a crooked smile and hands that were rough. They didn’t talk much. Derek led him to an abandoned shed, and Lincoln let him do what he wanted. It hurt. It hurt a lot. But when Derek called him a good girl afterward, Lincoln felt a warm rush of validation that outweighed the pain.

He kept going back. Different boys, different nights. He stopped counting the names. They were all the same—hungry eyes, quick hands, empty promises. He learned to dissociate, to float above his body while they used it. He learned to smile through the tears, to whisper it’s okay when it wasn’t.

One of them—older, with a beard and a truck—took him to a motel on the edge of town. Lincoln wore a crop top and a denim skirt so short it was barely a belt. The man was rough, and when he finished, he shoved Lincoln off the bed. Lincoln hit the floor, his shoulder cracking against the nightstand. A glass lamp shattered.

“Clean it up,” the man said, already pulling on his pants.

Lincoln did. He knelt on the shards, his knees bleeding, and picked up the pieces one by one. He didn’t cry. He didn’t scream. He just cleaned the glass, because that was what you did when you were worthless. You cleaned up the mess.

Back home, the sisters began to notice.

“Lincoln, are you limping?” Leni asked one morning. She caught him in the hallway, his hand pressed against his side.

He pulled away. “I’m fine. Just a cramp.”

“But your leg…”

“I said I’m fine.”

She frowned, her big blue eyes clouded with concern. He disappeared into his room before she could ask more.

Lori came home for the weekend and saw him wearing a hoodie that was clearly too small, with a neckline that hung low. She noticed the dark circles under his eyes, the way he flinched when anyone touched him. She tried to talk to him again, but he shut down, claiming homework, claiming tiredness, claiming anything to escape.

Luna heard strange noises from his room at night. Muffled voices, sometimes laughter, sometimes sobs. She knocked, but he said he was on the phone with Clyde. She didn’t believe him.

Lynn was the one who found the bruises. She’d burst into his room to grab a basketball she’d left under his bed, and she saw him changing. His arm was covered in purple and green marks, finger-shaped, like someone had grabbed him hard.

“Who did that?” she demanded.

Lincoln yanked his sleeve down. “No one. I fell.”

“Bull.”

“It’s none of your business, Lynn.”

She wanted to push, but he shoved past her, slamming the bathroom door. She stood there, her fists clenched, a cold knot forming in her stomach.

The week turned colder. The autumn air bit through the windows. Lincoln’s world narrowed to a cycle of pain, validation, and more pain. He stopped eating dinner with the family. He stopped going to school. He told his parents he was sick, and they believed him because they were busy, because they had nine other children to care for, because they never looked close enough.

Then came the night Lynn found him on the roof.

She’d come home late from a sports party at 3 AM, still buzzing from the post-game adrenaline. She let herself in through the back door, grabbed a glass of water, and heard a creak overhead. She looked up. One of the ceiling tiles in the hallway was loose, and a draft was coming through.

She climbed the attic stairs, thinking maybe a window was open, and found the small access panel that led to the flat portion of the roof. She pushed it open and climbed out.

Lincoln was sitting there, legs dangling over the edge. He was wearing a pair of lacy red panties and a hoodie, the hood pulled up to hide his hair. A cigarette glowed between his fingers. He was crying, silent tears streaming down his cheeks.

Lynn’s breath caught. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what to do. So she did the only thing that made sense. She walked over, sat down beside him, and said nothing.

For a long moment, they just sat there, the cold wind biting their skin. Lincoln took a drag of the cigarette, his hand trembling.

“You’re not going to yell at me?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“No.”

“You’re not going to tell me I’m wrong?”

She looked at him, at the red panties, at the hickey on his neck, at the tears that wouldn’t stop. “I don’t know what’s wrong, Lincoln. But I know you’re hurting. And I’m not going to yell at you for hurting.”

He let out a broken laugh. “That’s a first.”

They sat until the sky turned gray. Then Lynn helped him back inside. She didn’t tell Mom and Dad. She went straight to Lori and texted a group chat: We have a problem. Come home. Now.

Two days later, they found the warehouse party.

It was listed on an anonymous account Lincoln followed. A rave in the old textile mill on the south side of Royal Woods. He’d been texting with three men—all older, all promising to take care of him. He wore a tiny black dress, fishnet stockings, and enough eyeliner to make a raccoon jealous. He snuck out the window and walked the two miles in heels, his feet aching, his heart pounding.

Inside, the warehouse was dark and loud. Bass thrummed through the concrete floor. Strobe lights sliced through smoke machines. Bodies pressed together, sweaty and anonymous. Lincoln found the three men in a corner booth. They were handsome in a rough way, with beards and tattoos and hungry smiles. They bought him a drink that tasted like gasoline, and soon his head was spinning.

They led him to a back room, a storage area filled with old pallets and dust. The door clicked shut. He was against a wall, hands on his hips. The dress was hiked up. He closed his eyes and let it happen, the way he always did.

But then the door burst open.

“LINCOLN!”

He knew that voice. Lynn. She was there, in her letterman jacket, her face twisted with fury. Behind her stood Leni, eyes wide, and Lori, pale as death.

Lynn shoved one of the men away. “Get your hands off him! He’s twelve fucking years old!”

The man stumbled, confused. “Hey, he wanted it–”

“I don’t care what he wanted! You’re a grown-ass man and he’s a child!” She grabbed Lincoln by the arm, pulling him away. His legs gave out, and she caught him, wrapping him in a fierce embrace. Leni and Lori joined, forming a wall between him and the men.

“Call the cops,” Lori hissed at someone in the hallway. “I already did,” came a voice—Luna, appearing from the shadows, her phone in hand.

Lincoln sobbed. He couldn’t stop. The validation was gone, replaced by shame so thick he could taste it. He buried his face in Lynn’s jacket, and she held him tighter.

“You’re okay,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “You’re okay. We’ve got you.”

The ride home was silent except for Lincoln’s hiccupping breaths. He sat in the back seat between Leni and Lynn, Lori driving, Luna in the passenger seat. No one spoke. No one knew what to say.

But when they pulled into the driveway, Lincoln looked up at the house. The lights were on. Mom and Dad were waiting inside, worry etched into their faces. And for the first time in months, he didn’t feel invisible.

He felt seen.

They cleaned his cuts. They canceled his phone. Lori made a call to a therapist who specialized in adolescents. Leni sat with him for hours, not saying a word, just rubbing his back. Lynn slept on the floor of his room that night, her hand stretched out so he could hold it if he needed to.

He cried himself to sleep, but this time, the tears were different. They were the beginning of something else—a long, painful, necessary healing.

The next morning, he stood in front of the bathroom mirror. The makeup was gone. The marks on his hips were covered in bandages. He looked at himself—the tired eyes, the pale skin, the small frame that had been used and discarded so many times.

He hesitated. His hand drifted to his hip, touching the bandage.

A soft knock. The door opened a crack.

Leni peered in. She smiled—that gentle, understanding smile that said everything without words. She held out a cup of hot chocolate.

“Thought you might want this.”

Lincoln looked at her. Then back at his reflection.

He took the cup.

“Thanks, Len.”

The smile widened. She left the door open a sliver, and the light from the hallway spilled in, warm and golden.

He took a sip. The chocolate burned his tongue, but it was good.

For the first time in a long time, he thought maybe—just maybe—he could learn to look at himself and not look away.