3.11 Late

"How was prom? You came back pretty late," Olivia observes. 

Lincoln doesn't sense any hostility in her tone, so he gives an honest answer. "Eh, it was pretty boring. I didn't really know anyone so I dipped early and went fishing. I caught a bunch of rainbow trout, we could use it as fertiliser!" 

Olivia expression becomes concerned, "I thought you got along well with your cousins and the Duende's daughter...Tina?" 

"Tammi. Well. She's hot and cold with everyone. She was also doing her own thing at the dance," Lincoln vividly remembers her slapping a girl who "looked longingly" at Tammi's date, who then sided with the other girl. What a mess! "Chandra also left early, I think all the stimuli made her freak out." 

"Oh, right, it was her first dance... strobing lights, with all those colours, they can be overwhelming for a young werewolf," Olivia agrees. She managed not to transform at her own prom, but only because she'd been to several dances before. 

Olivia ends up taking the trout from her son and using it for her garden. 

Some of her plants are old now, though, so she goes out for more seeds. 

Lincoln goes to a friend's house to do homework.

Her older brother from the military makes some vague threats to Lincoln about "keeping his hands off of his sister or else he's gonna get it bad". 

"Your brother seems to think I want to spread my seed around. That's pretty weird," he tells his friend bluntly. 

Tina Broke frowns at her homework. Why is her brother so damn embarrassing? 

"I can't wait 'till he gets shipped off to space," she confides in Lincoln, "He's always so weird about my male friends." 

"I also can't wait to get out of this house. It's so crowded," she adds as her family trickles in. 

Sheesh, all I wanted was to finish this physics project, not get her whole life story, Lincoln thinks to himself. 

"That sucks," he says instead. 

Olivia's hunt for seeds takes her to Riverview's community garden. She pauses to answer a phone call from her father. 

"It's so beautiful here dad," Olivia breathes, in awe of the cherry blossom trees, "We should really come here again." 

Lincoln walks home from his strange classmate's house. 

And makes a pit stop for scrap. 

"You know, I had a chat with your grandpa yesterday, he said there are apprenticeships at the science lab, if you're interested..." 

"I'm alright. The labs here are more focused on ichthyology than ecology, anyways," Lincoln turns down the offer. In any case, his true passions all lie in engineering, not biochemistry or astronomy. There wouldn't really be a place for him in the local science scene. 

"Well, if you change your mind..."

He's pretty sure he won't, he thinks as he enters the school building. He's got it all figured out. 

He's so focused on thoughts about his future that he doesn't notice a new student quietly enter the mix of the other kids. 

Tammi Duende, on the other hand, notices immediately and frowns. Such an attention seeker, she tuts mentally, wearing such childish garb. She must think she's so cool.  

Heather would gladly tell Tammi that she's wearing the panda hat ironically, thank you very much, if she knew she was being sized up. But she sullenly ignores the stares of her new classmates instead, being conscious of the fact that she's fresh meat in a small town. 

Lincoln pays Heather no mind for the time being. He's still intent on showing that he's "not a dork", for whatever reason. 

I think he'd look much cooler windcarving around town in style like his dad, here. 

Evan makes a face like he's about to be photographed for a movie poster. Bigger Explosions 6...In Space! Coming to a theatre near you... 

Lincoln might not have much upper body strength, but he sure has stamina. His jog around town lasts well into the evening. Only cold splatters of rain make him decide to find shelter. 

He makes a detour to V's Flying Coffeehouse to wait out the rain. 

Heather seems to have the same idea. Not wanting to be rude, Lincoln introduces herself. 

"Heather, Heather Rose," she introduces herself, shaking his hand very limply, "You're...Washington, or something right?" 

Lincoln laughs, "No, Lincoln." 

"Are your parents ancient history buffs or something?" 

Lincoln shrugs. "My dad does like to read a lot. But I think he just liked the way the name sounded, honestly. You know why your parents named you Heather?" 

"Not really. I was adopted." 

"Oh..." 

"Ugh, don't make it weird. My life wasn't, like, super tragic or whatever. My bio dad was just bad at the whole parenting thing, and eventually I wound up here with my parents." She's cutting out the heartache, the nights she stayed up wondering why her parents gave her up, the awkwardness of being adopted as an older child and not knowing whether to call her adoptive parents "mom and dad" or their first names, often losing contact with her friends from the schools and families she's been with over the years, and now living halfway across the country from her birth-town. But Lincoln doesn't know that, not yet. 

Lincoln shakes his head, "I didn't mean that. Sorry, let's start over. Where'd you come from, originally?" 

"A tiny port town called Barnacle Bay. And no, I don't wear pirate hats or know how to sail a boat." 

Lincoln laughs, "Aw, and here I was hoping to sail the seven seas with a perfect stranger!" 

Heather frowns, not sure if he's making fun of her or not. "That was a joke, Heather..." 

She smiles at him cautiously. "Well...I don't know how to sail, but I do like ferry rides. Ever been on one?" 

Their hesitant, fragile conversation is instantly shattered when this elderly woman suddenly dies. 

Andy Duende, Tammi's father, picks this exact time to wander out of the restaurant, searching for his wife. Wasn't she just here a second ago...? 

"Oh dear!" he gasps. 

They watch in shocked silence as the woman shakes hands with the reaper and slowly fades away. 

"Well that was depressing as fuck," Lincoln says after a few moments of silence, as callous as only a flippant teenager can be.

This earns a genuine smile from Heather. "You said it. You know what, you're alright. Wanna hang out sometime?" 

Lincoln shrugs, "Sure. Just add me on Simstagram and hit me up whenever." 

And so a beautiful friendship is born.  

When Lincoln comes home, he finds that his parents have remodeled the kitchen and living room into this garish nightmare. 

The idea, which sounded so nice in theory, was to combine their favourite colours- green, purple, and orange. In practice, it makes Lincoln want to puke. 

Evan's main focus in the kitchen is the glitchy food synthesiser. Why is all the food it produces cold and bland? 

He manages to get it to replicate some lukewarm food. That's some kind of progress, isn't it? 

Olivia seems to think so. 

The next morning sees Evan going on a search of his own. 

The observatory is always on the lookout for meteorites. He knows it's because space rocks attract extra-terrestrial activity. For whatever reason, despite various peace treaties and agreements, scouts from the planet Sixam keep on abducting random citizens in possession of space rocks. Evan now understands why the government was so eager to take the meteor that nearly destroyed his house into its possession all those years ago- can't have aliens abducting random people! 

Heather invites Lincoln over to do homework together at her place. He finds himself helping her through the particularly arduous calculus they're expected to do while she tells him about her favourite TV shows. 

"Ever watch Panicked Homemakers?" 

"Ew, you watch that trash?" 

Heather frowns, "Call it whatever you want, it's entertaining." 

"It's vapid." 

"It's engaging. I bet you think you're soooo much cooler than other people because you watch overly complicated sci-fi." 

"Well, it does require a high IQ-" 

Heather's loud, derisive laugh cuts him off, "Oh boy. You're such a meme." 

Lincoln laughs, not offended. "Well, it's true. Sci-fi expands our horizons-" 

"Pft, like you've ever left this tiny backwater town. What horizons?" 

"Touché." 

The conversation turns to Heather's new family. 

"You have any siblings?" 

"No, thank the maker. But Mark and Crystal will definitely have some soon. They're super into this whole parenting thing." 

"Is that a bad thing?" 

"I guess not. Of course, I'm happy they took me in. But they're both pretty young- like, only about 12 years older than I am. I want to travel before settling down." 

"Where do you want to go?" 

"Well, overseas someday. I want to see what Al Simahara's like. I've never been to a desert. Barnacle Bay's surrounded by water, you know. Ocean everywhere you look. I want to know what the opposite's like. But I wanna see what some places closer by are like, too. Bridgeport sounds cool, the clubs, the vampires..." 

She clears her throat. "I hope you don't think that's lame, or whatever..." she's been teased about her lofty ambitions before... 

"No, it sounds pretty cool actually. I've never thought much about travelling myself. But I heard that this town called Midnight Hollow has the country's biggest toy factory. Would be neat to travel there." 

"Toys?" Heather's face curls into disgust. 

"Not for me. But I make a lot of them. I hope to be an inventor after graduation. A lot of that involves manufacturing toys." 

Her expression lightens, "Oh neat..." 

They blow off the rest of their homework in favour of ghost stories. Heather thinks that this is all awfully childish, but she has to admit... 

The story isn't half-bad. 

"This happened to my dad's uncle Igor. He bought a boat a long time ago, from a black-market in Redwood Harbor. The boat was suspiciously cheap, but he didn't think much of it..." 

"One night, when he was in the middle of the ocean, all alone except for the sound of the waves gently hitting the hull, he heard the voice... beautiful singing. Take me away from this awful place, free me, cast me to the seas," his rusty singing causes Heather to giggle, "When he stepped out onto the deck, no one was there, but, in front of his cabin door, was a single seashell..." 

Lincoln finishes the story with the dramatic reveal that the voice was of a dead mermaid, her soul endlessly searching for the right sim to free her from her curse. Heather flinches when Lincoln flicks the lights back on. 

Her parents, Mark and Crystal, are at a business dinner, leaving Heather unsupervised. 

"I dare you to break curfew with me," Lincoln challenges. He doesn't want the evening to end, but doubts his ability to entertain Heather with just conversation for much longer. 

"Let's go, rock paper scissors." 

Lincoln wins, though he suspects Heather would have joined him even if he'd lost the game. 

Naturally the only place there is to go is Mick's Karaoke. Not feeling up to singing, Lincoln and Heather set up a game of pool. 

Lincoln spends more time looking cool than actually paying attention to the game. It's not very complex geometry, anyways... 

When his dad texts him, asking where he is, he writes a short reply. Hanging out with a friend from school. Will be home late. 

The hour grows later. They decide to wrap up the evening with some funny photo-booth pictures. 

"Shoot, my parents are on their way home. Gotta go. This was fun!" Heather calls out as she dashes down the stairs. 

When Lincoln gets home, he's exhausted. Thankfully his parents are asleep, or else he expects that he'd get a lecture about being out so late on a school night. 

Still, he had a fun time. He texts Heather that he's home, and gets a short reply back. 

Let's hang out again sometime. 

He smiles.

---------------------------------------------------------------

AN: Heather is a slightly edited version of Feather Libros from Becky's Archers of Barnacle Bay blog! I gave her a different name and personality and obviously a pretty different life-story, but I kept some details about her life the same (criminal father, born in Barnacle Bay). Her traits here are: 

-Adventurous

-Party animal

-Dislikes children

-Couch potato 

I gave her dislikes children in honour of Holly Crosby (who had the trait herself), my initial pick for Lincoln's high school girlfriend. 

Her adoptive parents are only at the beginning of their YA stage so they're not really old enough to be her parents! They'll show up in some later chapters.