Ladd's in Love

On a bright, breezy spring morning, Ladd Loud stepped out of his house on Royal Woods’ fashionable Upper North Side and took a deep, savoring breath. A tall boy with sandy blonde hair gelled and neatly combed back from his broad forehead, Ladd wore white tennis shorts, a lime green Izod polo shirt, and white Nikes; with his clear, perpetually half-lidded eyes staring always down his narrow nose, his high cheekbones, and his square jaw, he was the picture of high class breeding, an image that he worked diligently to effect.

Laying a tennis racket against one shoulder, he basked in the sunlight like a royal in the effusive praise of the rabble. It was May, the trees were budding, the sun was warm...and love was in the air.

“I’ll be back,” he called over his shoulder in a posh accent. He pulled the door closed, tumbled down the stairs, and crossed the sloping lawn to the cobblestone sidewalk. Wide, expensive brick houses with horseshoe drives boasting Jags and Bentleys, marble fountains, and well manicured lawns lined Rosemont Drive in either direction; a Hispanic, probably illegal, worked in a yonder garden, and a man in pale yellow shorts and a blue T-shirt washed the windshield of a Caddy.

Feeling light and gay, Ladd whistled as he walked, his racket absent twirling in his hand. He was an exceptionally good player and took it everywhere he went, for one never knows what might need a good whack along the way: A loose nail, perhaps, or a door stuck in its frame...or an errant head. Ladd had administered many beatings with the racket, but only to uppity townies who deserved it: Some people tended to forget their station and needed to be pushed back down again.

Unfortunately, he was related to many of those, as his father was well-travelled - the man sank himself into any bimbo he could get his grubby little hands on and always seemed to fill them with one of his bastard offspring. He knew of five brothers and at least fifteen sisters...and he detested all of them. He wasn’t too fond of the old man himself, and was glad when his mother left him and married Chuck Spenser. Chuck was a man Ladd could relate to: He ran a Fortune 500 company and turned everything he touched to gold, whereas Lincoln Loud turned everything he touched into a child support payment.

Ladd rarely visited his cousins (so called because he simply couldn’t bring himself to associate closely enough with them to call them siblings), but today he required assistance that only one of them could render, and was thus burdened with the unenviable task of wading into the squalor of 1216 Franklin. Often when he stopped by, he would find his cousins engaged in remedial pursuits, and the loathing he felt in their presence was so great that he shook by the time he left. They were dirty, undereducated, and destined for bright futures in low level retail...if they were lucky.

Twenty minutes after setting out, Ladd arrived at his father’s house, a ramshackle tumbledown with peeling shingles, flaking paint, and a sagging front porch that groaned ominously in the wind. The unkempt lawn was scattered with riding toys, balls, debris, and other miscelania he could only guess at. Swallowing his pride and hoping to God no one from the academy saw him, he hurried up the porch and knocked on the door. Warm wind blew through metal chimes, producing a melodic tinkle, and Ladd sneered at the stench emanating from the structure’s very walls: Stale cigarette smoke courtesy of cousin Lupa; dirty feet; old cooking odors; pet mess; and the musk of unwashed bodies festering in equally unwashed clothing. Thirty people lived here, crammed into six bedrooms like Mexicans in a coyote’s trunk; they ranged in age from fifteen months to forty-five years, and each of them to a one had the most unutterably deplorable sanitary habits. Some of the younger ones, lead by Lizy the Brat, yanked down their pants and went where they stood, while some of the older ones did...things...to each other and never bothered to launder their sheets. Lemy and Marla were, last he knew, something of a couple, while Lyle and Bobby Junior took turns on each other’s asses like the faggots they were. Ladd was unshakably certain that if one were to take a blacklight to the inside of this...dwelling...they would find the place unlivable by normal standards.

The Loud family, however, was anything but normal. Many of the children behind that door were born of incest, as, regrettably, was Ladd himself. He, however, was fortunate to escape the despicable fate which befell the rest of them, and he delighted in watching them flounder in poverty from his ivory tower. How’s the water down there, old chaps? Is it filling your lungs yet? No? Pity.

For his part, he was going to be a doctor one day...or perhaps a lawyer; he’d decide once he got to Harvard. Either way, he’d enjoy a standard of living that his yokel cousins could only dream of, and he would take every opportunity to rub their faces in his success.

Ladd knocked again, harder this time, growing impatient at being forced to wait, and, momentarily, the door opened. Lemy, clad in an olive green vest over his naked chest, filled the frame, his hair a knotted mess and his eyes bleary as if with sleep. It wouldn’t surprise Ladd if the little cretin was napping already; steeling scrap metal all night and smoking pot with Drew the drunk takes so much out of a man.

Putting on his biggest, fakest smile, Ladd said, “Cousin Lemy, what a pleasure.”

Lemy sighed and hung his head in dejection, and Ladd’s smile fell into a distasteful frown. Little toad ought to thank him giving him the time of day. Leaning forward, Ladd stole a look around the living room.

No one else was about.

Perfect.

Shooting his hand out, he slammed his palm into Lemy’s forehead and drove him back, then entered. “Out of my way, peaon,” Ladd hissed through his teeth. “Your better has arrived.” He was annoyed with having to be here in the first place and with the tepid greeting, and the mask of civility was off.

Quickly recovering, Lemy blocked Ladd’s path, his shoulders squared and his hands balled into fists. The boy was a scrapper, Ladd would give him that...too bad he couldn’t back it up. “You think you’re better than me because your mother has a little bit of money,” Lemy growled.

“No,” Ladd explained with strained patience, “I think I’m better than you because I don’t look like a stray dog someone let in from the rain.” He jabbed his index finger into Lemy’s forehead, and the younger boy winced. “I also don’t wear a cheap, dimestore headband with a poorly drawn cow skull on the front.”

Lemy’s face darkened. “Your face is poorly drawn.”

Ladd’s lips pulled away from his perfect teeth in a sharp smile. He loomed over Lemy, and the younger boy faltered. “That’s not what your mother says.”

Lemy jaw clenched. It was true - Luna fawned on her nephew. You’re the cutest little dude around, she said and pinched his cheek. Ladd relished the attention...especially when he knew Lemy was watching with slitted envy eyes. Ladd suspected the boy carried a flame for her...his own mother. Disgusting.

“Screw you,” Lemy snarled.

That was it; Ladd was growing tired of the game. Flashing, he jammed the racket into Lemy’s stomach and pushed him aside; he fell against the back of the couch and landed in a heap on the floor with a breathless umph. “Pathetic,” Ladd spat.

Lemy glared up at him. “Fucker.”

“Indeed,” Ladd said. He turned away from the welp and climbed the stairs, the racket resting in the crook of his neck. At a closed door, he smoothed his hair back, stood up straight, and puffed out his chest. He knocked, and an airy voice called for him to enter. He turned the knob and slipped in, clicking the door closed behind him. Leia, dressed in a skirt and sweater vest, sat at her vanity, staring into the looking glass and brushing her silky blonde hair. She turned her head, and the light in her eyes dimmed.

“Oh,” she said with evident disdain. “It’s you.”

Leia and her mother Lola were what one might call posers - they put on airs and pretensions, but had no substance under their glitz. Lola’s hair was always done and her nails freshly manicured, yet she had scarcely a penny to her name. Leia attended the same preparatory school he did, and she made it a point to strut down the halls with her nose up as though she didn’t wear Salvation Army castoffs in her free time. Ladd suspected that his mother had been paying her tuition this whole time - like the pitiable charity case she was - and it took everything he had in him to not knock her down a few pegs when he saw her hobnobbing with her betters at lunch...as though she were one of them.

That’s not to say their relationship did not run deeper than that...it did...three to four inches, to be exact.

The depth of the average vagina, that is. Not that you’d know that bit of information. You’ve probably never even seen one in real life, let alone touched it.

“Leia,” Ladd cried happily and walked over, “you look simply stunning today.”

Sighing deeply, Leia ran the brush through her hair in quick, violent strokes. Scratch, scratch. The sweet scent of her shampoo filled Ladd’s nose and the corners of his mouth turned slightly up. “You want something. What?”

“Now see here,” Ladd said, “I simply came to pay my favorite cousin an innocent Sunday visit. Why would you think I have ulterior motives?”

Scratch, scratch. “Because you do.”

He could say a lot about Leia, but he could never accuse her of not knowing him. “Actually,” he said and bent over her shoulder, one hand splaying on the vanity, “now that you mention it, I do have a...very small...proposition for you...if you’ll take it, that is.” In the mirror, Leia’s crystalline eyes narrowed and her nose wrinkled as if hrranaged by a foul smell. Ladd leaned in until his face hovered inches from her hair, and drew a deep whiff of her fragrance.

“What?” she asked tightly.

Standing to his full height, Ladd looked down at her. Like he did everyone. “I...here, let me sit.” He went to the foot of Leia’s bed and sat down, his hands coming to rest daintily in his lap. Leia twisted in her chair and crossed her arms and legs. She glowered expectantly, and the agitation in her stormy eyes made him grin.

Then he got down to business. “That girl I’ve seen you with on occasion. Who is she? The fetching one? I’ve taken a liking to her.”

Leia’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What girl? Gwen?”

Now it was Ladd’s turn to wrinkle his nose. “The one who looks like cousin Lupa and acts just like you? No. I find her thoroughly unattractive.”

“Marsha?”

Ladd’s face hardened. “The nigger? I’ve made questionable choices, I’ll admit, but I would never.”

“So I guess you don’t mean Kimberly either.”

Ladd was getting impatient. “No, no,” he said and made a circular gesture with his hand. “The Hispanic. Rather large. Limpid eyes.”

Leia’s jaw dropped. “Juicy?”

Ah, that was it, sweet music to his ears. A beam crested cross his face like the rising sun, and he sighed contentedly. “Yes. Juicy.”

For a moment, Leia simply gaped. Carmen “Juicy” Santiago was their classmate at the academy, a tall, broad girl with muscular arms, mannish features, a sloped brow, and fat rolls on top of fat roll. She was crude, crass, ill-tempered, and a bully - Ladd did not believe in love at first sight, but then he watched from afar as Juicy pounded a third grader about the head, and then he did.

“Are you shitting me?” Leia asked in disbelief. “Juicy?”

“Juicy. Yes. I figure that since the two of you are acquainted, you could properly introduce us.”

Leia went on staring, mouth agog, and Ladd started to lose his temper. “Close your mouth,” he snapped. “You look like a philistine.”

Shaking her head, Leia said, “Okay, first of all, Juicy is not my friend. She bullies me. Badly. Second…why don’t you just go to her yourself?”

Ah, sweet, benighted Leia - why don’t you just go to her, Ladd? Well, you see, Leia, I feel for her something that I’ve never experienced, a deep sense of longng and kinship, and though I am self-possessed...I am nervous. With true love, one gets but a single chance.

Out loud. “Because I asked you, that’s why.”

Leia’s face darkened at his tone. “Go away,” she said and turned back to the mirror.

So...it was going to be like that, was it? Pity. Ladd got to his feet and moseyed over to the vanity. Laying his hand on Leia’s shoulder, he leaned close to her ear and, with a hateful grimace, he dug his nails into her skin. She sucked a pained gasp and went stiff. “Let go,” she said, “you’re hurting me.”

“If you don’t help me,” Ladd said and pressed his lips to her delicate ear, “I'll have to tell everyone…”

He whispered, and Leia gasped in shock. Whipping around, she fixed him with a stunned expression. “How do you know about that?” she demanded.

Standing, Ladd smiled smugly. “I have my ways, dear Leia. Now will you help me, or will I be forced to talk to father before I go?”

Leia regarded him with open hatred then pursed her lips. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll help. But I won’t like it.”

Ladd offered a patronizing smile. “Dear Leia,” he said softly and brushed a long strand of hair from her face, earning a scolding look, “you don’t have to like it.” He reached into his pocket, removed a can of breath freshener, and sprayed it into his mouth. “Now chop, chop,” he urged, “I have a lady to woo.”


A leafy green bush rustles, and a voice whispers a sharp ouch. Leia’s face appears between tangled branches - her skin is streaked with dirt, her hair is matted, and her eyes glint coldly like ice. “There’s something in my butt,” she complained lowly.

Next to her, Ladd’s head pops out. He holds a pair of binoculars to his eyes and slowly scans the distance like a deck officer for enemy subs. “Hm. First time you’ve ever complained of that,” he said. “Normally, you ask for it.”

Leia fumed. “Will you just shut up?”

“Yes, I’ll shut up when…” Ladd froze, his lips parting. “There!”

Leia followed his line of sight and spotted Juicy Santiago sitting on a park bench. She wore a black and white plaid skirt and a black cardigan over a white shirt. Her black hair was held up in pitiful little pigtail nubs and her bushy unibrow wiggled across her forehead like a fat caterpillar. She opened her bright red lips, and Leia caught sight of her pink tongue obscenely licking her crooked yellow teeth. She resembled an ape...even more so when she scratched her butt then curiously sniffed her fingers.

“Isn’t she lovely?” Ladd asked like in lovestruck tones.

Juicy slipped her fingers dumbly into her mouth and sucked them. “No,” Leia said, “she’s the biggest bitch in the world.”

Ladd sighed dreamily. “Exactly.” He lowered the glasses and Leia was taken aback by the haziness in his eyes. “I am cunning, she is brute strength; she is the baster to my master; the thorn to my rose; the mother of my future children.”

“The ew to your gross,” Leia said and stuck out her tongue.

Ignoring her, Ladd sat the binoculars on the ground. “This is what you’re going to do,” he said and turned to face her. “You will go out there...you will get her attention…”

“A decoy?” Leia cut in.

“Bait, rather. Anyway, if I am correct, she will grab you...like so.” He snatched the front of her vest. “I will run over, demand that she let you go, then, after you scamper off, I will turn on the charm.” He flashed a big, toothy smile.

Leia sighed.

“Or I can tell father - “

“I’m going,” Leia spat. She got to her feet and stumbled out of the bush, one shoe coming off. Grumbling under her breath, she pulled it back on and walked toward the bench, her shoulders tensing. Ladd watched on his knees, eyes darting from one girl to the other. Juicy sighted her prey like a wolf to a lamb, and, as Ladd anticipated, she got up. The girls were thirty feet away now, and, seemingly without word, Juicy grabbed Leia by the front of her vest and dragged her off her feet. Juicy was beautiful and heart-stoppingly devious...but terribly predictable.

Leia thrashed and kicked her feet back and forth, and Ladd almost let Juicy have her...but got up and rushed over just as Juicy cocked her fist. “Excuse me? Miss? What’s going on here?” Juicy looked up and glowered when Ladd came over.

“I’m about to beat her up and steal her money,” Juicy said. Leia’s face was pale and her eyes wide with fright, her feet dangling well off the grass. Ladd looked from one to the other.

“No, no, no,” he said and shook his head, “this is wrong.” He turned to Leia...and an evil grin split his lips. “Allow me to demonstrate.”

Before she knew it, his hand was closing hard around her throat, cutting her air supply. Her heart jolted against her chest and her eyes bugged out of their sockets. Juicy let go and fell back a step, her head cocking quizzically. Ladd held Leia aloft and shot Juicy a glance. “You first immobilize her by grabbing her about the neck. Then...to stun her…”

Ladd’s fist crashed hard into Leia’s stomach, and blinding white light exploded in the center of her skull. The air left her lung in a burning rush and Ladd dug his nails into her supple flesh. Juicy gave a deep-voiced huhuhuhuhu, and, smiling all over himself, Ladd dropped his cousin to the ground; she lay curled up like a dying bug, her leg twitching.

Juicy pointed one sausage finger. “She’s still moving.”

“That, my fair lady,” Ladd said and gave her a sly grin, “is when you kick dirt in her face.” He drew back his leg and brought it forward; a shower of grit, rocks, and dust blew into Leia’s face, stinging her eyes, coating the inside of her mouth, and plugging her nostrils. Ladd knelt and looked at Juicy over his shoulder, his eyes half-lidding. “She strikes me as the type of girl who keeps her money in her panties.”

Rolling Leia onto her stomach, he reached into the back of her underwear and pulled out the wad of bills he knew would be there. Licking his thumb, he counted: Ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, thirty...thirty dollars. Hm. Leia usually carried more than that.

Back on his feet, Ladd faced his crush; the big girl’s face blushed red and she looked shyly away, the toe of her shoe twisting cutely back and forth in the grass. “Would you care to accompany me on a date?” Ladd asked. “To a movie...then, perhaps, dinner?”

Juicy giggled. “You’re sweet...and really cute. Let’s go.” She grabbed his hand and dragged him off. Laughing in surprise, he quickened his step and followed, casting one last look at his fallen cousin.

She wasn’t moving.

Maybe he should alert someone.

Eh. After his date.

Maybe.