A/N: As with chapter 3, I have some questions to answer, so feel free to write a review if you want a question answered.
"As always, idea by NorththeGem on Tumblr, and we have an RP group called allforone-oneforeleven over on Tumblr as well. Apply if you're interested in Literary Roleplaying and practicing your writing skills!
Rose Grove
Watching as Vanzilla quickly pulled away, Lincoln checked his phone for the time. It was 7:30 in the morning, and the entire school was deserted, save for a few of the janitors and some other early bird students. Still, Lincoln was tired as all heck. Sitting next to him on a bench outside was Lola. To say that she was tired was a complete understatement. Holding Lily was a chore for her as she faded in and out of consciousness. Lincoln was quick to wake her up every time, and even if Lola didn't say it, she appreciated it.
"Relax, Linky," she confided, struggling to keep her eyes open, "I can handle this."
Lincoln watched her little brat of a sister bob her head as she fell asleep on the bench. A little bit of snoring later, Lola woke up and felt the top of her head. Something was missing.
"Oh no…" Lola said.
Checking her little sister's head, he noticed that something missing. "You left your tiara at home?"
Lola looked back at her older brother, panicked. "Yeah!" She yelled, "Now no one's going to believe me when I say I'm a pageant queen!"
"I'll still believe you," Lincoln tried his hand at being more responsible than he usually was. He gave her a thumbs up.
"You're not the audience I'm trying to impress here," Lola snapped, "If I don't immediately become the most popular girl here, then my pageant career is ruined! Do you hear me? Ruined!"
"Yes," Lincoln replied, calm as ever, "I heard you. But just trust me, be yourself and you're sure to make friends. I know, it's going to be hard at first, but I've been talking to Ronnie Anne about everything, and she's confident we'll be fine. She's doing fine in Chicago, after all." Lincoln leaned in to hug Lola, but Lola clumsily shook him off.
"What if people hate me?" Lola asked.
"What do you—" Lincoln stopped himself from going further, hoping not to embarrass her sister.
"Don't think I don't know my bad personality. After the entire stunt double thing with Lindsey Sweetwater, I just sort of, you know, realized that I'm…" She trailed off.
A silence hung between the two siblings as a trickle of students began to filter into the school. Before the students could totally surround the two siblings, Lincoln got up. He had to take initiative now. While he wasn't used to saying it himself, it was time for him to man up.
"Lola," Lincoln started, "I believe in you. I know you can make friends at this new school, but you just have to believe in yourself. Here, we don't have much time before class, but we can meet up at recess. How does that sound?"
She shrugged and sighed, finally picking herself up. Yet, as soon as Lola got up, she started to fumble with Lily. Thankfully, Lincoln was there to grab Lily.
"I'll take her to the daycare," Lincoln said.
Lola smiled. "Thanks, Linky."
"Hi everyone, my name is Lincoln Loud, and it's nice to meet you all!"
A subtle clap rang throughout Ms. Winston's 6th Grade english class. John Sutter Elementary School was a K-8 with a daycare and preschool nearby, so it was a no brainer for their father to register them here. It came at the cost of being slightly out of the way of his father's commute, but did save a few extra destinations along the way.
Lincoln took his seat in the middle of the class, gliding with confidence. After managing to cheer up Lola, he felt like he could do anything. What he couldn't do, however, was understand the new vocabulary words being taught in this class. As much as he tried to keep up, he kept fumbling the definitions of these complex words. Of course he wouldn't know the definitions of such words like "pretentious," "grandiloquent," and "sesquipedalian," but he was expected to know them at this rate. He wasn't exactly following along, but he could at least fake his way through. As soon as the recess bell rang, Lincoln sprinted through the halls to get down to where the 2supnd/sup graders were. It was his time to check in with Lola, and he didn't intend to be late. The recess lady, however, had a different idea.
"Just where do you think you're going, young man?" The recess lady accused.
Lincoln turned around, eyebrow raised. "I just want to check in with my sister. She's in Mrs. Lopez's class. Are they on recess yet?"
"They already went to recess." The lady explained. "Have you ever looked at your school schedule, young man?"
He hadn't. Fumbling around his pockets, he tried to pull out his schedule, but all he ended up pulling out were his pencils. After a little bit of shuffling, he finally found his schedule, stating the differences between each class's recesses.
"So I can't go see my little sister?" He asked.
"Nope. Wait until after school." The lady said.
Slouching a bit, Lincoln paced on to his next class. He wasn't worried about himself, but rather, he was worried sick for Lola. Thankfully, he would be able to watch over the recess field during history class. Of all of his classes, this was his favorite, since it required more listening skills than anything. Living in a house of 10 sisters, he got quite good at parsing the important information from the chaos. As the time ticked, Lincoln would occasionally glance out the window to see if the 2nd graders had gotten out yet. Most of the way into class, he finally saw kids filtering out of their classrooms for lunch. Lincoln scanned every single child to see if his sister was amongst them. He thought he had seen them when his teacher call him out.
"Loud!" The teacher said, "Lunch isn't for another hour. Go to your next class."
Lincoln looked back and saw half the class gone, the other half laughing at him. He sighed, hoping to perhaps get a glimpse at Lola in math. This was not the case, however, as math didn't have a clear view of the playground.
Down on the playground, Lola paced back and forth, avoiding the childhood mayhem. She wasn't sporty enough to play on the playground, and she didn't know how to talk to the other girls. This wasn't to say that she didn't try, however. At an earlier recess, she had approached some nicely dressed clique, yet she was laughed off. One of the girls was in her class and sat next to her, which meant she had seen Lola's miserable, sleep deprived attempt at trying to read a simple passage during class. Of course, Lola didn't mean to screw everything up, she just had simple trouble reading as always. For that, she was denied entry into a group of girls she thought she could get along well with.
As a pageant queen, this epic failure to get into the highest clique seethed her. At least the audience in Royal Woods knew her enough to fear her. To Lola, Californians were already too wary of her. Without even a single competition in her new home, her career was over, all because she couldn't read a sentence fast enough without stumbling. She had mentioned she was a pageant queen back in Royal Woods, but given the reaction by the clique, no one bothered to believe her. The more Lola mulled over it, though, the more she realized that maybe her tiara was just going to get her into bigger trouble. No longer would people just accept Lola as the beauty princess she was. Here in California, she had to start from the beginning.
All Lola was able to do for lunch, after eating her peanut butter and jelly sandwich, was to walk alone. She sat on a wall nearby the girl's restroom. She kept on thinking about Lana and how she might have been faring. For all she knew, Lana was probably just going about business as usual, eating mud and playing with the boys near the creek. Even if they were the exact opposite when it came to personality, Lola couldn't help but sorely miss her twin sister. They might have been fraternal, but that didn't stop them from being bluebells together and serving side by side terms as hall monitors. The more she thought of her, the more she missed her. Before long, Lola felt her stomach churn as she internally yelled at herself for starting to cry. Lana would have wanted her to be stronger than this.
The same group of girls that had giggled Lola out of their clique passed by Lola while going to the bathroom, exchanging weird looks and snickers as they filed in. Lola was about to make her escape when she heard a cacophony from that same room. Soon, a girl with messy brown hair and large glasses rushed past Lola and into the end of the hall. Lola recognized her as a girl in her class, so she decided to follow her. Alas, running with heels wasn't a great idea, and soon, Lola's foot began to cramp up. Thankfully, the girl with the brown hair and glasses was just around the corner, crying. Upon closer inspection, her hair was filled with filth, probably from the garbage can. Under the normal run of things, Lola would have nothing to do with garbage covered people, unless it was Lana. This, however, was not the normal run of things, and Lola felt she had nothing to lose. Without much more hesitation, and desperate for someone to talk to, she walked up to the trashed girl.
"Are you alright?" Lola asked.
The girl turned to look at Lola, allowing Lola to get a better look at her. She wore a plain green t-shirt over pink sweatpants with black tennis shoes. Almost every aspect of her looked exactly like Lisa, except for her darker skin. While Lola desperately wanted to make a friend, she didn't really know how to handle sympathy without a few backhanded remarks.
"Look, I know what those girls did to you," Lola said, "and I would have helped them if they accepted me into their group. But they didn't so that's their loss." She smirked, and offered the girl a hand. "I'm Lola, it's a pleasure to meet you."
Flinching from Lola's hand suddenly moving towards her, the girl adjusted her glasses and looked back up. Seeing Lola's grin confused her. Before now, no one had ever talked to her without some ulterior motive, so needless to say, she was a bit guarded.
Lola grew impatient. "Look, do you want to be my friend or not?" She said, pushing her hand forward to emphasize.
The other girl looked down, but grabbed Lola's hand.
"…sorry." She remarked. She mumbled her name, but Lola didn't hear it. When asked to say it louder, she only slightly mumbled louder. "I'm Adriana."
The bell chimed, letting them know lunch was over. Lola smiled and hugged her, trying to avoid the garbage on her new friend's hair. "Let's get you cleaned up."
After school, Lincoln walked over to his next location. His instructions from Dad were simple: stay put in the after school club until Lynn and Luan come by from their high school. San Juan high school wasn't too far, only a mile walk, so Lincoln felt it was fair to him. What he wasn't so sure about was Lola. He knew Lola would have a tough time adapting, so he figured he would stay by her side for as long as he could. Once at the after school program's room over by the day care, Lincoln checked in and asked for his sister.
"I don't know if you're sister's here or not." The after-school worker said. "Have you checked by her room?"
Lincoln dropped his backpack off and wandered back to the main part of the school, calling out for Lola. Before long, he noticed a group of girls cackling out of the girl's bathroom. Looking like the kinds of girls Lola would hang out with, he asked them if they'd seen his sister.
"Oh the new girl?" The redhead asked.
"Lola?" The blonde laughed. "Have you checked the trash?"
The three burst out cackling. Lincoln's stomach churned as he watched the clique moved away. Looking back towards the bathroom, he noticed a familiar set of eyes peeking out of the door. The eyes were filled with a set of rage only he knew of. He ran over to the bathroom door.
"Just you wait," snickered Lola, covered in trash, "I might be prissy like you, but I can at least handle more trash than you!"
"There you are!" Lincoln said, "Next time, just meet me at the front door! What's with those girls?"
Lola walked out to the hallway. She dragged another girl out with her. Both had trash dumped on their heads. While the other girl was crying, Lola had a smirk of vengeance only she was capable of. Lincoln fears were real: Lola had been dealing with this move only knew of one way to react to his little sister being bullied, that was trying to hug and reassure that everything would be fine for Lola. She promptly shoved him off.
"Where were you at first recess like you said you'd be?" Lola accused.
"I'm sorry I couldn't meet you," Lincoln said, "It's just that 6th grade schedules are different from 2nd grade schedules."
Lola was still miffed at everything, but at the risk of losing her one friend, she only slapped her forehead. "I was counting on you, Linky!"
"Come on," Lincoln said, "We have to go to the after-school club."
Lola rolled her eyes, but followed with Lincoln. She pulled Adriana with her, not wanting her to feel left out.
"…who is he?" Adriana asked.
"Oh, I beg your pardon." Lola giggled. "Linky!"
Lincoln turned back around to his little sister. "Are you coming or not?"
"I am!" Lola said. "This is my new friend, Adriana. Adriana, this is Lincoln. He's my big brother, and the most reliable person I know."
A/N: Time for some questions and answers.
TheLynnster asks: "Hey can you please make Rita's side, not be focused on Luna entirety, since so many other stories just focus on Luna and not the other family. Since both chapters on Rita's side is heavily focused on Luna, I wanna know how the other sisters are feeling, great story though!"
As I said earlier, I feel Luna is the easiest character for me to write, but I get where you're coming from. I feel like I was excessively harsh on Rita in that last chapter, so I hope to clear everything up on the next chapter. Don't worry, Luna won't be the only one getting all the attention in future Royal Woods chapters!
Guest Asks: "Is Luna a lesbian or bisexual in this story?"
She's bi. I'm basing most of my characterizations on the canon, with liberties taken where seen fit.
Guest Stereotype Asks: "I'm pretty sure haggis is banned by the USDA, so I don't know why Luna was eating it."
Shhhhhhhh…. Don't tell the NSA… In all seriousness though, I did not know that. It would have helped me get through customs easier once upon a time. For those living in countries where it isn't banned: Go try it, it's delicious. For those living where it is banned: Go to Scotland.
Toybot asks: "So...why did they sperate children based on roommates?"
Short answer: drama. Long Answer: I mostly separated them like this so the sisters can have interactions with sisters they might not usually talk to. In universe, I justified with Lynn Sr. wanting to take the neatest children, so he wouldn't have to worry about the deposit incase Lana tracked mud into the house, or Luna smashing a guitar on the wall. Of course, he also has Lynn, so…