Lincoln lay back on his bed, crossed his legs, and drew a heavy sigh. Across the room, Johnny sat in front of the computer and stared at the blank screen, his shoulders slumped in dejection. Dad's braying sobs drifted up the stairs from the living room, and Sergio flew circles around the room, his face a perfect mask of boredom. Lincoln tried opening Facebook even though he knew what would happen; NO CONNECTION appeared on the screen, and he let out a frustrated "Uhhh."
It was Friday night and the internet was out. Along with everyone's phones. And the cable. If it wasn't the dead of winter, the electric company would have cut the power, but that was thankfully against the law.
"Stupid Dad," Johnny said.
Last week, forgetting that he was a grown adult in his forties, Dad blew his paycheck on a meet and greet with Crowbar, Daffney, and David Flair, three nobodies from WCW who weren't even relevant when they were on TV.
Twenty years ago.
Dad came home so amped he trembled like a small, excited dog. With him was a bunch of crap that no one cared about: Signed photos, a T-shirt, and a bunch of action figures of fourth string literal whos who wrestled a couple times on WCW Saturday Night, the WCW's bottom of the barrel fifth rate showcase of mediocrity. "I got to meet Dave Meltzer," he gushed, "and Bruce Mitchell, and Bryan Alvarez, and Wade Keller. It was so awesome. I squeed!"
"Cool, Dad," Lincoln and Johnny had said in unison. They learned over the years to just humor the old man until he went away.
Normally, Dad was somewhat responsible with his spending, but not this time around. Oh no. He peed away most of the bill money and because of it, everything was shut off. Lincoln and Johnny had been staring at the walls and twiddling their thumbs for three days straight, and Dad sat in front of the TV crying because he couldn't watch crappy old wrestling shows on the WWE Network. Oh boo hoo, fat boy, this is your fault.
Even now, Lincoln could hear his father's soft weeping from the living room. "Oh, shut up, Jason," Mom snapped, "this is your fault."
Ha, nice one, Mom.
"I'm so sorry," Dad wept.
"From now you, I want your check deposited directly into my account."
Dad cried even harder because he knew what that meant: No more making it rain on dumb stuff behind Mom's back, no more sneaking Big Macs on the way home from work, no more stopping at random tag sales and coming home with garbage, no more anything.
About time she put her foot down.
"I hope he suffers," Johnny said and sat back in his chair. His hands jittered and his face was drawn and pale, lending him the appearance of a zombie freshly risen from the grave. Everyone was hard hit by the loss of their phones, internet, TV, etc, but no one more so than Johnny. He'd been going through withdrawals for days: That morning, Lincoln found him curled up on the floor, shaking and crying, and the night before, Johnny picked at his skin and rocked back and forth while mumbling incoherently to himself. The last time Lincoln saw someone feen that bad, it was in one of those health class PSAs about heroin. Johnny wasn't puking and screaming in agony, but that would probably come soon if he didn't get 10ccs of cat videos stat.
"He is," Lincoln said. He opened the calculator app and punched in random numbers. Since he lost service, he had gone between one random app and another to keep himself entertained. There wasn't much, though; everything required the internet. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Prime, even all the games he'd downloaded. Like seriously, none of this stuff can run without the web? Why? How dumb. The X-Station did the same thing. You had to be hooked up to the internet to play it. That made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Back in the old days, you could just put a game in and go, but now you needed to have an account, a credit card, an internet connection, a perfect credit score, and a full time job just to get in the door.
Sighing, Johnny flopped his head forward and issued a watery sigh. "Not as much as I am."
"I MISS HULK HOGAN SO MUCH," Dad wailed.
Had this happened in the summer, it wouldn't have been so bad; Lincoln and Johnny could have gone camping for a few days. Being in the great outdoors, surrounded by trees and rocks and bugs, not being constantly linked to the digital hivemind was manageable. Out there, it was right. You know the saying: When in Rome, do as the Romans.
Only this wasn't the middle of summer. It was the dead of winter. Dirty snowdrifts leftover from last month's storm dotted the world like big, pus-filled whiteheads and the icy wind lashed the earth like Indiana Jones' bullwhip only much, much, much colder. Going outside even to get in the car was hard; there was no way they'd survive a single night out there. They'd wind up looking like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining. No thank you.
Getting to his feet, head hung and shoulders stooped, Johnny shuffled over to his bed and dropped on. "You can always read a book," Lincoln suggested.
Johnny grimaced. "I'd rather read the shampoo label."
"Then go do it," Lincoln said.
"I have," Johnny moaned, "three times."
Lincoln hummed.
Honestly, he didn't know what to say. He was having a hard enough time trying to keep himself entertained. He clicked on his contacts list and scrolled through, looking for old numbers to delete. Each one had a picture next to it. Dad wearing a chainmail head covering and sunglasses ala Scott Stiener; Mom smiling and looking tired because she chose to marry a mark who cosplayed as other people; and, all in a row, Stella, Sid, and Liam, the first smiling, the second waving, and Liam holding his pet pig Virginia like a proud poppa with his newborn child. Virginia was much bigger than an infant, but that was still the first thing that came to Lincoln's mind. Lincoln lingered over the faces of his friends, his mind beginning to work and warm fuzzies flooded his chest.
"You remember how we met Stella?" he asked.
In his bed, Johnny laced his hands behind his head and crossed his legs. "Yeah," he said. "I sure do."
Cue flashback sequence.
"Okay, class," Mrs. Harribaulm said and clapped her hands, "we have a new student joining us. Everyone, please welcome Stella."
Lincoln and Johnny sat in the back of the room like the cool rebels they were, Lincoln with his sunglasses on and Johnny impatiently drumming his fingers on the desk. It was early May and warm outside; Lincoln wore black tank top that bared his scrawny white arms and Johnny wore a black T-shirt with the Punisher skull on the chest. They looked like they were going to steal your crush and drink all your apple juice, and that was exactly the kind of thing they were into.
The door opened and a freakishly tall Asian girl walked in. Really, she looked like Godzilla rampaging through downtown Tokyo.
A deep hush fell over the class and everyone gaped, even Mrs. Harribaulm. The girl stood in front of the blackboard, cupped her elbow with one hand, and looked shyly down at the floor. "Uh, hi," she said, "my name is Stella and I just moved here from Manilla...Massachusetts. I like reading, video games, and drawing."
Her tone was practiced and automatic, as though she had introduced herself to a new class a million times before.
She took an open seat and a wave of whispers swept the room. She's so tall; wow, what a freak; they must grow 'em real big in Massachusetts. That last one was Liam, who really had no right to say anything about anyone...not with a hick accent as thick as his.
"Check out the new girl," Johnny said and chewed on a toothpick.
"She's tall," Lincoln said.
"Yes," Johnny replied, Chad-like.
And that was the end of it.
The other kids in class, being far less cool and mature, didn't let it go. Over the next few days, a lot of them gave Stella funny looks, a few even teased her for being so tall. She took it all gamely enough, as though she were used to it, and kept her chin up. She ate her lunch at the same table every day, surrounded by nothing and no one. Lincoln and Johnny observed her, and one day, Lincoln said, "We should hang with her."
"Okay," Johnny said.
They wouldn't admit it out loud but they knew all too well how it felt to be ignored, outcasted, and made fun of by literally everyone.
It was not a good feeling at all.
They got up and went ovr, Lincoln sitting on one side of her and Johnny the other. She looked nervously from one to the other, her shoulders tensing like she expected them to attack her for her lunch money, or worse...make fun of her height.
"'Sup?" Lincoln asked.
"Yo," Johnny said, "we're the Velazquest brothers. We're kind of a big deal around here."
"Coolest kids in school," Lincoln said casually.
"Uhhh, hi," Stella said guardedly, "I'm Stella."
"We know," Johnny said. "We've been watching you."
Stella squinted one eye. "Uh...okay, that's not creepy."
"We think you're cool enough to join our club," Lincoln said.
Johnny plucked his toothpick from his mouth and pointed it at her, making her flinch. "Don't worry about what those losers say."
A genuine smile spread across Stella's face. "Oh, don't worry, I'm not. My dad's a contractor with the government and we move around a lot, so I'm totally used to it. Once people have time to -"
"I mean, yeah, you look Yao Ming in drag, but that's fine," Lincoln said.
Stella blinked.
"People are ignorant," Johnny opined, "once they get to know you, they'll realize there's more to you than your comical height."
She opened her mouth, but Lincoln cut her off. "And those clown feet. It doesn't matter to us that you literally tower over everyone in school."
"And stick out like a sore thumb," Johnny added.
"We get that you're totally isolated from your classmates because you're higher than Afroman, but that's okay."
Neither one noticed Stella's bottom lip beginning to quiver.
"We accept you for the willowy, gangly, awkward, stick-legged giant you are," Johnny said.
Tears filled Stella's eyes.
"I'm sure you'll manage to find some way to live a normal life," Lincoln mused. "You just have to find another one of your kind."
Johnny bent over to examine her legs. "Do these things go boing when you walk?"
"I was wondering the same thing," Lincoln said. "She legit looks like she's about to take Pearl to prom."
Leaping to her feet, Stella buried her face in her hands and bounded away, her sobs trailing over her shoulder. Lincoln and Johnny both missed a beat, then looked at each other. "Dude," Johnny said, "look what you did."
"Me?" Lincoln asked, hand fluttering to his chest. "It was you and your dumb paper bag. I wanna cry too after looking at it all day."
Growling, Johnny sprang at him and they fell to the floor.
"NERD FIGHT!" someone yelled.
Lincoln and Johnny rolled back and forth across the floor, crushing discarded bits of food beneath their bodies. Lincoln slapped Johnny's face and Johnny whacked Lincoln over the head. "I'm gonna Fulci your butt," he hissed through his teeth.
That meant he was going to gouge Lincoln's eye out.
"NOOOOOOOOOO!" Lincoln wailed.
Thankfully, Mr. Peterpuffer, the biology teacher, came over and pulled Johnny off. ""I should have known it was you two again," he said. Grabbing both boys by their ears, he hauled them to the principal's office.
The next day, they sat with Stella at lunch again. She froze when she saw them. "Are you here to make fun of me again?" she asked tightly.
"No," Lincoln sighed.
"Look," Johnny said, "we're really sorry. We're, uh, we're not exactly, you know, good with people.'
"Truth is," Lincoln said, "we used to get picked on too."
Johnny nodded. "Hard."
"And we don't really know how to…"
"Talk to people and stuff," Johnny finished.
Stella regarded them suspiciously, then, seeing that they were being honest, she relaxed. "It's okay. I...guess I was a little too sensitive yesterday. It is, you know…" she leaned conspiratorially in, "that time of the month."
Both Lincoln and Johnny nodded that they understood. "The end of the month always makes me sad too."
"Actually," Stella said, "it's...nevermind."
End flashback.
Lincoln and Johnny laughed. "Yeah, we were such idiots," Johnny said fondly.
"We tried to make her feel better about herself, but we only made her feel worse," Lincoln said with a chuckle.
"Speaking of feeling bad," Lincoln said, "do you remember how we met Sid?"
Johnny rolled his eyes. "Do I ever." He rolled up his shirt sleeve to reveal a long, jagged scar on his forearm. "And I have the battle wounds to prove it."
Cue another flashback scene.
Lincoln and Johnny walked down the sidewalk running along Argento Street, Lincoln in jeans and a tank top and Johnny in nothing but a pair of sweat soaked basketball shorts. It was the middle of summer and the sun pounded the earth with intense heat. It was so hot that the pavement shimmered and so dry that everything had turned a sickly brown color. Not a breath of wind stirred and most of Royal Woods' residents had retreated indoors, leaving the town eerily deserted.
The week before, Dad blew his paycheck on a bunch of AEW merch he randomly found at Hot Topic (what he was doing in Hot Topic in the first place, Lincoln would never know). The power got shut off, meaning they didn't have air conditioning (but at least they had Orange Cassidy throw pillows). During the day, it got to, like, 200 degrees in the house, so Lincoln and Johnny spent as much time outdoors as they could. They were on their way to Flip's for a couple frosty Flipeez and were just passing the skate park when something shot over the stone wall separating it from the street. Lincoln and Johnny both came to a halt and watched as a girl on a skateboard sailed over the street and landed on the opposite sidewalk. She jumped off, kicked the board, and caught it in one fluid motion.
Lincoln and Johnny looked at each other. "Whoa."
That was the coolest thing either of them had ever seen.
They rushed across the street. "That was sick," Lincoln said.
"Temperature of 103," Lincoln added.
"Thanks," the girl said. She unclasped her helmet and took it off. "My name's Sid. What's yours?"
"I'm Lincoln," Lincoln said, "and this is Johnny."
"We might not look like it, but we're brothers," Johnny said.
Sid was a self-described daredevil who "lived for the rush." She claimed to have gotten the blueprint for her philosophy from that episode of Spongebob where Spongebob and Patrick try to live like Larry. "I realized I was just like them," she explained. They were sitting at one of the concrete picnic tables outside Karl's Ice Cream and eating soft serve with sprinkles. "A little baby couch potato who was too scared to take risks. I decided to heck with that and got my head in the game." For her, the game was tempting fate and risking injury.
Maybe Lincoln and Johnny were still awkward from their days of not having friends, but when they met someone as cool as Sid, they wanted to impress them. "We're daredevils too," Lincoln said.
"Yeah," Johnny put in, "we're planning a sick stunt."
Sid's face lit up. "Cool. What is it?"
Lincoln and Johnny looked at each other. "Yeah," Lincoln said with a fake smile, "what is it?"
"I don't know, bro," Johnny said through a smile that was just as forced, "it was your idea. Remember?"
Darn it. Now Lincoln had to come up with something cool. He looked around for help and that's when he saw it in the distance, rising majestically over the town like a proud and stately ocean liner o'er her berth.
Royal Woods Hill, the third highest point in Royal Country after Mount Chiliad and the top of Stella's head. Next, his eyes went to a discarded shopping cart sitting next to a STOP sign. Two wires in his brain touched and produced a spark. Before he even knew he was going to speak, he blurted: "We're going to ride a shopping cart down Royal Woods Hill."
Johnny, eyes closed, said, "Yeah, we're going to -"
His lids flew open and he whipped his head around to Lincoln. "We're gonna what? Dude, no, we -"
Sid slammed his ice cream to the ground and jumped onto the table like a monkey going nuts at the zoo. "THAT'S SO COOL!"
And that is how Lincoln and Johnny wound up screaming down Royal Woods Hill in a shopping cart. The highway unfurled before them like a red carpet to hell before crossing the Royal River over an old trestle bridge and the wind filled their lungs like canvas sails, making breathing impossible. Johnny clutched the sides of the cart in a white-knuckled and howled at the top of his lungs, and Lincoln clung to the front of his brother's jacket, tears streaming down his cheeks. "This was such a bad idea!" he wailed.
"I KNOW!" Johnny screamed.
Sid pulled up beside them on her bike. "You guys better slow down!"
"WE DON'T HAVE BRAKES!" Lincoln yelled.
SId blinked. "Oh."
The road straightened out and the cart began to wobble. It veered across both lanes, narrowly missed an oncoming pick-up, and slammed into the bridge's metal exoskeleton. Lincoln and Johnny were thrown out of the cart and flew over the side of the bridge. Below them, the land sloped down to the shallow river.
Lincoln flapped his arms but instead of flying off to safety, he and Johnny both fell to the sharp, jagged rocks below.
End flashback.
Lincoln and Johnny laughed. "I thought we'd be in traction forever."
"That was the single scariest moment of my life," Lincoln said, remembering the rocky river bed coming closer and closer.
Johnny opened his mouth to agree, but stopped. "Actually, the day we met Liam was pretty scary too."
Oh, right. Lincoln almost forgot about that. "You really think it was as scary as falling thirty feet onto a bunch of rocks?" he asked, genuinely curious.
"I remember you screaming and crying."
Lincoln's brow furrowed. "I didn't scream and cry."
"Yes you did," Johnny said with a wicked grin.
Cue one more flashback.
Lincoln and Johnny were hanging out at town square, a literal square of grass, trees, and flowers situated in front of the Royal County Courthouse. A statue of Royal Woods' founder, Sir. Jonathan Woods, cast a long shadow across the commons and water chugged and sloshed in a stone fountain.
It was late summer and school was starting in less than a week. Lincoln and Johnny had resolved to make the most of what remained of their summer vacation, but, honestly, there was nothing to do. They had just gotten out of the hospital after their disastrous meeting with Sid and they were a little leery of overexerting themselves.
Johnny watched cat videos on his phone and Lincoln people watched, flipping down his sunglasses when a cute girl passed. "Hey, mama," he called to a redhead twice his age.
"Get lost, creep," she snapped.
When she was gone, Lincoln sat back and smugly crossed his arms. "She wants me."
"No she doesn't," Johnny said, "no girl wants you."
Lincoln's face darkened and he cocked his fist to punch Johnny in his dumb arm but stopped when a cry rang through the back. Lincoln and Johnny looked at each other, then sprang into action. They followed the sounds until they found the source behind a stand of trees. A redheaded boy with a bowl cut and buck teeth was surrounded by eighth grade boys. "Where's your pig, pig lover?" one of them asked.
Another shoved the boy and he almost fell.
If there was one thing Lincoln and Johnny both hated, it was bullies. "Hey," Johnny said and assumed a fighter's stance. "Why don't you pick on someone your own size?"
"Yeah," Lincoln said and did the same.
The boys turned to them and seemed to think twice; Johnny and Lincoln were both small but they were wiry and intimidating nevertheless.
Lincoln jumped at the boys and kicked one in the shin, and Johnny caught another with a sick haymaker. The others scattered and Johnny stood victorious over his fallen foe. Shaking, the boy started to scream. "DAAAAAAAAAAAAD!"
"Ha," Johnny laughed, "crying for your daddy, huh? Well, he can't help you now?"
When a deep voice echoed through the park, Johnny and Lincoln's blood froze. "I'm coming, son."
A moment later, a gang of bikers built like German bunkers came into the clearing. They were big, they were mean, and they each carried a weapon: Steel pipes, switchblades, eve 4. "He's gonna beat me up, Daddy, help!"
The head biker looked at Johnny, and Johnny uttered a nervous laugh.
And that's how Lincoln, Johnny, and Liam wound up running down the middle of Main Street from a gang of murderous bikers. "I know a shortcut!" Liam shouted in that thick Dukes of Hazzard accent. He ducked into an alley and Lincoln and Johnny followed. At the end, they came to a wooden fence with a hole at the bottom just big enough for them to squeeze through one at a time. On the other side, they got to their feet and ran to the end of the alley. "There," Liam said, "that should keep them off our -"
The head biker exploded through the fence in a shower of splinters and his buddies came behind like the offensive line of a football team that grew 'em big. Liam, Johnny, and Lincoln screamed and fell all over themselves to get away. Lincoln shoved Johnny, vaguely hoping to trip him and thus by himself time to escape, and Liam threw his elbow into Lincoln's guts, knocking the air from his lungs. Liam, smaller and faster, pulled away like a tiny sports car outpacing two lumbering SUVs, and Lincoln followed his lead because what else could he do? Liam angled across the street, ducked between two parked cars, and blazed down the sidewalk, weaving in and out of pedestrians with a lithe grace that Lincoln would have stopped to admire under other circumstances. Johnny, a real klutz even at the best of times but especially when he was running from a herd of killer bikers, bumped into one of the cars, and an alarm squawked like Sergio on waking from a pigeon related nightmare.
Lincoln assumed that the bikers would lay off, considering there were tons of witnesses around, but he sorely underestimated their determination to the cause of catching and pummeling little boys. When he spared a quick glance over his shoulder, he was mortified to see the head biker only a scant few steps back, his teeth gritted and his eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. His handlebar mustache (because what other kind of facial hair would a Big Scary Biker have?) rippled like a caterpillar on speed and his teeth looked sharp enough to crack bone.
Ahhhhh, leave me alone!
Ahead, Liam ducked into an open door and Johnny and Lincoln followed. Pottery on shelves, metal racks crammed with a confusion of clothes, castoff crap in every corner and stacked onto every surface, little old ladies browsing cookery and knick knacks at the speed of social security. Thrift store. Mom loved these places, dragged Lincoln and Johnny to them every blue chance she got.
Liam darted between the racks like Moses fleeing across the Red Sea and it was all the brothers Velazquest could do to keep up. Behind them, the crash and clatter of breaking breakables told them that the bikers were hot on their trail. "My word!" an old woman cried in alarm.
"Now see here!" a man yelled.
Through an open doorway and down a set of steps. They were in the back down, second hand items all around. A roll-top door was open a foot, maybe two. Liam scurried under, Johnny rolled. Lincoln stopped and looked behind him just as the head biker appeared at the head of the stairs. Panicking, Lincoln hit a random red button, and the door started to close. He crawled out and cleared the door just as it met the concrete with a clang of finality. He got to his feet and looked around. Alleyway. Dank. Trash cans and back doors leading into buildings on either side. He caught a flash of Johnny's dreads as he disappeared around a corner, and went after him.
A maze of warrens, secret courtyards where bums lived and the sunlight barely reached, and slime slathered corridors rank with mold and scum brought them to River Road. Though his lungs burned and a hot stitch flared in his side, Lincoln didn't dare slow.
They ran south on River Road until they were outside town, the shops, restaurants, and houses comprising downtown Royal Woods screened behind a thick layer of trees at their backs. They finally stopped at a slanted mailbox at the end of a long dirt driveway leading up to a white farmhouse. Tall, brown grass waved in the furnace blast wind and the rusted strands of a barbed wire fence twanged like guitar strings. On either side of the driveway, cows munched on grass and swished their tails back and forth, and closer to the house, chickens chased each other back and forth, wings flapping and their little claws kicking up tiny puffs of dust.
Liam bent at the waist, clasped his hands to his knees, and sucked deep gulps of air, his back rising and falling like the ebb and flow of a violent tide. Johnny stumbled, sank to his knees, and gasped like a suffocating astronaut dying on an alien planet, and Lincoln threw his head back. His lungs ached, his side ached, his legs ached, and his entire body was thickly coated with sweat. His head spun and for a terrible moment, he thought he was going to puke all over his shoes. Liam, half way composed, sat down next to the mailbox and ran his hand through his damp hair. His face was a dangerous shade of fire engine red and his shirt was soaked through like he just climbed out of a swimming pool.
Giving up the ghost, Johnny toppled over and lay still, his knees drawing to his chest as his body contracted like a dying bug. Lincoln hobbled over to his fallen brother, dropped to his knees, and shook him. "Speak to me, kid" he asked. "Say a few syllables."
"Is my paper bag okay?" Johnny croaked.
"No," Lincoln said, "I think you lost it back on Main Street."
Squeezing his eyes closed, Johnny began to cry.
Dude.
Really?
What are you, a girl?
"There, there," Lincoln said and gave his brother's shoulder a stiff pat, "we'll get you a new one."
"We had so many good times together," Johnny mourned, his voice breaking.
"Just be glad we got away," Lincoln said and got back to his feet. He stuck out his hand, but Johnny waved him off.
"Not now, Linc, can't you see I'm wallowing?"
Oh boy. Lincoln loved his bro like, well, a brother, but the guy was the biggest drama queen on the face of the earth. No, seriously, he was the only person Lincoln knew who'd break down over a paper bag. It's not like it was some expensive hat with great sentimental value or anything. His dying grandmother didn't entrust it to him on her deathbed, he didn't pay a fortune for it - he got it for free from the grocery store. He'd wear it for a few days, then, once it was sweaty, ripped, or otherwise compromised, he'd toss it out and put on a new one. This was a cycle that had been repeating itself week after week after week since the fourth grade.
Too long, didn't read: Dude's a baby.
Leaving Johnny to grieve over his dearly departed headgear, Lincoln walked over to Liam and stood over him, his hands going sternly to his hips and his brow angling down in an angry V. Everyone said he looked just like his mother and he couldn't deny it even though he sometimes wanted to; in that moment, he was identical to her.
He had half a mind to tear this little butthole limb for limb and then poop down his neck. "Hey, kid, you almost got us killed."
"Mighty sorry 'bout that," Liam said. "And I thank you kindly for stickin' up for me. Ain't no one ever done that before."
That assuaged a little of Lincoln's righteous fury. He and Johnny liked to think of themselves as protectors of the innocent and defenders of the weak, and knowing that they did just that, well...maybe it was worth nearly being turned into mincemeat by some adult men. How could he stay mad at Liam? He said no one had ever stuck up for him before. Lincoln understood that feeling well. Very well. More well than he cared to admit. When he and Johnny were the punchline of the school and being roasted by literally everyone, even the principal, no one stood up for them, no one at all. They were reviled and picked on by everyone.
And if people weren't absolutely clowning on them like MJF and Jericho clowning on a steak dinner, they treated them like criminals because of their many - and admittedly crazy - get rich quick schemes. They called Lincoln and Johnny conmen, grifters, thieves, tramps, gypsies, and all other manner of awful things. They were alone, alienated, and...long story short, they felt like crud.
One day long ago, Lincoln and Johnny swore to each other that they would never make anyone else feel like that and that they would always be a friend to the friendless. They even pinkie promised, that's how deadly serious they were.
Lincoln couldn't say Liam was particularly friendless - he'd never seen the kid before in his life - but he certainly didn't have any friends back there at the park.
Sighing, Lincoln asked Liam's name. "What school do you go to?"
"I'm homeschooled," Liam said. "My Mee Maw doesn't believe in public schools. She says they's all run by liberals."
Now Lincoln, Johnny, and Liam were sitting together, Johnny with one knee belt to his chest and his back against the weathered post holding the mailbox up. "I reckon I might go to the public school this year on account of the government sayin' you can't homeschool people if you ain't got more 'n' a fifth grade education but I can't rightly say."
"I'm Lincoln and this is Johnny," Lincoln said. "Where do you live?"
"Right here," Liam said and jutted his chin toward the farm house.
Johnny sat up straight. "Dude, you live on a farm?"
There was a hint of wonder in his voice.
"Well, yeah, I live on a farm."
"I've never been to a farm," Johnny said.
"Ain't never been to a farm?" Liam asked incredulously.
"We're suburban boys," Lincoln said.
"Can you give us a tour?" Johnny asked. "I wanna see."
Liam mulled it over for a second. "Well, I reckon it's okay."
That afternoon, Liam showed them around his farm, starting in the pasture ("watch for cow patties, y'all") and ending in the kitchen, where his Mee Maw sat at the table and smoked like a freight train. "This here is Lincoln and Johnny. They're my new friends. They ain't never been to a farm before."
"It's mighty fine to meet you," Liam's Mee Maw said. "You boys hungry?"
Liam, Johnny, and Lincoln ate cold fried chicken and drank glass after glass of fresh squeezed lemonade. Neither Lincoln nor Johnny had ever had anything so good in their entire lives.
At the end of the day, they walked home through the twilit town. "You know, I like that kid," Johnny said.
"Yeah, me too."
And that is how Lincoln and Johnny became friends with Liam.
End flashback.
Lincoln and Johnny were both laughing over the shared memory of how they met their three best friends. Laughing led to reminiscing, and soon they began to trade favorite memories back and forth like kids with baseball cards.
They weren't bored anymore, and, truth be told, they appreciated Sid, Stella, and Liam a little more now.
THE END.
