‘Angel!’ a boy shouted.
Penny and I watched his silhouette grow larger as he approached. He slowed when he saw us.
A smile appeared on Angel’s face. ‘Brock …?’
I perked up, excited that Brock was alive and talking and everything! He must’ve been set free by Arnold’s power absorption.
‘Hey, man!’ I said, like we were old pals.
He looked at me. ‘Who’re you?’
‘Uh, nobody,’ I said. ‘I’m nobody. Never mind.’
Penny and I gave Brock room to sit by his sister.
He squinted as if he were trying to recognise her, and then he smiled. ‘You got old without me.’
‘You’ve been frozen for thirty-two years …’ Angel said.
Angel rested her head against Brock’s chest. Even though he was only twelve years old, he was still her big brother.
‘Your body … What happened?’ Brock said.
‘I lost control. All I wanted was to save you … If I knew how easy it was … but it’s too late. I never wanted to hurt anyone … I made a mistake.’
Brock chuckled. ‘Your mistakes always got us into so much trouble.’
‘You always found a way to fix things, though …’
Brock’s face twisted as his sister twitched in his arms.
‘… Fix this,’ Angel said.
‘But your body’s gone,’ he said. ‘I need you to pull yourself together, okay?’
Angel shook her head. ‘… I can’t.’
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Remember when you were, like, six? You used to come into my room in the middle of the night after a bad dream? You’d lie in my arms, and we’d read Garfield comics until you fell asleep?’
Energy continued to boil and swirl.
‘Give me your cape,’ Brock said to me.
For the record, I didn’t mind giving him the cape – I just wasn’t thinking straight.
I untied the fabric from my neck and handed it to Brock. He wrapped it around his sister and held her close.
‘Remember that one where Garfield brings a hose into the house?’
‘… And then he drenches the recliner with water?’
Brock chuckled. ‘Right! But then he uses a blow-dryer to dry it off!’
‘… And the chair shrank down to his size!’ Angel said.
She let out a laugh, glowing brighter than before.
‘… You know that was the last one we read together?’ Angel said. ‘You left for the academy the next day …’
‘I know,’ Brock said, his face twisting as he nodded. ‘It’s time to sleep, all right?’
Angel smiled softly.
The air around us became unbearably hot.
This was it.
This was the end.
I hugged Penny close and tried to find the North Star to say goodbye to my parents.
There was a flash of light, and then …
Nothing.
The sky was dark, and the air was quiet.
It took my eyes a second to adjust. When I could see again, Brock was holding his sister.
Both had turned to stone.
My cape wrapped around Angel like a blanket, but the figure wasn’t the Angel we knew. It was the Angel that Brock read Garfield with – the one who fell asleep in his arms.
It was Angel at six years old.
Penny and I looked back and forth between each other and the statue.
It took us a moment to accept that it was over.
The bomb didn’t go off.
And everyone was safe.
Penny flopped back onto the grass, exhausted. ‘All right, good game, Braver. You got some orange slices or something?’
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the package of peanut butter cups that Coach gave me from Jennifer.
Penny took one.
I took the other.
She laid her head on my shoulder, and I rested against her. We sat in silence, eating our treat after a hard day’s work.
It was melted and all smooshed up, but it was the best peanut butter cup I’d ever had in my life.
