If It Makes You Happy(137)

He stops in front of Aunt Carol and crosses his arms.

“Are you seriously scared?” he asks through a laugh.

Aunt Carol’s lips purse as she pushes him the same way I just pushed Luke. Maybe Lars is annoying like that too.

“We have no clue how computers work,” she says.

Lars places a comforting palm on her forearm. “You’re being ridiculous. You know that, right?”

“No, I’m not.”

From the living room, everyone starts counting down from ten. We’re close to midnight.

Lars smiles. He always has the kindest smiles.

“We’ll count together,” Lars says, stroking a line up her forearm.

Aunt Carol’s eyes dart down to the hand. I wonder if she’s worried he’s rubbing something on her. Lars always has sticky doughnut glaze on his fingers. But I think Dad made pie instead of doughnuts tonight.

“You’re trying to scare me more,” she says.

“Or I’m trying to distract you.”

She snorts, like she doesn’t believe him. But it does kinda seem like he’s being nice to me.

I glance back at the bright shiny ball on the TV, getting closer and closer to the crowd in New York.

“Eight seconds until the end of the world,” Luke says.

I groan. “Stop it.”

“Four … three …”

“Luke, stop it!” I whine.

The countdown feels slower than usual. I try to remember Dad telling me I’m not supposed to be worried, but maybe things will end.

“One …”

There’s an outburst of “Happy New Year!” from the living room and everyone cheers. I freeze, waiting for an explosion outside or maybe even total darkness. But everything feels the same.

I watch Lars take Aunt Carol’s cheeks in his large palms. He grins.

“See?” Lars says. “Happy New Year, Carol.”

She blinks at him as if in shock, but something tells me it isn’t because the computers didn’t explode. I’ve never seen Lars get this close to her. She looks like she hasn’t experienced this either.

“What are you—” Then Lars leans in and kisses her.

Luke immediately lets out a “YUCK!”

And that’s when the lights and TV shut off.

The world goes dark.

Luke screams, making me scream, and then Aunt Carol screams. A firework sparks off outside. Rocket scampers into the bathroom, his claws skidding on the hardwood. There’s a plunk. I think he jumps into the tub.

“I told you!” Aunt Carol screeches at Lars.

But then the lights turn back on. The heater lurches, then hums back to life. From the living room, laughter roars through the house, followed by Shell’s yells of “Cliff!”

From the hall, Lars bursts out laughing.

The world didn’t end? The world didn’t end!

Carol’s face falls. “It’s … not the end of the world?”

“Your asshole brother just turned off the lights,” Lars says. “Trying to scare everyone.”

Then Carol lets out a hesitant laugh. Her words are shaky as she says, “He’s … he’s ridiculous.”

“A family trait,” Lars says, and they look at each other for a lingering moment before Aunt Carol takes his face this time and kisses him. I expect to feel grossed out like Luke was, but instead I smile. It’s kind of cute. It feels like something from all my princess movies. I wonder if Aunt Carol feels like a princess.

Maybe that’s silly. Maybe I look silly to Luke. I look back at him, but his eyes are wide, staring at the blank TV.

“It’s not the end of the world?” he asks breathlessly.

And suddenly it all seems so funny.

“You screamed,” I say.

Luke shakes his head, like he’s coming back to reality again. He furrows his brow. “I did not!”

I giggle. “You’re a total scaredy-cat.”

“Well … you screamed too!”

But then I’m laughing and eventually so is he, and we’re falling back on the bed in fits of laughter neither of us can stop. Each laugh feels lighter and lighter until all the tension coiled in my chest is in the room instead of inside my chest.

“Want to go see the fireworks?” I ask.

He laughs. “Definitely.”

Rocket tiptoes out of the bathroom.

“Want to come, Rocket?”

He disappears again, but that’s fine. He’ll realize Emily was wrong.

It’s not the end of the world.

And we feel fine.