Lynn Loud Jr. had met every challenge life had thrown at her with dogged determination and a will to succeed. She faced down the toughest opponents in the most grueling games, meets, and matches, and almost always came out on top. She tackled the best and brightest across a dozen sports and held her own. She finished a football game in ninth grade despite a twisted ankle; she played power forward during the state basketball championship while sick with the flu; she never let anything get her down and no matter how bad the going got, she never, ever gave up. Her motto was suck it up and power through, and unlike a lot of people, she actually practiced what she preached. Life was like a game, and in order to win, you have to push yourself even when you've got nothing left. The other team won't take it easy on you just because you're tired, or sore, or sick, or preoccupied. There is no safe space on the field, you either give it your all or you let yourself lose.

In her long and illustrious career, she had lost many times, but she was assured in the fact that it was never because she let herself lose. She may not have been 100 percent, but she gave 100 percent anyway. Sometimes you're best isn't good enough, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try your best. When you're put into a given situation, you rise to the occasion, no ifs, ands, or buts. For her, it didn't matter if she was practicing by herself in the backyard or playing in front of a thousand people, she gave it everything she had, and if that wasn't enough, she tried her damnedest to give it more.

At eighteen, she was set in her ways, her philosophy codified and strengthened by years of experience and vindication: She had put her outlook into action in every arena of life and it had always come through for her. She woke early in the morning, jogged around the neighborhood, and kept active throughout the day. In the evening, she did her homework with the same resolve and thirst for excellence that she brought to the field, then ate a light dinner, showered, and went to bed before ten. A good night's sleep is an athlete's best friend, and even on the weekends and in the summertime, she never stayed up too late. Early to bed and early to rise makes a girl healthy, wealthy, and wise.

She was confident in her ability to handle whatever came along and trusted herself entirely. If and when she came up against a challenge, she would wrestle it into submission and get the W like she always did.

This, though, this was different. She stood on the threshold of a brand new chapter, a young bird taking its first fight into the great blue unknown. Up until now, her story had been tightly plotted and the narrative framework always present, shoring up her life like a network of wooden beams holding back the earthen walls of a mineshaft. Now, nearing the final word of the final line of the final paragraph, it was beginning to sink in that the pages ahead were blank, hers to write, craft, build, and plot.

Lynn liked to think she could adapt to any situation. She played every sport, worked every muscle, and mentally prepared herself for any eventuality because like the guy in that movie said: Life is like a box of chocolates...you never know what you're gonna get. As she careened toward the second act of her life, however, she began to doubt herself. All through her teen years, she bounded through her day bursting with bravado, ten feet and bulletproof (as Pop-Pop might say). She could win any fight, surmount any obstacle - she was the biggest, the baddest, and the best all rolled into one perfect, ponytailed package. She was smart, fast, and unbreakable. Other girls tore their ACLs and broke their ankles, but not her. Pfft. Seriously? I'm Lynn freakin' Loud Jr., the best that's ever been and the best that ever will be. Booo to the yah. Somewhere around third base, with HOME in view, a very sober and very startling revelation hit her in the face like a soccer ball.

She wasn't.

She wasn't the strongest, she wasn't the biggest, and she most certainly wasn't the best.

That realization didn't happen all at once - it crept in by degrees. There was no catalyst, no rock bottom moment, no dramatic injury that snapped her awake, her head just gradually worked its way out of her ass and she saw the light, faint at first, then blinding. Whoa, my eyes! The final blow, the one that really jarred it loose, came when a college recruiter from Duke approached her after a basketball game last November. A youngish, good looking man in tan slacks and a white polo shirt, he handed her a brochure and told her that Duke would just looooove having her on their women's basketball team. Lynn took his pamphlet, said she'd think about it, then hit the showers.

The seed had been planted and over time it sprouted.

Soon...she'd be going to college.

Now, getting into a good school had always been a part of Lynn's plan, but college was a vague and indistinct concept, a teeny tiny little blip so far on the horizon that she could barely see it, even when she squinted. She took her eyes off the ball because hey, it's way over there. After her encounter with the recruiter from Duke, she saw that, holy shit, it wasn't so far away anymore, it was right freaking there and hurtling toward her like a bullet. In a few months' time, she'd walk across a spot-lit stage, accept her diploma, and walk off into the Great Unknown...AKA adulthood. Everything up to that point was charted and structured, a safe, sheltered harbor. Everything beyond that point? You know those old, yellowed maps where oceans were marked HERE THERE BE MONSTERS because no one knew what was out there?

Yeah.

That.

When you're a kid, you have everything provided for you. Your mom and dad feed you, buy you clothes, take you to practice; they bolster you when you're down, take care of you when you're sick. The burden of responsibility falls entirely on them. Being a child...it's like riding a bike with training wheels. But adulthood...adulthood was a Big Girl bike. There would be no one to prop her up if she fell, no one to turn to when things got rough, the buck would stop with her, and just thinking about it made her feel like the world was pushing down on her chest.

To Lynn Loud, as to everyone under a certain age, being a grown-up had always seemed awesome. You get to make your own way in the world and no one can tell you anything. If you want pizza for breakfast, jack, you're having pizza; if you wanna stay up all night and binge watch cool action movies, who's gonna say no? Your mom?

A lot of things look good on paper, though. When something is firmly in the far-flung future and not right now, it often looks more enticing. From a distance, you don't see the warts. Through the autumn of her senior year in high school, Lynn was able to take a good, long look at adulthood, and it kind of scared her. What if she failed? What if she wasn't the star athlete she thought she was and didn't go pro? She could probably make a college team, but let's face it: That's where a lot of players stop. There are hundreds, thousands, of good quarterbacks, point guards, and pole vaulters out there, and while many of them are a big deal in the little towns they come from, they're not good enough to sign to a team or participate in the Olympics. For every Tom Brady or Usain Bolt, there are countless nobodies who peak in school, then wind up selling insurance over the phone or running a used car lot.

All her life, she was certain that she would fall into the 0.1 percent of athletes who go big, but once the chip was knocked from her shoulder, it dawned on her that hat her chances of landing in the other camp, the has-beens whose hopes and dreams turned to ash and soot, were much, much, much higher.

She was in a bad place mentally and emotionally, and around the beginning of the new year - the real home stretch - she took her own advice, sucked it up, and powered through. What else could she do? Mope? Worry? That wasn't the Lynn Loud she wanted to be, so she resolved to be better. She could cry into her Gatorade later, right now, she needed to focus on her grades, picking the best college, and deciding what to major in.

That last one had never been a serious consideration (why would it be? She was going pro, baby!) but all of a sudden, it was; if she didn't make a career out of sports, she needed something to fall back on. Something that would afford her a decent living...but also something she enjoyed. Engineers and computer nerds make bank, but while she could probably learn either trade if she set her mind to it, neither one interested her.

And that's when she hit her first major roadblock: Nothing interested her. Not teaching, not science, not nursing, not mechanics. Police work kind of did, and there was always the military, but when she tried to picture herself in camo or wearing a badge, she couldn't. Sure, both were cool lines of work, but they weren't really her.

There was only one thing she loved, one overriding passion, and that was sports. She was never as happy anywhere as she was on a field or court. She loved running, jumping, twisting, tackling, and being tackled; she loved the feeling of the turf beneath her cleats and the excited din of the crowd; she loved running drills on cold autumn mornings and playing hard on hot summer afternoons; she loved it all, even the musky scent of the locker room. Sports was her life and if she couldn't play it, she wanted to be involved somehow, as a coach maybe or a general manager...something, anything, just as long as it kept her doing what she loved...and what she knew.

But...wasn't that taking the easy way out? She was Lynn Loud, taker of every challenge, picker upper of all the gauntlets. She had never been content to play it safe. What does that get you? If you want to get ahead, you have to take risks. Doing something with sports would like replaying a video game tutorial because you know you can beat it. The rest of the levels are jam-packed with awesome stuff, but you miss out on all of it because you're overcautious and unwilling to take any chances.

That wasn't her nature, but then again, her life was rapidly changing. It was like going from T-ball to baseball ball. Adulthood was a totally different animal; the same rules did not apply.

While that was true, she didn't allow herself to dwell on it much. She didn't have to pick a major until next fall, so why beat herself up over it? In the meantime, she had another decision to make, perhaps an even bigger one.

Which college should she go to?

In addition to Duke, she applied to four other schools across the country: UCLA, Mary Washington University in Virginia, WVU in West Virginia, and Florida State.

She was accepted to all.

Picking one proved more difficult than she thought it would be. Duke was the obvious choice for its storied basketball program, but it was really far from home. All of them were. She didn't take distance into consideration when she started applying, and now she regretted it. Being close to home wasn't important to her at first, but the more she agonized (and despite her best efforts, that's exactly what she wound up doing), the more being away from her family bothered her.

It's natural to cling to a little piece of the familiar when everything is changing around you. You can't be stuck up your family's ass forever, but was there anything wrong with wanting to be close to where you grew up? To your parents...where you're loved and accepted no matter what? That was mushy-gushy-corny, but it was true.

Then again, all of her older sisters went off to start their lives and they were just fine. Lori was in school in Boston, Leni was in Chicago, Luna was in Seattle, and Luan was in Wyoming at the nation's most esteemed clown college.

Each one had left the shelter of 1216 Franklin Avenue and embarked on their own path. And so far, they were all well-adjusted. They had jobs, lives, boyfriends, and didn't call Mom and Dad every five minutes because they were homesick. If those jokers could do it - if Leni could do it - then so could she.

Her old stubbornness reasserted itself and she considered picking the college farthest away just to prove a point.

That would be FSU in Tallahassee: From her front door to the campus was 1,035 miles. If she went there, there'd be no way she could play the homesick card; travelling a thousand miles isn't exactly easy, you know, and it sure isn't cheap. She could pick something closer, but her mind was made up, and in late March, she went with FSU.

To say she was nervous would be a gross understatement, but she was also kind of excited, manly because, hello, it's Florida. It's basically summer year round and there were beaches pretty much everywhere. In Royal Woods, the only place to swim besides the cramped and smelly public pool was the river, and that wasn't very deep.

FSU's basketball program wasn't the best, but that didn't matter as much as it may have at the beginning of the fall. She had to get practical here and start thinking beyond the count. She needed a clear and viable game plan, and putting all of her eggs in the basketball basket seemed kind of foolish. No, no, it didn't seem foolish, it was foolish. Statistically speaking, she had a very small chance of making the big time, even if she gave it all, so it would be prudent to focus on something else. At least in conjunction with sports.

When you get right down to it, though, those slots on all the pro teams had to go to somebody, didn't they? Why not her? She could balance school and sports. She could get a good major and do her best on the court. That way, she'd have double the chances of blowing up. *Taps forehead* That's me, always thinking.

That was walking a really fine line, though. If she put too much emphasis on sports, her grades might suffer. If she put too much focus on academics, her performance would falter. She was sure she could pull it off, though; it's not like she had a choice. Adulthood - from the outside looking in - was a complex juggling act, and the moment you stopped for even a second, it all came crashing down on your head. Therefore, once you start to adult, you can never stop, no matter how tough the going gets. Just look at her parents. They raised eleven kids. Money was always tight and there was never much of anything to go around, but they sucked it up, powered through, and got it done. They did whatever was necessary to keep those balls in the air, and they never dropped any. That made them both MVPs in Lynn's eyes. She may not have appreciated their grueling determination and self-sacrifice before, but she did now. Honestly, she was really downright impressed and she made sure to show Mom and Dad her gratitude by doing extra chores.

Okay, by promising to do extra chores but never getting around to them

C'mon, it's the thought that counts.

Anyway, Lynn did a lot of thinking and soul searching, picked her college, then did more thinking and soul searching. By mid-April, she had come to terms with the idea of being an adult and living far from home. There was one itty bitty exception to that, though, one that blindsided her out of nowhere like a 350 pound lineman.

She was going to miss Lincoln.

A lot.

Growing up with ten siblings, it's kind of hard to establish a really close bond with one over the other. They're this huge monolith - The Siblings - and separating one from the pack for quality one on one time isn't the easiest thing to do. It's not even something most people would think to do. Lynn didn't. Add to that everyone's unique and clashing interests, and you have eleven totally different people with totally different tastes, likes, and wants. When everyone's personality conflicts and contrasts with everyone else's, you wind up with no one being particularly close. Luan and Luna were only a year apart and shared a room their entire lives, for example, but they weren't besties. Oh, they shared a good sisterly connection, but one had her head up Mick Swagger's butt and the other had her head up Mr. Coconuts' butt. If they didn't live under the same roof...if they weren't related...Lynn seriously doubted they would be friends.

The same could be said of her, Lynn, and Lola. Lola was a pretty princess who went to pieces everytime she broke a nail. Lynn, on the other hand, didn't know jackshit about fashion or make-up, had never even worn it. As for pink, Lola's favorite color: Gag. Lynn would rather wear a freaking swastika armband than pink.

They couldn't be more opposite, but they loved each other.

It was different with Lincoln.

Though she couldn't say exactly how.

Lincoln was, let's face it, a geek. He played video games, read comic books, and thought gay-ass fantasy movies were cool. His arms, even now, at sixteen, were limp and noodily, and he had the perplexing (and eyeroll inducing) ability to sit still and and read. Not just comics, actual books...with nothing but words! Lynn read when she had to, but it wasn't something she did for fun: If she tried, she'd get restless and start fidgeting five minutes in. Her foot would shake, her neck would roll, and her butt would shift from one side to the other like a dog wiping itself on the carpet. Give it ten, and she'd be outside playing football.

That's to say, she and Lincoln didn't have all that much in common, but she spent far more time with him than she did with any of her sisters. You can't play ball by yourself, and the only one who'd humor her was Lincoln. Sure, she had to pressure him a little (usually by insulting his masculinity and teasing him about being made of soy), but that was beside the point. Any time she needed a sparring partner, Lincoln was there for her, like a true bro.

And when you really got down to it, they were more alike than they weren't: Both were competitive, both were competent statagitions (you have to be if you want to play team sports), and...well, that was pretty much it.

Maybe they didn't have all that much in common, but she had always been closest to him anyway, so much so that if she had a problem or just needed to vent, she'd go to him if she went to anybody.

She tried not to make a habit of doing that, but sometimes the pressures of life got to her and she needed someone to talk to.

Like that time in tenth grade when her world came crashing down around her.

Okay, it wasn't that bad, but it was bad enough. That fall, she was elected captain of the basketball team, a position she thought would be a cakewalk but wasn't. She got so caught up in mediating fights, coming up with plays, overseeing practice drills, and trying her hardest to get her team to the state championship that she let her grades slip. The principal told her that if she didn't bring them up, she'd be cut from the team, so now she was doing all the same stuff she was before while also cramming her head with three subjects worth of study. She got up early, went to bed late, barely slept, hardly ate; every day she felt like she was in over her head and drowning, and before long, she started to crack.

Then Francisco, her boyfriend since freshman year, broke up with her.

For Polly Pain.

And then, to top it all off, her team lost in the semi-finals and didn't get to go to state. All of her blood, sweat, and tears, all of those late nights and early mornings, all of it meant nothing. She pushed herself to the brink, and in the end, she and her team lost and they went back home with their tails tucked between their legs.

To make a long, messy story short, Lynn sought out Lincoln one evening to ask if she could use his laptop (hers was frozen). He was sitting up in bed doing his homework by lamplight, and for whatever reason, the stress and anguish that had been building up inside of her for months picked that moment to spill out of her. One minute she was standing in the doorway, the next she was sitting on the edge of the bed and crying hysterically into her hands. After a shocked moment, Lincoln scooted over until he was beside her, then stiffly patted her shoulder, as though the source of her misery were contagious and he was deathly afraid of catching it. There, there, he fumbled, it'll be okay.

No it won't, she moaned.

Sure it will, he said. Then: What, uh, what is it?

She broke down and told him everything. By the end of it, her tears had tapered off and she felt hollow, like a pumpkin whose guts had been ripped out. The look of sympathy on Lincoln's face brought a flush of shame to her cheeks. He did his best to comfort her, but he was out of his element: He didn't know the stress and rigors of balancing school and sports, and he certainly didn't know anything about relationships. He kinda-sorta dated Ronnie Anne before she moved to the city, but as far as Lynn knew, there hadn't been anyone else since.

That didn't matter in the end, though, she didn't need advice, just consolation, and he gave it willingly and without hesitation. Or at least much hesitation. None of the others did that. Not Leni, not Luna, not Luan; they could never make time for her, but Lincoln always did and that counted for a lot in Lynn's book.

Going forward, she wouldn't have that, and it bothered her. A lot more than it should have, perhaps. She went back over every memory she had made with Lincoln, and realized there were more than she could count. They played together, laughed together, argued together. For a couple nights she slept in his room after her and Lucy got into it, and another time she spent a whole weekend teaching him how to play football - they had made so many snapshot moments that naming and categorizing all of them was impossible. She didn't have that with the others. She would miss them the way she missed Lori and Leni, but leaving Lincoln would be almost like leaving a piece of herself.

That bummed her out, but, hey, it goes with the territory. Like she said, you can't be joined to your family's hip forever. You have to spread your wings and fly away from the nest. No normal person spends their entire life living at home because they can't bear the thought of not having mommy, daddy, brother, and sister around. She was going to miss them, Lincoln most of all, but once she got her feet under her in Florida, she'd get a grip. You can't be homesick when you're busy playing basketball, studying, working a part time job for spending money, and dating.

Heh.

Dating.

Maybe she wasn't ready for that yet. See, she'd known Francisco since she was a kid and she really liked him. He was so much like her - tough, driven, competitive - and their friendship quickly blossomed into something more. They shared their first kiss when they were fourteen and went to second base the summer before he broke it off; he touched her and she touched him, and had they stayed together, they probably would have given each other their virginities. Finding people she could connect so well with wasn't easy, and that made him even more special...and her feelings for him even stronger. Did she love him? She thought she did. She thought about him all the time, yearned to be with him when they were apart, and fluttered every time he was near. Was that love? If so, then yes.

Regardless of what heading her emotions fell under what he did hurt, and she was in no hurry to let anyone else into her heart.

If she met the right guy, that would change, but, in all honesty, she didn't even know what constituted right anymore. She used to think she wanted someone who liked all the same things she did, a guy who could play every sport, never gave up, and pushed himself each and every day to be better than he was the day before, but now she wasn't so sure. Her entire life, heart, and head were in upheaval and she was questioning everything she thought she knew about herself. Was she really the best? Was she ready to grow up? Did she really want a boyfriend who was nothing more but a gender swapped her? The traits she looked for in a guy were kind of superficial, weren't they?

Maybe that wasn't the best word - she was a jock, not a wordy and pretentious writer. What she meant was: What she once thought she valued in a guy didn't seem all that important in the grand scheme of things and she was starting to wonder if she wasn't focusing on the wrong traits. Like a love of sports. She had never, ever, seen herself with someone who didn't love sports as much as she did. She didn't outright make it a rule that her boyfriend had to be into it, but it was, like, an unspoken byline or something. Here, on the edge of childhood and staring apprehensively into the yawning abyss of adulthood, that wasn't as big a deal as it once was.

But if she took that out of the equation, what was left? Rather: If she didn't want Mr. Sports, what did she want?

She searched her heart and came up with the perfect composite. Her ideal man would be caring, loving, and kind, someone she could lean on, someone who wouldn't stand in front of her or behind her, but always at her side, a true partner in life. He would be loyal and reliable. She didn't need him to be handsome or a sports fanatic, she just needed to know that she could count on him and that no matter what came, he would have her back, just as she would have his. His looks, his passions, all of those things that make a person unique, were beside the point. He could be a suave centerfield like Francisco, or he could be a stringy nerd like Lincoln.

Actually, Lincoln was the perfect example of what she wanted in a guy. Every time she needed him, he came through for her. Sure, he wasn't perfect, but no one is, not even her. She and Lincoln didn't have common ground in matters of taste, but taste doesn't matter. What kind of music someone listens to or what they watch on TV is totally insignificant. What does matter is the contents of their heart and their character, and the contents of Lincoln's heart and character were both primo. She'd be damn lucky if she could find a guy as good as him.

Seriously, how was he still single? She'd seen his female friends, it's not like they were out of his league or anything. That Stella girl was a big, goofy, gangly dork, surely she must have noticed Lincoln at some point.

And maybe she had. Who knew? Lynn didn't pry into her brother's love life. Well...not since what happened with Ronnie Anne. He didn't say anything about having a girlfriend and she took him at face value, but maybe he kept it to himself for fear everyone would freak out and start meddling again. He did hang out with a lot of girls, so maybe he was a total stud. That really wasn't her business, she just couldn't see why he wouldn't have a girlfriend. Guys like Linc are rare, and if you meet one, you snap him up. And if some other girl gets in your way, knock her out and take him for yourself. What, weren't they attracted to him? He was...okay. Like, you know, he wasn't hideously ugly. It's kind of hard to judge your brother's hotness because he's your brother, but taking a step back and looking at him objectively, yeah, he was okay. Not handsome or sexy but...kind of cute in a boyish sort of way. With his overbite and cowlick, he put her in mind of a rabbit, and even a tough jock like her could admit that rabbits were adorable.

Lincoln being cute or the perfect archetype was irrelevant, though. In late April, she firmly settled on FSU. In late August, Mom and Dad would drive her down, help her move into her dorm, and then leave her to stand on her own, like a mama bird letting its baby fly for the first time. That left her with four months - four months to prepare, four months to steel her resolve, four months to make the most of what little time she had left with her family.

Especially her awesome little bro.

And that's exactly what she planned to do.