Cold Weather, Play Warmer

Chapter 9

The next day, Lola was off to a pageant, and Lucy and Lana went to support her. Lisa chose to stay at home, due to reason of HAVING ALREADY TAKEN AND PASSED THE GRE, which meant that she could show me exactly what went down two days after Boxing Day, aka the day the search turned up nothing.

Surveillance cameras showed that Mom and Dad came back with the news that, since the charges were of domestic violence, only Lori can drop them. This...right after Lisa and Lynn concluded their investigation and found that Lori did in fact force the tickets out of my hand. Timing...

"What?" Lisa was the first to feel the outrage, "Oh, of all the moments..."

"Then, that means... we framed him..." Lucy muttered.

"Oh, man, this is the worst..." Lynn was at a loss for thoughts, "I cannot believe we did this to him. After all that talk about futures and we're about to stomp his future into the slammer..."

"I thought it..." Lori was stammering at this point, "I just...You-we never-"

"Maybe now, Lori can unplug from her screen saver and finally fess up to what really happened!" Luna looked like she was losing her mind, "I think I'm turning Japanese with all this drama, and not the good kind!"

"Lori?" Mom got stern all of a sudden, "What happened?"

"I...ok... I elbowed Lincoln so that he would-"

Everyone froze in terror, except Leni, who just walked away.

"Dude, why?!" Lynn lost it, "I already told you, man! Couldn't you just tell him off instead of just ball out?!"

"Dang," Lola commented, "And I thought I had cojones..."

"Not now," Dad said, "Why don't you all leave Lori and Lynn here. We need to talk."

Everyone else left and had an argument of their own.

"Lucy?!" Lana begged, "Your crazy spirit friends had to have seen something! Anything!"

"Yes, they have."

"Nice! What did they see?"

"It wasn't his fault. It wasn't his fault."

"But, why?!" Luna complained, "He trapped you in a room, managed to shred my guitar, and remove Luan's braces! Why did this happen?!"

"Because we were too deep in our own conjoined minds to realize the truth," Lucy said, "We believed what we saw. And that's all we wanted to believe."

"What difference would it make?" Lola interrupted, "If he hadn't made the things, or got those tickets, then maybe we wouldn't be in this mess."

"You're saying this now?" Lana confronted her, "When our brother could be coyote food right now?"

"Well..." then Lola started thinking about everything that happened that year, how I did my best to rebalance everything by giving up my sleep time, "Ok, so maybe we might still be in a mess if he hadn't..."

"Hadn't spent time with us in the summer and fall to make up for lost time in the winter?" Leni suddenly started making sense.

"What?" And Luna started to realize too, "That's...you're just rambling on, aren't..."

"Nope," Leni schooled her, "Designers always try to bring out an emotion. The more they bring out, the more they can tell who's thinking what. And Lincoln was thinking about us the entire time."

"How do you know?!" Lola demanded while Luan ran downstairs.

Lucy appeared behind her, "Those jam sessions. The seances. The London Cemeteries. The Lynn-Sanity Sports Extravaganza. And those playtimes with everyone else. We can't act like they didn't happen."