I know some of you wanted to see more of Lester, so this chapter will show how he and Lincoln are related. You'll also see more members of Lincoln's steadily growing circle of friends.
Chapter 9
Lincoln walked into the cafeteria, scanning the tables for an empty seat.
"Hey, Lincoln! Over here!" Ronnie Anne was waving him over to a table where she and Clyde sat with two other girls. One was a black-haired Filipino girl with a white T-shirt emblazoned with a red star, and the other was the mute girl from earlier in the day. He joined them at the table, and Ronnie Anne introduced him to the girls. "Lincoln, these are our friends Stella Zhao and Mollie Markle. Stella moved here from the Philippines last year, and Mollie had an accident involving her vocal cords."
[Nice to meet you,] Mollie signed.
"Same here. Welcome to our ragtag band of misfits!" said Stella.
"Misfits?" Lincoln asked.
"It makes sense if you think about it. I'm the rough-and-tumble tomboy, Mollie can't even whisper, Stella's too tall, and Clyde's a coward," Ronnie Anne explained. Stella stood to prove Ronnie Anne's point. She and Lincoln were both tall for their age, but Stella was two or three inches taller.
"What makes you a coward, Clyde?" Lincoln inquired as Stella sat back down.
"It's not so much me as it is my dads. They can be a bit overprotective."
Mollie made a gagging sound and signed, [A bit?! They made you wear a ducky tube in the kiddie pool!]
Clyde turned red and said, "Yeah, not one of my proudest moments. Especially since I was nine and wasn't supposed to be in the kiddie pool anyway."
"That pales in comparison to what happened to me," said Lincoln. "Just this summer, I got banned from the pool for public indecency. In their defense, it was an honest mistake. The only trunks the mall had in my size were white." The story was admittedly pretty funny, and everyone but Mollie burst out laughing. Stella was the first one to sober up, and she groaned at something behind Lincoln.
"Jerk alert. Look alive, people!"
"Hello, White-Out." If it were possible, Lincoln would've turned even paler than he already was.
"Hey, get lost, Lester! It's the scum like you that make life more unbearable than it already is!" Ronnie Anne snapped. Lester only smiled.
"Aw, c'mon, Santiago, I can't just leave. Not when my favorite cousin is about to give me free lunch," he said and snatched the bag from Lincoln's hand.
"Hey, that's my lunch!" Lincoln exclaimed and tried to grab it back. However, Lester had two other boys with him, and the skinny one with glasses punched Lincoln's gut.
"Now now, Trent, we don't want to hurt precious Linky-poo on his first day of school," Lester chided as he opened the bag. "Ew, a sandwich and a salad? No thanks!" He dumped Lincoln's food on the ground and stomped on it. "There. Eat it before the rats get it, freak!" He and his goons walked away laughing.
"Ooh, if he weren't the principal's pet, I'd clobber him into next month!" Ronnie Anne seethed. "You okay, Lincoln? Linc?" Lincoln just sniffed and wiped his eyes.
"Stupid Lester. He thinks he owns the world just because he's half Tetherby," He muttered just loud enough for the others to hear. Local millionaire Lord Tetherby was the father of Lincoln's Aunt Leanna, who was in turn married to his Uncle Leopold, Lynn Sr.'s brother. Lester's was the typical Internet family: entitled mom, submissive dad, spoiled brat. Lincoln looked up when Mollie snapped her fingers to get his attention.
[Would you like to share my lunch, Lincoln? My mom always packs too much food,] she signed.
"Y-you'd do that for me? B-but you hardly know me," was Lincoln's half-hearted protest.
"That's what friends do, Lincoln. They help each other out," explained Stella. Any lingering doubts Lincoln had vanished when Mollie handed him half of a sub sandwich and a banana.
...
During recess, Lincoln sat under a tree with his hood up and sunglasses on. Suddenly, the twins pounced on him and wrapped their arms around him in a tight hug.
"Hiya, Lincoln! Did you miss us?" asked Lana.
"Heh heh, that I did, girls," he said and rubbed their heads. Then his smile disappeared. "Why didn't you tell me Lester would be in my class?"
"It must have slipped our minds in the heat of the moment. Sorry, Linky," Lola said with an apologetic look that Lana mirrored exactly.
"Speaking of our traitorous cousin, he's right over there." The three siblings screamed, but it was only Lucy sitting on a branch above them. They looked where she was pointing and saw Lester and his cronies kicking a pair of second graders off of the swing sets.
"Let me handle this, guys," Lana said with a grin. "Oh, Skippy!" she called in a singsong voice, and a freckled, brown-haired boy with a backwards green cap walked up. "We're having trouble with Lester. Go get the eggs."
"Fresh or rotten?" Skippy asked while picking his nose.
"What do you wanna do, make him an omelet? The rotten ones!" Skippy walked away and returned with an open egg carton. The smell was so strong that Lincoln, Lucy, and Lola had to cover their noses. Lana pulled a pair of slingshots from her chest pocket and handed one to Skippy. "Aim 'em high and let 'em fly!" she said. The two of them shot the eggs at the bullies, who ran around screaming. Fortunately, they had no idea what direction the eggs were coming from, so Lana and Skippy were free from their wrath.
...
Trouble came back for Lincoln when he walked into Ms. Johnson's room for Social Studies, the last class of the day. He'd given a stellar performance in both Science and Woodshop, creating small sparks of jealousy among his peers. Ms. Johnson finished the head count and motioned for the students to be seated. Lincoln slid into his desk, only to leap back up with a shout of pain. The seat of his pants was covered in shiny brass thumbtacks. The teacher looked on with disapproval as Lester snickered and fist-bumped his other henchman, a fair-skinned boy with rust-colored hair and a green shirt with a white gear on the front.
"Lester, Chandler, that's two more weeks of detention each," she said sternly. "Ronnie Anne, be a dear and escort Lincoln to Nurse Patti's office, will you?"
"Yes, ma'am." Ronnie Anne grabbed Lincoln's arm and gently tugged him in the direction of the nurse's office.
"Ow, ow! I'm losing my mind! I'm losing my mind!" he grunted.
...
The final bell rang, and the four younger Loud girls were looking for Lincoln when they saw Ronnie Anne sitting on a bench against the wall. When asked if she'd seen Lincoln anywhere, the Hispanic girl jerked her thumb at the nurse's door beside her.
"TAKE IT EASY, YOU'RE TEARING MY HEART OUT! OW!" Lincoln howled.
"Sorry, sorry. The pliers keep slipping," the kind-hearted nurse apologized. From the fire in Ronnie Anne's eyes, the girls could immediately tell who was responsible for their brother's plight.
"I strongly suggest that we inform our eldest sibling immediately. She can handle the situation better than any of us," said Lisa. The three sisters that Lester feared most were Lori, Luna, and Lynn, in that order. The former two were capable of giving him an epic smackdown, while the latter was famous for her "atomic wedgies." The other girls agreed to tell Lori if Lincoln didn't tell her himself, when lo and behold, Lester walked past, still smelling like the rotten eggs he and his goons had been pelted with. Ronnie Anne held a finger to her lips before taking her shoe off and throwing it as hard as she could. Lester shouted as it hit the back of his head, his beanie doing nothing to cushion the impact.