The months went by, the air continued to warm up, and Lincoln grew as almost any other boy did. He gained weight and his motor skills were improving, but his dirt brown hair began changing when he was about a month old. Piece by piece, Lincoln's scalp began paling in color to a rather unusual degree. By August of his birth year, much of his hair was close to gray with only tints of brown remaining; there were some patches, though, that had already become as white as the snow that lied on the ground when he was born. The parents took their precious Lincoln to a doctor to see if it indicated an ailment. Extensive examinations failed to produce an explanation for the hair color, but they found that the baby was healthy. Relieved, normal life in the Loud house continued.

As his arms and legs became strong enough to crawl, Rita slowly integrated him into his sisters' play time, much to their delight. Each day, she would allow Lincoln's siblings to interact with him under her watchful eye.

All of them sat in the living room. Rita held Lincoln as she and most of the others surrounded them, giggling. Lori had her Barbie, Leni had Bun-Bun, Luna had a farm animal wheel, Lynn had a rattle, and Luan was reading from a joke book she had recently got at her fourth birthday party. Lynn Sr. had bought it, unsure how his fourth daughter would react to it. Luckily, it seemed the gamble was paying off.

"Okay, okay," Luan said between gasps for air, "How about this one? What do you call somebody with no body and just a nose?"

Her effort to leave room for silence was squandered by her inability to contain her laughter. Regardless, her mother, three older sisters, and two younger siblings were eager to hear the precious punchline.

"Nobody knows!"

Immediately, Rita, Lori, Luna, Luan, and Lynn burst out chuckling. The fellow comedian felt herself smiling at the warm reception she had received ever since she started reading from that precious tome.

Seeing another opportunity, she knelt up to Lincoln, sitting upright on his mother's lap. Using her nimble fingers, she picked at his face before swiping her hand back. With a grin, she presented two of her digits pinched before her brother. That unified form proved simple enough to attract his young, awe-struck eyes.

"I got your nose, Lincoln!"

Luan then contorted her hands and pointed straight at her brother's attentive face. She inched her extended finger towards the tip of nose until it was squished up against it. Upon making contact, she opened her excited mouth.

"Boop!"

And just like that, the five off them roared out in guffaws once more. This time, though, little Lincoln smiled and began laughing himself. The sound of his cheery, high-pitched guffaws made Luan feel jittery—a special type of warmth she had never felt before. Was this what it meant to be a big sister? Does it always feel this good to make a baby happy? The four-year-old didn't give any thought to these questions; she was far too fuzzy to be critical of this moment.

"Tell another one, Luan," Luna said, her voice filled with anticipation.

"Funny!...funny!" Lynn cheered with her eyes clenched and smile too wide to control.

Turning towards the rest of her siblings, Luan rushed to her book and her eyes scanned for another great punchline. Internally, she cursed the fact that each page had an abundance of knockouts; they were all so good that she found immense difficulty picking one to do first. To help this problem, she resorted to spitting out the first one she saw.

"What do you call a fake noodle?"

Silence.

"An impasta!"

Once again, the majority began giggling at the pun's utter silliness. Even Lincoln, who couldn't understand the jokes, succumbed to his mother and older sisters' laughter. Seeing those people happy made Luan fuzzy on the inside.

Meanwhile, Leni sat there with Bun-Bun resting on her lap. Although the others around her were chuckling, her face failed to break from its default blankness. She stared wide-eyed at each of her siblings' reactions, struggling to understand its meaning.

"What did Mrs. Boxer say this was?"

She knew that some expressions, feelings, and vibes were powerful enough to affect her own face. But something about these contortions, throat hacking, and choppy breathing made it too complicated for her to replicate, especially in the absence of the subliminal urge.

"What did the policeman say to his belly button?...You're under a vest!"

"What would bears be without bees?...Ears!"

"What did the wall say to the ceiling?...I'll meet you at the corner!"

"Why can't a nose be twelve inches long?...Because then it would be a foot!"

Every punchline got at least one person to laugh. Rita and Lori guffawed at all of them. Lynn and Luna didn't quite understand all the words or concepts, but they chuckled anyway. Leni, though, was stoic. Never once did she even smile. And with each successive joke, Luan found herself staring more and more at her second big sister. By the nose-foot joke, the little comedian looked up from the book following its delivery.

"Leni, don't you get it?" she asked, somewhat nervously.

"Get...what?" she replied. At this point, Leni's eyes were focused on her sister's like laser beams.

"My jokes. Do you find them funny?"

Luan felt her joy slipping into uncertainty, as if Leni's opinion was powerful enough to trump the consensus of her other family members. To her, the approval of all three of her big sisters meant an awful lot.

"No."

That one word stung at her. All she wanted to do was make others happy. And right there, it appeared as if her older and wiser sister had rejected her efforts, as if it wasn't enough.

"I think it's really funny, Luan," Rita said, casting her soft gaze onto her daughter.

"You're great! You should do it more!" Luna added.

Hearing Luna's compliment helped a little, just enough for her to open the book to a new page. The printed words, though, were a little harder to look at, now having the assumption that they weren't good enough for a particular someone.

"Uh...maybe this one will make you laugh, Leni," she said as her eyes darted to different lines on the page. Upon finding one, though, she found herself able to laugh off some of her anxiety, "Okay...What do you call a cow with no arms or legs?"

Luan looked up and stared at her big sister. Her face was unchanged—her eyes remained focused, her lips were unfazed, her body was unnervingly still. Regardless, Luan pressed on.

"Ground beef," she forcefully exclaimed.

She checked on her sister once more. Despite hearing laughter from the others, Leni was frozen. And that alone was enough to deflate the short-lived flair of hope of impressing the six-year-old.

"Leni," Luan said softly. The others were stunned by the sudden contrast from their sister's voice, "What about that? Did you like that?"

"Um...uh..."

"Ground beef," Leni thought, "Why does the cow have no legs? There are cows like that? But how do they make milk or eat grass if they have no legs? And what's ground beef? Is that beef that's in the ground? Is that in the backyard? But if that's a cow with no legs, then why doesn't it make the sound? The 'moo' sound."

In the suffocating silence, Luan felt her form shrinking and Lori started tapping her foot.

"Leni," Lori finally said, "Did you like Luan's joke?"

For several more aggravating seconds, there was nothing. To Lori, it felt like her sister hadn't even heard her—too lost in her thousand yard stare. She was about to ask again when she saw Leni take in a large breath of it.

"No."

The other three sisters began protesting at this disagreement, chipping away at Leni's look of indifference bit by bit. Luan, though, had no interest in what the defense was. Her head sunk and she sighed. Her eyes stung and she feared that she would start crying in front of Leni, adding onto what she believed was humiliation.

"Are you okay, honey?"

Luan looked up and saw her mom with a warm smile on her face. Holding the baby with one hand, she used the other to pat an open cushion on the couch, "Wanna sit with me and Lincoln?"

As Luan nodded and joined her mother, the criticisms continued.

"How could you say that to Luan? It made her sad," Lori said, her brows furrowed.

"Funny!" Lynn cried.

Leni wasn't listening though. Her big sister's words had drawn her to Luan and Mrs. Boxer's voice began playing in her head. Not long after came the flash cards and the activities.

Without changing her facial expression, she got up and walked over to the couch, stopping right in front of Luan.

"Leni. Is there something you wanted to say to your little sister?"

After a moment of awkward stillness, she leaned into her sister and hugged Luan, although her sitting posture made the embrace somewhat crooked.

"I'm sorry Luan," she said solemnly.

Luan squeezed her eyes shut and took some deep breaths. The hug's warmth soothed some of the tightening pangs in her chest and head and stopped the tears that threatened to break free from her eyes.

"That's okay," was all she said before planting her face into her mother's leg. As Leni moved away from her, she felt a much smaller set of arms touch her back. Feeling those fresh palms made her smile and chuckle a little.

"Leni," Rita said, her face having relaxed, "did you not find it funny because you didn't understand the jokes?"

"I don't know..."

"Let's take the fake noodle joke. Did you know that noodle is a kind of pasta?"

Leni's mind slowly went through the words she knew. It took a solid fifteen seconds for her to shake her head.

"Well that's what it is. And do you know what an imposter is?"

Another fifteen seconds elapsed as the young girl scanned her vocabulary in search of the word. Sadly, the investigation ended with nothing.

"An imposter is a fake person. And the 'poster' part of the word sounds a lot like 'pasta'," Rita said calmly, "And since a noodle is a type of pasta, a fake noodle is an impasta."

Leni's mouth dropped open and her eyes fell to the carpet. Lori groaned as she saw her sister assume this position. Her annoyance grew when Leni's posture began to slouch a little. And the silence wasn't helping matters either.

"Wouldn't...a fake noodle be...pasta? Why are you making up words?"

"Because that's the joke. Of course impasta is not a word, but because it sounds like imposter, that's what makes it funny. And when something is funny, we laugh."

Rita then gave a hearty chuckle to demonstrate. And then, Leni replicated it. The hacked huffs sliced the air and Lori's ears. But Rita smiled.

"There you go. And that's how jokes work," the mother said.

Grateful for the advice, Leni hugged her mom, squishing baby Lincoln in the embrace. She then turned to her little sister and hugged her again.

"Those jokes are...funny," Leni said. She then forced out some more chuckles. Lori, though, groaned.