On Spencer's thirtieth birthday, the world ends.
Not in some vague, emotional way – because he may be turning thirty while single and unemployed and still unsuccessful at selling more than a piece or two a year, but he's not going to whine about it like one of the women on that annoying show Carly and Sam are always watching on Wednesday nights.
No, the world actually ends. Ends ends. He watches it from high above, from the apartment window. The view is obscured by smoke, but he still sees more than he really wants to see.
At least he's not alone. Carly is here, and Sam and Freddie too.
None of Freddie's mother's precautions had mattered in the end. Freddie has barely said a word since he raced into their apartment and threw the deadbolt behind him.
Eventually, Spencer turns from the window in disgust. What he sees when he surveys the apartment is the same as what he has seen every day for years and years, the juvenile decorations and comfortable furniture that equal his home. And there, almost constants themselves, are his sister and her friends. Sam, mute for once, is sitting on the sofa and holding Freddie's hand while, mercifully, Freddie sleeps.
But Carly is watching Spencer, and it kills him to see the look in her eyes, defeat where he was so used to seeing a spark of determination, the insistence that anything could be overcome with a creative enough plan.
Not now.
He feels responsible for these three, although he knows that there is nothing he can do to keep them safe, not really. Maybe he was always kidding himself to believe that he could, to believe that he could keep Sam out of jail and help Freddie find a girl and raise his sister to be a fantastic young woman.
Maybe he managed that last part at least, stepping in when Mom and Dad found some more important task than raising their children. He had resented them the day they brought Carly home from the hospital, not because he saw her as a threat or because he was jealous of his parents' attention, but because he knew that Carly would not receive that attention any more than he had. He had resented them for becoming parents again when they had never really been parents to begin with.
He was all of thirteen years old when he decided that his baby sister would never, ever feel unloved, not as long as he had anything to say about it.
Their eyes meet, and he jerks his head, beckoning her over. She casts a glance toward Freddie and Sam, then joins Spencer at the window.
"At least it's not raining," she says softly, and he smiles down at her because he knows that a smile is the reaction she wants.
His arm slips around her shoulders, and he says, "We've had a good run of it, kiddo. Haven't we?"
"Until this morning," she agrees. She doesn't make another noise, but she turns so that her face is pressed against his shoulder and his arms are around her, and he holds her there because he promised himself, he promised.
He wonders, distantly, where his mom and dad are, what is happening there. But it doesn't escape his attention that Freddie is the only person in this room actually missing a parent today, that the rest of them learned how to make due long ago.
Carly's body relaxes in his arms, her breathing evening out. He would suspect that she was asleep on her feet if not for the hand on his back, smoothing the wrinkles from his shirt, as if it could possibly matter now.
He takes a step back, gently, and tilts her chins so that he can see her eyes. They are bright, but her cheeks are dry. He brushes her hair away from her face and presses a kiss to her forehead.
"We should check on Sam and Freddie," she whispers. She is giving him an out, and he takes it.
The scene on the sofa is not really any different than it was twenty minutes before. Freddie is still sleeping fitfully, head on Sam's leg and Sam's hand clutched in his. Sam looks up as Spencer and Carly approach, and Spencer cannot avoid noticing her usual spark missing from her gaze.
"How is he?" Carly asks, one hand twitching at her side but ultimately not reaching toward Freddie.
Sam shrugs one shoulder. "He's fine till he wakes up." Her eyes jump to Spencer. "You have any booze?"
"Sam!" Carly chastises.
"What?" Sam is entirely unapologetic. "It might make him feel better, and what do a couple years matter when we're all gonna die soon anyway?"
She is the first to actually say it. The truth of it, despite its being nothing he had yet to admit to himself, feels like a blow to the stomach.
He cannot let himself look at Carly, not now. He walks away from the two girls and into his room, returning a few moments later with a case of beer in tall glass bottles. It almost definitely is not what Sam wanted when she asked about booze, but it is all he has, itself a rare purchase only intended to be shared with Socko and Tyler while Carly and her friends were in school for the day.
Not much of a party, Spencer realizes, but Socko had been promising him a really excellent, albeit predictable, gift, and Spencer would have rather spent the day with a few friends than doing something more exciting.
He hands a beer to Sam and says aloud, "Happy birthday to me."
"Aww," Carly murmurs.
Spencer meets her eyes, surprised. Maybe after all these years he should not be surprised, should give himself some credit for having helped her to become a compassionate young woman.
One of them is going to say something, he knows, but he has no idea what. He wants to ask her whether she is scared, whether he has made her happy, whether she knows that he loves her and would not trade their home or their family of two for any law degree or gallery opening or white picket fence. But before he can ask anything, the ground begins to shake under their feet.
Carly yelps, and Spencer grabs her shoulder, pulling her toward him, helping her to stand. He notices Sam's beer soaking into the sofa cushion, but if there is ever a time that his relaxed attitude toward life is justified, it is today.
Freddie sits up and immediately clutches the back of the couch. "What's going on?" he demands.
Before anyone can answer with the obvious, which is that no one knows, the earth stills once more.
"That was–" Sam begins.
"Freaky," Freddie agrees.
Spencer holds his breath through this moment of normalcy. If it were not for Carly, still in his grasp, he would not be able to avoid flinching at the flicker of memory that darkens Freddie's features.
For the first time since this started, just half-a-day ago, Spencer wishes that whatever is out there would hurry and come inside, hurry and finish the job and leave them in peace.
Sam must notice the look on Freddie's face, too, because she grabs another beer from the case and says, "Hey, Spencer's letting us drink. Special end-of-the-world circumstances."
The look Freddie gives her is nothing new between them, a shocked disbelief at her priorities. But after a beat, he holds out his hand and accepts the bottle. Sam uncaps another for herself and sits back down beside Freddie, their knees touching.
"Rodney was right," she declares. "Warm beer is gross."
And because it is far past the time when Spencer needed to worry about who was hanging around Carly and her friends, he just nods his agreement.
The light outside the window is dimming. Spencer has to check his watch to be sure that this is a legitimate, rotation-of-the-earth darkening of the sky and not some side effect of what is happening outside. At the same moment, Carly yawns, an unbelievably ordinary occurrence.
"Bedtime, little sister?" Spencer asks softly, and she nods.
Sam glances up from her beer and gapes at them. "The world might not even be here in the morning, and you're going to sleep?"
Carly shrugs, a casual one-shoulder gesture. "I'm tired," she says. "Besides, you want to be awake for this?"
"It might be cool," Sam reasons.
Carly all but flings herself on Sam, hugging her tight. Sam seems surprised, but she reaches up to pat Carly's shoulder with the hand not holding her beer. Carly turns her head and kisses Sam's cheek, whispers, "Thank you" as she pulls away.
No hint of amusement on Sam's face now, a rare moment of total seriousness, but she tries to force levity into her voice when she says, "You too. Thanks. Just think, you'll never wind up in detention because of me again."
Carly nods, not meeting Sam's eyes again before walking back toward the stairs.
Spencer has never been good at goodbyes, but he has to say something before the night ends. He follows Carly to her bedroom. She is standing in front of her dresser, two pairs of pajama pants clutched in one fist while she looks in her mirror and brushes a tear off her cheek. She looks angry with herself, and he cannot resist the pull to go to her, to gather her in his arms.
She wrecked her bicycle when she was eight-years-old, and he did the same thing then, gathered her into his arms and carried her back to their apartment. Now, he carries her to her bed and lays her there gently, pulling a blanket over her shoulders.
"Stay," she asks, tangling her fingers in his before he can walk away.
"Okay," he agrees. Just like when she was a kid and had nightmares and would insist that he sleep beside her in her bed, reasoning with a child's logic that monsters do not attack adults. This, what is happening outside, is so much more than an imagined monster in a closet, but he can also remember the time when she stayed with him after a nightmare of his own. Comfort goes beyond the reality of protection.
He settles onto the bed beside her, her blanket cool under him. Not proper, perhaps, but that has never mattered less than it does right now. In the dim light of late evening, he can see tears glistening on her cheeks, and he reaches over tentatively to brush them away.
Her voice surprises him. "I'm sorry about your birthday, Spencer."
"It's okay," he says.
"Your present is in my locker," she continues, not hearing him. "I was going to bring it home after school today."
"It's okay," he says again, and she listens this time, nods. He thinks he may even see her smile.
She turns onto her side to face him. "Maybe this will be over when we wake up," she says hopefully.
"Sure," he says, voice as light as he can make it. "It's probably just a dream anyway."
"Brought on by drinking Peppy Cola before bed," she murmurs. Her eyes flutter closed, and her breathing evens into sleep.
Spencer turns toward the window and listens for Seattle's final rain shower.
He will wake to a kaleidoscopic sky and think–
A tiny hand cradled in his own as the sound rises–
Thirty years was just enough.