‘Me too,’ says Woody.
I feel my face go pink – and that’s not something I want Woody to see, or I’ll never hear the end of his teasing.
‘Fancy cloud-gazing?’ I suggest, flopping down on my back on the frost-hard ground.
‘It’s freezing! Are you crazy?’ he asks, leaning over me, staring down.
And the strangest thing happens … it’s as if miniature white feathers are fluttering by his head, as if the angels are subtly showing themselves to him, giving him delicate, soft hints that they’re around him, helping him.
That can’t be true, though.
I mean, there’s plenty I still don’t know about my neighbours next door, and plenty I’d still love to ask them (and, yeah, I’m still a little scared to ask). But one thing I’m sure of – to them, I’m special.
I’m the only one who knows who and what they really are, and my lips are staying zipped up for sure.
‘Why are you laughing?’ Woody grins, as the feathery whiteness drifts down, speckles of cold landing and melting on my face.
‘Cos I’m Riley Roberts, I’m crazy and I’m happy. Whee!’ I yell, sticking my tongue out and letting the snowflakes land on it.
‘What is this stuff ?’ I hear Pearl exclaim in wonder, as Kitt and Sunshine gasp, and Dot giggles.
‘You lot,’ Woody says with a shake of his head, ‘are all mad. What kind of weirdness is going on in Chestnut Crescent?’
Wouldn’t you like to know, Woody? I smile to myself, watching as he sticks his tongue out and joins in with us crazies …
Make your own friendship bracelet
Friendship bracelets are great fun to make and even better when you make one with your best friend! Just follow our step-by-step guide and you’ll have a unique gift – one that’s really simple, but really special to you both!
1. Choose three colours of embroidery thread or old wool – pick any colour combination you like. Why not check out the ‘What colours mean’ chart below and pick colours that represent your friend’s character?
2. Take two strands of each colour.
3. Tie a knot at the end of the six strands and separate the different colours from each other.
4. Get your friend to hold the knotted end of the bracelet and start plaiting the three colours together – cross the two strands on the left over the two strands in the middle, and then do the same with the two strands on the right.
5. Repeat this until the bracelet is long enough to go round your wrist, then tie a knot at the other end.
6. Snip off any straggly ends and tie round your wrist.
7. Now repeat the above to make a second bracelet for your friend!
What colours mean
Red: Enthusiastic Orange: Friendly Yellow: Cheerful
Green: Chilled Blue: Loyal Purple: Imaginative
Pink: Sweet Brown: Kind
White: Honest Black: Deep thinker
www.karenmccombie.com
Great a Friendship Collage
A collage that’s all about you and your friends – that’s got to look great on your wall, right? Or why don’t you make one in secret, as a surprise for someone? Of course, there are websites where you can create an online collage, but there’s nothing like getting a bunch of photos and images and snipping, sticking and gluing them together by hand!
1. Decide on the theme.
What do you and your friend(s) like to do together? Share a hobby?
Watch movies? What makes you laugh, squeal, drool? Decide on your theme – and you’re ready for Step 2 …
2. Grab some photos.
The snaps you use should be of you as well as your friend(s), or group shots of you together. Choose a variety of sizes and shapes, as well as photos taken from different times of your life. (If you don’t want to use the ACTUAL photos, copy them on a printer and use the copies instead.)
3. Flick through some mags or the internet.
Browse through magazines or online to select headlines or images or even just fun words that represent the theme of your collage.
Rip out the pages or print out your favourites to use. You could also look for a quote from a film or book that you both love, or maybe even a phrase you always say to each other.
4. Get creative.
For a cool collage, cut each photo into an interesting shape. If you have a photo of you and a friend, for instance, cut round your bodies and discard the background. Or maybe stick your heads on to a star made out of silver foil, or transplant yourselves on to a funny background, like a scene in Harry Potter!
5. Add the words.
The words and phrases you’ve picked from magazines or online should be a variety of sizes, shapes, fonts and colours.
6. Get gluing!
Stick the larger images on to a poster board (from art shops) or just some cardboard, and then paste other images around them. Try to cover every area of the backing board with either a photo or words. Remember: you can get clever with your background too – if you don’t want to have just one big rectangle, you could cut it into a circle, or even a chunky letter from the alphabet, like the first letter of you or your friend’s name.
7. Final touches.
Got any tickets from shows you’ve been to together? Even tickets from things like swimming or ice skating are nice last-minute additions. And scrabble around for some craft stuff to add sparkle, like bits of ribbon or sequins.
Even buttons look cute!
8. Tah-nah!
Your collage is ready. Stick it up on your wall, or present it to your friend. And don’t forget – you can always update it by adding a new photo to it now and then.
www.karenmccombie.com
How to be an Everyday Angel
The Angelo sisters use their magical abilities to help Riley – but you don’t have to be a real angel to help others! Check out these six ideas for how to be an everyday angel …
1. Say it, don’t think it.
A girl you know has a nice new hairstyle. A boy in class who’s usually annoying has done a great drawing. Your best friend was really good fun today and made you smile when you were grumpy. You might fleetingly notice and think about stuff like that, but how about saying something out loud? Come right out with a compliment? Giving someone a bit of praise can boost their self-confidence big time. And make you new friends!
2. ‘There, there …’
Feeling ill is pants. If your friend is off sick with flu or whatever, be aware that she will be feeling
a) ropey,
b) mopey, and
c) like she’s missing out on the fun that you and your other friends are having. So get yourself round to hers after school or at the weekend, armed with chat, chocolate and maybe a favourite magazine. Or, if she’s infectious, gather your friends to shout, ‘Get well soon!’ down the phone to her. That should help her smile through the snot!
3. Be an ace listener.
You can tell something is bothering your friend, but she keeps saying she’s ‘fine’. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk in front of others, so how about arranging to have a little time to chat, just the two of you? You can suggest it face to face, or reach out with a text, or even a note. You might not have all the answers, but having someone to splurge her feelings to might be enough to cheer your friend up.
4. ‘If you liked that, you might like this …’
Start a book group. And don’t just invite your BFs... ask girls you don’t know so well, who you know like reading. You might turn people on to books they wouldn’t have ever tried before. And, for people who are a little shy, getting together to talk about books and stories and authors is a great way to be sociable. (Don’t forget the biscuits – you ALWAYS need biscuits at a book group!)
5. Make homework not suck.
It’s easy to get stuck on homework, especially with creative subjects like writing or projects. But being in a group, bouncing ideas around, can really flick a switch on in your brain!
So suggest get-togethers to
help each other out – but lay down the rules too:
1) be nice (no poo-pooing what people say),
2) be encouraging (you’d want the same) and
c) no gossiping (you can save that for later, once the homework is done!).
6. Mad makeover time!
If a friend is feeling a little flat or fed-up, get silly with an over-the-top makeover. Invite her round, blast some music on, and try out a ton of different hairstyles and make-up looks on her. Get her to pose in the mirror, or catwalk up and down the bedroom. It’ll be even more fun if you get her to do the same to you!
www.karenmccombie.com
If you would like to...
Turn the page for an extract from
Angels Like Me
the next book in the Angels Next Door series
by
Karen McCombie
Karen McCombie
ANGELS LIKE ME
(ANGELS NEXT DOOR BOOK 3)
I wish I could tell …
I have something amazing to say.
And I want to YELL it from the top of this hill.
But shy girls like me aren’t so good at yelling, so I do something else.
‘Happy New Year, Riley Roberts,’ I whisper instead.
Here’s what’s amazing – I hadn’t expected to be happy this year.
But then I hadn’t expected my new next-door neighbours to end up being my best friends.
Or that they’d be real-life angels …
‘Oi, Riley!’
That’s my other new best friend, calling out to me as he goofs around, waving at me to join in. Woody’s not an angel, in case you were wondering. He’s more of a dork, but that’s OK. In fact, it’s a lot of fun.
‘In a second,’ I call out to him, resting my back against a large block of white marble.
Perched on the block is another angel, wings and all. But this one’s made of stone, a statue who’s been staring out from the top of Folly Hill for a couple of hundred years or more.
Copying her, I take in the view too, but use my camera to pan around and film the jumble of streets and buildings of the town. Dad’s print shop is down there on the High Road; the hospital where his girlfriend, Hazel, works is that big white block; and down by the station, that’s where Mum’s florist’s was, though that’s long gone now …
‘Aw, c’mon, Riley!’ begs Woody, as he rushes by, chasing my little sort-of-stepsister, Dot. ‘Put down the camera and help me catch her!’
‘In a sec!’ I say again, smiling at the two of them as they lollop around like a pair of puppies.
The thing is, I’m not in the mood to play some dumb, but fun, game quite yet.
Just for a minute, I want to hold on to my happy new-year feeling. I’m just so glad to be back here after two weeks away. The whole of the Christmas holidays was spent in relatives’ overheated houses or stuck in our stuffy car on endless motorways between visits.
All that time – even when I was having fun, getting nice presents, staying up late on New Year’s Eve – I kept pining for home. Well, for Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl, really …
Before I went away, when we were saying our byes and see-you-soons, Pearl had hugged me and said, ‘Oh, I can’t WAIT till you’re back, Riley. It’s going to be amazing!’
I’d been about to ask her what she meant, but then Dad had honked the car horn for me to hurry up and there was no time. Apart from that, Sunshine and Kitt looked wary, the way they do when they think Pearl has said too much …
So I won’t make a big deal of it when I see them. I won’t ask and risk getting Pearl into trouble. I’ll just be patient and see what unfolds.
Maybe the girls are going to tell me more about themselves. (I know their present, but not much about their past or future.)
Or maybe they’ll let me help find the next person who needs fixing. (I don’t have nine angelic skills like they do, but I’ll do my best.)
Or perhaps they’ll keep their promise and find out more about Mum for me (since Dad won’t tell me anything).
Thinking of my special friends, I feel a flutter of nervous excitement in my tummy and lower my camera, glancing towards the semicircles of roads at the foot of the hill.
One of them is Chestnut Crescent. It’s easy to make out because of the giant, solid chestnut tree in the garden of number thirty-three, the house next door to mine. My best friend Tia used to live there, but she’s far away on the other side of the world, probably plunging into a pool in the New Zealand summer.
Here, of course, it’s winter, and number thirty-three is now home to my new, magical best friends.
I just hope they hurry up and come – the air up here is so frost-prickly cold that my bare fingers are in danger of falling off. (Yes, Hazel was annoyingly right when she shouted after me that I’d need my gloves today.)
‘Arf! Arf! Arf!’
I jump as a small log is shoved in front of my face.
It has two googly eyes stuck on it, and a nose and mouth drawn on long ago (by me) in marker pen. It’s Dot’s beloved pet ‘dog’, Alastair: a lumpy, bumpy chunk of driftwood that does look vaguely like a pooch if you squint at it funny.
It doesn’t bark for real, though. My dorky friend Woody is helping out with the sound effects.
‘Fancy translating?’ I ask him. Woody grins at me, his gelled spikes of dark hair flopping forward on to his forehead.
‘I will!’ Dot bursts in first, full of bouncy five-year-old enthusiasm. ‘Alastair wants you to come and play, Riley. NOW!’
She grabs my stiff, cold fingers in her fuzzy, warm mittens, but I resist. ‘I’m fine here, looking at the view,’ I tell her.
‘What view?’ Dot frowns, coming to stand next to me. ‘It’s just buildings and cars and BORING stuff.’
OK, so views are about as exciting as a trip to the paint aisle of a DIY store when you’re a kid.
‘It’s not all boring!’ I say, wondering how I can make it interesting for her. ‘Why don’t you try to imagine what the Angel statue saw when she was first here, years and years ago?’
My little sort-of-stepsister looks up at me, then gazes thoughtfully around.
‘Did she see dinosaurs?’ Dot finally suggests.
I laugh. ‘She’s not that old!’
I’m just about to tell Dot that, back in the early 1800s, the Angel would’ve looked out on:
fields upon fields of crops and cows (instead of rows upon rows of streets and houses)
the grand Hillcrest Manor (though my modern, blocky secondary school has taken its place)
a winding country track called Meadow Lane (now a noisy dual carriageway, still – stupidly – called Meadow Lane)
an ornamental lake named after the daughter of some posh old lord of Hillcrest (which is a scruffy, bramble-tangled dog-walkers’ spot these days).
But, before I can speak, Dot’s mind – as usual – jumps off like a frog.
‘What’s your New Year Wish, Riley?’ she turns and asks me.
‘My New Year Wish?’ I check with her. ‘Don’t you mean my new year’s resolution?’
Dot narrows her eyes, as if I’ve just spoken to her in an ancient Inca dialect. ‘No. Not one of them,’ she says with an earnest shake of the head. ‘Your New Year Wish.’
I turn my snigger into a thoughtful ‘Hmm …’ and do some fake-thinking. Meanwhile, Dot slips off her mittens and flaps her hands madly.
‘My New Year Wish is that I could be a penguin and fly to the Arctic!’ she trills, and spins.
Woody and me, we swap quick glances. Of course, one of us could be a spoilsport and point out that penguins actually:
live in the Antarctic and
don’t fly.
Luckily for Dot, neither of us are that mean. And, hey, she’ll learn stuff like that in class soon enough. Maybe even tomorrow, since it’s the first day of term.
‘Wow, that sounds great, Dot!’ Woody says instead. ‘Well, for my New Year Wish, I’d like to bring an extinct dodo back to li
fe, and it could fly with you!’
‘Yay!’ cheers Dot, too busy flapping to spot Woody winking at me.
Wait a minute – what’s that smudged all over Dot’s nails? Pale blue varnish with sparkles in it. Exactly like the nail varnish Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl bought me as a Christmas present. In fact, it is the nail varnish that Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl bought me as a Christmas present.
I’m just about to give Dot a slightly stern big sort-of-stepsister talk about using things without asking permission when I see them …
(My heart thud-thuds.)
Three girls – and their white-blond fuzzy dog – meandering up the crunchy flint path that leads here, to the Angel, and to us.
Sunshine is the tallest, her waist-length wavy hair fluttering around her head like a rust-red festival banner.
Beside her, shorter, is Kitt, the lenses of her thick black-rimmed glasses catching the light.
Pearl waves at me, and, even though she’s too far away for me to see her face clearly, I know she’ll be smiling, because she’s the cutest, friendliest person I’ve ever met. Even if she isn’t technically a person …
I wave back, and know instantly what my REAL New Year Wish would be: I wish I could tell the world that these girls are angels.
Actual, amazing, awesome angels.
And I wish I could tell the world something else, something I can hardly believe: that these amazing, awesome angels like me. Ordinary, mortal, un-amazing ME!
Dot spots that I’m not paying her any attention and looks where I’m looking. As soon as she sees Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl, she takes off, shrieking ‘HELLOOOOO!’ as she hurtles down the hill, all ready to give their dog, Bee, a hug.
Then I notice Dot slow down. I think she’s confused and it’s obvious why. Instead of waving back, the three girls have turned away from her and are staring around in different directions, as if the view is calling to them.
Which it is, sort of.
‘What are they doing?’ Woody asks, frowning at our friends. Of course, he doesn’t know what I know.
Angels in Training Page 12
