It was around 20 minutes later when Taylor managed to power through her own misery enough to realise that she was really, exquisitely dumb. Not only had she shown her weak, girly side to the boy she had a crush on, she'd done it to his entire family, as well. If they wanted to spread how much of a wuss she was, they were placed at pretty much every level of town, and even some neighbouring cities, as well. She was screwed there.
But also, she'd decided to run out of the house in the middle of the night, into a part of town she only knew in pieces when she passed by on the bus. And that anguished escape out the house hadn't had her really caring about things like directions, when she'd taken herself through the door and out onto the street.
She stopped herself, and surprised herself when she found she was puffing. She must've been going faster than she thought. Normally, she was in pretty okay shape, and didn't do anything like vaping to frick up her lungs (her youngest older brother had started vaping, but he'd stopped after he'd coughed up something purple, with the consistency of jelly). But perhaps what had shocked her, was the horrible rending feeling in her mind when she tried to think about what had happened in the dining room of the home she'd been in only a few minutes before. Everything felt raw. And she felt a sense of terror, shame and vulnerability that she'd never experienced before as a teenager.
What was going to happen to her? In the long term, she had no idea, and in the immediate short term, she didn't see herself getting back home anytime soon. Perhaps she could find a bus-bay to huddle in, in the hopes that something would come by, and connect to somewhere where she could make her way home from. And if one didn't come…
Taylor shivered. And not just because she was cold.
That little tick of fear, suddenly accepted, began to steadily grow. The noises of the street she was walking along were magnified. The bark of a distant dog. The sound of a trash-can being turned over. She began to slowly walk across a stretch of darkened houses, where the street-lights didn't seem to reach.
Suddenly, a figure slowly lurched behind her, a low, slurring voice coming from them. Taylor yelped, and shut her eyes as she cowered…
…Until after a few seconds, the burbled words began to take on a familiar tune. Jingle Bells. She opened her eyes to see the figure, mired in shadow, was a grimy, weather-worn Santa Claus animatronic.
"GRAAAAAAHHH!" She screamed in a feral cry, as she shoved the lawn-ornament over, and began to kick at its plastic torso. The frustration of the night, compounded by the surprise, sent her into a frenzy.
Screw not wanting to hurt anyone. She wanted to give the whole school a collective wedgie. She wanted to slam the mayor into a locker. She wanted to slug God in the face. She wanted to keep swinging, and kicking, and thrashing, until she didn't have the strength to anymore.
Taylor was roused by a blinding ray of light, along with a shrill beeping. A car strolling down the street towards her.
She dropped the aching foot that had been raised to give one final blow to the animatronic, and slumped her shoulders in defeat. She was done. She was ready to be called out by the owner, or picked up by a passing cop, and take her lumps. Anything to make the crap-hole of night she'd had stop.
The car lurched closer to her, creeping up, before slowing as it approached her place by the sidewalk. She looked at it, and saw that it was some sort of convertible, perhaps red, with a closed top. Finally, the car fully ran to a stop as the passenger door halted directly beside her.
She initially expected the window to roll down, but instead, she heard some banging and knocking from the inside of the car, before the door swung open.
Taylor immediately saw the driver of the car, and began to back away.
"You!" She said, pointing an accusing finger.
"I was literally about to say the same thing." Lori Loud said, looking sullenly, as she sidled back into the driver's seat, watching Taylor as keenly as a hawk.
"What the heck are you doing out here?" Taylor snarled, hoping the older teen would take the hint and quickly drive away from her.
"Looking for you." Lori said, with a chastising click of her tongue. "Just like my mom, dad, Lincoln and the rest of my siblings are in their van on the other side of town."
Taylor's mouth opened with a sceptical gawp.
"You freaked everyone out. We thought you were just going to hang out the front until a ride came." Lori continued. "When we didn't hear a car pull up, and saw you weren't there, we decided to go looking to see if you were alright."
Taylor… Couldn't believe it. Sure, maybe Lincoln was some sort of boy-scout doo-gooder normally, but the fact that the entire family would rush out to make sure a stranger that they, at best, barely knew, and at worst actively hated, was okay… It was ridiculous. Unreal.
"You all decided that?" Taylor asked, exploiting the improbability of Lori's story. "Just like that?"
"Welllll…" Lori said, sheepishly. "…Mom yelled at us all for being terrible to a guest. A lot. And Lincoln was threatening to do a speech about helping others..."
Taylor gave a short nod of understanding. Rita seemed like she wore the pants in the house. As well as any other items of clothing she demanded. And Taylor had been on the other end of a Lincoln speech, when she put gum under a table instead of the trash. To his credit, she hadn't done it against since then, his shrill voice echoing in her head as warning.
"Look. Let me just call them now to tell them you're here, and then I can drive you home, or leave you here, or whatever you decide, alright?" Lori offered, as she fished out her phone from a pocket of her cargo shorts.
Taylor gave another short nod, before she walked over to the front of the car, leaning on the hood, in a hoodlum-like way. She didn't know what she wanted to do, but she knew having Lori around for a few minutes wouldn't hurt. She could at least dump the broken Santa on the older girl if someone came asking about it.
"Dad. Hey, it's me. I found her." Lori said, a tangible hullabaloo sounding from the phone as she confirmed Taylor was there. "She's fine. She was just walking home. Yes, I literally did just offer to drive her the rest of the way. I'm just going to—"
Taylor kicked the tire she was closest to. Seemed firm. Probably wouldn't need a pump anytime soon.
"—Love you all too. I'll be back in a jiffy." Lori said, before hanging up irately, and turning her attention back to Taylor. "Okay, what do you want to do? Because if you really are almost home, I don't mind letting you go, and spending the next twenty minutes parked here, playing Caramel Crash on my phone."
Taylor jolted off the hood of the car, and stood back to better reflect on the proposition. She didn't really know where she was, or which direction home was, and she didn't have any better prospects for the night for getting home. On the other hand, she was pretty sure that the house with the Santa was empty, and she definitely felt like she could do some extra work on the singing decoration…
"Fine…" She said, resigned.
Crouching down, Taylor squeezed into the car, noting the ankle-deep Burpin' Burger wrappers that were on the passenger-side, she kicked at a soda-cup that sloshed heavily at the impact.
"The commute's literally a couple of hours long between here and Fairway." Lori said, self-consciousness layered in her voice. I haven't had time to clean it out yet. But I will."
"Uh-Huh." Taylor responded dully, as something dripped inside of her shoes.
"Okay, so where are you at?" Lori asked, taking her phone out, and putting in the GPS of their current address.
Taylor told her.
"Really?" Lori said, frowning. "That's literally on the other side of town. You weren't really lost, were you?"
Taylor stayed silent, refusing to dignify the question with an answer. The small flush in her cheeks was probably enough to answer it, though.
"Alright. You're lucky I was the one who found you." Lori said with a shake of her head, as they began to drive. "They already made such a fuss. I don't know if you heard before, but I just had to shoo Lincoln from being dropped off here by reminding him that there's only two seats in this car, and that if I wanted to drop you off, he'd have to walk back home."
Taylor stayed silent. Bringing up the boy who she'd humiliated herself for that evening, didn't make her feel any better.
"I'm pretty sure if Mom wasn't there to give him an earful about it, he would've done it, too." Lori continued. "He's an idiot sometimes. Well, most of the time, actually. But he'll go to hell and back for the people he cares about."
Taylor remained silent. Though, she'd had to clench her jaw firmly shut in order to stop herself from breaking.
"You should count yourself lucky you can bring out that side of him, Taylor."
Taylor warred within her own mind on whether she could throw herself out of a moving car and survive.
"It's obvious that he cares a lot for you." Lori said, her focus entirely on the road.
"Shut up!" Taylor yelled, causing the car to jerk for a micro-second before Lori regained control of the car. "I've had just about enough bullshit for one night with you all!"
Lori slowed at a set of traffic lights, before turning, and shooting Taylor a sour look.
"What? Are you going to bury me neck-deep in a sand-trap like you promised? Huh?" Taylor said, baring her teeth as she breathed out furiously. "Cause, you know what? I'm fine with that! In fact, you'd be doing me a favour!"
Lori continued to stare.
"After tonight, I'm never going to be able to show my face at school again without anyone laughing their pants off that I spazzed out going on a dinner date with a dork two years younger than me, while I was dressed like a total slut! I don't even have any friends to talk to, because I told them that I hate them and don't want to be around them anymore! And the boy I gave it all up for doesn't give a fuck about me, except as a friend."
Taylor found herself clutching at the dashboard hard enough to leave some indentations.
"Just…" She said, the anger that exploded from her a second ago too much to hold onto.
"… Just kill me already." Taylor finished weakly, starting to sob.
The lights turned green. But the car didn't move. Fortunately, it was late enough that there wasn't any traffic behind them, or otherwise, able to easily shift into a neighboring lane.
Inside the car. Lori laid a hand on Taylor's shoulder that the younger teen didn't have the strength to whack it away. She held it there for a moment, until the light turned red again.
"Taylor. I'm not going to hurt you." Lori said softly, as she put both of her hands back onto the wheel. "None of us are going to. You haven't hurt Lincoln at all. In fact, I don't think you've hurt anybody since this has started, besides yourself."
"I… I…" Taylor said, choking back sobs. She felt the need to talk, to somehow explain things, but she didn't know where to start, or hat she even wanted to express.
"Shh… It's alright, Taylor. You're okay." Lori said, as she made a turn from off the road, and drove a short way, until they reached a small curb beside a gas station.
"Look, if you want to just take a minute to chill out, then head right back to getting home, that's fine." Lori said, placing her hands on her lap after the car went still. "But I've got the feeling that you might need to talk to someone about all this. And I can spare some time listening if you'd like me to. I'll never tell another soul about anything you say. I literally swear my life on it."
Taylor initially clung to the thought of just getting home, and blurting Lori to take her there without saying another word. She'd be fine, after all. She'd been alright on her own with worse things happening to her.
But another impulse, small, gnawing from the deepest cavity in her stomach, was telling her to vent. To let out the emotional poison that was killing her. Even if she didn't know the person she was venting to.
"I… I wanna talk." She said, finally.
Lori nodded.
"I think I have some idea about what's going on, but maybe you should start from when I last saw you, and catch me up on what happened.
Taylor nodded, gulping a stray bit of spit that had worked its way out of her lungs. Before barely taking a pause to breath, she began to explain everything that happened in the last couple of weeks.
"… And… And I just freaked the hell out! I just couldn't be there anymore!" Taylor finished, her explanation frantically coming to a close. She hadn't stopped more than a few seconds to get her breath back, and for a moment, she thought that the older girl hadn't taken in her spiel at all.
"I literally get what happened." Lori said, looking tired. "Dinner was kind of a disaster. And after how me and my sisters acted when we first dragged you into our insanity, I don't think there was any way we could have acted that would've made you comfortable in that kind of situation."
"Yeah… But I should've stuck it out." Taylor said, miserably. "I should've just bit down and finished dinner, and not let any of that crap get to me."
"Taylor…" Lori said, sighing. "That's easier said than done."
"Why?" Taylor shot back. "I'm not some girly wimp. I can tough out whatever comes my way. I know I can."
"Nobody can tough out anything, Taylor." Lori said, shaking her head. "We all need help sometimes. An ear who'll listen to our problems. A shoulder to carry us when we can't carry ourselves. Take it from someone who's had the responsibility of having to take care of ten siblings for days at a time before she finished high school… Don't be afraid to ask for help, or you'll suffer more than if you didn't."
Taylor didn't respond.
"Don't take this the wrong way, but…" Lori hesitated for a moment, before pushing on. "…Isn't there literally anyone you can talk to about this sort of stuff in your regular life? You have brothers…"
"I don't want to bother them." Taylor said, stubbornly. "They've just got their own lives, with problems way worse than mine. They have rent, and dating, and 401K's. Whatever those are… They'd probably just laugh at my dumb problems. Especially when it comes to boys."
Lori sighed, reclining back into her chair as she seemed to think for a moment.
"What about your parents?" She offered.
"I don't talk to my dad." Taylor said firmly. "But my mom…"
Lori looked at Taylor hopefully.
"She had such a bad time after my dad left… But she knuckled under, and worked through it. For me and my brothers. She's so… Strong. And I wish I could be as strong as her. But I know I can't do that if I ask her for help all the time. If I pile up worries onto her."
"I don't want to say something I don't know much about…" Lori said, cautiously. "But if your Mom decided to look after you, even when times were tough for her, then she wants to worry about you."
Taylor was about to protest, but when she went to respond, she couldn't muster a word, let alone anything that would have stood up to the truth of Lori's comment. Taylor knew her Mom loved her. But…
"Arghhh!" Taylor said, pulling at her hair, and kicking into the burger wrappers under the seat. "Why does everything have to be so… Complicated! Why can't I just do the right thing?"
"Because you're young, Taylor." Lori said. "Because you're growing up, weird things are happening inside of you, and you don't have the experience to know what the right thing is, yet."
The car went silent, as Taylor digested the comment.
"Look… Let me tell you something that happened when I was your age." Lori said, breaking the silence. "You see, there was this boy that I liked, who was in my grade, who I thought was absolutely the dreamiest, hottest, coolest guy, ever. He even played the acoustic guitar, and wrote his own songs. His name was Tad."
"So," Lori continued. "I crushed on him for about a year, chickening out whenever I got the chance to talk to him, until one day, I sucked in my gut, and started a conversation with him at lunch one day. And we literally hit it off so hard. We talked about stuff we had in common, like how the cafeteria food sucked, and he even made up a song that had my name in it to me. I was literally on cloud 9.
"And then the next day, I went over to chat to him again, and found he was singing to a friend of mine, Becky. He was even singing the same song that he'd sung to me the day before, with her name in place of mine. I… Kind of went insane. Let's just say that when I was done, Tad was down one guitar, the school was down one table, and Becky was down with a ruptured disk in her back."
Taylor looked over to Lori keenly. Never had she heard a story from another girl that had engaged her as much as this one had.
"I mean. It was kind of a blessing in disguise. Tad dated her while she was in the hospital, until she broke up with him when she caught him serenading a girl in the Burn ward. After my suspension lifted, me and her made up, and I staved off boys for a full year, since I knew what scumbags they could be."
"What happened after a year?" Taylor asked.
"…I met another boy." Lori said, her face flushing lightly. "One who knew what it was like to sacrifice things for his family. Who knew what responsibility was. Who kept his word, no matter what. My Boo-Boo Bear."
Taylor instinctively blanched at the sickly-sweet nickname, but did so quietly, out of new-found respect. Or, at least, understanding.
"The point is," Lori continued. "I had to fail, and make mistakesat first, to figure out what I wanted in another person. Underneath the looks and appearances. To know what love really felt like."
The older girl gave an unusual pause, before she continued talking.
"What do you see in Lincoln?" She asked Taylor, her gaze keen and concentrated on the younger girl's response.
Taylor thought for some time, almost enough for Lori to begin talking again.
"I… Think he's really nice." Taylor started. "Too nice for me. But he still tries, and doesn't make me guilty for trying to care as much as he seems to. Even if it's just as a friend." She added sadly. "And… There always seems to be something happening around him and the people around him? Like, me and my friends just kind of hang out, and don't really do much else. But with Lincoln… Even if it's crazy, there's some… crazy thing happening to him or a friend, or someone he knows..."
"He tries." Lori said, nodding along with Taylor's explanation. "He never wants to see anyone upset because of him. But the problem is, he doesn't realise that you can't plan your way out of everything, especially when it comes to other people. And he's so in his own head, that he's literally oblivious to other people a lot of the time.
"I don't want to say that I knew exactly what was coming with him upsetting you back there, but I was pretty sure he was going to blow things with you last night, somehow. It's part of why I came to dinner tonight."
"Wait," Taylor said, realisation dawning on her. "You knew I was coming to dinner tonight?"
"Of course." Lori said, picking at a nail. "That was easy. Lincoln texted me yesterday and told me he was inviting you over for dinner last night, and that you'd accepted. But I can also tell you that knew much more than that. I knew that you were pretending to date, and that you were way more into him, while he didn't know you were."
"What? How?"" Taylor said, backing away from someone she now suspected had some sort of evil psychic powers.
"Ronnie-Anne told me." Lori said simply. "She was concerned that Lincoln was going to mess things up somehow, but told me she'd promised you she wouldn't tell him. So, she told me instead. And I even put together what you'd be wearing after Leni told me you came into her store at the mall when she chatted to me last night."
Taylor growled under her breath.
"Are all older sisters as nosy as you are?" Taylor asked.
"Only the good ones." Lori said flippantly. "All of them need someone looking out for them, whether they know it or not. Especially when it comes to their love lives. I'm not even going to go into the breakdowns I've had to avert with the older three. But can you imagine what would happen if Lynn looked away from her sports long enough to be into another human being, she'll probably break every bone in their body if one of them end up breaking her heart. And then I worry about Lucy. And Lola. And Lisa's going to be a nightmare, because she's literally as smart as an adult in some ways, but still such a kid in others…"
For not the only time in her life, Taylor was glad she was the youngest kid in her family. It sounded much, much easier than any alternative.
"But, outside of a few exceptions, I know I won't have to interfere so directly. Just enough to stop them from doing something too stupid." Lori finished.
Taylor gave a sad laugh.
"Is that why you guys went after me? Because you knew it would all be a stupid mistake?"
Lori's face fell for a moment, laden with guilt, before she swiftly sat up, and looked directly into Taylor's eyes.
"Taylor. I'm not afraid to admit that I was wrong with what I said about you. How you didn't deserve Lincoln." She confessed. "I think I see what Lincoln sees when he looks at you. More than a bully. Someone with a tough front, who wants more for her life, and from the world, and isn't afraid to go for it."
"But," Lori said, the word punctuating the kind words she'd just spoken. "You're both young. Him, more than you. And like I said before, there's things that you don't understand about yourself, or your own feelings, and that's going to make things like what happened tonight happen, no matter how much you plan."
"You're saying it's not going to work out." Taylor said, sinking into her seat while her heart began to sink in her chest.
"With how wrong I've been about things before, I can't say shit about how things will go." Lori admitted. "But I can guess that it'll be hard. Even if both of you are completely honest with one another."
Taylor gave an imperceptible nod. She was too tired to give anything more than that. The conversation had been scouring, and she felt raw, and weak, and exposed. But she also felt cleansed. Unburdened.
"Do you want me to run into there," Lori asked, gesturing towards the gas station they were next to. "Get you a snack, maybe a flipee?"
"I don't know what that is." Taylor responded. "And I'm not hungry. I'm… Tired. I think I just want to go home now."
Lori didn't ask further questions, but instead simply started the car, and began to follow with quick glances at her phone. After a few minutes, Taylor found some familiar streets and landmarks that told her she was almost home, and gave a sigh o relief. Lori had continued adamantly talking about her life, not particularly fussed to find Taylor only half-listening.
"… And now Bobby has a new apartment, and he's asked me to move in, and now I'm literally terrified about what might happen I decide to move out of the dorms, and live with him. I mean, I've got friends on campus, and what if I find something I don't like about the place, and the landlord doesn't let me fix anything without us having to give up the deposit, and then we're basically just fixing the place up out of our own pockets—"
"—We're here." Taylor said, as they went into the cul-de-sac comprised of a bunch of pastel colored bungalow homes. She pointed out one with a handful of sun-bleached flamingo ornaments on the very edge of the lawn.
"Oh." Lori said, a hint of disappointment in her voice, as she pulled in to the curb. The car's engine thrummed for a moment, before going still.
The car was quiet again, with neither girl quite knowing what to say after the half-hour of raw, emotional honesty that they'd shared. Lori ended up talking first.
"When you ran out, and Lincoln wanted to follow you, I told him not to follow you, because he needs to learn to give people space. When I get back I'm going to drill that into him, so you shouldn't worry about him bothering you until you're ready to talk to him." She proclaimed. "And you don't have to worry about the rest of the sisters either. I won't tell them what they don't need to know, but I will remind them that we swore not to pry into Lincoln's business. That should be enough."
"…Thanks." Taylor said, not accustomed to the niceness she had received from the older teen, and so unaccustomed to saying anything nicer in response.
She opened the door, and prepared to step out, when she was stopped.
"Wait." Lori said, her tone suddenly less certain and more blustering than the previous confidence she had mustered.
"Taylor… Whatever you do decide to do…" Lori said, her own tongue tripping over itself as it tried to find the right word. "I just want to say that I hope it works out for you."
Taylor placed one foot on the road outside.
"…I think I'm going to talk to my mom about tonight. And all the stuff that's been happening."
"You'll literally have nothing to worry about." Lori said, a tired, but satisfied smile on her face. "You already did the hard part, just before. Just say what you said with me, and you should be fine."
Taylor stepped out, and shut the door, and walked up onto the curb. She briefly turned back to see Lori, who gave a short wave before she drove away. Taylor stayed there as she watched the tail-lights flicker away into the darkness like twin dying embers.
Taylor's curfew was 9:00, a hard-fought compromise after she had debated her brothers' generous past curfews, including one time where her eldest brother didn't come home for an entire week. It was still a few minutes until then, but for whatever reason, it felt like it was past midnight.
The porch-light triggered as she made her way up the pebble-paved path, to the front door. She took out her key, and silently opened the chipped, white-painted door, and crept inside.
As she closed it, she felt the presence of a few of the tell-tale things that told her it was home. The phantom smell of camomile tea that her mom made whenever she got home from work. The television playing softly, when her mom watched about five minutes before retreating to her room for the night, and the moody, blue lighting of the living room's lava lamp, that Taylor had got as a Christmas gift some time before she could properly remember it.
Taylor put her bag down in the living room, and briefly considered fixing herself a snack, or a glass of water, but shook herself of the though. It could wait a while.
After she did what she had to do.
She moved down the hallway to her mom's room. While the rest of the house was pitted with day-to-day dents, scrapes and marks, her mom's door had remained immaculately clean. A sign of respect from both her and her brothers. Even standing in front of it felt like a kind of sacrilege.
Taylor raised a defiling hand, and felt nausea as she knocked softly.
She remained rigid and silent as she heard the soft pad of slipper-clad feet crossing the carpet, before the door finally drifted open.
There, in all her frumpy glory, was her mom. She was wearing her usual fluffy night-robe, and her hair was still wet from the shower, and of course, her make-up had been long removed, so the dark rings under her eyes that had never gotten better since she started doing overtime, were still there.
It was her. And despite all the flaws and her tiredness and her ordinariness, Taylor still felt small and powerless in front of her.
"Tay?" Her mom asked, confusion evident in her voice. Normally she had to seek Taylor out, and usually the conversations were virtually one-sided, apart from her daughter's apathetic grunts.
"Mom…" Taylor said, her mouth suddenly parched dry. Now the idea of a glass of water wasn't so out of the question. But it was too late to worry about that.
Taylor stood there, her legs suddenly becoming wobbly and weak.
"Is everything… Alright?" Her mom hazarded, visibly disturbed by her daughter's behaviour.
"Yeah. It's fine. Cool as." Taylor said, her own anxiety causing her to say the opposite of what she wanted to.
"Okay..." Her mom said, beginning to close the door. "Don't stay up too late, remember that you have school tomorrow…"
"I mean, No." Taylor quickly blurted out. "No, everything's not alright. There's been a lot of stuff I've been feeling recently that have me feeling really screwed up inside. And I… I don't know how to make it better at all, Mom…"
For a moment, her mother stood in the same spot, seemingly stupefied. But after some moments, the door drew open, and her mother stepped out to wrap her in a brief, smothering hug.
"It's okay, Tay." She cooed, patting Taylor on the head. "Let's get a nice cup of camomile, and you can tell me all about it."
And they did.
And she did.
After her mother had heard her out, she diagnosed Taylor's problems as being Deeply Serious. And sufficiently serious problems meant time for recovery. Her mom called into the school to tell them that Taylor was feeling unwell, and needed to take a week off to recover.
Taylor wasn't too jazzed that she 'd have to make up any work she missed when she got back, but she was jazzed when her mom also called into work to take the week off. Apparently, she'd actually managed to build some savings after her brothers moved out.
They ate ice-cream for breakfast. Watched movies until nightfall, a mix between sappy romance movies that her mom liked, and gory slashers that Taylor had enjoyed watching with her friends. Then, in the evenings, they ordered take-out, and talked. Catching up on the years they'd missed, where her mother was overworked, and she was overly moody.
While her mom didn't try and force her to take any decisions, she did ask Taylor to sit down and think about things. Maybe because it was her mom asking it, Taylor took the request seriously, spending hours every night, while she was in bed, going over everything that made her unhappy and frustrated.
There wasn't any epiphany, any lightning-strike of an idea, inspiring her towards a certain course. She slowly thought about her life up until that point, and found there were other relationships, not just the romantic kind, that she hadn't been satisfied with. Reconnecting with her Mom was good, but there was still more that needed to be done.
Her and her Mom started it off by calling her brothers. They didn't go into heavy detail about why they were calling, but there was an added effort by them to reconnect, and earnestly find out how they were doing. Taylor's oldest brother was agonizing over what to get his boyfriend for their anniversary, and one of the twins had almost lost a toe when a crab decided to latch onto a flipper during one of their dives, but otherwise things seemed well. Taylor promised to call and message them more often.
Her mom wanted her to call her dad, but Taylor refused. She might've been feeling unnaturally nostalgic for togetherness with the family, but Taylor wasn't going to try and force any miracles.
Eventually, the break that she had been given ended. Her Mom promised she'd be more present, and dedicate at least an evening a week to Taylor, if she needed it. Taylor said she'd take it, even if she didn't need it.
The first day back was tough.
The bus-ride was fine. Taylor spent most of the ride on her phone, uninterrupted. Most of the kids were busy playing around with RC cars. Something about a derby at lunch.
When class started, Taylor did something alien to her, and paid attention. Tried to, at least. She managed to concentrate until the half-way mark to Lunch, anyway. The alternative was to take on the glares of her classmates, curious or scornful of her time away from school. She didn't need that from them.
It was when she was in the cafeteria that she finally found the courage to do what she'd been dreading to do all week.
Anderson and Pablo were holding a tray of someone's lunch over their head. That person, some freckled girl in a purple dress was particularly shrimpy, since Pablo was, in his own words, "still between growth spurts". The game of keep-away seemed rote and emotionless though, though. Anderson looked grim-faced, and Pablo's jeers seemed extra put-on. It was almost sad seeing the two of them like that.
Almost.
"Hey, dicks." Taylor shouted, grabbing the pair's attention immediately. That kind of language wasn't something you just threw around. If a teacher heard it, it was guaranteed detention.
The sneers were expected. Anderson dropped the tray onto the head of the girl as he turned his full attention to Taylor. Pablo took a couple of moments extra to put the same scowl on his face, carefully watching Anderson's reaction first.
The girl scampered away, and the three squared off in the corner of the cafeteria, the usual crowds of lunch-goers suddenly finding themselves with other places to go on a short notice.
"Hey, Tay." Anderson said, hatred dripping from each word. "We thought you'd wimped out and headed off to some fancy-pant private school where you could be a prissy princess in peace."
"Huh?" Pablo said in confusion. "I thought you said she probably had food poisoning—"
"Anyway." Anderson said, continuing to stare his nose down at her as though Pablo had never spoken at all. "You're back then?"
"Yeah." Taylor said, her fists balling up as she spoke.
"You going to try and talk to us about how we need to see the light, and how we need to start a life of charity, and feelings and all that crap?"
"…No." Taylor said, unbaling the fist, and untensing herself in general. "But I do want to talk with you guys."
"And why would we want to do that?" Anderson asked.
"Yeah! So that you can just blow us off again!?" Pablo burst out, his whole body shaking.
"No, you buttheads," Taylor said, rolling her eyes. "Because I feel bad about it, and want to try and be friends again."
"You… Do?" Anderson said, his own hostile posture dissolving after she said the words.
"Duh." Taylor said, shrugging.
"Yes! Oh, my god, yes!" Pablo said, running up to hug her. "We missed you so much Tay, you have no idea…"
She brusquely pushed him away with a single hand.
"I, uh… Didn't expect this." Anderson said, walking up to her, a hand resting on the back of his neck awkwardly.
"So does this mean it's just going to be like it was before?" Pablo asked hopefully, tears beading in the corners of his eyes. "The three of us rolling and rocking over all the dweebs in this school?"
"What? Have you been listening to a thing I've said? No." Taylor said, her frown displaying her intense annoyance.
The two looked at one another in confusion before looking back to Taylor.
"But you just said—" Pablo began to say, before Taylor interrupted him.
"I said I want to try and be friends again. But that comes with the pair of you actually listening to me, and taking me seriously for once."
"What, since when don't we take you seriously?" Anderson said, bemused.
"Like, right now?" Taylor shot back. "Or when you rip into me for not having a wang? What I said before last week hasn't changed. You need to take what I said into account if you want me to try get back to hanging out with you too."
"Of course!" Pablo said eagerly. "You were completely right when you said… Uh… Remind me of what your point was, again? You know, just so we all know."
"My point was that we got into picking on dweebs and whoever, because this school sucks, and it was fun trying to get back at all these jerks that pretended like we didn't matter." Taylor said, laying out the unspoken, but true, reason for them. "But we still don't matter. Nobody cares about us. They're afraid of us, most of the time, but otherwise they don't care about who we are just as much from when we first stepped foot in here. And when we move on next year, we're going to be just as ignored in high school too."
"Then we hit the gym, learn some new moves, and make the entire school our bitch, like we did here." Anderson said.
"You're not getting it." Taylor said, shaking her head. "Do we keep beating up nerds once we're out of there? When we get jobs, and have to pay taxes? We'd just be losers ready to get thrown into jail as soon as we try any of that crap.
"And it still wouldn't fix things either. We'd still be boring nobodies that no-one cares about. Ignored and forgotten as soon as we're done giving them wedgies. That's lame. I don't want that for me anymore, and I don't want that for you guys, either."
The pair looked at her, perplexed by Taylor's speech.
"Why do you care?" Anderson asked. There wasn't any harshness in the way he said it. Only a genuine want to receive an answer from her.
"Because, numb-nuts," Taylor said, exasperated. "You guys were there from the first day I was here, and even though everyone else ignored me, you guys didn't. And even if it was just to go out with me, you stuck around afterwards. To me, that's cool."
"Is this a bad time to ask if we can go out again?" Pablo asked. The steely glares of both Anderson and Taylor caused him to recoil. "I'll just be quiet now."
"Okay," Anderson said, hastily returning to conversing with Taylor. "Even if what you said made some sense, and that we didn't do any bullying anymore… What else is keeping us together?"
It was an important question. And the future hinged upon the answer.
"I don't know. Whatever anyone else does. The same crap that makes all the other people in this school go and be in talent shows, or do the news on apps, or fly kites and race remote control cars and whatever other dumb stuff that seems to happen on a daily basis."
"All that stuff you just mentioned is completely lame, though." Anderson retorted. "Heck, you've been the one saying its lame for the last few years, even!"
"Well, maybe it doesn't matter doing something lame if you like it." Taylor said hesitantly. She was completely improvising her response to him, but the words felt right somehow.
Anderson's eyes widened, as if she had said something absolutely insane.
"Maybe… You don't have to worry about what other people think so much, as long as you're having fun, you know? Maybe you can just do dumb stuff you enjoy, even if it's not cool…?" It was almost as if she'd stumbled upon a secret, one she should've understood years before. They'd spent years not liking anything or doing anything in case they did something they considered uncool. In case they'd accidentally ran into a reason for others to reject them even more than they had already been rejected.
"I mean…" Pablo began, looking like he was painfully trying to hold the concept in his mind as he spoke. "I guess that could be true. But… Like… What could we do? If we wanted to do… Something…?"
The three stood, mute as they each considered the possibilities. Unfortunately, their imaginations were rusty from years of disuse, and it took some coaxing for them to grasp an idea.
"Well, I guess we could… Huh." Taylor said, her head empty of any inspiration.
"Maybe we could do a… Um… Darn. I lost it…" Anderson said.
"We… Like… Movies?" Pablo said, uncertain. When he didn't hear any form of protest from the other two, he continued. "Like, maybe we could… Watch movies together?"
"I mean. We already do that." Taylor said, frustrated, less from his comment, but from her own dumb brain.
"Oh, yeah..." Pablo said, disappointed.
"But… Maybe we can do more than that." Taylor said firmly, faking a confidence that wasn't there a second before.
"How do you mean?" Anderson asked.
"Maybe we could make them." Taylor said. Suddenly, ideas began to flood into her brain. The future was beginning to unfold.
"I don't know… Sounds kind of dorky… I don't want to make some crappy home-made film…" Pablo said.
"Then we won't make a crappy home-made one. We'll make legit ones." Taylor said adamantly. "Ones we'd want to watch."
"Ultra gory ones?" Anderson said, sounding less cynical than any other time he'd said anything that day.
"With cool monsters and effects?" Pablo added, looking giddy with enthusiasm.
"Duh. Of course." Taylor said, nodding.
"Alright, but how are we going to do that?" Anderson said, once again looking standoffish.
Taylor shook her head disapprovingly. She wasn't going to let her friends psyche themselves out of doing something that they could have fun with.
"Anderson, your older brother has all that dumb collectable stuff, like those dumb lizard puppets he said he bought from a studio. I'm sure he could tell you about whatever they're made of, or where you could get some tips on how the guys that made them did it."
"…. I have always wanted to work with something involving fake blood." Anderson said, stroking his chin. "And if there's some way we do a cool head explosion, I guess I'd be interested."
"Pablo, you're good with phones and crap." Taylor said, throwing her shorter friend a bone. "You can probably do the sound and lighting and camera and whatever."
"Well, I am good at that stuff…" Pablo said, unhesitatingly agreeing with Taylor's suggestion. "You know what? You're right! I'm going to be the best damn… Crew guy that this town's ever seen!"
"Well, what are you going to do, then?" Anderson said, gesturing to Taylor.
"I like the sound of directing." Taylor admitted. "Bossing people around so they don't screw things up. Sounds like my kind of job."
"Damn. I should've called shotgun on that." Anderson said. "Maybe we can switch things depending on what we're filming…"
"Just as long as Pablo doesn't ever direct." Taylor said, receiving a nod from Anderson, as the pair of them began walking down the hallway, their next class close to starting.
"Yeah, just so long as I—Hey! Wait a minute!" Pablo said, running after the pair of them.
"One more thing." Anderson said, ignoring Pablo, as was normal. "I get your point with keeping our grades from being too crappy. And I guess I sort of get where you're coming from with the whaling on sixth or seventh-graders… But how do you feel about cutting teachers and grown-ups down to size?"
"Oh, I'm fine with that." Taylor said, smiling. "That's just being a rebel. That's still totally cool."
Anderson exhaled with a look of relief, and didn't speak any more as they made their way to their lockers, their week-and-change conflict resolved.
The trio were back together. And things seemed like they were finally going to change for the better. Taylor felt a sense of respite, that at least one more thing that she considered important in her life had been resolved for the time being.
But perhaps it was because of that that fate decided to bring the primary source of her anxiety onto the scene. In the distance, she saw a white-haired figure, surrounded by a gaggle of randoms.
Him.
"Uh, one second guys." Taylor said, preparing to turn into another hallway. "I've got to do something. I'll see you in class."
The two looked at her each with a roll of their eyes, but perhaps the reconciliation had also left them feeling like they didn't need to pry. They continued on as she quickly made her way around to a small alcove.
She had planned for this, or something similar. She was surprised that she hadn't seen Lincoln on the bus, but she also knew, and had privately hoped, that he had just been driven to school. But she knew that she would run into him, or him into her at some point.
Unfortunately, she wasn't ready to talk to him. Yet.
She had figured out a way of communicating with him, though.
Taylor swiftly took out a marker, and a slip of paper, and hastily, but legibly, scrawled out a small message. Then, retrieving a small stone from her other pocket, she wrapped the message around it, forming a small ball.
Quickly peeking around the corner, she saw Lincoln and his group about thirty feet away. Taking swift aim, she flung the message directly at him, before turning back around the corner.
"OWW!"
As much as it pained her hearing Lincoln injured by her own hand, the sound told her that he received her message. She would've liked to tell him in person, but she needed to prepare herself, as well as a few other things, before she was ready to meet him at the final bell.
As soon as the bell sounded, Taylor had practically leapt into the crowded halls, dodging dorks like ping-pong balls, just to reach the music classroom on time. She reached it as the crowd thinned, standing outside the door, as the final stragglers filtered out of their classes to home.
She was nervous, for a lot of reasons. This was supposed to be where she made up for her crappy behaviour to him, and he would forgive her, and everything would be peachy. But that was only possible if he actually decided to show up.
She couldn't blame him for not showing up. She hadn't just been abysmal as a prospective girlfriend, but also universally crappy as a friend. She'd thrown him to the wolves, refused to be seen with him in public, kept him at arm's length in terms of her feelings and thoughts. She couldn't be mad at him if he didn't want to ever see her—
"Hey." Lincoln said, walking up to her, and almost making Taylor crap her pants. She attempted to recover and press on as though she he hadn't come close to giving her a heart attack.
"Hey… You…" She started, immediately tanking the chances of her keeping cool, like she'd planned things out. "You're looking like you're doing… Good."
"Heh. You too." Lincoln said with a smile, his tone suggesting a genuine warmth to his comment, that Taylor took some temporary solace from.
However, the two failed to follow up from their brief attempt at conversation immediately, leading to a long pause that both of them seemed to be waiting for the other to fill. Finally, after half a minute like that, the dam finally broke.
"Look, I'm really sorry I—"
"I've really wanted to talk to you about—"
The two found themselves talking over one another, and cut one another off. Both awkwardly laughed at the faux pas, before settling into silence again. However, this time, Taylor willed herself to speak first.
"I'm sorry for freaking the hell out and running out of the house, making you go out and look for me, and then not talking to you for a week, okay?!"
She shouted the last word out so loud and so quickly that she felt herself suddenly out of breath. Lincoln looked at her with shocked surprise, before shaking his head.
"You've got nothing to apologize for, Taylor." He said, fidgeting. "I was the one who wanted you to come and meet my family, and get along with them. And I shouldn't have forced you to do something that you didn't want to do. And I should've been a better communicator about what was going on, and—"
"Okay, slow down, spaz." Taylor said trying to get him to not work himself into some kind of apologetic frenzy. She saw a student walking down the end of the hall towards them, and she decided it was better to move their conversation away from there at that point.
"Let's continue this in here." She said, ushering him by the shoulder into the neighbouring room, where she'd intended for them to talk alone.
She closed the door, and drew the shade to the door's window down, and wandered over to lean against the teacher's desk. She saw that Lincoln had defaulted to placing his backpack onto a desk, while briefly pacing back and forth in a circle around it.
"Look…. Lincoln…" She began with a sigh. "I think we finally need to talk about what the hell is going on between the two of us here."
Lincoln looked almost as drained from the statement as Taylor felt after having spoken it. But she knew that this was what this entire meeting as about, and whatever was going to happen between the two of them afterwards, they'd need to be clear and honest with one another, like she'd been with Lori, her mom, and her friends. If there was one thing she had learned in the previous few weeks, it was that talking about things was far less painful that the silence and stillness that came from keeping things bottled up inside.
"Heh. What do you mean?" Lincoln said, with a nervous laugh. "We're buds. You're helping me out with figuring out how to be cool around girls, and—"
"Come one, man. That's bullshit, and you know it." Taylor said, shutting Lincoln up from embarrassing himself further with his forced obliviousness. "Why do you think I'd just go from beating you up every day, to suddenly wanting to hang out with you, and help you with you girl trouble. Like, didn't you think that was weird, or anything, especially just after you wrote me a letter confessing you liking me."
"Weird things happen to me all the time!" Lincoln said, both hands raised in a gesture of helplessness. "And note only said that you interested me, and I wanted to get to know you better…"
Taylor was unimpressed by his inability to be straight with her in that moment.
"So… You didn't have feelings for me." Taylor said, before she felt the need to correct herself. "And you don't have feelings for me."
Perhaps a week earlier, she would've taken some pleasure in watching him squirm, like we was doing, under her interrogation. But she had changed, and the need for answers and certainty outweighed those old impulses.
"I…" Lincoln said, before he started to gawp, and clam up. "I… Don't know."
It was disappointing to hear. But hearing it made her certain of what she had to say and do next.
"Well, I had… I have feelings for you." Taylor confessed, every word feeling like they were being wrung from her.
"What!?" Lincoln shouted out, with his own emotional turmoil temporarily forgotten. "Since when?"
"The letter, you moron." Taylor said, the last words not said with any malice. "You saying that you were interested in me, made me interested in you. And once I hung out with you and got to know you better, I found…"
"What did you find?" Lincoln said, walking away from the desk he circled around, to move within a few feet of her.
"…That even though you were a total lame-ass dork," She began. "You were happy. That you had, like, weird adventures and hobbies, and cared about stuff, and on top of that, you cared about me. Even though you didn't have to."
"But I couldn't not care about you—" Lincoln began, before Taylor raised a hand to stop him while she finished her thoughts.
"Yeah, I know." She said, tiredly. "It wigs me the hell out how you can care for me on top of everyone else you've got in your life, but I know that you're not faking it. But at the same time, I can tell that, with how things are, that you don't really feel the same way about me."
"That's not true!" Lincoln protested, sounding like he was convincing himself more than he was her. "I think you're really neat, and—"
"Look. Shut up until I'm finished talking to you here, or else I'm going to gag you the egg-salad sandwich I've still got for my lunch." Taylor said, hoping the threat would stop him from interrupting further, and stopping him from making a complete ass of himself. "And really? You think I'm 'Neat'? That's a real confidence booster, there. You should open a business as a total Girl Guru."
"Well, actually—" Lincoln began again, before Taylor threw the moist, bagged sandwich past his head.
"C'mon, man. Shut it until I'm done here." Taylor growled. She'd hoped to get it done quickly, like ripping off a band-aid, but she found that the longer she tried to explain things, the more that messy, confusing feelings seemed to be bubbling up and spilling out, like blood from an open wound.
"Look… I know you think you like me the same way I think I like you… But recently I've been talking to my mom, as well as some other people, and they've made me think about what I actually like about you. And… Yeah, I want a nice guy who'll treat me right, and who likes stuff, and gets me to be interested in things too… While I really do like all that stuff about you, it's not enough."
She saw the disappointment and collapse of confidence occur in him, as his eyes began to tear up.
"You're just too much of a kid still." She admitted, hating herself a little for being so blunt. "And maybe I'm not much older than you, but there's still a lot of stuff that I want that you just can't give me right now."
"Like…?" Lincoln asked, probably against his better judgement.
"Well, firstly, you're really bad at picking up cues from girls." She started. "And, no offense or anything, but you're kind of short. I think I'd like to date someone at least around the same height as me. And you've also got kind of noodle-arms there. That's kind of a major turn-off when I think about things. And I think I'm beginning to get to an age where it'd be cool to date someone who can drive…"
As he heard her continue, Lincoln looked like he'd had his chest stomped on, but was valiantly attempting to mask the pain he was feeling.
"But… like I said before…" Taylor continued, blushing slightly as she spoke. "What made me like you was the way that you paid attention and spent time with me. That you took the time to make me feel like I was worth the effort. That's, like, really cool, and I think any girl you'd choose to be with be really lucky if you did the same thing with her."
"Yeah, I'd bet…" Lincoln said miserably.
Taylor was hoping that finishing on his strengths would fill him with confidence and self-esteem. Clearly, he was still reeling from the other insights Taylor had told him.
"Oh, come on. You don't have to mope like that." She added. "I just said you're a catch!"
"If I'm such a catch, why don't things work out for me then?" Lincoln suddenly said, his voice suddenly kicking up a pitch in anguish. "How come when I like someone, it all just… Falls apart, and there's nothing I can do about it!"
Taylor resisted the temptation to tell him being self-pitying was a real turn-off for most girls, and instead went over and clapped a hand on his shoulder in comfort.
"I mean, none of my relationships have really worked out or went anywhere…" Taylor admitted, almost bumming herself out, but she steely continued making her point. "But I reckon that's because I kind of just went with things, instead of working to make them go on, or get better. You can't pretend things will all just work out in the end, you know?"
Lincoln looked like he was on the verge of tears, but managed to fight them back.
"Yeah. I guess." He said sniffling.
"But you also need to know when it isn't working." Taylor said as she squeezed his shoulder. "And I guess you don't know which one is worth fighting for, and which one isn't until you get experience."
"Maybe this with you and me has all been kind of that sort of experience?" Lincoln asked her, his fierce blue eyes, dulled with a lens of tears.
"Sure." Taylor answered, feeling a pang of sadness when she though about how it related to her.
"I get what you mean about getting experience, but I guess it's just tough for me finding someone who likes you enough to give you a chance." Lincoln said, wiping both of his arms with his forearm.
"I don't think you've got much to worry about there." Taylor said, with a smile.
"Uh… What do you mean?"
"I mean, there's someone here who I think likes you plenty." Taylor said, smirking.
At the entrance to the classroom, the door slowly swung open, revealing a figure, one who was recognisable to both Lincoln and Taylor.
"Paige?!" Lincoln exclaimed, the appearance of his technical ex certainly not being what he expected to deal with that day.
Paige remained silent, simply sheepishly waving to Lincoln in greeting. Her own cheeks looked red enough to stop traffic.
"What are you doing here?" Lincoln asked, bewildered.
Taylor jumped in to answer, saving the younger girl the embarrassment of explanation.
"I called her here." She explained. Once Lincoln gave her a look that showed that that didn't really explain anything, Taylor continued to explain.
"Look, I got to talking with her a while ago to figure a few things out about where you went wrong in the past with other girls, and she flat out told me that she was still crushing on you."
"Really?" Lincoln said, his eyes widening as he looked to Paige for confirmation.
Paige gave a shaky nod in response, but otherwise remained silent and unmoving, like a deer caught in a hunter's sights.
"And you were talking about how you totally regretted bailing on her during your date, and not giving her the attention that she deserved." Taylor continued.
"You did?" Paige said to Lincoln, who took his own turn to silently nod in response to her question.
"So… Since the two of you were being dumb-asses and not doing anything about it, I figured I'd get you two to hash it out one another instead of being all angsty about it." Taylor finished.
The room became silent.
Taylor sighed.
"Look, Paige has been listening at the door for a while, so she already knows what a self-absorbed moron with baggage that you are. So, just… Communicate already! Geez."
Paige and Lincoln turned to one another to stare straight into one another's eyes. Both of their cheeks practically incandescent with bashfulness.
"Paige…" Lincoln started out, his words failing him. "I really can't say sorry enough to you for how I left you as Gus's. I mean… Not the venue, since the food's amazing, there's lots to do, and Gus is a pretty great guy…"
Taylor gave out a short cough to force him to get to the point.
"…But I should have told you what was up with me, that I was still missing someone who was really important to me, and tried again with another date." Lincoln said, the words for once seeming difficult for him to form. "I still think you're really great, and it wasn't fair on you to have to miss out on having a good time…"
"But I did have a good time!" Paige blurted out in response, not helping with her ruddy cheeks. "It was really nice, and you were really nice! And if I'd known about how you were feeling about things, I totally would've understood!"
"Really?" Lincoln asked.
"Really, really!" Paige said, nodding enthusiastically.
Taylor looked on at the two, satisfied with their answers to one another.
"Well, there you go. Now that the two of you know what the score is, and you know that you like one another, so now the two of you can try and go out again. This time, working on things and not being dumb when it comes to talking about your problems. Got it?"
Paige nodded at her comment, while Lincoln boldly stepped forward and took Paige by the hand, causing her to give out a squeak in delight.
"Okay, Paige. What is it you want to talk to with me here in the music room that you can't tell me anywhere else—"
The room's occupants all turned their eyes to the sudden appearance of Christina, who had abruptly frozen in the doorway when she saw who was in there. Her head seemed to turn down to focus on the joined hands of her friend and Lincoln. For a moment, every person in the room, frozen and waiting for someone to react. Paige, in particular, looked like she was going to pee herself.
Finally, however, a reaction did come, and from the least likely individual.
"Ughh, yuck." Christina grunted, turning away from the sight of her friend being affectionate with the boy who had embarrassed her in elementary school. "I suppose if you have to, I can tolerate it. Just… Don't expect me to get all buddy-buddy with him. And if he ever gets in the way of us getting our careers as Broadway Stars going, I swear I will end it myself."
Just as swiftly as she'd come, she walked out of the doorway, her footsteps echoing into the distance.
"Yeah, that one was me, too." Taylor said, with an approving nod. "Just so you weren't holding any of your baggage back from him either. Kind of lucky she was fine with it though. I was expecting her to go berserk, from what you said about her."
Paige nodded shakily again. She was beginning to look exhausted from the emotional gamut she had quickly been through.
"Th-Thank you." Paige squeaked.
Taylor took that as her cue. She walked back over to the desk, and grabbed her bag, slinging it over a shoulder as she made her way towards the door.
"Taylor, wait!" Lincoln shouted out to her. "…You're going?"
"Well, there's no reason for me to stick around, now that we have everything worked out." Taylor said, dismissively. "The two of you should go out to Gus's, or wherever, to celebrate. I've got to meet up with my friends now. I promised to do some crap together with them."
"But don't you…" Lincoln started, before hesitating. "…Why does this feel like this is goodbye?"
Damn. She couldn't deny that he had her with that one. There definitely felt like an end to something, and even though she was the one who had willingly decided to cut things off, it still didn't make the entire thing any harder for her than it was for him. Nevertheless, Taylor sucked in a breath, and spoke on as if she weren't affected by it.
"It's not goodbye." She said, adamantly. "I mean, we might not have much time to hang out when I start high school, but I've gotten myself into making movies, and I don't even know where to start with that, especially when it comes to editing. So, I might ask you for some help there.
"And I mean…" Taylor said, her resolve breaking momentarily. "…You can call me, if you need advice about anything. Or you need some extra muscle to get you out of a jam. So… Yeah."
She stood there for a moment, not wanting to go, but not feeling like she could stay, either. Taylor felt herself begin welling up, as her vision suddenly began to blur.
Lincoln quickly ran up, and practically tackled her into a hug.
"Thank you. So much. For everything." He said, his own voice quavering with emotion.
Taylor fished out an arm from his embrace, and tousled the top of his head affectionately.
"Okay! Okay! Enough of this crap!" Taylor said, wrenching herself free from his tight grasp. "I've got stuff to do. A life to live, you know?"
She began walking out, as Lincoln gravitated back towards Paige, their eyes only gazing at one another.
"One more thing." Taylor said, her voice slightly hoarse. "If I hear that the two of you have broken up over some dumb misunderstanding, or because of some dumb, pretend drama that doesn't mean anything. I'm going to hunt the two of down and wedgie you so hard, that when they find your bodies, they're not going to be able to tell which one of you was which. Got it?"
The pair each gulped, before nodding in agreement. Taylor finally strode out the door, into the hall, ready to leave to meet with Pablo and Anderson outside.
She honestly didn't see the two of them lasting. Paige seemed to have her head in her clouds, chasing her dreams, despite her lacking the raw talent that was necessary, while Lincoln was busy rushing around doing a hundred different things at a time. One of them would surely get bored, and go off of one another in a month, two months tops. But maybe…
Maybe if he put all his effort behind her, helped her be better, and coach her to be able to succeed… Maybe the two of them could end up enabling the best from one another, the person who help, with a klutz who needed help…
But Taylor didn't think it was much of a possibility. What mattered was that with Paige, he'd be able to learn something about how relationships could work, and how to make a girl happy. It was something that he'd hopefully be able to use in the future.
And hey, maybe in a few years, after he got into High School, and began to fill out a little, maybe if Taylor and he were sharing the same space again, they could try and make a real attempt at something.
There were no guarantees, of course. There seemed to be half a dozen other girls with complicated feelings for him in the background. Ronnie Anne in particular was definitely one to watch out for. And then there was his family who now all thought she was completely insane…
But for now, Taylor was content. The future, that had only a short before, been a terrifying thing to think about, was now full of possibilities for what she could do, be and be with. The fear that of change and loneliness that had once guided her entire person, had now each been tamed.
For the first time since she could remember, Taylor felt everything would be fine.
AN: Well, that was certainly an experience writing. Honestly, from the break I had after chapter 5, I wasn't sure I'd come back to it, but getting to both chapter 10 and 11 compelled me to continue. I hope you enjoyed reading it, despite the long wait between chapters.
Now, regarding the elephant in the room, and, in an attempt to forestall any angry comments along the lines of "WTF is Paigecoln doing in my Taylorcoln story?" or "Why didn't Linc get the girl at the end?" I want to attempt some form of explanation: This is not a story where Lincoln is the main character, and despite the introduction with Lynn, it's largely not a story where the Louds are the focus. This is about Taylor, a pretty one note character with a single appearance, whose only defining feature is being a bully. That's not a lot to build on, even if you repeat some pretty cliched Ronniecoln ground. I knew from the outset, I was going to have to take a different tact if I was going to have a chance of making the story's concept work. And the more I kept writing, and figuring out where to take the story, I realised two things:
Taylorcoln just doesn't work with the two of them at the ages they're at in the series for a bunch of reasons, and the story of Taylor overcoming her insecurities was way more interesting to me to puzzle out. The idea of a semi-realistic character running into the insane, cartoonish antics of the Louds, and wanting a bit of what they have, is an angle that I'm sure many can empathize with, since that's basically what falling into a fandom is like. I think that Taylor's story, of someone growing up, but finding that you don't have to be a cynical jerk that ruins other people's fun, is something that is more important than just another shipping fic.
But maybe I'm just getting up my own ass, there. To anyone still wishing to see a more standard ending to the story, keep watching this space for an extra, super special alternate ending! It should be shorter, so it will likely be around sooner than it took getting this final chapter out.