Leni sat on her bed scanning through her phone. It was quiet, given how Lori was still on "hall patrol". She wasn't exactly sure why that step was necessary, but she immediately assumed that it was. After all, Lori was always right.
The girl checked all her usual websites. No new Princess Pony fanfics or fashion videos on TubeTube. No text messages or friend requests on EyePage. Nothing fresh to read or watch. To her, it seemed the Internet was having the slowest night ever.
Putting her phone down, she got up and leaned towards her nightstand. She dug through its contents. The thing was largely jumbled and disorganized, which forced her to remove some of the stuff and place it on the top. One of them was a clean sheet with her name and Lori's birthday on it. Feeling a pang of shame, she carefully slid it on the bottom, ensuring it was out of plain sight. Eventually, she pulled out this week's issue of the lucrative 16.5 magazine. Before doing anything else, she strategically placed everything back in the drawer, obscuring that white sheet in the process.
She held up the magazine and stared at it. Even after spending a whole afternoon in her dark cramped drawer, the cover still bore a glossy shine that glittered along her vision. The older girl that dominated much of it had flawless cream skin and immaculate chocolate hair. Gazing at her wonderful image made her think of her older sister. Was this what all those silly products doing on the bureau? She had seen models like this girl in 16.5 before, but she herself never strove to make her face look like their's; her only interest was the clothes.
"Hey! What does a guy have to do to get some privacy around here?" she heard through the corridor and walls.
"Oh wah!" she heard Lori, mock pouting, "Am I ruining your little chit chat with your loser friend?"
Leni couldn't even get the magazine open. The amplified conversation was too much of a disturbance. She wondered how Lori could aspire to be someone so beautiful when there was clearly much work to be done.
"That's mean. Linky's not a loser!"
"Take that back right now!"
"Well I don't have to! You know why?" Lori exclaimed, her voice smoldering with nasty glee, "Because you're the one breaking the rules. I forgot to report it earlier, but talks with people outside the House are prohibited...Give me that walkie talkie."
"I don't wanna!" Lincoln protested.
"Would you like solitary confinement? Huh. I have already put two in there and I would be happy to put more!"
"Why can't I have this? Mom and Dad let me talk to Clyde all I want when they're home."
"Well...um...Mom and Dad aren't here...just give it to me!"
"I don't wanna!"
Leni was trying to tune out the outside fighting. No one in the House liked it, but most of them appeared to tolerate it. She, though, couldn't stand it. It brought all of her thoughts and activities to a grinding halt, yielding to the tension (whether it's having to witness it or trying to block it out). Leni was shocked that others were able to still function and go on with their routine as it happened and was even more so by the fact that they would even participate in it.
"One hour solitary confinement!" Lori exclaimed, followed by a deafening slam. Leni heard footsteps quickly increasing in volume. And then, her door swung open and Lori emerged, gripping a black brick-shaped object. Leni tensed up a little as she heard her big sister sigh and easily lie down on her bed.
"Lincoln Loud, do you copy?" a voice broke out through a static barrier. Leni immediately figured it came from the walkie talkie and, from the sound of it, was Lincoln's friend from earlier. If only she could remember that boy's name, "Lincoln Loud, do you need me to come over? Please copy."
Lori sighed, her mouth pressed against her bed sheets. Suddenly, she propped herself up and grabbed the device.
"My brother is done for the night. Now go away!" she snarled into the machine.
"Yes m'am," the voice said terrified. The static then cut out entirely, silencing the walkie talkie.
As she planted it on her night stand, Lori sighed once again. But rather than it being natural or suggestive of tiredness, it was forced and carried all the subtlety of a cartoon show. To boot, she even threw out of her arms, as if she were yawning. She hoped to capture her younger sister's attention, but her head was buried between the covers of 16.5 magazine.
"Let me tell you," Lori said, making sure every word was articulate and projected, "it ain't easy putting up with a bunch of babies. If it weren't for me," she then jabbed both her hands (which were shaped like daggers) firmly into her chest, "this entire House would fall apart!"
"Like, why did you have to be mean to Linky like that? You could have, like, just let him keep talking to his friend," Leni said.
Through her shades, her attention-hungry eyes noticed that Leni was still inside that gospel. Leni couldn't even bothered to meet eye-to-eye for that audacious comment. Perhaps, she figured, even more theatrics would be required.
"I mean think about it," she said as she got up and started wandering aimlessly around the room, "here you have Mom and Dad gone and suddenly the House becomes all," she then stopped and slapped both her cheeks between her palms, forming a sandwich. To add to it, she put on her best damsel impression, "'Oh no! We have nine babies inside and they're gonna run around, break things, insult each other, and ruin everything! If only we had a super special, very important person to stop them!'"
She then took one of her hands and turned it into a fist. As she struck it in the air, she planted her feet and gave an ideal smug.
"And then I swoop in to save the day," Lori said, trying to evoke a sense of pride and triumph, "I say 'No! You can't do that!' and then I say 'No! Mom and Dad don't want people over the House!' and then everyone will see me and that is why they do as I say. They'll say that nothing around here would work without me! And then Mom and Dad will say that I'm doing a good job! And then I'll think the same way!" she then desperate gleamed as her eyes returned to her intended demographic, "So what do you think?"
That did get Leni's attention, or at least got her to put down the magazine. Her face, though, lacked any expression on it, worrying to babysitter.
"So, like, the House can talk?" Leni pondered. Just like that, Lori found herself mentally banging her head against an imaginary wall.
"No, but you know what I mean," Lori said, annoyed, "The point is that without me, everyone would misbehave," she then forced herself to imagine each of these scenarios, although it took more effort than she would like to admit, "If I wasn't here to tell you all what to do, then you would be making a big mess with your sewing machine. Plus, I'm pretty sure you would hurt yourself using that death trap. I don't wanna have to put up with Mom and Dad over that."
A brief moment of silence ensued. All Lori hoped to assume was that Leni was taking her time processing this.
"Really?" Leni said.
"Yes!" Lori exclaimed, sporting a cozy grin.
Another pause.
"I'm, like, in here by myself a lot. Whenever I use the machine, I'm, like, pretty careful and I don't get hurt," Leni said matter-of-factly.
Meanwhile, Lori was stricken. Although she still had that smile, it was starting to feel more awkward and her cheeks were starting to hurt. Why did Leni have to undermine her like this? Was she trying to drag her down or something? Still, Leni continued.
"In fact," Leni said, her head turning to the bag beside the machine, "Just today when I was in here all by myself, I made some lovel-"
"And what about Luna!" Lori blurted out. Her younger sister stopped talking, but didn't immediately turn back to face her. The babysitter told herself that she had to keep going to stay alive, "Oh Luna. You never know what that girl is up to. She'd probably...um..."
"Come on, think of something!"
" run away from home if I weren't around to keep her in line," she made up, ignoring the weirdness of the thought, "Surely, you've seen how she can go from running around to feeling sad in the blink of an- err, very quickly! I wouldn't want her to put those two things together, you know."
Leni did her best to put all of this together, but her older sister kept going.
"Then there's Luan. Without me, she'd go full on April Fool's Day in here! I can already see the emergency room and the paramedics trying to fix your broken fac-uh then there's Lynn! Never forget about her! Football field, basketball court, dirt bike track all indoors! Priceless valuables...gone!"
Lori amped up the theatrics through melodramatic tears and even more flippant arm movements. All Leni could do was let her mouth clumsily fall open. At this point, Lori was speaking too quickly for her to have any emotional reaction to her cry for help.
"Now don't even get me started on Lincoln! He's just a gross, disgusting boy! Just imagine him and all of his boy friends getting their dirty hands and feet all over our room. Imagine your precious sewing machine getting smashed or jammed or touched! And Lucy? Well she'll just sit around talking about how sad she is all the time! I wouldn't be surprised if she ended up running away from home too! Lana would track mud and maybe even bring in a spider! A spider! Doesn't that scare you? Lola would lose her freakin' mind and terrorize all of us, being an even bigger jerk than I would ever hope to be! And Lisa? Well, she'd probably learn how to build some weird machine that would blow up the Hou- No!...the entire town."
At last, there was a pause. For the first time since she started speaking, Lori took a gander at her audience. Leni appeared unfazed, deflating her spirits a little.
On the other side, Leni was left mostly confused. The most feeling she truly got was when she said 'spider' (the mere image of that fuzzy creepy crawler was enough to make her heart jump in her throat). But she wondered if her other siblings were really like that. She didn't think so. Most of her siblings were pretty nice people (even if some of them were grumpier than others).
But the more noticeable feature was Lori's face. Neither Mrs. Boxer nor Mrs. Lane had gone over every possible nuance in human expression, but Leni felt she had developed a pretty good system for determining if someone was at least alright or bad. Looking at her big sister, she saw a smile that was forced and revealed her braces-coated teeth clenched tight (as if she were a lion devouring its prey), cheeks that were firm and had beads of sweat dripping down, eye brows that were unusually lifeless, and a posture that was far too animated and overcompensating to be natural. Even if she couldn't put her finger quite on it, Leni determined that her sister was not well.
"Lori, um, are you, like, okay?" she asked, her unsupported voice a strong contrast to the hammy, booming refrain that preceded it.
Rather than answer, she merely stretched her arms again (as if she hadn't already given them proper toning. Leni watched as her older sister did several exercises that took up a decent span of time. She lacked the will to interrupt or press her because she felt these movements were answering her question. The specifics may have been blurry, but Leni had a hunch (one that she felt was best reserved for another time, at least until after she fixes the problem with Carol).
"Sorry about that," Lori eventually said, her voice cartoonishly inflated, "babysitting is such a draining job that I had to do a refresher," she then shot Leni a condescending smug, "But don't worry, you'll never need to understand. As long as I'm around, I will have it in me to take up the duty!"
Deep down, Leni still felt as if some things were out of place. What did her sister mean by her never needing to understand? Is her big sister hiding something and if so, was it something she wanted to know? However, Leni was suddenly reminded of a powerful force that lied under her surface.
"Why can't you just take her word for it? You're being silly again! Lori is always right and you have no reason to say she isn't!"
Ultimately, it was that trust that won out. She figured that she couldn't dare challenge her sister or make her more upset than those thoughts proclaimed her to be. It told her that she was just rebelling in the false pursuit of being right. All it would have left is shame and hurt feelings. And with that, she nodded her head.
"Okay," Leni said gently.
Leni turned back to her magazine and started looking at the pictures, giving Lori the opportunity to settle on her bed. This issue had some really interesting designs in it (no wonder the price tags were unaffordable). She considered all the creative ways to make new designs, whether they were copies or reimaginings of what appeared on the colorful pages.
But just as she was about to become complacent, an alerting thought dragged her out of the immersion. As she stared at the open magazine, Leni found herself unable to keep herself at peace.
"Is this how the whole night is gonna go down? You have a super big thing to do and you're just gonna push it off again!"
Leni's head jerked to Lori. The babysitter sat on the edge of her bed, her back as straight as a pencil. She silently observed Lori, trying to spot any movement. But she never slouched, leaned, or anything. It was as if she were a night watch woman, completely focused and above any form of distraction.
Even with that voice shouting in her head, Leni was unsure whether the time was right. It was like this force was telling her that she should back off, let Lori do whatever it was she was doing. Besides, she was Leni Loud. When was she ever the one to press an issue when it didn't have to do with stupid clothes? But on the other hand, she recalled how much she liked Carol (even though she got weird vibes from some of the stuff she was saying, ones she still couldn't put to words). Leni felt a tinge at the thought of letting these relations go unresolved. All she wanted was for everyone in her Fashion Club to be happy.
"Lori," Leni said, shutting the magazine and lying it down on her bed.
"Do you have permission to address me?" Lori stated, her body frozen and her voice affirmative. Leni was stunned. Lori had only acted like this when she was babysitting and in that costume. Did she really feel like that was necessary to do her job and keep the House together?
"I don't know, like, do I?" she asked, genuinely confused. Not helping was the seemingly strange use of the word "address". It briefly preoccupied her from speaking, but she triumphed. Oh, how she thought Lori would be proud.
Instead, though, she sighed.
"What do you want to talk about? What is so important that you have to take my attention away from these troublemakers?" Lori asked begrudgingly. That remark was the only sound Leni could make out, however. Out there, surprisingly, there were no other conversations to be heard (or games or any rumbling). It was as if Leni herself were the troublemaker, giving her mixed feelings. She had doubts about falling through that started to resurface again. If Lori's word was anything to go by, Leni felt they shouldn't be a reason for this effort to be embarked on tonight, that it would only upset her even more quickly than when the parents were home.
"Why won't you go away?" Leni thought to herself. She was glad that during all of this, Lori remained a statue at her post. Who knew what type of things she was letting out by thinking about everything.
"Um..." Leni made out, trying to give herself time to debate the situation. Eventually, she cleared her mind and proceeded, "I talked to Carol again and I don't think she's as mean as you think she is."
As she dreaded, Lori groaned. This time, though, it was enough to break her guard; she shook her head and swiveled around the bed.
"Ugh. Why do you keep talking about her?" Lori asked nastily.
"Because, like, I want you two to be friends and to be happy. She's-"
"How many times do I have to bring it up? We are done! I will never forgive her for the way she treated me back then!"
Now seemed like a good place to quit, or so it seemed again at first. It felt like every word only hurt the babysitter even more. And when she knew Lori was hurt, she felt that way too. But then she remembered Carol again, that sweet yet sorry face. She imagined her pleading for Lori's forgiveness, her eyes welling up with tears, only to be slapped in the face and left to weep. Leni feared that scene as much as the one unfolding before her.
"But she told me that, like, she wants to say sorry to you," Leni said. Although her voice still sounded largely robotic, pieces of her conviction were picking their way through it, "can't you give her a second chance?"
"Can't you just leave me alone?"
Lori shot her a glare through her shades, the fire in her eyes searing the opaque plastic. Leni broke what limited eye contact she had with her sister, preferring to let her vision rest on the blank wall where her innocent drawings once hung. Had she really descended so far as to "rebel" against Lori? What kind of sister was she, she asked.
"Why do you even give her the time of day?" Lori asked, tinged with resentment. Leni, though, kept her eyes on the wall, "Sure she has nice hair and fancy clothes and an expensive purse! She wears makeup and...she has been winning friends left and right since last years," a brief, telling pause, "But I'm those things too!"
At this point, she could no longer keep herself looking away. Leni turned back to se Lori. She was standing up and pacing around the room again, flippantly flapping her arms for some strange reason.
"Look at me!" she continued, raising her voice and pressing her hands against her chest, "I have every good thing she has and more! I'm up to date on the new fashion trends! I have all the makeup I need to look stunning every morning!" she then pulled out her phone, which had a "diamond"-encrusted case and her small white purse, "Look at this stuff! It's stylish!"
Throwing both of those things on the bed, she continued pacing the room. It was like she was spilling her feelings in a diary; the company was enough to reassure her but (as she assumed) not smart enough to comprehend or give meaningful advice. Leni felt herself growing increasingly concerned as her sister kept speaking.
"And who cares about being in some dumb Honor Society anyway? Sure you can go out there and save the whole world or whoever! But you don't need any of that," Lori then froze and pivoted towards Leni. Lori desperately approached, using whatever body parts she could to point at herself, "You have me! You have me to keep this dump from falling apart! And as long as you need me, that's all that ever needs to matter! Who cares about that stupid Carol? She couldn't keep this place in tact if she tried! But I can!"
Leni grew uneasy from watching Lori descend into despair from this whole ordeal. She was confused, trying to think what she did to make her open up so...transparently. Why was Lori suddenly acting so animated and paranoid?
"You're right about one thing," Leni said, "I do need you."
She still wasn't sure what exactly her big sister had wandered off into, but either way, she got up from her bed and hugged her big sister. Lori trembled at first, but those words were at least enough to keep her from blowing her whistle. She just remained frozen in that spot, letting her sister display her feelings. After the roller coaster she went through from that one rant, a hug certainly was nice.
"Did Carol make you feel bad about yourself in the past?" Leni asked, still locked in an embrace.
"Yes. She literally showed off all her stuff even back in first grade and she made fun of me for looking ugly. But she's literally wrong!" Lori said defensively. True, she told herself now that she had fantastic taste for fashion, but when she was younger, even she admitted that Carol's insults stung.
"Okay. She, like, doesn't do that anymore and she even said she wants to be friends with you again," Leni said.
Lori, still in the hug, laughed sarcastically, worrying her younger sister.
"You're so cute," she said, "there's no way she would ever want to be friends with a 'low-life' like me."
All she got in return was a tighter hug, making Lori regret using those precise words.
"She really means it. She said it in front me and, like, all of her friends," Leni replied, her voice filled with compassion whose authenticity Lori couldn't hope to chip at, "Carol has so many friends. She likes people and she wants you too," Lori then felt another tug, "and, like, you are not a low-life."
As she heard her little sister speak from the midst of a warm, intimate moment, Lori sensed inklings of compassion trying to break away at her fortress of stubborn pride and humiliating memories.
"Well if she has so many friends, then what difference would I make to her?" she asked pointedly. Indeed, the steel walls were harder to melt than any 'hard feelings' Leni could have developed for anything. That was certainly one major difference the sisters had (one of many obvious distinctions).
"I'm sure she, like, um, would like more friends," Leni said, though she had difficulty finding words to defend herself, "She said she would want to be your friend. And, like, don't you think she would have, like, not said your name if, like, she didn't mean it? Friends are, like, good and, like, um, you can never have too many."
Lori wasn't sure how to tackle that. Sure, she still carried a significant amount of doubts about that argument. The notion that Carol was an overrated snooty still clung to her like Leni. She didn't like having to face facts on the matter, preferring to blind herself with those earlier memories of her rather than the glimpses of good deeds she had seen around the halls of Royal Woods Junior High in recent months (and it certainly didn't please her to consider herself delusional).
"What do you know about friends? You don't have any!"
But feeling the warmth of their togetherness told otherwise. It may not have made her willing to take Leni's word at face value (she resented herself on the occasions where her rationality forbade her from doing this), but it did convince her of one thing; the absolute sincerity of it all softened her attitude, created a hole in the wall rather than leveling it.
"Okay," she said without smiling, "if it'll make you feel better, I will give Carol a second chance."
She felt Leni nudge her head and stare up with wide eyes and a small smile. Lori was almost tempted to smile at seeing her sister's hopeful face.
"I want to make something perfectly clear, though," Lori said staring at her sister. She tried to sound affirmative, however her throat was naturally relaxed and softened from the mushy fuzzies. Leni, though, kept those eyes on her, pleading for her to continue, "I will be open to changing my mind about her, but that does not mean that I will end up liking her. I want you to know that because if I end up not becoming friends with her, then it won't be for a lack of trying," while she could see a different personality take this opportunity to take off the shades, she actively decided against it, "Understand?"
Leni immediately nodded without a word.
Worrying that she would have gotten too weak, Lori pulled herself away and stood straight as a soldier. Perhaps it was good enough, given how Leni oddly decided to emulate her posture. She supposed it was respect, obedience, dependence (the last one being the most important). But even with all that had happen (or maybe because of them), Lori couldn't be too harsh on her immediate younger sister.
"I will be out for Hall Monitoring duties. Do not sew," she simply said.
And with that, Lori marched out the door, leaving the girl to herself. What she felt was a combination of ease and nerves. She was relieved to have accomplished her goal (kinda). It may not have been a golden guarantee, but it was more than she could have realistically expected. Leni Loud, the advocate. To her, it didn't seem like a title she could have attained. As far as she could recall, everything that involved other people hinged on them taking the lead and her to be the audience (the response rather than the leader). There may have been a few minor incidents of her initiating an action or conversation, but to her, what did they matter? It's not like anyone remembered them anyway (including herself). She supposed it was a little exciting.
"But what about how you made Lori upset?"
That was a genuine point in her mind. At what cost did her personal gain come at? There were doubts, even at the outset, that it was worth it (even if the "pain" was fleeting). Not helping was the poor timing.
"Maybe I should have caught her when she wasn't acting so weird."
And why was she weird like that at all? Mom and Dad were never so open like that in front of her. Was it something on Lori's mind? Did she catch a bug? Was it something about her?
Personally, it was a question that guided Leni the rest of that night. Even when she returned to her precious magazine, she never let the thought be forgotten. The ads for makeup and hair products made that an easy job, even though Lori never returned to the room until bedtime.
"Was she just mad at Carol?"