This fic contains a lot of flashbacks to the storm and fire that turned Angel’s life upside-down and the events leading up to it.
If I wrote about Angel’s birthday, I felt like I also had to cover this. Title is a line from a song I love, “If the World Was Ending”, by JP Saxe and Julia Michaels. It’s a long title, but I guess it kind of works.
It’s Been a Year Now (I Think I’ve Figured Out How to Think About You Without It Ripping My Heart Out)
The day started out like any other for Angel. The only thing that seemed out of the ordinary to her was that it was January eleventh, her best friend Daniel’s birthday. She wouldn’t see him, but she would think about him a lot.
She woke up early and immediately climbed down from her top bunk. Her nine-year-old sister, Skylar, was still asleep in the bottom bunk. If she hurried, she could make it into the living room in time before SpongeBob SquarePants came on.
Ten-year-old Angel was relieved to discover that she was the only one around when she exited the room she shared with Skylar. Her dad was busy piloting the boat and nobody else was up yet. After all, it was only 7:23. SpongeBob would be on at seven-thirty.
She fixed herself a bowl of Choco Pillows, her favourite cereal, glad nobody was there to criticise how big her bowl was. Then she took it into the living room. The SpongeBob theme song was just starting up as she switched on the TV, so she settled in for the show (she could hear it, so, of course, her dad yelled at her to turn it down) and what she thought would be an ordinary, maybe even kind of boring day.
Angel’s memory had always been good, if a little random. She wondered if she would remember that day in such detail if it had been an ordinary, boring day. She wondered if she would remember she was wearing her blue flannelette pyjamas with penguins on them. Would she remember that the SpongeBob episodes on TV were ‘Big Pink Loser’ and ‘Bubble Buddy’? She doubted she would remember the clock on the microwave saying 7:23 when she got up… if it had been an ordinary day.
It was the first thing on Angel’s mind when she woke up on the morning of January eleventh. An alarm blared in her head: One year, one year, one year!
How had it been a year already? She remembered it so vividly, but she wished she didn’t. She never expected what started out as such a mundane day to end in such horrific tragedy.
Angel sighed. I guess nobody ever expects that, do they?
She wondered what things would have been like if she had known? If she couldn’t have stopped the disaster, but she’d known it was going to happen, what would she have done differently? Probably not much, she figured.
“Mum!” Skylar whined. “Angel didn’t leave me enough cereal!”
“Snitch!” Angel sneered. Her show was having an ad break (if she saw one more back to school ad, she was going to scream; they’d been popping up everywhere since Christmas!) and she was getting up to put her bowl and spoon in the dishwasher.
“Angel!” their mother, Sally, scolded. “You really need to be careful how much you’re eating! It’s not just you who lives here! And we can’t go to the shops when we’re out here!”
“I know!” Angel snapped.
“Well, if you know, then why do you keep doing it?!” Sally demanded, entering the living room. She eyed her middle daughter. “You need a shower.”
“Can I do it after SpongeBob?” the ten-year-old pleaded.
Sally sighed. “Straight after.”
YOU ARE READING
The Ocean Deep is the Life for Me
Fanfiction"Anyone who reads the first book will know there's a happy ending." But is this really the end? Angel wondered. She loved the Octonauts and it looked like she was going to have many more adventures with them. Was this what came after happily ever af...
