Me and Lentex originally started this story in early 2019. After a few months of writing, though, we took a break for a few different reasons. Glamorama is back now, though, and this time we aim to finish. Enjoy.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. That maxim had never been clearer to Lincoln Loud than it was on the morning his life changed forever. It started as any other, the shrill beep-beep-beep of the alarm clock startling him from the warm bosom of sleep like a brisk and sudden slap. He jerked, looked bewilderedly around, then relaxed as the mist rapidly dissipated from his brain. Golden late winter sunshine spilled through the window pane and lay in puddles on the carpet, and a cold breeze blew against the closed window, rattling the screen.

He slapped the off button and laid back against the pillow, blinking the sleep from his eyes. Maybe, if he stayed really still, the world would forget he existed and he could take the day off. Surely life wouldn't miss him that badly.

Right?

Heh. Wrong. At seventeen, Lincoln, the perennial middle child born smack dab between two sets of five sisters, one group older and the other younger, was the Oldest Sibling, a prestigious position that entailed endless managerial work. The Loud house was, he reckoned, like a ship at sea. You don't just step away from the wheel and let it sail itself. That's how shipwrecks so epic people still talk about them 200 years later happen. Remember the SS Loud House? The Captain ducked out to read a comic, and it hit an iceberg so hard everyone instantly died. His little sisters, Lucy, Lana, Lola, Lisa, and Lily, were responsible enough and able to govern themselves to an extent, but there were still times they needed him...whether they knew it or not.

When Lynn left for college last year, leaving him to assume the mantle of Oldest, he did not relish the prospect of shouldering the burden as each of his elder sisters had. He loved his family and would do anything for them, but he was a sixteen year old kid with his own life. Friends. A part time job washing dishes and Jean Juan's. The occasional party. And an on again off again girlfriend in Stella Dinh, a girl he enjoyed being around but could never fully connect with.

Then, after a few months of dragging himself half-heartedly through his duties, Lori called home from Boston, and when he mentioned not really wanting to do "this crap," she told him something that gave him pause.

I was a shitty big sister, she said, a note of guilt in her voice. I could have been more involved...I should have been more involved...but I wasn't. I was too focused on myself and when I left home and didn't have you guys anymore, you know what? I really regretted it. And I still do.

Family, she said, is a sacred thing, but fleeting too. Things even out down the road, but before that, they're constantly in flux, the ground shaky beneath your feet, never quite still. Before you know it, your childhood is over and you're left to reflect on it for the next forty years. Lori had begun to look back, and she didn't like what she saw.

He didn't want that for himself, and resolved to be the best big brother he possibly could.

He rose and stepped down from his bed, careful not to get up too fast and bump his head. The closet-room ceiling above him was much closer than it had been when he was younger. For the past half decade, his older sisters had moved out one by one each year, departing like bullets from a revolver firing off a steady pace, and for the first time ever, each Loud child had their own room. Lincoln's parents had offered to make two of his sisters pair up again, but he shook his head and refused their offer. He of all people knew what it was like to want freedom and privacy—growing up, it was often difficult to come by—and to have your own room was to have freedom. He didn't want to strip that freedom away from any of his sisters by forcing two of them to once again share a room. He could manage just fine in the linen closet, and he would be gone in a year and a half anyway, too.

In the hallway, he pondered what he would do if he grew any more. He was tall, but not extremely much so. Lincoln had just turned six feet a couple of months ago, and when he measured the height of his closet-bedroom, it was six feet and two inches at the lowest point. He didn't think it would become a problem before he moved out, but if it did, he could always ask around and see if any of his little sisters were willing to trade with him. If he told them his problem, he was sure they would. Though the way they most often showed it was through ducking, dodging, pushing and shoving, the Loud siblings all loved one another.

As he reached the end of the hallway, like clockwork, Lincoln watched as Lucy left the bathroom just as Lana opened the door of her room.

"Did you two time that out?" Lincoln asked, joking.

Lucy shook her head. "I guess we just have this down to a science by now."

She was right. While ten siblings getting ready in the morning paved the way to chaos and disorder, five siblings getting ready, while not as free-flowing as just two or three, was a lot easier for everyone to manage. Since Lynn's departure last year, a new

routine had taken hold of the morning before school like an unwritten regime. Always first to wake up and get to the bathroom was Lola, due to the fact that she took a bath for at least twenty-five minutes before the start of every day. Next came Lisa, who was particularly concerned with her dental hygiene (Lisa was the only person Lincoln knew who actually flossed twice every day) and made a point to take care of it first thing every morning. While Lisa took care of her teeth, Lily showered, and when Lisa and then Lily left the bathroom, Lucy had her turn. Lana was always the last to wake up and the last to use the bathroom. It wasn't uncommon for her to sleep in and skip her shower entirely in the morning.

Lincoln was the only one to take his shower during the nighttime. His sisters were in no way good at functioning in the morning and all preferring showering after waking up in an attempt to help them gain some sort of consciousness before the day started. It wasn't easy for him, either, but he still preferred taking his showers before going to sleep because it was a good thing to look forward to before he went to bed. A warm shower always relaxed him before bed and gave him a chance to collect his thoughts at the end of the day. Especially useful were these thought-collecting moments because he'd found himself with more and more to think about as the Oldest.

Lucy began to head downstairs and Lana began to make her way into the bathroom, but Lincoln grabbed her shoulders and gently moved her out of the way.

"What are you doing?" she asked sleepily. "It's my turn, Lincoln."

"I need to grab the trash," he said, walking in. "It'll take two seconds."

Lana stuck out her tongue as Lincoln opened the bathroom and approached the small trash bin next to the sink. He opened the cabinet under the sink, grabbed a fresh trash bag, and reached into the trash bin to swap it out with the old one.

"It's all yours," he said as he took the full trash bag out of the bathroom.

As he made his way downstairs, the smell of bacon hit Lincoln's nose and he heard the sound of the coffee machine brewing. He went into the kitchen. Lola was sitting at the table fiddling with her phone, Lily and Lisa were having a soft conversation, Lucy was fixing a plate, and Mom was washing her hands.

"I thought doing the trash was Lily's job?" Mom asked when Lincoln grabbed the

kitchen trash bag.

"Yeah," he said, "but she's been studying hard for a test the past few days and I wanted to give her a little break." Since becoming the oldest, Lincoln made a conscious effort to more often pitch in where he could to help out his sisters. Even small things didn't go unnoticed, and he had to lead by example.

"That's very sweet of you, Lincoln."

Outside, a cold wind hit Lincoln like a slap in the face. It was nearing the end of February now, but Lincoln suspected that there were still at least a couple of snow days left down the road. The sunrise in the distant Michigan landscape was bright and orange and beautiful, so much so that to Lincoln it almost even was suggestive of a higher being. Such a wonderful scene demands an intelligent creator, right? Lincoln didn't actually know, but he didn't entirely rule out either possibility. His family was sort of religious but never really went to church, and Lori, Lucy and Lisa all thought for certain there was no God. Personally, Lincoln was entirely unsure. Shrugging, he threw the garbage bag into the can.

"How do you think the Earth started?" Lincoln asked Lucy over breakfast once he went inside and got himself a plate.

"I don't know," she said simply.

"Really? I thought you of all people would have at least an idea of something like that."

"People don't need to know everything, Lincoln," she said without looking up. "It doesn't really affect me, so I don't put much thought into it. It's pointless."

He shrugged. Lucy was fourteen, and would be fifteen in less than a month. Lincoln thought her to be much smarter and deeper than he was around that age. When he was a freshman in high school himself, his peers were concerned with simple kid things like first girlfriends or passing tryouts to get on a sports team. From what Lincoln saw, Lucy wasn't very much concerned with things like that. He walked in her room the other day and saw her reading a giant book titled War and Peace. He asked her what it was about, and she said something about post-reform Russia and aristocracy.

"I guess so," he responded. He brought a piece of cooked potato to his mouth.

Chewing, he pointed his fork at her. "But isn't it weird going through every day not knowing why or how you're here?"

"No, not really. Not for me at least. It doesn't concern me in the slightest."

Lincoln nodded.

It did him, but only in a vague, roundabout way. Maybe it was getting older, but he often found himself wondering after the point and meaning of life. Surely there must be a reason. The science teacher said that earth, and indeed the very universe itself, was created by an accidental chain reaction of events, and that human beings formed from parasites in the sea. Perhaps they did, but man possesses a spark of something that no other animal does, a certain self and moral awareness that sets him distinctly apart from the lower beasts. Did that, too, come from nothing?

He took a drink of orange juice and sighed. In the grand scheme of things he supposed it didn't really matter, but he thought about it anyway. "That test is today, right?" he asked and forked a piece of egg to his mouth.

Across the table, Lily nodded. "Yeah. I'm kind of nervous."

Seven, almost eight, and small for her age, Lily wore her blonde hair in a ponytail that stuck up from behind her head like a feather duster (Lola and Lana were both fond of flicking it when they passed). Like each one of her sisters, she was intelligent, but her ADHD ensured that her time in school was anything but easy. Even on medication, she could barely sit still, and even now, she twitched and figited restively in her seat. She stared down her plate with something approaching shame and prodded a piece of underdone potato with her fork. Lincoln had the utmost faith in her ability to do the work, but the jury was still out on whether or not she would be able to concentrate.

"You'll do fine," he said and took a bite of bacon. "Just close out the world and -"

"Pretend nothing else exists," she finished.

Lincoln grinned. He worked with her as best he could, and always told her to block everything else from her mind but the task or assignment she was working on. Sometimes it worked, other times it didn't.

Turning his attention to Lana, who sat hunched protectively over her food like a starved dog, he asked, "Anything interesting going on?"

She nodded. "Yeah," she said around a mouthful of eggs, "shop."

Ah. Lana was a long time member of the Future Engineers of America, an after school club that, despite its lofty moniker, was little more than a glorified shop class. There, she excelled in welding, metal fabricating, auto mechanics, and electrical work. She routinely brought projects home and set up in the garage, which even now was strewn with parts and pieces that Lincoln could name only tentatively. He provided as much help as he could, but his mind, unfortunately, was not geared in that direction, and he wound up doing little more than handing her tools and nursing her cuts, burns, and scrapes.

"Is your project due today?"

"Tomorrow."

"Lola?" Lincoln asked. "Anything exciting in the cards?"

Lola, once a beauty queen and now the captain of the cheer squad at Royal Woods Middle, sat next to her twin, clad in a sleeveless pink dress with a white belt featuring a large oval-shaped buckle. Her hair, like summer wheat, spilled over her shoulders in wavy tresses. Her features were identical to Lana's, but somehow they seemed more delicate on her; with her high cheekbones, pert nose, faint constellation of freckles, and clear eyes, she was beautiful, and Lincoln was strangely proud of her for it, even though aesthetic beauty is largely beyond one's control and not really an accomplishment.

"Not really," she said, "I think I have a math test. Not sure, though."

In addition to her looks, Lola was blessed with a mechanical inclination similar to Lana's. If she were to cultivate it, she could match or even exceed her twin's technical prowess. She was not interested in doing so, however, and used her smarts to pass (with flying colors, of course) but nothing more.

Lincoln glanced at his watch, saw that it was time to leave, and sighed. "Alright, well, you guys have a good day. Lola, pass that test. Lily, you too. Lana...if you use the

blowtorch today, do me a favor and wear your mask."

"Yes, mother," Lana said, spraying food. She nodded to his plate. "You gonna finish that?"

He pushed the plate across the table, and she took it.

Before leaving, he went over to the sink, where his mother was elbows deep in soapy water, and kissed her cheek. "Love you," he said.

"I love you too, honey, have a good day."

"I will," he promised.

At the front door, he slipped into his jacket, grabbed his backpack, and slung it over his shoulder. He went outside and drew a lungful of bitterly cold air. The trees up and down Franklin Avenue stood stark and bare against the facades of the houses fronting the sidewalk. A yellow school bus, its flanks coated in mud and salt, ambled past in the street, a plume of exhaust trailing behind it like a phantom chasing after the living (wait, I want to be like yooooou). Lincoln pulled his coat closed at the throat and went down the stairs, pausing at the end of the walkway to let a Chevy pass. He crossed the street and started toward school, hands in his pockets. Have a good day, his mother said.

And he intended to do just that.


Lucy Loud grabbed her books from the kitchen table, tucked them under her arm, and went into the living room. Lola and Lana sat side-by-side on the couch in front of Good Morning, America. Neither paid attention, they were just killing time until they had to leave. Lucy glanced at the ornamental clock on the mantle; she had fifteen minutes.

Instead of whiling it away like her sisters, she sat her books on the end table, shrugged into a black, knee length pea coat, then picked them back up again and left. A raw blast of February wind lashed her pallid face and a slight shiver went through her thin frame. Fourteen with long black hair pulled into a ponytail and bangs obscuring her crystalline eyes, Lucy was, per Pop-Pop, a "string bean." Tall, thin, and lanky. She started puberty at twelve, yet her body was still as flat and shapeless as it was when she was eight.

Most girls her age would worry incessantly over their lack of hips and breasts, but Lucy, frankly, didn't care. The body, she had come to realize, is but a superficial vessel with one purpose and one purpose alone: To house and facilitate the mind. Modern society places great emphasis on appearance and fashion, but one's looks do not define them. Their face, their chest, even their genitals, are not them: Everything that makes a person who they are is centered in the brain. Their thoughts, worldview, life experience, likes, dislikes, interests, hobbies. The body was, in essence, an overcoat to the mind's being.

That may have sounded nhillistic if she spoke it aloud, but she did not mean it to. She was fundamentally happy (though she did not wear it on her sleeve) and, she thought, well-adjusted. She had friends and had been asked on dates by both boys and girls. She did well in her classes and never suffered from existential dread; she was not sad, depressed, or awkward.

Though she was different.

Royal Woods High was about a twenty minute walk from her house, and she usually made the trip with Lincoln. Her being a freshman and him being a junior, she often didn't see him at school, and she liked engaging in conversation with him when the opportunity arose since they didn't really go out of their way to talk at home. It was always good, though, to walk alone, as it gave her an opportunity to collect and organize her thoughts before the day got underway.

Lucy heard the hum of a car behind her, and thought not much of it until she noticed it start to slow behind her. She paused and looked over her shoulder, and the vehicle, a red Sudan, came up next to her and stopped. The front passenger side window lowered and Lucy saw the face of her friend, Caroline, looking back at her.

"Lucy!" she said. "My sister's giving me a ride to school today. Want to hop in?"

Caroline, a timid and quiet girl with glasses but very personable once you got to know her, was one of Lucy's best friends, and one of the few girls at her school that she didn't consider vapid. Her favorite conversations with the girl were about literature. When she saw Caroline reading a Bret Easton Ellis novel near the start of the school year, Lucy gave herself a one time exception to her personal rule never to interrupt someone while reading and struck up a conversation about it.

Lucy nodded. "That'd be lovely. Thank you."

"Are you excited for the meeting today?" Caroline asked as Lucy got into the backseat of the car.

"For sure. You finished the book, right?" She fastened her seatbelt and the car lurched forward.

"Of course I did! You?"

"I saved the last chapter for my study hall today, since it's in the morning and I have nothing else to do."

Caroline nodded. "I think you'll like the ending."

When Lucy found out that Royal Woods High had no literature club, she took it upon herself to start one. Once a week, she and four other students met after school in the library for an hour to discuss the agreed upon reading they had done since they last got together. Then, they ate snacks and chattered quietly as they used the rest of their time together to begin reading the next selection for the week. Because the literature club allowed Lucy to discuss books with other like-minded people, it gave her the opportunity to read even more difficult literature than she would have alone because she could bounce any questions that she had around the group, but more importantly, she had started the club because she thought it would be a fun thing to do. And she thought right; attending the meetings were the highlight of her week, and she looked forward to them almost in the same way a child looked forward to an amusement park ride whilst waiting in line.

This week's book was Finnegans Wake by James Joyce, often cited as one of the most difficult books in the English language for its stream-of-consciousness writing style, idiosyncratic use of language, and free dream associations. It was an avant-garde masterpiece and loomed large in the landscape of Lucy's mind, a mysterious, mist-shrouded mountain begging to be climbed, a challenge to her intelligence that promised to either make her sense of self...or break it. She was not conceited, but she prided herself on her profound intellect, and the worst indignity she could ever suffer was to feel or look stupid. Finnegans Wake was as intimidating as it was inaccessible, and when it was first suggested to the club by an overweight tenth grader/dungeon master named Winston, her initial reaction was mortification. A part of her wanted to remonstrate, but another part realized, on a fundamental level, that if she backed down from this, she would never be able to look herself in the mirror again, for in the looking glass, she would see a cerebral coward.

She grudgingly accepted the selection and began an arduous climb to the summit that, to her surprise, became easier as she made her way higher. At first, the literary iconoclasm was jarring, like the sudden touch of icy water to sensitive places, but the more she read, the more accustomed to it she became. By the end of the week, she was even enjoying it.

"Because that means the book's over?" Lucy asked archly and lifted a questioning brow,

Caroline opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. "I don't want to spoil anything," she said and faced forward, "just read it for yourself."

A short girl with shoulder length auburn hair, too close eyes, bland cheekbones, and a flat nose, Caroline, perhaps inexplicably, reminded Lucy of the fish-human hybrids from Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth. She was not attractive, though she wasn't exactly ugly either. Of course. her physical appearance was neither here nor there - Lucy was drawn not to her face but to her mind. She and Caroline were similar in matters of taste and pursuits, both seekers after knowledge who enjoyed the occasional delve into the macabre and the trivial. Before Caroline moved to Royal Woods three years ago, Lucy was alone in her love of esoteric subjects, obscure history, aberrant psychology, and the supernatural. In Caroline, she found a kindred spirit and for the first time in her life, she felt understood. Her brother and sisters were deep and thoughtful people, but their interests rarely aligned with her own.

"Alright," Lucy said, "I will. Speaking of endings, did you hear who died?"

Caroline furrowed her brow. "No, who?"

The car turned left onto Schoolhouse Road. The grimy brick facade of Royal Woods High, built so long ago that George Washington might have once been a student, peeked out from behind a rush of barren trees. In the driver seat, Caroline's sister Rachel drummed the wheel with her fingers and bunched her lips from one side to the other, her vacant face the dictionary definition of indecision.

"Mrs. Atkins," Lucy said.

"Really?" Caroline asked with subdued interest. Mrs. Atkins, a tall black woman with glasses so big they had their own Congressman, was the principal of Royal Woods Middle. She retired the year Caroline transferred from Ann Arbor, and Lucy often

crossed paths with her in town, the most recent time being three months before when she literally bumped into her at the grocery store. At fifty-eight, she was healthy and fit, and Lucy was surprised to see her staring back from the newspaper obituaries.

Lucy nodded. "Yeah. She went home to be with Jesus." She spoke with a sardonic twist. Obituaries seldom give the cause of death, it's always died after a long illness or went home to glory.

"What do you think it was?" Caroline asked, her voice lowering conspiratorially. Rachel pulled into the driveway fronting the school. A line of buses sat at the curb and spilled their contents onto the breezeway running the length of the building. Principal Rader, a tall man with a bald pate, glasses, and a walrus mustache stood next to the main doors with Vice Principal Wuornos, a blonde woman who looked like a man. They both glared at the flood of students streaming past them like a couple of serial killers.

"Heart attack," Lucy said instantly.

Rachel pulled into a slot in the student parking facing the school's western wall, then whipped out her phone and texted someone. "What makes you so sure?" Caroline asked as they got out.

"Whatever happened, it was probably sudden," Lucy replied, "and heart disease is the leading cause of death for women over fifty in the US."

Caroline tilted her head concedingly. "True."

Side-by-side, they joined the crush of humanity shuffling into RCHS like absent eyed sheep to a slaughterhouse. Lucy's eyes darted left at right, taking in the dull, apathetic faces around her. She tried hard not to look down on other people, and constantly reminded herself that intelligence combined with ego leads only to stuffy insufferability, but there were times she looked at her fellow students and honestly disdained them. They were all alike - they dressed the same, spoke the same, listened to the same music, played the same video games, and chased superficial and material things. New cars. Nice clothes. 80 dollar tennis shoes that absolutely had to be kept in pristine condition. Chains, watches, status symbols that ultimately meant nothing. Looking at them, she found herself wondering what they did when they went home at night, what sort of shallow, unfulfilled, cast-adrift lives they lead.

Analyzing herself, she honestly did not think she was better, at least she didn't believe she did, she just valued different things. Seeing someone (or a whole lot of someones) who valued things that were antithetical to what she did was strange and disconcerting.

Maybe the problem rested not with them, but with her.

Eh. If there was a problem, it was probably too late to fix it now.

At her locker, she grabbed her history book. Caroline opened the one next to her and withdrew her science text. "See you at lunch."

"I'll be there," Lucy said, "barring unforeseen circumstances."

Caroline disappeared into the crowd, and Lucy made her way to class, ducking between roughhousing boys, insipid chatting girls, and harried teachers who looked like they wanted to be somewhere far away.


The morning bell rang in Lincoln Loud's ear only a few moments after he walked in the door of the school. He shoved his hands in the pocket of his hoodie and thought briefly about his schedule. It was Tuesday, so his first class would be media production.

Media production was the elective class Lincoln had picked for the current school year, and was probably his favorite course. The teacher, Mr. Berk, was very lenient with the curriculum and students loved him for it. If you were making an effort to do at least a little work during class, and you had something to show by the end of each school quarter, you got an easy 100 for a grade. All kinds of cool things came from the class—poorly edited but charming videos filmed in the school, 3D printed objects, posters digitally made by students, sub-par electronic music made in a digital program—and what you worked on was entirely up to you.

He smiled as he realized that his morning would not be spent with math equations being drilled in his head or by a teacher droning on to him about grammar or history, but by spending time in a class that he genuinely enjoyed. He merged into the crush of students walking down the hall and eventually hooked a left at a t-shaped junction.

Lincoln felt a tap on his shoulder and looked to his left. Clyde walked up from behind and joined Lincoln at his right side.

"Hey, man," he greeted.

"Hi," said Lincoln. "Ready for Mr. Berk?"

"Always. What are you going to work on this class?"

Lincoln thought. The last time he had media production, he and Clyde had sort of just goofed around in photoshop, playing around by editing pictures of one another. Mr. Berk saw and told them that they were doing good, that they were learning the program, but Lincoln didn't feel productive. He wanted to make something today, he wanted to put something together.

"Why don't we film a video?" he suggested.

Clyde nodded. "Like a movie?"

"I had something shorter in mind… but, hell, sure, why not? Let's spend a few classes making a short movie."

"Sounds good."

By now they were at the door to their class and they went in. The media production room was large but effectively split into two different sections by a thin wall with a wide opening on both the left and the right sides to provide walkways into each section. There was no real order in here; tables lined most of the walls, and various computers, cameras, and other equipment stood atop them. Lincoln had once heard a freshman girl say that this class had the largest quantity of "random shit" she'd ever seen, and he couldn't help but to agree. There were all kinds of weird apparatus lying over the entire room.

"What's this video even going to be about?" asked Clyde.

"Not sure yet. Any ideas?" asked Lincoln, already walking over to grab Mr. Berk's studio quality camera from off of a table. "I'm going to grab this for now, lest a little sophomore get their little hands on it."

Clyde chuckled. Media production was one of the few courses that Lincoln took that he

went to class with students outside of his grade. Both Juniors like him as well as Sophomores took media production, and it had allowed him to branch out socially. He didn't consider himself terribly popular around the school, but he wasn't a total outcast, either. He had friends in many various social circles and was comfortable talking to almost anyone, both teachers and students, both friends and strangers.

He didn't hate all underclassmen like some of his peers did. In fact, he found many of them to be much more personable than the Juniors and Seniors. Of course, though, that didn't stop him from making the occasional joke at their expense. It was all in good fun, though.

"And that's the last thing we want," continued Lincoln, chuckling. "I bet they'd spend half an hour just trying to figure out how to get the camera to record! We'd never get our chance."

Clyde smiled and walked over to a computer to load up a document to get started on writing a script. Other students began to fill into the room and get to work as the late bell rang and class officially got underway.

Lincoln was about to follow Clyde when he heard a yell. "Hey!" a male voice cried, and Lincoln turned around. A sophomore boy stormed up to him and pointed an accusatory finger at his chest. "The sophomores are not that stupid!"

From his tone, Lincoln knew he was joking, and he smiled. "Are you sure?" Lincoln countered. "I could have sworn I saw one the other day trying to film something on a home toaster."

"No way!" the boy cried. "At least we don't hog the camera all day."

"Oh, really? That doesn't sound nearly as bad as mistaking a home appliance for a camera."

"That never happened!" He laughed, and his laugh to Lincoln sounded natural. Something that couldn't be counterfeited, something genuine.

And his genuinity continued throughout the rest of the conversation. They spoke more, about the class, about the school, about various things that Lincoln didn't fully remember after their talk came to an end. What you saw with this sophomore boy was

what you got: he had introduced himself running at Lincoln and screaming, his high energy and unique sense of humor the leading and defining features of his character on full display right from the get-go.

"Lincoln?" called Clyde eventually from the other side of the room. "Ready to start, or what?"

Lincoln nodded. "I'm going to make a video with my friend," he said. "I bet it'll be a masterpiece compared to anything the sophomores could piece together."

The boy before him smiled and shook his head. "Yeah. Sure." He turned around to leave. "I really doubt that," he joked.

As he walked away, Lincoln found himself watching him go. He was pretty short, around 5'5" if Lincoln had to guess. His hair was dirty blonde and his eyes were the deepest shade of blue that Linc had seen in recent memory. His face was soft, which made it all the more whimsical to see him scream, even if it was in simple jest.

"Who was that kid?" asked Clyde.

Lincoln shrugged.

"Don't even know his name?"

"No, I guess not."

"Huh. Okay."

And the two started their project. Lincoln's mind, however, kept going back to the boy, and when it did, he felt something faint but getting larger inside of his chest.


When Lucy made it to the office on the first floor, the secretary, who was speaking on the phone, motioned for to have a seat, and Lucy did. She tapped her foot not out of impatience but because it helped her focus on her thoughts over the droning of the phone conversation happening six feet away from her.

Lucy was a bit annoyed when she got called down to the office at the start of her study hall because she had just begun to read her book, but at the same time curious about why she was summoned. Had she done something wrong? She thought about it and thought not. She hadn't broken any rules, at least not recently.

A good ten minutes passed before Lucy really did begin to grow impatient. She was missing out on valuable reading time, and at this rate, she would not finish Finnegans Wake on time, and even if she got back to her study hall soon, she'd have to rush, and Lucy hated rushing things.

Finally, the door to the vice principal's office opened, and a student whom Lucy did not recognize left the room. Mrs. Wuornos called her in and she got up.

"Yes?" she asked politely once in front of the vice principal. Lucy took a seat.

"I just wanted to have a brief conversation with you," said Mrs. Wuornos. "Recently, there's been a spike in delinquent activity around the school. Late last week, a bathroom stall was vandalized, and just this morning, a large plant in the school lobby was stolen. These are just two examples of many."

"Why exactly do you tell me this, Mrs. Wuornos?"

"Well, Lucy, you're one of our best students. Your grades are excellent and you have no real disciplinary action in your record. I'd just like to ask you if you would happen to know anything about any of these events."

"No, I can't say I have."

"Is that so? Have you heard any rumors?"

By now Lucy was very much annoyed. Incompetence of authority was one of her biggest pet-peeves, and right in front of her sat a prime example. She had no real opinion on Mrs. Wuornos. The vice principal was innocuous at best but stupid at worst. It was wrong for her to have been forced to waste ten minutes sitting in the lobby because Wuornos couldn't do her job and had to ask students if they knew anything about the students ruining the school. Lucy had witnessed many times in the past students with earbuds in their ears in the hallway or wearing obviously dress code-violating clothing walk right by Wuornos, and she had done absolutely nothing about

them. Maybe it was a good idea to start by asking those kids. Why was she being bothered about this inane rubbish?

Lucy sighed. "No, I know nothing about these occurrences. I'm sorry."

For a moment, Wuornos gave Lucy a look almost as if she didn't believe her, almost as if she might have even suspected her, but as soon as it came it passed. The vice principal sighed. "Very well, then. You may return to your study hall."

"Thank you," Lucy said with a hint of bitterness. She got up and went back into the outer office, where a group of boys sat in the waiting area with hangdog expressions while Mr. Berdella stood over them and gave one of his famous tongue lashings. Something about a fight in the gym - Lucy ignored it.

The corridor stood empty as she made her way to the library, her steps rushed. She glanced at the clock on the wall and frowned. She'd have enough time to finish...only if her copy was missing the final ten pages.

That annoyed her.

In the library, a tranquil and ambiently lit hall crammed with utilitarian metal bookshelves and long, scuffed tables, Lucy passed the check out counter and ducked into one of the study rooms opening off the main space. Haiku and Caroline sat side-by-side at a desk facing her, their books open before them. Lucy sat, and they both looked up. "You're late," Caroline said.

"I know," Lucy said, "Mrs. Wuornos needed me."

"The same reason she wanted me?" Haiku asked.

Lucy opened her book and laid it in front of her. "The vandalism?"

"She asked me about that too," Caroline said.

Apparently the old woman was worse at her job than Lucy suspected. Perhaps she was being a little harsh on Mrs. Wuornos, but she made her late and all but ensured that she would waltz into the meeting this afternoon metaphorically empty handed. She

would thus have to resort to looking the ending up on Google and pretending that she finished the book. Lucy didn't like cutting corners like that. She was proud of her intelligence (maybe a little too proud), and half assing things made her feel like a failure.

"Do you think she suspects us?" Haiku worried.

Lucy remembered the look of incredulity on Mrs. Wuornos's face before she left the office, as though she disbelieved her statement, and her frown deepened. Off hand, she'd say no; she, Carolie, and Haiku were all honor roll students whose disciplinary infractions ranged from zero to nonexistent. What cause did she have to think they were involved? "I don't know," she said. "I do know I need to get started." With that, she bent over her book and started to read.

When the bell rang twenty minutes later, she was ten pages from done, as she'd anticipated. Sighing in frustration, she slammed the book closed and got roughly to her feet. Caroline and Haiku both looked up at her. "Did you finish?" Caroline asked.

"If you need help -" Haiku started.

"No, I don't need help," Lucy snapped, "I'm done."

Before either one could question her further, she spun on her heels and marched out of the room, her cheeks flushed with embarrassment. Yes, she was too proud for her own good and not finishing Finnegans Wake left her feeling two inches tall when it honestly shouldn't. In life, everyone has a defining characteristic upon which they lay great value. For some, it's their strength or ability to play a certain sport, for others it's their appearance or fashion sense...for her it was her intelligence and all of its attendant features. Day in and day out, she observed the complacent actions and apathetic habits of her classmates and yearned to be as unlike them as possible. She sensed in them a vapid hollowness that they themselves didn't. They went through the motions of life like marionettes on the end of a string, all the same, all interchangeable, all governed by animal instinct and content to vegetate in front of the television and amount to nothing.

That struck her as a dismal and unhappy fate. She strove for a full, well roundedness in life.

A well-roundedness that she didn't feel.

She didn't hate or even look down on her classmates. She saw reflected in them her own abiding unfulfillment and detested it.

If she hated anyone, it was herself.

She didn't hate herself either. She simply felt the absence of something, like a vital piece missing from her soul. That piece, she imagined, was out there somewhere, waiting for her to come along and find it. In what form it would come, she could not say. A boy? A girl? A certain career path? Everyone is incomplete, she reckoned, whether they know it or not. At least they start off incomplete...then, if they're lucky, they find that missing component. Not many people realize they are missing something, and those that do are fundamentally unhappy or, at the very least, dissatisfied. Lucy was the latter. Simply displeased.

If she allowed herself to dwell, she would become the former - distraught and anguished in heart and spirit. She did not; instead, she went to math class and threw herself into her lesson with the reckless abandon of a woman escaping the maw of some great and pressing beast.

The final bell brought her back to reality, and to her most recent source of peturbment.

Not finishing Finnegans Wake.

Though it was a small thing, it represented, in a way, her disenchantment. Better to focus on that than on more major issues.

She filed out of class with the others and wound through the crowded hall toward the meeting room. Kids laughed, horseplayed, and bumped into her, one nearly knocking her to her knees. She did not hate them, she envied them because they, unlike her, were not cursed with an overactive mind, a mind that, she sometimes feared, might even be broken. That envy lead to resentment. If she indulged that resentment, it would fester and metastasize into hatred like cancer.

Taking a deep breath, she sought shelter in a nearby girl's room, sitting on the toilet lid of the far stall and waiting for the school to clear out. After a few minutes, which she used to ashamedly look up crib notes for Finnegans Wake, the cacophonous din slacked off, and sighing, Lucy got up and went back into the hall, where only a handful of kids lingered, most of them belonging to one of the after school clubs. Clutching her books

to her chest and keeping her head down to block out the world around her, she hurried to the meeting room - the creative writing classroom across from the cafeteria. Caroline, Haiku, and Winston were already there, sitting at a long table and patiently waiting for the stragglers. There were five members, Lucy being the fourth and the final a gangly black boy named Clarence who wore a black trench coat and read manga during lunch, much to the cruel delight of bullies. They called him niggachu, Dragon Ball Z, and faggot.

Lucy sank into a chair across from Winston, whose beady little eyes immediately slithered over her body.

A short boy with tiny spectacles, a wild crop of yellow-headed pimples on his fat, rosy cheeks, and breasts that were the envy of every girl in school, Winston Emery Lauder wore sweatpants, New Balance tennis shoes, and a solid gray shirt because every print shirt was probably too small for his titanic girth. He panted perpetually for air and his doughy face was always lightly coated in perspiration. Lucy was not shallow and did not care whether a person was fat or thin, but Winston repulsed her. It was not his body so much as it was his personality. He was condescending, overbearing, dismissive, and the biggest egotistical jackass Lucy had ever known. He waddled through the halls with his fat nose in the air as though he were better than everyone else and wrote strange, second person poetry that always, it seemed, incorporated sexual imagery.

To her endless chagrin, Winston had a crush on her, and showed it by leering at her like a hungry dog and licking his chapped lips in a disgusting and obscene manner. After ten minutes in his presence, she felt thoroughly violated, and if he were to ever touch her with his bloated, probably damp-palmed hand, she'd never get clean again.

"You're late," he huffed thickly.

"I had something to do," Lucy said shortly.

"Consider my proposal?"

Last week, he asked her on a date. Perhaps we can...go to...McDonald's together, he said between gasps for air; the most strenuous thing he'd done was get up and lumber into the hallway.

She told him she didn't date but would think about it. Whatever she may have been,

she was not cruel, even in regards to a creep like Winston, and did not want to hurt his feelings.

"I have, and I'd rather not. Sorry. I'm not ready."

"The game continues," Winston said and winked.

Ew.

Momentarily, Clarence came through the door in a trench coat and wide-brimmed hat that made him look like the bastard love child of a Quaker and a school shooter, and the meeting began. The whole time, Winston molested her with his eyes, and halfway through, Lucy's skin started to crawl. She squirmed uncomfortably and stared down at her book, half wishing he'd suffer a massive heart attack and die. "Did you find the text difficult, dear Lucy?" he asked at one point and wetted his lips with his tongue.

"No," she said sharply. She wished he wouldn't call her that.

"Beauty and brains," he remarked.

She shivered.

At the end, it fell to Caroline to pick the next book. She chose Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, another novel known for its inaccessibility. "Ah," Winston said, "brings back memories of fourth grade, I'll have it done by the end of tomorrow."

Lucy rolled her eyes. Collecting her things, she pushed away from the table, got up, and hurried away; she could feel Winston's eyes on her butt, and she nearly gagged. At her locker, she grabbed her history book and homework assignment and slammed the door. Caroline leaned back against her own locker, gazing into space. "You want a ride home?" she asked. "My mom will be here in five minutes."

Lucy considered. After the day she had, she needed a little time to clear her head. "No, thanks, I'll walk."

She waited with Caroline until her mother text that she was waiting at the side door, then bid farewell to her friend and started toward the main doors.

"Lucy!"

She came to a grinding halt.

Winston's voice echoed through the desolate corridor like the cry of a damned soul, and Lucy ground her teeth together. She almost ignored him, but turned instead, her face hard. He waddled toward her as fast as his short, stubby little legs would carry him, tits and stomach jiggling under his shirt. She took a deep breath through her nose and let it out. When he reached her, his face was beet red and dark patches spread out from beneath his underarms. "I was...just going...to see…" he panted, "if you...wanted to...borrow...my copy of...Jest." He bent, clapped his hands to his knees, and struggled to catch his breath.

Though she wished him dead not twenty minutes ago, her face softened in concern. "You alright?" she asked.

He nodded and stood to his full height. "Yes," he rasped, "I'm fine. Anyway, if you'll accompany me to my abode, I will happily lend you my copy of Infinite Jest." A slimy smile skipped across his cracked lips. "Then, perhaps, we can engage in a little French kissing."

Lucy's jaw clenched. "Perhaps you can leave me alone."

"Come now, Lucy," he urged, "we're both intellectual heavyweights. We've more in common with each other than anyone else. I might not be handsome, but I can still take you to second base. Third if you open your legs."

Everything Lucy had been bottling up for months - the resentment, anger, agitation at Winston's endless passes - welled up in her chest like a blast of steam from a boiler. "I don't want to go to second base with you," she said tightly, "I don't want to go anywhere with you. You're a fat, snide, pompous ass and your corpulent body revolts me."

Winston cringed, and the stupid look on his face made her even more furious. "I've tried to drop hints that I hate you but you're simply too stupid to pick up on them. Leave me alone. Don't look at me, don't talk to me, don't even think about me. I don't want you and I never will. No girl wants you. Your pathetic little micopenis will never know the kiss of a woman's body unless you pay for it, and if you do, she will charge

you extra because you are that hideous of a human being."

Winston's face screwed up in misery and tears welled in his eyes.

"Go away. If you're lucky and lose six hundred pounds, and that shitty attitude of yours, you might stand a fighting chance of not dying a virgin."

Beginning to blubber, Winston turned and ran down the hall, his sobs trailing behind him like a funeral lament. Lucy watched him go with hatred in her eyes, then turned and went through the door. She positively seethed with pent up rage; letting it out was liberating, like an orgasm, and her body shook with the need to expend more of it. She looked around, then jerked in surprise when something sailed past her head. A group of people in ski masks stood on the sidewalk lobbing things at the front of the building. Something came down in front of her and splattered on the top step.

An egg.

Lucy's head throbbed with anger and she shot them a dirty look. One saw her and slapped a comrade on the arm. They both looked at her, and for a moment they stared each other down. Something about the challenge she sensed tripped a deep, animalistic trigger in her brain, and to her surprise, she threw herself at them with a high battle cry. There were six, maybe seven, and they could have taken her on easily, but they must have seen the fire in her eyes, for they scattered in every direction like cockroaches. She locked onto one like a laser guided missile and ran after him.

Then it happened.

She slipped in the goo of a broken egg, and heart in throat, she landed hard on her butt, the air knocked from her lungs in a rush. The criminals disappeared and she was left alone with the gathering twilight, panting and shaking.

Fucking bastards.

Baring her teeth, she got to her feet and glanced up at the school. Eggs dotted the brick facade like bullet holes, and soap smeared several of the windows.

Well, there you go, Mrs. Wuornos, I found your goddamn vandals.

Shaking her head, she picked up her books and started home, unaware that she was being watched by a camera mounted above the door.