As a general rule, Clyde McBride did not like change.
Born to God knows who God knows where, Clyde spent the first eight years of his life as a ward of the state. His earliest memories, like glimpses of dark and threatening trees through dense fog, were of a house where he and three other children were fostered, and they were not particularly good ones. His foster mother was an old black woman who was not necessarily mean, but very strict. She was married to, or in a relationship with, an old Mexican man who couldn't speak very much English. Clyde remembered him sitting in an armchair and watching soccer and telenovelas on Telemundo or one of those other Spanish speaking stations. The rapid-fire gibberish always disturbed Clyde; he couldn't understand what was being said and it deeply bothered him.
Clyde wasn't there for very long before going to another foster couple. They were white, very Catholic, and lived in a beautiful home in a nice neighborhood. Clyde couldn't remember much about them but he recalled them being weird. Not overly religious, not strict, just strange. The woman talked to him in a baby voice even though he was five or six and the man's voice was breathy and high-pitched. Looking back, Clyde was almost certain that he (Ben? Bob? Something like that) was gay. He imagined that Ben-or-Bob only married her (Nancy or Nadine or maybe Natalia) to hide his sexuality. Maybe he was wrong, though. He couldn't entirely trust his memories.
After a while, Clyde wound up in a children's shelter, and then a residential facility where fifteen boys lived full-time under the watchful eye of a rotating staff. Clyde remembered that place very well. The floors were all bare tile and always cold, the fluorescent lighting was harsh and stung his eyes, and the institutional furniture was lumpy and uncomfortable, the cushions so thin that you could feel the frame underneath them. There were two halls, one for boys six to twelve and another for boys thirteen to seventeen. The building was situated on a sprawling campus in the country along with two other cottages, both for girls, an on-site school, and a chapel that held mandatory services on Sundays and Tuesdays. You couldn't go outside without a staff member being present and you weren't allowed to hang out in your room; you had to stay in the dayroom and the adjoining dining room. If you were lucky, one of the staff would take you outside. If you weren't, you'd have to sit on a couch that hurt your back and watch the sole TV set, which was always controlled by one of the bigger, stronger boys.
Then there was the bullying. Clyde was pushed around, called names, and beaten up a few times by older kids, and his stuff kept going missing. His CD player once, then a pair of his shoes. The boy who took the latter wore them around and smirked at him, daring him to do something about it. Clyde was too small and frail to fight and too scared to snitch, so he just watched.
From there, he was transferred to a group home, and then another one three months later, finally ending up in another temporary foster home before the McBrides adopted him. In his short life, Clyde had been to more schools, homes, and facilities than he could count, and it seemed so strange to him that he would stay with the McBrides...forever. No more packing up, no more moving around. It took some getting used to at first, but once he adjusted, he realized something.
He liked being settled. It didn't bother him much at the time, but thinking back to all the moving around he had done over the years, his stomach churned. The prospect of having to do it again sent pangs of dread rippling through his middle and sometimes, he worried that Howard and Harold would want to move away. Once, he reluctantly brought it up to them, and Harold assured him that they weren't going anywhere. "This is our home and it'll be our home forever," he said, then added, "unless it's eaten by termites, in which case we'll just build a new one."
That was a joke - they did have termites at one point, now they were gone - but it made Clyde feel better. For the first time in his life, he had his own room in his own home, he had structure and stability and a routine that he could rely on to never be suddenly switched up or thrown into disarray. He even had friends and a girlfriend.
Well...a soon to be girlfriend. He hadn't put the final touches of winning her over yet, but he liked to think she was close to saying yes. Her name was Lori Loud and she had silky blonde hair, shimmery brown eyes, and the most perfect figure Clyde had ever seen: Not too skinny, not too fat, but juuuust right. A lot of boys Clyde knew drooled over "thick" girls with huge, bulging breasts...you know, the kinds of girls who don't exist outside of anime and comic books. Not Clyde, though, Clyde liked thin and petite women. He could go for a thick woman dependent on other criteria (such as personality and overall attractiveness) but he preferred skinny blondes with cute little butts and perky boobies. Lori had both of those things, plus long legs and a mature personality to boot. Clyde had been in love with her from the moment he first laid his eyes on her: When he was around her, he felt hot and sickly, when he wasn't around her he felt like he had a nest of butterflies in his stomach, and when he thought about what she looked like under her clothes, he would inevitably start to play with himself. He was thinking of her the first time he ever masturbatd, and he was thinking of her each time he'd done it since.
Lori was his friend Lincoln's older sister, so Clyde had spent a lot of time around her, sometimes going to hang out with Lincoln just so he could see her. And by "see" he meant "see" since he got shaky and tongue tied every time he tried to talk to her. Once, Lana fell down in the hallway and hurt herself. Lori came to the rescue and comforted her crying sister until she was all better. When Lana was gone, he told Lori "You have a beautiful heart" but it came out as "you have a beautiful fart."
Her face turned bright red and she stomped the floor. "IT'S THESE SHOES!"
Last year, Clyde's love quest was further complicated by the introduction of a rival, the liquid Chris to his solid Chris, if you will.
His name was Bobby Santiago.
Bobby Santiago was a classmate of Lori's who delivered pizzas on the weekend like a loser. How are you going to support Lori on pizza tips, huh, Bobby? Lori was absolutely head over heels for him, and Clyde was crushed. Winning Lori's affections was hard enough when she was single, but now she had a boyfriend, which made it ten times more difficult. He resolved to tell her how he felt, but popped a nose bleed and grossed her out instead.
At night, he curled up under the blanket and hugged himself, aching to be with Lori and wishing she were there to hold and love. He was attracted to her beauty and to her personality - what made her her - but more than that, he wanted her love and intimacy. Those two things had eluded him for most of his life. He didn't grow up with parents who hugged him and told him he was special like other kids, he grew up with staff members who wanted their shift to end so they could go home and didn't care to hide their apathy from the kids they cared for.
Like a flower growing small and malformed for lack of sunlight, Clyde grew without those vital nutrients, which made him clingy and dependent, or so his therapist Dr. Lopez said. He desperately sought love and affection to make up for what he didn't receive as a child, only now that he was older and consciously mature, he didn't seek it by climbing into his dads' laps or snuggling up to them the way a needy toddler might, he sought it in a romantic context.
His feelings for Lori had long been a major topic of his and Dr. Lopez's thrice weekly meetings. She said that his infatuation bordered on obsession and said that he "lusted" for Lori for all the wrong reasons. "That's what this is, Clyde," she said once, "lust. Lust is a powerful and all consuming emotion with nothing beneath it. Love is rooted in personal relations, lust is not. Lust is not only sexual. You can lust for anything. A sports car, for example. You want it because it's fun, looks nice, or because you subconsciously want it to fill a void inside of you. Your infatuation with Lori is the latter: You see her as a source of the affection you did not get in your early developmental stages. I daresay she may even be something of a mother figure in your eyes."
It took everything Clyde had to not call bullshit and shut down. He tried to keep an open mind when talking to Dr. Lopez and to confront uncomfortable and inconvenient truths about himself. He closely interrogated all of the things that attracted him to Lori and honestly, he thought Dr. Lopez was way off base on this one. Lori was an amazing person all around. She was beautiful and intelligent, sexy and kind, cute and friendly, nice and hot, and...uh...a bunch of other stuff. It was kind of impossible not to have a crush on her. Was Dr. Lopez wrong about his psychology in general? Ehhh...that was debatable, but she was dead wrong about his feelings for Lori. Dr. Lopez was a great psychiatrist and Clyde respected the heck out of her, but she was too darn Fruedian for her own good. Hur dur you wanna sex ur mom lol. When Clyde allowed himself to look ahead at his and Lori's future, he saw an adult partnership built on mutual trust and stuff. They didn't have some kind of weird mother/son dynamic going on, they were normal. Clyde worked and came home, Lori...well, he didn't put much thought into what Lori did, but she was always there when he got in from work, waiting for him by the door with a kiss and a "Welcome home, baby."
Such an achingly beautiful vision...such a foolish vision.
On some level, Clyde knew that he and Lori would never happen. No matter how hard he tried, no matter how kind or charming or handsome he was, she would never feel the same way about him. They were seven years apart in age and worlds apart in life. She was preparing to go off to college somewhere far away and then to begin her life with Bobby. He, meanwhile, was still stuck in middle school. By the time he was even legal, Lori would probably be knee deep in a professional career and pregnant with hers and Bobby's second child. Even if she was neither of those things, what would a twenty-seven year old woman want with a little twenty year college kid?
Sigh. Nothing. That's what.
Dr. Lopez might be wrong about some things, but one thing she was right about was that he needed to get over Lori and work to improve himself so that one day he could form healthy romantic relationships.
Knowing something and actually doing it are two completely different things, however. He told himself to back away, but he still went over to Lincoln's house just to see Lori, he still thought about her endlessly, and he still held onto some tiny flicker of hope that she would fall for him. Stranger things have happened, right? It might be unlikely, but it wasn't impossible. What was that saying? Your chances of being killed by [insert innocuous thing here] are low but never zero. The same could be said for his chances of winning Lori's hand.
The biggest obstacle in his way, as he saw it, was Bobby. Lori was really into him and as long as he was around, Clyde didn't stand a chance. He had been wracking his brain for ways to break him and Lori up but he'd never made a movie because all of them involved Lori being upset and heartbroken so that he, Clyde, could swoop in and save the day, and though it might help him in the long run, he couldn't stomach the thought of Lori hurting for even a second. If he framed Bobby for cheating or doing something else equally messed up, Lori would be crushed, and Clyde felt sick just thinking about her pain.
What could he do, then?
Get Lori to break up with Bobby on her own terms?
If he wanted to avoid hurting her, that was pretty much all he could do: Make her fall out of love with Bobby somehow and not want to be with him anymore. Could he brainwash her? If cartoons are to be believed, all you have to do is make a tape repeating a simple command over and over again and then make someone listen to it while they sleep. You will fall in love with Clyde. He's your boo-boo bear now. You will fall in love with Clyde. He's better than Bobby. He didn't know much about psychology or the wiring of the human brain beyond what he had learned from Dr. Lopez, and they hadn't exactly gotten around to mind control techniques yet. If he could do it, he would in a heartbeat, but it was probably for the best that he couldn't. Brainwashing someone is pretty much cheating, and he gave it a little thought, it felt like it would be a hollow victory, like getting a prostitute to sleep with you. He wanted to win Lori on his own merits, not to cheat. He wanted her to love him for him...not because he told her to. If there were no other options, yeah, maybe he would do it, but he'd feel shitty about it afterward.
To make a long, convoluted, and complex story short, Clyde was in a bind with Lori and didn't know how to proceed or even if he should. Then the day finally came when Lori graduated and went off to college (those happened on two different days, to be clear). He knew it would eventually happen, but it was always a hazy and indistinct storm on the horizon, never coming closer until one day it was on top of him. Clyde hated change and whether he wanted to accept it or not, his life was about to drastically change because the girl he loved wasn't going to be just down the street anymore. The only thing he would have of her would be the shrine he had built to her in the back of his closet, carefully concealed behind boxes and hanging clothes. Push aside the heavy plastic tote labeled COMICS (after emptying half of its contents to make it lighter and more manageable) and you would find a tiny space just big enough to accommodate a lovesick eleven year old boy. Pictures of Lori, some printed from her Instagram account and others snapped without her knowing, were tacked to the wall, and an array of her personal items, stolen on Clyde's many weekend excursions to the Loud house, were fanned out below them: Her brush, her dental floss, a clump of her hair. In the center was his most prized Lori artifact.
A pair of blue panties.
Clyde had had them for almost six months, and when he brought them to his nose like Jim Carrey putting on Loki's mask, he could still smell the faint scent of her most sacred and secret part. When he came back here, which was often, he lit a couple candles and stared at her pictures by flickering light, his hands resting on his knees and his heart palpitating slowly and sickeningly in his chest, each beat so strong that it made him wince. He spent many hours beyond the deadfall, basking in Lori's beauty; it was nowhere near as good as the real thing but it was better than nothing. In the dog days of summer leading up to her departure for college on the east coast, Clyde knelt before her visage and prayed - to God or the universe, he could not rightly say. In his heart of hearts, he did not expect an answer either way. He prayed not for Lori's love, it was too late for that, he prayed for himself to get over her so that he could get on with his life.
Dr. Lopez said that Lori leaving town was the best thing for him, and though it hurt so bad he felt like curling up into a little ball and sobbing resolutely into Lori's panties, he had to agree. His obsession with Lori and all things related to or reflective of her was not healthy...it wasn't normal. With her around, he would never have a life of his own; he would always be her Adminerer and nothing else. His identity would be inextricably entwined with his feelings for her and he would lose any chance at individuality that he had.
He repeated these things to himself and more, but that didn't make watching Lori leave any easier. On the day she packed up her used hatchback - purchased as a present by her grandfather Pop-Pop - and set , Clyde gathered with the Louds to see her off. Mr. and had tears in their eyes and each one of their children had a pained expression on their faces, as though they were losing a vital part of themselves: A finger, say, or even a whole arm. Clyde, for his part, struggled to keep from hyperventilating. Worse than losing Lori was the uncertainty that lay beyond. What did life after Lori look like? How would he adjust?
God, he hated change. Why do things have to change? Why can't they just stay the same forever?
After Lori was gone, Lincoln asked if he wanted to go inside and play video games, but Clyde turned him down. Shoulders slumped, he dragged himself home, flopped onto his bed, and hugged himself. His heart and stomach ached in tandem and he suddenly had a queasy feeling like he had just pounded two Double Flipdogs with extra chili. He drew a deep, watery sigh and rolled onto his side facing the wall. Tormenting himself wasn't going to accomplish anything, but he couldn't help it. The heart and the brain are sworn enemies, both pulling their host in opposite directions. In some people, the brain is stronger, but in most, the heart wins out, for all it takes is a single moment of passion for it to overtake its ancient foe. Clyde liked to think he was intelligent since he didn't have much else to hang onto, but his heart was stronger than his brain and lying there, grieving over the loss of the girl he loved, he could only give into its demands.
Which meant thinking about Lori until his brain hurt and he felt even sicker than he already did.
For almost a week, he was confined to his dreary room, curtains heavily drawn to keep out the light. The only thing that kept him from becoming a full on hermit was school starting on September 5. If it weren't for being forced out into the world, he would have stayed locked away from the world.
He was not looking forward to his first day of school at all.
On the morning of September 5, he woke to the grating cry of the alarm. He rolled onto his side, turned it off, and took a moment to wake up. He could not remember what he had been dreaming about but it was warm and pleasant and he sorely wished he didn't have to leave it. Sighing, he sat up, stretched, and scratched his back. A crack of morning light fell through the slit between the curtains and tinged the darkness an ashy gray color that matched his mood. He got up, went to his dresser, and took out his clothes for the day, a blue and yellow striped shirt and a pair of black pants. He dressed and then pulled on his socks and shoes, only remembering to put on deodorant as he was walking out the door. Oh well, what point was there? He wasn't trying to impress anyone and wouldn't succeed if he was. Who cared how he smelled? WIth Lori gone, he had no reason to care.
His personal bathroom was to the immediate right of his door. He went in, flipped the light on, and used the toilet. In the mirror, he looked sad, and that only made him sadder. He took a deep breath and went out into the kitchen, where Harold and Howard sat at the table, the latter reading a newspaper and the former sipping a cup of piping hot tea. "Good morning, dear," Howard said.
"Good morning," Clyde mumbled.
"Are you hungry?"
"No, thanks."
A look of worry flickered across Howard's face and he darted his eyes to Harold for reassurance. "Not hungry?" Harold asked.
"Not really," Clyde said, then threw in a lie. "I had a midnight snack."
He figured that would get them off his back and he was right. Outside, the day was warm with a light breeze from the west. Tendrils of golden sunshine spread across the ground, chasing shadows back to their burrows and healthy green leaves rustled in the wind with a sound like whispering. He strained to listen and imagined he could make out Lori's voice, light and airy. He listened closely for words of love and devotion, but heard only gibberish.
The walk to Patricia Coates Middle School took fifteen minutes on a good day, but that first morning of the year it took Clyde almost half an hour. A low L-shaped building with an open breezeway running along the front, it sat on the main highway south of Center Street, the football field on the left and a stand of forest on the right. Old Glory, all red, white, and blue, fluttered atop the flagpole and Clyde was reminded of those old Levi commercials (some folks are born made to wave the flag, ooooh, that red, white, and blue). A group of kids passed him and made their way to the door, the boys in shorts and T-shirts and the girls in short skirts and dresses that barely covered them. He wished he could caress their legs and budding breasts with his eyes but he didn't feel up to it. He could look and appreciate other girls when Lori was around, but she took his heart, his passion, and his mind with her when she left. Now he was nothing, just an empty suit of clothes going through the motions of his day.
Feeling like he was going to cry, Clyde hung his head and went inside.
Lincoln Loud met the first day of school bright-eyed and bushy-tailed...which wasn't exactly normal for him. At the end of last year, he was tired, stoop-shouldered, and dragging like a zombie with a broken foot. After a refreshing summer full of rest and relaxation, however, he felt fully recharged and ready to face anything. If there was a blemish on his otherwise decent morning, it was his best friend, Clyde McBride.
It had been almost two weeks since Lori left for Maryland and in that time, Lincoln had hardly heard from Clyde: He didn't answer texts, didn't reply when Lincoln called him via walkie talkie, and hadn't logged into his X-Station Alive account. Lincoln worried incessantly about him and prayed to God every night that Clyde didn't do something stupid in his depression.
Something like killing himself.
Lincoln had known Clyde for what felt like forever and didn't honestly think he would commit suicide over Lori, but he wasn't 100 percent sure, and that scared him. Clyde was one of the most important people in his life and Lincoln cared for him very much, so even a 0.00001 percent chance that he might do something was too much. Like Clyde, Lincoln had been dreading the day Lori left for college and for the same reason too. Clyde was madly in love with her and her leaving would screw him up. Lincoln hated to see Clyde in pain as much as Clyde hated seeing Lori in pain, and knew that when the big day came and Lori left, Clyde would be as far from okay as one can possibly get.
In a way, Lincoln could almost hate Lori not only for leaving, but also for having such a strong hold over Clyde in the first place. Whenever Clyde came over, he spent more time worrying about Lori than he did paying attention to Lincoln, and he found a way to bring her name up in almost every conversation they had, no matter how irrelevant she was to the topic at hand. Those things wounded Lincoln. Why did Clyde have to constantly talk about Lori? Why couldn't he just be happy to hang out with Lincoln? There were times they would be playing video games and Clyde would "go to the bathroom." Twenty minutes later, Lincoln would go looking for him only to find him downstairs in the living room with Lori. Lincoln would get so jealous that he'd storm into the room and yell at him. One time, Lincoln snapped at Lori. "I just love how you spend more time with my best friend than I do."
She raised her brow incredulously. "Excuse me?"
That statement wasn't entirely accurate - or technically accurate at all - but that's how it felt and he was sick of it. He loved being with Clyde and that Clyde would rather shove his head up Lori's butt than hang out with him made Lincoln feel inexplicably like crying. Clyde was the best friend Lincoln had ever had...for a long time, he was the only friend Lincoln had...and Lincoln loved him like a brother.
The last two weeks had been just as hard on Lincoln as they had been on Clyde; it was bad when Clyde wasn't mentally with him, but exponentially worse when he wasn't physically with him. He thought about Clyde everyday, worrying over him and remembering the good times they had, and each time Clyde didn't respond to a text or call, the lead in his belly got a little heavier, his sadness a little more raw. The other day after dinner, Lincoln walked to his house through the gathering gloom, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans and his heart throbbing sickly in his chest. He planned to knock but when he finally got there, the terrors of rejection overcame him and he stole into the backyard instead, creeping along the side of the house like a cat burglar.
Lincoln knelt in the soft grass beneath Clyde's window. A light shone from inside and Lincoln imagined he could feel his friend's presence like static electricity in the air. He laid his hand on the siding, warm with the stored heat of the day, and tried to picture Clyde sitting up in bed, and the pain he saw on his face gutted him.
Risking being caught, he lifted his head above the window sill. The curtains were parted just enough that he was able to see inside. Clyde sat on his bed, as Lincoln had imagined, a comic book open and forgotten in his lap. Instead of the agony Lincoln had envisioned, his face was blank, displaying the most neutral expression Lincoln had ever seen; he might be thinking of blowing up the school or trying to remember the name of a song he liked. He gazed into space, his mouth a tight, white slash and his breathing steady and regular. Lincoln's heartbeat sped up and his stomach did a happy cartwheel that almost knocked him off his feet. It had only been a relative handful of days since he had seen Clyde, but it seemed so much longer, and beholding him now made Lincoln feel good.
Presently, Lincoln minced over to the dresser, took out a pair of jeans, and held them up, one hip cocking unconsciously to the side. They were clean and neatly pressed but kind of...bleh. This was the first day of school, and the first day of seeing Clyde again, and he wanted to look nice. Of course, pants were pants and there was simply no way of making them look nice. He pulled them on over his briefs and then grabbed an orange polo shirt. As he dressed, he thought of Clyde, and excitement stirred in his chest. He figured things would be a little awkward at first, but that they'd get back to normal once Clyde had come to terms with Lori leaving. Lincoln would do anything, anything, to get Clyde's mind off of Lori.
Lincoln could have stayed there all night looking at Clyde, but he eventually slunk off, strange thoughts and emotions washing over him. He shoved them away like he always did, but they came roaring back later on. He tossed and turned long into the night, trying in vain to escape them, but found no respite. His dreams were awkward and nonsensical when he woke, and he did his best to forget them.
It now occurred to Lincoln that seeing Clyde would only reignite those thoughts that had long plagued him, but he didn't care. He was happy to hang out with his bestie and nothing was going to hamper his mood.
Putting on his shoes and socks, Lincoln went into the hall and waited his turn for the bathroom. Lucy was directly ahead of him in line, her head bent over a notebook. Lucy, an avid fan of horror, had decided to try her hand at writing and had composed ten short stories and part of a novel over the past six months. She sent her work to magazines in the hopes of having it published, but so far, she hadn't had any bites.
She turned to him and cleared her throat. "Can you give me some feedback, please?"
Lincoln was the only one in the family who would critique Lucy's work. Everyone else either couldn't do it or wouldn't do it as much of Lucy's work was gorier than a Lucio Fulci movie. "Sure," Lincoln said, "what do you have?"
Clearing her throat again, Lucy began to read.
"In the soft glow of the summer moon, a hand broke through the ground, white and skeletal and streaked with dirt. Its bony fingers flexed, stiff and slow, tasting the night like the arcane sensors of some alien creature. The crickets and bullfrogs fell silent, and preternatural quiet reigned. Soon the hand became an arm, ragged strips of flesh hanging from faded bone. Then a head appeared, its face a grinning skull, its gaping eye sockets squirming with worms, and long strands of black hair still clinging to its rotted scalp. It clawed its way from the earth like the second coming, born again, and stretched wearily out in the grass beside its grave."
She looked up at him, her eyes hidden behind her bangs but her anxiety clear from the downward curve of her mouth. Lincoln crossed his arms, thrust his hip out, and stroked his chin. Lincoln wasn't a literary scholar or anything, but he read more fiction than all of his sisters combined (except for Lucy) and had a tenuous grip on what made a good story. He couldn't write one to save his life, but he could read one and pick out its flaws and shortcomings, which is why Lucy always came to him. It was not something he particularly relished doing but he when she came to him, did it to the best of his ability because that was just who he was.
Lucy watched him expectantly, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his lips scrunching from side to side. "Well," he said, "it's very vivid, you did a good job there, but it's also a little…" he made a circular motion with his hand.
"A little what?" Lucy blurted.
"Verbose," Lincoln finally said.
The air visibly left Lucy's sails and her shoulders slumped. Lincoln's heart went out to her but he did not try and soften the blow. An ugly truth would do her a far better service than a pretty lie. "That's just my opinion. It feels forced, like you're trying too hard. Maybe I'm wrong. Like I said, you set the tone and atmosphere really well. The problem is really just a couple of your word choices, which is easy to fix. Most people who read just want a good story, and being too wordy or pretentious will turn them off."
"I didn't mean to come off a pretentious," Lucy said. There was a hint of remorse in her voice, and Lincoln patted her shoulder. "I just like using evocative language."
"And some people like reading it," Lincoln said. "Like I said, that's just my opinion. I'd need to read the whole thing to get the full effect."
Lucy sighed. "Alright. I'll finish it later."
After the line had whittled itself away, Lincoln used the bathroom and went downstairs. Leni, Luna, Luan, and Lynn sat at the dining room table with bowls of cereal, and Lucy, Lana, Lola, and Lisa sat in the living room, already having eaten or decided not to eat. Lincoln went into the kitchen, grabbed a fruit bar from the pantry, and ripped open the wrapper. It was some store brand crap that tasted like cardboard but Lincoln choked it down anyway. Despite being solidly middle class on paper, Lincoln's family was poor in practice. Yes, it was his parents' fault for having so many kids, but it is what it is. Like...it happened, you can't change that, you just have to accept it. They didn't go without the necessities and didn't use government assistance, but money was always tight, and everything they bought was a knock-off. Dr. Pepper? LOL have a Dr. Bob instead. DiGiorno? Ha, you're crazy, now eat your Totino's Party Pizza and like it. Lincoln was used to it by now but sometimes when he had the real deal - Mountain Dew rather than Mountain Lightning, for instance - his taste buds were blown out of the freaking water.
Tossing the wrapper into the trash can, Lincoln went upstairs and grabbed his backpack, having completely forgotten about it until just now, and paused to put on some extra deodorant. He wanted to smell nice for Clyde.
He caught himself and shook his head.
No, he just wanted to smell nice in general, that's all.
No one likes smelly armpits.
After a few minutes of loafing around to kill time, Lincoln left. The day was bright and already shaping up to be hot. Mr. Grouse hobbled around his front yard, bending over to pull the occasional weed or clump of crabgrass, and the single mom across the street herded her kids into the car. Lincoln took a deep breath and let it out with the gusto of a man with a new lease on life. He was going to get to see his best friend and could hardly wait.
The walk to school was short enough that he could make it in time but long enough that he was winded by the time he got there. Before Lori left, she would take everyone to school in the van, but now they had to walk because Leni, who had taken Lori's place as de facto den mother, still couldn't drive. Thankfully, Luna was studying for her driving test and would likely step in. Lincoln felt bad for Leni. She really wanted to fill Lori's shoes but she wasn't quite cut out for leadership. She knew this but she tried her hardest anyway, and you could see the frustration mounting as she failed time and again to gain the (admittedly begrudging respect) that Lori enjoyed. No one listened to her or took her seriously and it got to her. Like a fresh-faced kid who leaves college, enters the real world, and becomes a frowning adult covered in bags and wrinkles, she wasn't a happy go lucky cinnamon roll anymore. She was stressed, on edge, and clearly headed for some kind of breakdown. She was too stubborn to give up, though, and kept pushing herself.
It was kind of hard to watch, to be honest. It took a strong arm and an iron fist to keep the Louds in line. Lori had it in her to be dictator, but poor, sweet Leni did not. Lincoln tried to point that out to her, but she refused to listen. "Like...I can still be nice. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, Lincy!"
That was not the best way to approach it, but okay. Leni wanted to stand on her own two feet and Lincoln was prepared to let her, but he worried about her. She was putting herself under a lot of pressure and he didn't know if she could handle it. She was...well...a little slow, and she had never been under such sustained stress before. She only had to worry about herself, now she had to worry about everyone. She had to mediate disputes, keep the peace,help with homework, enforce rules, and do a thousand other things to keep things going. Of course, she could abdicare her duties and pass them onto Luna, but it was a matter of pride to her. She wanted to prove to everyone - herself especially - that she could do it.
At school, Lincoln stopped by the door and checked the student planner he received at last week's open house. His locker was number 622. He scanned the map of the school and located it between the boys' room and the nurse's office. He pushed through the man doors and went in.
The office was to the left behind a glass partition, a long counter manned by an army of secretaries. The principal, Mr. Lenzi, stood over one of the secretaries with a glower on his face, putting Lincoln in mind of an old timey slave driver. The vice principal, Ms. Deodato, stood by the door, greeting the influx of students with a smile. She said "Hi," to Lincoln, and Lincoln said "hi" back. She seemed nice but that didn't mean much. An administrator is still an administrator, and if you let your guard down, they would pounce. He found that out first hand when he told his old principal about a cool game he played and then wound up in therapy because he enjoyed "violent and problematic" video games. Adults act like they're your friend and gain your trust, but just like with each other, they stabbed you in the back the moment you turned away.
From the office, Lincoln made his way to his locker, looking left and right like a tourist in a strange and exotic city. He expected middle school to be somehow...more mature, but so far, it looked just like elementary school. The only difference was: No recess. The idea of not having a half hour break for fun and recreation was daunting. He figured he'd get used to it, but it would take time to adapt.
At his locker, he put in the combination, checking the planner when he did it wrong, and then shoved his books inside. He had almost ten minutes before the first bell so he walked through the halls looking for Clyde. He didn't find him so he went into the cafeteria, where breakfast was just beginning to wrap up. He spotted Rusty, Poppa Wheelie, Cristina, and Cookie all at different tables, and seeing people he knew amidst a sea of people he didn't was immensely comforting. He bit his bottom lip and did another sweep of the room, but still no Clyde.
He really hoped Clyde showed.
God, what if he didn't? What if he was dead from cutting his wrists or something? What if he never got to see him again?
Lincoln started to hyperventilate. He slapped his hand to his chest and took a series of deep, calming breaths. You're a worrywort, he told himself, Clyde isn't dead. Stop jumping to the worst possible conclusion.
He took a breath, held it until his lungs burst for air, then let it out slowly. The worst part, he told himself rationally, was not knowing. This was the first day of the year and neither one of them had established a set routine yet. In elementary school, Clyde was always in the cafeteria for breakfast, even though he never ate at school. This was a whole new grade in a whole new school, a totally different ball game, to borrow a phrase from Lynn.
Sighing, he went back to his locker, searching every face he passed. He was just about to give up when he spotted Clyde in the distance. Lincoln's stomach jumped into his throat and he came to a skidding halt. Clyde rounded a corner and disappeared, and for a moment, Lincoln was rooted in place, heart slamming, before unfreezing and rushing after him. "Clyde! Wait up!"
He turned the corner just as Clyde stopped at a locker and opened it. He hurried over and Clyde looked up. A tiny smile touched his lips and Lincoln smiled too; wan though it was, it was genuine and beautiful.
"Hey," Clyde said.
"Hey," Lincoln said and touched his own hair. "It's been a while. You okay?"
Clyde hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah, I'm alright. Sorry I haven't been around much."
"It's cool," Lincoln said. Part of him wanted to tell Clyde how many restless hours he'd spent thinking of and missing him, but he didn't want to hurt his feelings or make him feel bad about himself. "Excited for middle school?"
Clyde shrugged one shoulder. "I guess. It's kind of cool to be somewhere new. I was getting tired of the other school."
Lincoln laughed. His chest tingled and his face felt warm. "Yeah, it is kind of cool."
The bell rang. "What's your first class?"
"Math.'
A surge of bitter disappointment went through Lincoln and he sighed. His was history. "I guess I'll see you later then."
"Alright," Clyde said. He shut the door. "See you."
He brushed past Lincoln and Lincoln turned to watch him go, a confused snarl of emotions gripping him.
Taking a deep breath that did little to dispel them, he glanced at his planner for directions, then went to class.
"Alright, guys, it's, like, clean up time," Leni said.
She was standing by the dining room table with one hand laying on the back of Luna's chair. The clock on the wall said it was almost time to go - the big hand was pointing a seven and the little hand at the 9, which meant they had to leave or risk being late, and being late was not acceptable.
"...called him a spergnigger and blocked him," Luna said and laughed.
Leni's mouth dropped open. "Luna, that's totes mean."
Ignoring her, Lynn said, "One day you're gonna get doxxed and we're gonna suffer for it."
Six months ago, Luna started a new band with her girlfriend Sam and a couple friends from school. They called themselves The Edgelords and played songs with titles like "I am Woman (Hear me Bitch and Moan)", "Nazi Rock", "Let's Get Gay Tonight", and "Blacks Aren't People (Remix)." They weren't, like, racist or anything, they had a really dumb and mean-spirited sense of humor. Luna said they were punks and that being a punk means rebelling against the establishment. "The Left is turning into the establishment, man, it's time someone stuck it to them." They made fun of other people too, like Jesus and Donald Trump, but their favorite targets were SJWs and people on Twitter. They posted on 4chan, released their music under assumed names, and wore masks and make up in their music videos. In one of them, Luna wore a slutty S&M outfit and a KKK hood.
Okay, Leni was kind of dumb but even she recognized pure cringe when she saw it. Luna was acting like a child and it wasn't funny, it was super annoying.
But not as annoying as being completely ignored. "We gotta go, guys," Leni said, firmer than before.
No one listened.
Of course not.
They never listened to her. They, like, had no respect and acted like she wasn't even there. Uh, hello, I'm the oldest now and Lori said I'm in charge. She put her hands on my shoulders, looked me in the eyes, and said I believe in you.
Did they have any idea what that meant to her? Did they have any idea how much she wanted to make Lori proud and be a good big sister? People had been looking down on Leni her whole life, going oh, she's dumb, she can't do stuff, and this was her chance to make them eat their hearts out. This was her chance to be to her little sisters - and brother - what Lori was to her: A friend, mentor, and protector. Leni looked up to Lori and knew that no matter what, she could count on her. Lori was like...the best...and Leni really wanted to be the best too. Lincy got it because he was nice, but the rest of her siblings were total bitches who went out of their way to not listen or respect her. It upset her so much that she almost cried and sometimes, it made her plain old mad. Why were they being like this? Why did they respect Lori and not her? Was it because they thought she was "dumb"? Was it because she was too nice? Well...she wasn't like Lori. Lori had her own way of doing things and Leni had hers. Her way could totally work too...if her sisters would just be reasonable.
Thinking about it was starting to make Leni mad. A fiery ball of anger formed in her chest and her face grew hot. She ground her teeth together with an audible sound and her nostrils flared.
"...not gonna happen," Luna said. "No one knows who I am."
Leni came so close to slapping the edge right out of her that every muscle in her body tensed. She dug her nails into the back of the chair and mentally counted to three. She was just about to repeat herself when Lynn and Luan got up. Luna pushed her chair back and Leni moved so that she could stand. "Be sure to put your -"
All three of them went into the living room without taking their dishes into the kitchen. "Guys?"
No reply.
See? There was totes no reason for them to do this, they just did it to be mean.
Lincy said they were probably testing her and that if she stood her ground and show them they couldn't walk all over her, they would stop, but Leni didn't think that was true. There was no showing them or changing their minds. They had it in their heads that they could get away with anything because she was dumb and soft. On some level, she was beginning to understand why Lori was such a hard case, but that wasn't her. Leni was nice and didn't like having to be mean to her family because it made her feel bad. With some people, though, you have to be a hard case because they won't respect anything else.
Now she felt...what was that word? Demoralized? Yeah. She felt demoralized. She sighed and sank into the chair Luna had so recently vacated. She planted her elbows on the table and rested her cheek in her upturned palms, a sad, puppy dog look creeping into her eyes. She blew a puff of air and blinked back a crop of tears. She was a failure. She was too dumb to get her lisence, too dumb to get her sisters to respect her, and too dumb to make Lori proud of her. She was a total waste of space. No wonder her sisters didn't take her seriously.
She went back to her last conversation with Lori before she left for college. "I don't know if I can do it," she said with a burdened sigh. "I'm not like you. I'm dumb."
"No you're not," Lori said. "You're literally smarter than you give yourself credit for and I know you can handle this. I believe in you."
She really didn't want to let Lori down.
Sighing again, she got up and cleared the table. She should really make Lynn, Luna, and Luan come back and do it, but they'd either ignore her or get attitude, and she couldn't deal with that right now. Back in the dining room, she pushed all the chairs in, picked up a balled up napkin someone had left on the table, and went into the living room.
Everyone was gone.
They left her.
Of course they left her. They never would have donev that to Lori but it was just fine to do it to dumb retarded Leni.
Leni bit the inside of her bottom lip and slowly shook her head. Why were they doing this to her? Why were they such….meanheads?
You have to be firm and command respect, a voice said from the back of her head. It sounded like Lori.
"I don't know if I can," Leni said.
You have to be.
She sighed.
Being the oldest wasn't all it was cracked up to be.
Grabbing her purse, she left the house, thinking, not for the first time, of giving up.