My brother was a sucker for the sixties. He called it "the best time to be alive, just sex, drugs and rock and roll." And even at seven years old, I knew he wasn't speaking from experience, as he was born in seventy one and was the oldest of anyone he knew.

His car was full of old CD's and tapes for The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Nancy Sinatra, The Hollies, The Kinks and all the other crap he threw in to prove his point. His point being that he was born in the wrong place in the wrong time. His favourite was Elvis Presley, who he'd often throw on in his Chevrolet to impress his girlfriend.

"Yeah, you've heard the King, Carrie, but you haven't heard him like this."

Danny threw in his tape, branded with 'The King: Best Bits' lazily in Sharpie. The girl threw her arms around him, distracting him whilst he was driving.

We listened to a few songs of his, most of them being classics that everyone, even then, could sing along to. I stared out the window at the moon, it looked huge through the specs I used to wear, concaved to make things look bigger.

Carrie clapped for the stereo after another song ended. "Oh, where do you find these things, Danny?" She squealed. I was slack-jawed, was she being serious?

"I don't know, baby," Danny wrapped one arm over the passenger seat, resting his hand over Carrie's shoulder. "I guess I was just looking in the right place."

Carrie Duke was your average dumb blonde. Your average, atomic dumb blonde. She was the type of girl to sit there, laugh at jokes and look pretty, the type to show no dissernable personality through a heavily made up face. An average, dolled up, delicate trophy wife.

But I loved her for this. Somehow, despite being twenty years old, she was just clueless yet competent enough to make a fun childhood friend.

Danny pulled up to the theatre's parking lot, looking for a space. I was practically bouncing in my seat, I had been waiting to watch Batman Returns for six weeks, and we were running out of theatres that were still showing the film.

"I've never understood Batman," Carrie hogged the rear-view to add some more blush, "A guy wearing leather and kicking people's asses is ridiculous. I haven't even seen any of these movies before."

"Carrie, they're all gonna laugh at you," I giggled, "People really like Batman, you need to pay attention to get what's happening."

Danny reversed into a parking space, struggling to park as both cars either side of his were almost halfway over their own parking lines.

"Ivy's right, babe, you can't talk through this one. it's not like Jason Takes Manhattan, people actually give a shit about what's going on."

"Fine, nerds, I'll shut up," Carrie put her make-up down and crossed her arms in frustration. "Want to go to Kmart?"

Whoever built a Kmart next to a cinema was my secret saviour. With cheap candy and Carrie's bottomless handbag, it made pre-movie shopping and post-movie smuggling quick and simple.

Danny scooped different types of candy into my arms, he was the only person of the three of us tall enough to reach the top shelves. He must've handed me around seven or eight king size bags of candy before we both giddily ran toward the checkout.

Danny was a great big brother, and managed to handle the sole guardian schtick fairly easily. He'd let me hitch a piggyback ride on his shoulders when I was tired, order takeout after a bad week and been there for me when Mom and Dad left. His fashion sense was terribe, riffing on whatever was popular from sixty five to sixty nine, and his hair was always ruffled, especially at the front. His nose was large, his voice was deep and small hairs sprouted from his cheeks to his chin.

He ruffled my hair whilst we stood in the line. "You look more like Ripley by the day, Ivy."

His finger traced a curl of hair, before knocking on my left horn twice. He'd always compare me to Ellen Ripley, from Aliens, as we both had curly brown hair. The only difference between me and Sigourney Weaver, however, is that she didn't have bulbous horns sprouting from her head.

I'd always had mixed feelings about being a voxi. I liked the way my horns looked, the way they felt and how they felt against things. But even at seven years old, I knew that people were put off by them, and always looked at me horns first.

Other than that, I was a normal kid, quirks and all. I wore glasses, went to school and wanted to be a moviestar. My nose was smaller than my brother's, button-like and slightly red. My eyes were a deep brown, my lashes naturally long and brows naturally thick.

The store clerk looked halfway dead. He scanned the candy with a bored and half-assed look on his face, probably knowing that we were going to take the entire haul into the theatre next door. Carrie watched from behind us, judging him from behind her designer shades. She passed her handbag to Danny, who passed it straight on to me. I threw each bag in there, burying it deep into the creviced so the theatre guys didn't get suspicious.

Skittles, M&M's, Nerds, Hershey's, Laffy Taffy, Fuse bars and Pop-Rocks. The perfect concoction to sit back and watch a movie with. I practically sprinted out of Kmart that night, almost tripping and breaking something.

"Be careful with my bag!" Carrie called out after me, "it's vintage,"

So, there I was. Seven years old, standing outside a cheap theatre on the outskirts of New York, waiting for my brother and his girlfriend. My eyes lit up when I caught sight of the poster, Michael Keaton's cowl covered face staring back at me. It wasn't glamorous, but I wanted this night to last forever, I genuinely believed that my life would not get better than the twenty first of July, nineteen ninety two.

And it never did.