Blush Cutiebunny's Arc

Chapter 6 of 12

Blush spent the night gluing puzzle pieces back together, but the cracks still showed. In the morning, she brought the repaired puzzle to school in a shoebox, planning to give it to Emma before class. She found Emma by the water fountain with David Moonboom and Zorie Lavenderbee, but they weren't talking about puzzles or hero cards. "Warren can actually do things," Emma said, not looking at Blush. "He showed us yesterday. He made a rock float in the air. No strings, no tricks." David nodded, eyes wide. Zorie twisted her fingers together but didn't disagree. Blush held the shoebox tighter, feeling the weight of the broken puzzle inside. "But we're heroes," she said. "We help people feel brave." Emma finally looked at her. "Feeling brave doesn't stop anything. Warren's group actually has power." She walked away toward the brick wall near the playground where someone had painted a huge red and black symbol with a W in the center. David and Zorie followed. Blush ran to the pink cottage after school and found a purple hoodie folded on the ground by the door—the one Emma had worn all last week, the one with the bunny on the front. No note, no explanation. Just the hoodie, left behind like the hero card. Blush picked it up and saw other kids walking past the cottage toward the field where Warren's tent stood. Through the trees, she could see the colorful graffiti wall he'd set up, the word KINGS painted in huge gold letters. Six kids were already there. Maybe more. Blush sat on the cottage steps with Emma's hoodie in her lap and the broken puzzle beside her. She'd tried to prove kids could be heroes by making everyone feel protected, but feeling protected wasn't the same as being protected. Warren showed real power—things that actually worked, things people could see. Her cards and her cottage and her invisible glitter couldn't compete with that. She folded the hoodie carefully and placed it inside the cottage, then walked home without looking back at the field. Tomorrow she'd have to find a different way to prove heroes were real, because feeling brave wasn't going to be enough anymore.