Chapter 14

On Monday, Lincoln and his friends (the circle of which had grown to include Liam and Girl Jordan) were eating lunch when they were approached by Lester's friend Chandler. He asked if he could talk to them, so they let him sit down.

"The first thing I want to do is apologize for the way Lester and I have been treating you," Chandler began. "The only reason I was friends with him in the first place was because his grandpa's been backing my dad's sewer treatment plant."

"Go on...," said Lincoln.

"Now that he's in Juvie, I decided to cut ties with him and turn a new leaf. I'd like to bury the hatchet and get to know all of you, if that's okay?"

"Works for me!" Lincoln said and shook Chandler's hand. They got to talking and found out that Chandler had several things in common with the other members of the group. He had Lincoln and Clyde's passion for video games and comic books, and Stella's head for robotics. Like Liam, he didn't flinch when tasks required getting down and dirty, and his strong stomach allowed him to be in close proximity to his dad's workplace without losing his lunch. They talked even more at recess before going back to class.

...

It had hardly been a week since the pool party when Lester suddenly returned to school, smugly boasting that his grandfather had bailed him out. That very same day, Lincoln rode the bus home, only to find his Aunt Leanna and Uncle Leo sitting in the living room with a fuming Rita while Lynn Sr. prepared dinner for everyone. Rather than face his wicked aunt, Lincoln power-walked straight from the front door to the kitchen to help his dad cook. When the older girls got home, none of them were happy to see their extended relatives, Lori especially.

"Mom, what is the Wicked Witch of the West doing in our house?" the teen asked slowly, a vein in her forehead starting to throb.

"Blame your uncle. He brought her and Lester so that they could apologize to us and Lincoln," Rita said, still glaring daggers at Leanna.

"Yes. I'm sorry for conspiring to kill the freak of nature you call a brother," Leanna said, standing up to deliver the insincere apology. "Is there anything I can do to make it up?"

"Well, you can start by doing me a favor and holding this bacon," Lori replied, handing Leanna a strip of the breakfast food, which she took with a look of confusion.

"Uh, why am I holding a piece of-"

"BACON!" Lana screamed, and she and Charles, the family dog, pounced on Leanna to retrieve their favorite food. Rita beamed proudly and shot Lori a thumbs-up, to which Lori winked with a smile of her own. Meanwhile, Lester was sneaking up the stairs with the intention of trashing Lincoln's room and destroying his belongings, but found Luan standing in his way with her video camera held to her eye.

"Where're you going, little cuz?" she asked, the broad smile never leaving her face for a second.

"Upstairs, now get out of my way! And get that stupid camera out of my face!" Lester snapped.

"Actually, I can't do that," Luan explained. "You see, you have a starring role in my upcoming action movie, Attack of the Wedgie Ninja."

"'Wedgie Ninja'?" Lester asked with a raised eyebrow. No sooner did he ask than Lynn in a ninja costume front-flipped off the top of the stairs, landing between him and Luan. She struck several karate poses while yelling like a fictional movie ninja before vaulting over Lester's head. With one final yell, she landed behind him, grabbed his waistband with both hands, and gave it a swift jerk upwards, giving him a fierce wedgie. While Lester doubled over in pain, Lynn and Luan high-fived.

Dinner wasn't any better. Everyone ate in dead silence until Leo had the decency to thank Lynn Sr. and Lincoln for the meal. When he learned that Lincoln had helped make the food, Lester refused to eat any more until Lori gave him two choices: eat it or wear it. Mistakenly thinking it would only be a food costume, Lester chose the latter. Ten seconds later, he was shouting profanities while scrubbing his face with a handful of napkins, the entire front of his body covered in the food that had previously been on his plate.

"Lori! How could you do such a thing to your own cousin?!" Leanna admonished while trying to help her son clean up.

"Because that demon spawn who I'm ashamed to call family tried to kill my only brother, who I love with all my heart!" Lori yelled back.

"I wouldn't be trying to kill him if he looked like an ordinary human! He looks like your mom had a baby with a yeti!" Lester argued. It wasn't the first time Lincoln's parentage had been called into question, but for Rita, that was the final straw. With her own string of profanities, she ordered Leanna and Lester to get out of her house and never come back. Leo was exempt from the rule because none of their actions were his fault.

Tiredly slumping against the front door and blowing stray hair out of her face, Rita said, "If you kids repeat any of those words, I'm disinheriting you!"

Lynn Sr. turned to his brother and asked, "How on Earth can you stand living with that woman?"

"I have no freaking idea, Lynn! I'm about at the end of my rope with both of them!" Leo stressed, clutching his hair.

...

The next day at school during recess, Lincoln recounted how Lester and Leanna got banned from his house, and his friends (including Chandler) laughed and applauded. That is, until the twins ran up to Lincoln screaming their heads off.

"Whoa, whoa! Calm down, girls! What's wrong?" Lincoln asked.

"It's our friend Meli! She's stuck in a tree!" Lola exclaimed.

"And she's too high for me to get her down!" added Lana. Lincoln and his friends followed the twins to the tree in question, where a sizeable crowd of students and teachers was already gathered. About thirty feet up, a small Hispanic girl was shivering with fright as she clung to a branch. Lincoln saw that he could reach the lowest branch if he jumped, so he knew what he had to do.

"Alright, everyone stand back!" he called out, and the crowd parted in the middle to let him through. Lincoln got a running start and was able to scale the tree with ease, shocking the bystanders with his squirrel-like dexterity. He reached Meli's level in a matter of moments, and he was able to notice a few more details about her.

"Help me! Please, someone help me!" the girl whimpered; she hadn't noticed Lincoln yet because her eyes were screwed tightly shut. She wore a long, loose-fitting gray dress that made her look even smaller than she already was, and her hair was styled into two braided pigtails. Her arms and legs were wrapped around the branch she was sitting on. Lincoln didn't want to startle her into falling; luckily, the branch directly under hers was only three feet lower, so he was able to stand on it as he approached her. He laid a hand on her back, and she flinched with a loud squeak.

"Shh, shh, it's okay. Open your eyes and look at me," Lincoln gently instructed, and one of Meli's eyes popped open and looked into Lincoln's face. "I can get you down from here. Would you like that?" Meli started to nod, but then developed a look of fear.

"I can't let go! I don't wanna fall!" she said.

"Don't worry, I won't let you fall. You just have to trust me and do exactly what I say," Lincoln reassured her. He placed his hands just below her armpits. "See? I'm holding onto you, so you won't fall. Now, let go with your arms." Meli let go, and Lincoln kept a firm grip on her as she sat upright and turned to face him. "Okay, now put your arms around my neck." She leaned forward and did so. Wrapping his left arm around her, he placed his right hand on the branch to steady himself. "Good. One at a time, put your legs around my waist." It took some effort on her part, but Meli was able to let go of the branch entirely and latch onto Lincoln. "Hang on tight. I'll have you back on the ground lickety-split!" Going down was slower than going up, mostly because Lincoln could only climb with one hand while the other held Meli. When he finally jumped from the last branch to the ground, everyone burst into cheering and applause, but Meli just clung to Lincoln as her body shook with sobs.

"Nice work, Lincoln! But how did she even get up there?" Coach Pacowski wondered aloud. Lincoln just held Meli in his arms and stroked her back until she calmed down enough to give a confession in jumbled Spanish.

She says Lester threw her onto the first branch and threatened her with a slingshot!" Lincoln translated. Everyone turned and glared at the singled-out boy, who gulped and bolted for the building.

"GET HIM!" screamed the twins, and no less than a dozen first-graders dog-piled Lester and pummeled him with their tiny fists.


I hoped you guys liked this most recent addition to The Albino Loud! I've read a few stories where Lincoln and Chandler bury the hatchet and become friends, and they were actually really good. As they say in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, "A bully turned friend is a friend to the end." The next chapter will center around Lincoln's eleventh birthday, so keep and eye out for that!