Thirteen

Thirteen-year-old Tracy Louise Freeland (Evan Rachel Wood) writes poetry and is a straight-A student. Her divorced mother Melanie (Holly Hunter) is a recovering drug addict and high school dropout who struggles as a hairdresser to support Tracy and her older brother Mason (Brady Corbet). At Portola Middle School in Los Angeles, she is teased about her "cabbage patch" clothes by more popular girls. Melanie buys Tracy new clothing items from a discount vendor in a van. Thus clothed and much to her delight, Tracy is invited by Evie Zamora (Nikki Reed), one of the most popular girls at school, to go shopping on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Although Evie gives her a disconnected telephone number, likely as a mean-spirited joke, Tracy takes a bus to Melrose Avenue anyway, where she finds Evie and a friend shoplifting. Tracy later steals a woman's pocketbook while she is distracted and the girls go on a shopping spree, whereafter Tracy and Evie become fast friends and Evie moves into the Freeland house.... [read more] Meanwhile Tracy is angered by and torn between her divorced parents, both of whom are struggling to earn enough money to live. Unknown to her mother, Tracy has been cutting herself as a way to cope with her stress. Tracy neglects her old friends and at home taunts Melanie's boyfriend, a former cocaine addict (Jeremy Sisto). Melanie sees hints of what is happening with the two girls but is unable to stop them, further thwarted by Evie's manipulative but likely truthful claims of childhood abuse. As Tracy steadily shuts Melanie out of her life, Tracy and Evie become very close, even talking to each other in their own ludling language. However, after the early thrills, Tracy's newfound popularity does not make her happy. In one scene, underage Evie and Tracy try to seduce Luke (Kip Pardue), a lifeguard in his early twenties who is a friend of Mason's. Drawn at first into their kisses, Luke throws them out of his house and soon after moves away. One night in Hollywood, Mason and a friend make comments about a cute girl who has her back to them. When she turns around and answers with a scathing remark, Mason is shocked to see this is his sister, with a belly ring. In another scene, the two girls take turns inhaling from a can of gas duster and become so high they laughingly hit each other for kicks, drawing blood. Melanie is not aware of how deeply the girls have fallen into petty crime and drug abuse, but seeing the harmful impact Evie is having on their lives, takes Evie back to live with Brooke (Deborah Kara Unger), her guardian, an aging model and aspiring actress who also works as a bartender and is going through a painful recovery from cosmetic surgery. Tracy seems to agree with this step, after which Evie betrays her at school.