Lynn Loud was known far and wide for her exploits on the field…and the court…and the track. Basically, wherever sports were held, she had a rap there. She played every sport you can imagine, from football to cricket, and she was a confirmed master at most of them. Even she, the great Double L, couldn't be 100 percent perfect at everything. There were a few sports where she wasn't the best to ever play, but those were few and far between, and none of them really mattered. She was the best football player, the best basketball player, the best softball and volleyball player. She was even stunning and great at quidditch. You know, the game from Harry Potter? In the books and movies, you play it by flying around on a broom. In real life, you just clutched a broom between your thighs like a little kid with a hobby horse. It looked really dumb to the casual observer and actually was kind of dumb, but it was a sport, and she was a collector. Some people collect Pokemon cards, other collect vinyl - Lori collected video games, for instance - she collected sports. She had to be the best at every single one of them. And if, for some strange reason, she couldn't be the best, she wanted to be one of the best.

Lynn's obsession with sports was, for her, prehistoric, the catalyst existing in the shadows of time beyond the rim of her conscious memory. To her, it seemed that she had always loved sports. If you asked her, she was born with it. It was in her blood and deeply encoded in her DNA. It was as organic a part of her being as her brown hair and freckles. She couldn't control being born a sports star anymore than she could control being born a white female. It just was what it was. Not everything has some deep and profound meaning, you know? A headshrink might be like "Oh, your love of sports is a manifestation of your own subconscious desire to be the opposite sex."

Uh, no, I just like knocking balls out of the park. Woot woot. I don't wanna be a guy, I'm happy the way I am, leave me alone. Can't a girl be into guy stuff without everyone thinking she's trans now? Even her internet algorithms thought she was gay. Every time she looked up the release date of the next Madden game or tried to find the stats of her favorite sports star, she got ads for reassignment surgery. TRANSITION INTO YOU. Get outta here with that, I'm already me. I'm sure not Lincoln!

LOL.

That was funny because Lincoln was scrawny. He had arms like limp noodles and his chest reminded Lynn of a rotisserie chicken that had been picked clean and left for dead. Or at least he was scrawny. A little while back, he and Johnny got really into exercising and bulked up until they were buff as frick.

But the point remained that Lynn was Lynn and no one else. She was perfectly happy in her own skin and doing her own thing. If other people weren't comfortable with who they were, Lynn felt for them and believed that they should do whatever they wanted to get to a point where they liked what they saw in the mirror. It wasn't her place to judge someone else for how they did or didn't live their own life. It seemed kind of pointless to her. Like…okay, I don't like what you're doing. Now what? Am I going to stop you? Am I going to waste time and energy worrying about what you're doing over there? No, I honestly don't care. My name's Bennett and I ain't in it, so there's that.

She liked being her and didn't want to stop. In fact, she wanted to be even more like her…if that was even possible. She wanted to be the top star in every stop, recognized by whatever governing body determines such things. She wanted to be so much like herself that she wound up entering a Lynn Loud lookalike contest and lost because the judges thought she was trying too hard.

Ball, for Lynn Loud, was life, there was literally nothing else out there for her. Other people might have varied and wide ranging interests - if so, good for them - but she was the kind of girl who put all her eggs in one basket, a basket shaped like a ball. She cared for little else outside the wide world of sports. She wasn't a movie buff, she wasn't a reader, she didn't like romance or horror films, she didn't play Grand Theft Auto 5 like Lori and Lana did. She didn't do any of that stuff because every free moment she had went into playing sports, or watching sports, or talking about sports, or thinking about sports. She barely even had time for a personal life. She didn't have a boyfriend and wasn't interested in getting one. She noticed cute guys and all but messing around with them would only distract from her true calling. Outside of Lincoln and Johnny, who had lived across the street from her forever and who were now staying with her family while their house was being rebuilt (seriously, how long is that going to take?), she had no friends other than her teammates, Every pal she had, she met through sports. Margo, Polly Pain, Big Bertha, Betty Bowling Ball, Cindi the Outfielder.

Lynn felt most at ease with people who shared her rabid love of sports. However, very few people loved all the sports, so she was always kind of an outsider. She could talk bowling with Betty and softball with Cindi and Margo, but she couldn't talk to them out soccer or Greco-Roman wrestling. She had no one with whom to share the depth and totality of her sports love.

That kinda sucked, but oh well, she was Lynn Loud Jr., she didn't need anyone else. She was head and shoulders above the rest and if she wanted to remain so, she just had to suck it up and get used to being by herself. After all, it's like they say: It's lonely at the top.

Lynn was okay with lonely. She was not okay with losing, however. She would rather live on a desert island on the planet Mars than lose. Losing stung worse than anything else she knew, even worse than getting hit with a rubber band. She and her friends used to do that to each other all the time, and Lynn hated being on the receiving end of a sick strike to the arm, cheek, or back. Wait, there was something even worse than that. Being snapped with a wet towel. She and her friends did that too sometimes. They'd get it nice and soggy, twist it all up, and then bam, lash it across their victim's bare butt like a bullwhip. It hurt like heck and left a welt that took days, if not weeks, to go away. They did it primarily to prove their toughness to each other and to themselves. Truth be told, Lynn hated it. She tried to think of it as a sport and got really competitive about it, but she'd be just as happy if they stopped.

Where was she again? Oh, yeah, losing. Lynn hated to lose. Not just on the field, but off the field as well. She wanted to be the best, period, and in order to be the best, she couldn't be caught slipping, even for a second. If she and her sisters were going to make dinner, for instance, she had to have the best dish. If they were going to clean the house, her area had to be the most immaculate. A lot of people said that Lynn was way too competitive for her own good, and you know, maybe they were right, but that was just how she was. She couldn't change that, and even if she could, she didn't really want to. She liked the way she was just fine, remember?

Her super competitive nature did get her into trouble sometimes, however, and other times, it led to sort of weird situations that she never wished to find herself in. For instance, she once wound up competing in a beauty pageant in the hopes of besting her little sister Lola, who liked to brag that she was the best beauty queen in all the world. Oh, wait, you said best? Yeah, okay, now I have to show you up. Sorry, Lol', I don't make the rules, I'm just a slave to them. Needless to say, she didn't do very well in the pageant. She wasn't pink and girly enough. That day taught Lynn a valuable lesson: You can't take the field with no preparation and expect to instantly win the game. You have to know what you're doing first, and you have to train hard. No matter how good you are, you can totally get out there and make a fool of yourself the way Lynn did.

And being overly competitive, Lynn had made a fool of herself many times. Have you ever heard the phrase "keeping up with the Joneses?" Well, Lynn did that too. She couldn't be left behind while everyone else had nice things. When Margo got an iPhone 12 for her birthday, Lynn went out and got an iPhone 13 just because. The joke was on her, though, because it was some complicated that she couldn't even navigate it, and wound up breaking it by dropping it onto her bed…from a height of, like, two inches. Okay, look, she loved having all that tech in one place, but if you cram so much of it in that your phone becomes too sensitive to even exist, what's the point?

Probably to make more money, but that was none of her business.

Anyway, Lynn was feeling extra competitive when she woke on the rainy morning of October 4. It was football season - also known as autumn - and last night there was one heck of a game on. She went to bed feeling electrified and wanting to play. When she left her room, she threw out her hand and stiff armed the first person she saw, who happened to be Lucy. The littlest goth fell to her butt with a breathless umph and looked up at Lynn through her bangs. "Why did you do that?" she asked flatly.

"Because I wanna use the john first."

"You could have asked me to move," Lucy said, "I don't even have to go, I was just talking to Lana."

"Yeah," Lana said, "that was totally uncalled for. I'm gonna tell Mom and Dad." She started to walk away, but Lynn grabbed her by the back of her overalls and spun her around like a Globetrotter with a basketball. Lana screamed and begged her to stop. Lynn was nice and sat the little girl down. She teetered and tottered like she was drunk, her eyes dazed and her head spinning in a circle.

Lynn got to use the bathroom before either one of them, so she was happy, but she wasn't happy that she had to wait for Lori. Lori didn't play so there was nothing Lynn could do. She might look all weak and womanish, but Lori was secretly a monster. Lynn was shocked by how strong Lori was. Lynn was stronger, of course, but it was better to just leave well enough alone. Lynn used the bathroom, got dressed, and peeked into Lincoln and Johnny's room. Lincoln was dead alseep but Johnny was sitting up with his knees drawn to his chest and a thousand yard stare on his face. Lynn blinked. "You okay?" she asked.

He looked at her with bleary eyes. "I'm fine. I just couldn't sleep."

"Well, I hate to tell you this, but it's time to get up."

He sighed in defeat. "I know."

He got up and shook Lincoln awake. When Lynn was sure that they wouldn't be late, she went downstairs. In the dining room, Lincoln and Johnny's dad was wearing a fake beard, sunglasses, and a wrestling belt over his shoulder. He was dressed in a New York Giants jersey and acted like he was better than everyone else. "Who are you supposed to be?" Lynn asked.

"Bro, I'm a genius, bro. I created the Attitude Era, bro."

Lynn looked at him with a mixture of mockery and pity. She didn't know which emotion was stronger, but it was probably the latter. "You're obsessed with wrestling, you know," Lynn said, "it's not healthy."

"Whatever, mark," he said.

Okay then.

Lynn pouted herself a cup of coffee - black - and ate a sports bar, Lincoln and Johnny were just coming down the stairs as she walked out the door. Johnny looked miserable, but she didn't say anything. He was probably having nightmares about the time she and her sisters beat him to within an inch of his life. Lynn still felt terrible about that. She knew she could be kind of a hothead, but she never realized that she was capable of something like that. She and the others were arrested but let go when Johnny decided not to press charges. She was grateful to him for that, but if she was going to be all the way real, he probably should have. If she were in his shoes, she couldn't guarantee that she would have turned the other cheek.

Johnny was a really great guy, when you got right down to it. Kind of a dork, but great nevertheless.

Hmmm, she should push herself to be a greater guy. Can't let Johnny beat her.

The rain was cold but had tapered off to a light drizzle. Red, yellow, and orange leaves were plastered to the wet sidewalks and a light mist clung to the ground. Lynn liked days like this. The best football games she had ever played were on cold, rainy autumn days. There was nothing quite like running through the mud trying to reach the end zone. It was al slippery and dangerous and made the game extra interesting.

When she reached the middle school fifteen minutes later, a low, L-shaped building with an overhang along the promenade facing the street, she went inside and made her way to the cafeteria, where she found her girls waiting. Polly, Margo, Betty, Bertha, and Cindi the Outfielder. They were all, to a woman, bent over their phones, furiously texting. That was kind of strange, but Lynn didn't think too much of it. "How they hanging, guys?" she asked as she sat.

Margo grunted, Cindi said "Good," and the others ignored her.

"What's got you guys so busy?" Lynn asked.

"We're texting out boyfriends," Polly said.

Lynn did a double take. "Boyfriends?" she asked.

"Yep," Margo said, "we have boyfriends now."

"When did this happen?" Lynn asked.

Apparently, the previous day, while Lynn was stuck at home doing homework, the girls got together for a game of basketball. There was a group of guys at the court and they played a game against each other. They hit it off, and by the time they parted company, they were all boyfriends and girlfriends. Even Bertha had a boyfriend, an older guy from the high school named Chaz. Lynn processed that information for a moment. That meant she was the only one who didn't have a boyfriend.

That could not stand.

Over the course of the day, however, she talked herself out of keeping up with the Joneses. She didn't want a boyfriend, Boys were too much trouble and required too much attention. She didn't feel like giving all her time and energy to some dude, same as she'd always felt. It was all good, she thought, let them have their little boyfriends, no biggie.

Only it was a biggie. Every time Lynn wanted to hang out with her friends, they always brought their boyfriends along. When they played baseball at the park, "the guys" were there. When they went to a high school basketball game, the guys were there. Every activity became a couple's activity and Lynn was more and more aware - uncomfortably so - of her single status. She was the only one who didn't have an opposite number. In essence, she was your classic third wheel. A first that was okay, but after a while, it really started getting to her. She needed a boyfriend of her own. Just to hang out with her friends. How do you like that?

Mind made up, the search was on. Lynn looked high and low, but she didn't really like any boys, at least not like that.

Well, there was one that she kind of liked. Maybe more than kind of. His name was…well…you guys know him, let's just leave it at that. She avoided going to him first because she was a little nervous about what he might say. And where their relationship might lead.

But finally, she sucked it up and went to him, finding him sitting at his computer and watching cat videos. "Hey, Johnny," she said. "How's it going?"

"Alright," he said, "same old same old, you know?"

"I sure do," Lynn said, then cut to the chase. "Look, I have a problem and I need your help."

She told him about her dilemma, and he looked at her funny. "What do you want me to…" he trailed off when realization dawned on him. "Oh, no."

"Oh, yes."

"No."

"C'mon," she begged, "I wanna spend time with my friends. Right now I'm a third wheel and I feel like a total loser."

That must have gotten through to him, for he took a deep breath. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but fine, I'll be your…your…" he tried to spit the word out but couldn't bring himself to do so.

Lynn smiled. "Thanks, John. I knew I could count on you." She gave him a friendly noogie.

He pushed her away. "Yeah, yeah, but let's get one thing clear. I wear the pants in the relationship."

Lynn put her hands on her hips and raised her brow. He nervously chuckled and rubbed the back of his neck. "I mean…when you let me."

Since they were together now, Lynn figured it would be a good idea for them to practice being boyfriend and girlfriend. "You're taking me out for dinner," she said.

Cut to them at a fancy, romantic restaurant with candles and table cloths. Both were clearly uncomfortable and didn't know how to act or what to say, so they sat in silence. "Interesting weather we've been having lately," Johnny said, fidgeting with his fork.

"Yeah," Lynn said, "it's so…weather like."

When they were done eating, Lynn belched and leaned back in her chair. The waiter brought the bill and she pushed it across the table to Johnny. "Why are you giving this to me?" he asked. "I didn't bring any money."

Lynn sat up straight. "What? You didn't bring money? Dude, you're the guy, you're always supposed to pay."

"I thought women got insulted when you paid for them. Like they wanna do it themselves."

The waiter frowned at them and they both flashed nervous smiles. To pay their bill, they had to work the rest of the day in the kitchen, Johnny bringing trays full of plates and silverware back and Lynn washing them. "How romantic," she said sarcastically, "no wonder you're single."

"Hey, you chose me."

She splashed soapy water at him.

The next day, they sat on the couch and tried to hold hands while watching TV. After a minute, however, Lynn yanked away. "Your hand's gross and sweaty."

"You have callouses," Johnny said and grimaced, "it's like holding hands with my dad."

That kind of hurt Lynn's feelings, but she ignored it. You have to be, like, patient and forgiving in relationships. She liked Johnny, she really did, but she was beginning to suspect that she just wasn't ready for a boyfriend. She wasn't gay, she was definitely into boys, it was just…she didn't know. Maybe that part of her hadn't fully matured yet. Maybe she was still stuck in that weird in between phase where boys no longer have cooties, but the idea of being all up on them stick gakked her out.

Saturday, Lynn and Johnny went to the movies with Lynn's friends and their boyfriends. "He's kind of…weird," Bertha whispered to Lynn as they stood in line at the concession stand.

"Yeah, weirdly awesome," Lynn said.

"Well…I guess. He's really buff tho."

They sat in the back, all the happy couples holding hands. Johnny and Lynn each had their own bucket of popcorn and shoveled large scoops into their faces. The movie wound up being a romance, and they both gagged. "I hate these things," Johnny said.

"Me too," Lynn agreed. "It's always some pasty British dude who acts like a giant dork."

"Yeah, and the woman is kind of a b-word who only cares about her career, screw everyone and everything else."

Lynn snorted. "Or it's about her going back to her hometown for Christmas."

"That's, like, a Hallmark movie. She rolls into town thinking she's better than everyone else, then when it's over, she's barefoot and pregnant on a tractor going YEEEEEE-HAAAAAW!"

Everyone in the theater whipped their heads around and shushed Johnny.

"Mob movies are better," Johnny said. "I like the part in GoodFellas where they shoot Joe Pesci in the back of his head for being a psycho." He laughed like a man at a fond memory.

"Never heard of it," Lynn said.

"Really? What about The Godfather?"

Lynn stared at him blankly. "I don't watch religious movies."

"No, it's - nevermind." He sighed and settled back into his seat. Lynn tried to think of something for them to talk about, and it hit her. She brought up Michael Jordan's run with the Chicago Bulls, but Johnny said, "I'm not big into animals."

So there they were, neither of them possessing the same interests and both unable to really talk to and connect with the other. Lynn was young and didn't know much about relationships but that seemed like a bad omen. What kind of relationship can two people have if they can't relate? Yeah, she liked Johnny, but maybe, in the long run, that wasn't enough. There was an old song that Pop Pop liked by some band named after a bug called "Love is all You Need." Well…maybe it isn't. Maybe you need other things too, like common ground.

Those thoughts swirled through Lynn's head for the rest of the day. Sunday, she dragged Johnny into the living room. Her plan was for them to become acquainted with each other's hobbies. To that end, they watched GoodFellas, one of Johnny's favorite movies.

It was long, boring, and not much happened. Except some guy getting high and imagining helicopters were chasing him. Lynn was bored out of her mind and fell asleep while Johnny sat on the edge of his seat. "Oh, Jimmy, you so cray," he said at one point.

Next, they watched a football game. Now it was Johnny's turn to be bored. He drummed his fingers on his knees and looked around the room, beginning to whistle. "Am I boring you?" Lynn snapped.

Johnny's face darkened. "Yes, you are," he retorted. "I'd rather watch wrestling."

"Well go ahead then," Lynn said, "you act like you don't like it but you know everything about it."

"I do not," he said. Just then, his dad walked by, still dressed in his Giants jersey and fake beard.

"Bro," he said.

Johnny rolled his eyes. "Why are you acting like Vince Russo? He -"

Lynn jumped to her feet and shoved her finger at him. "HA! See? You know everything! You're a wrestling fan."

Now Johnny stood up. "Those are fighting words, Lynn."

She shoved him back down by his face. "Don't buck up to me."

"That's domestic violence," Johnny said and popped back up. "I have half a mind to call the police."

Lynn narrowed her eyes. "I got your domestic violence right here." She advanced on him, but Lincoln and Lana managed to get between them.

"Calm down, Lynn," Lana said, "you don't need to go back to jail."

"You okay, Johnny?" Lincoln asked. "Did she hurt you? Do you need a safe place to stay tonight?"

Johnny pushed his brother away. "I'm dumping you," he said to Lynn. "We are over."

"Yes we are," Lynn said.

They both spun on their heels and marched in opposite directions. Lincoln and Lana looked after them for a moment, then Lana grinned. "Johnny's single now," she said. "That means it's my time to shine."

Grinning ear to ear, she went after her man.

Lincoln, for his part, threw up his hands.

This place was a madhouse.

"I WON'T BEAT YOU, JOHNNY, I SWEAR!" Lana cried.

Forget this, he was gonna go hang out with Maggie.

At least Maggie was sane.

"PLEASE, JOHNNY, GIVE ME A CHANCE! PLEEEEEEEEEEASE!"

Lincoln V, out.

Peace.