Angels Like Me

by Karen McCombie

  ‘All right, you may all leave …’

  The rest of our deputy head’s sentence – ‘calmly and quietly’ – is lost in the general shuffle and screech of chairs.

  It’s only when I’m trundling along the line behind Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl that I hear another kind of screech – a girl kind.

  ‘Eurgh! I’ve got chewing gum stuck in my hair! How did THAT happen?’

  I don’t turn round.

  There’s no way I want Lauren to see my pleased smirk and think I had anything to do with her current hair disaster. But I reckon I know who did have something to do with it …

  ‘Pearl?’ I whisper, crushing up behind her as we inch towards the end of the row of chairs.

  She used errant magic just now, didn’t she?

  She isn’t supposed to.

  First, because the angels are only ever meant to use their magic for positive, good, important reasons, not for petty tit-for-tat human reasons.

  And, second, because the angels need all their energy to develop the nine skills, and using magic for anything else just sucks that energy away. It’s like leaving a torch on and letting the light fade to nothing as the batteries run down.

  But still, Pearl’s messed up and messed around with errant magic before. The chart on the wall of the girls’ loft bedroom – the one that lists their progress with the skills – has a bundle of black crosses against her name because of it.

  ‘What?’ says Pearl, glancing over her shoulder at me.

  Her eyes are their normal colour: the pale grey-blue of a husky dog’s. They’re not darkening, or twinkling, and her mouth isn’t crinkling into a don’t-tell secret smile.

  OK, so it doesn’t look like Pearl’s guilty of letting her feelings get the better of her. This time …

  ‘Um, nothing, doesn’t matter,’ I say quickly.

  Well, if Pearl didn’t do the magic … was it Kitt? Kitt is so serious, and works hard at getting her skills right. But buried deep is a temper. And during last term’s school trip to the theme park a flash of Kitt’s anger turned Lauren into a shrieking, shaking, spider-covered mess on the Haunted House ride. (Lauren deserved it, trust me.)

  I peek past Pearl at Kitt, just to check for any signs of revenge rage on my behalf. But all I see is Kitt pushing her glasses up on to her nose, her expression still and earnest.

  So if it wasn’t Pearl and Kitt … but it couldn’t have been Sunshine. She is dreamy, calm and pretty much perfect. Sunshine never, ever breaks the rules – unless it’s to sort out the mess her sisters have got themselves into.

  I hear Lauren shriek some more. ‘DO something, Joelle! Get it out NOW! Ouch! You’re hurting me!’

  Hey, I think, smiling to myself, maybe I should just think of Lauren’s bad luck as a small, surprise present to me.

  And worry about who did the magic later …

  Watch the wonder

  People stare.

  They always do.

  This lunchtime, like every lunchtime, Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl stroll along the corridor and heads turn. Girls and boys in every year group are drawn like magnets to these strangely cool girls.

  Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl, meanwhile, have absolutely no idea that they’re strange, or cool, or even that anyone’s staring.

  Sunshine has never noticed that girls are copying her habit of wearing her ankle boots unlaced and of clipping her long hair up on one side with a flutter of coloured butterfly clips.

  Kitt is oblivious to the fact that heaps more students are wearing black geek glasses now, or that twisting your hair into a cute pair of buns has become a big fashion.

  Pearl hums happily to herself, not spotting the stubby plaits she’s inspired or the stripy socks and tights that everyone’s wearing – unless they’re a boy, of course. (Or Lauren Mayhew and her cronies, who stick to their personal uniform of long, flicky hair, rolled-up micro skirts and sneers.)

  You know, it’s a lot of fun to stroll alongside the girls and watch the wonder in everyone’s faces.

  And I bet plenty of people wonder why Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl let little old me hang out with them.

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ I feel like telling them all. ‘They’re angels. They take the time to know me and they like me!’

  But, same as yesterday – when I was dreaming up a New Year ‘Wish’ for Dot – I keep quiet.

  ‘Hi!’ says Woody, bounding towards us and interrupting my thoughts.

  ‘Hi,’ I reply, and I’m the only one of us who stops to talk.

  Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl say nothing, since they’re lost in their senses: searching, seeking. They breeze past Woody, as if he’s as noticeable as a twirling speck of dust – and not a tall, skinny, freckle-nosed twelve-year-old.

  ‘Was it something I said?’ he asks me jokily, while Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl disappear into the bustle of blazers on the move. I’d like to go after them, of course, to see if I can help them in some way, but I can hardly ignore Woody, can I?

  And I can’t exactly tell him the truth: Yeah, they’re just busy seeking at the moment. Do you want to know what that is? And what the rest of their skills are?

  I wrote a note once, trying to remind myself what every skill was and what it meant. I threw it away (of course), since it was for my eyes only. But could you imagine if I had it in my pocket right now and I let Woody see it?

  THE NINE SKILLS:

  SEEKING: tuning into someone’s thoughts or feelings

  QUIET WORDS: talking with no sound

  VIRTUAL STROKING: infusing someone with a sense of happiness (starting with a touch, but doing it from afar)

  WARMTH: stopping a person panicking with a feeling of cascading warm water spilling over them

  SPRINGING: making someone tell you what’s on their mind, without them meaning to (like a truth drug)

  CATCHING: seeing JUST into the future – phones about to ring, people coming round a corner, etc.

  SPIRIT LIFTING: cheering someone up by letting them relive – just for a few seconds – a treasured memory

  TELLING (the second strongest skill): giving a person an insight into something that’s happened to them, like watching snatches of the bonus DVD of their life

  REWINDING (the strongest skill of all): the ability to stop time and unravel it back to a minute or so before

  I bet if I did that Woody would probably think I was showing him some text from a superhero graphic novel or an extract from a Doctor Who script.

  ‘Hey, you know what they’re like,’ I say instead, giving a vague shrug.

  ‘Spacey?’ he suggests.

  ‘Something like that,’ I agree, even though I still don’t totally understand what the angels are, even after all this time. Yes, we might be friends, but I’m too in awe of Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl to ask them such a personal question. Especially when I worry that I’m too simple and human to understand the answers.

  ‘Are their parents as spacey?’ asks Woody.

  ‘Foster parents,’ I correct him. ‘No, they’re pretty ordinary.’

  Mr and Mrs Angelo are very ordinary – in the nicest way. They’ve fostered kids for years and years and have absolutely NO idea that the current bunch they’re looking after arrived thanks to a trail of spells and spookdom.

  ‘Anyway, we’ve got a meeting to go to, haven’t we?’ I say, giving Woody a playful nudge in the direction of Mr Edwards’s ICT classroom.

  We’re due there now, along with the other members of the school-newsletter team. Woody nods and leads the way along another busy corridor, made narrow by a gaggle of students staring at something tacked up on the wall outside a music room.

  ‘It’s about the auditions tomorrow … for the Frost Fair,’ explains Woody, squeezing by the small crowd. Without pausing, he cheekily taps the right shoulder of someone in the group, while passing on their left.

  It’s a girl with a neat black bob. As she spins round, I realize that:

  it’s Marnie Reynolds, and

  than
ks to Woody’s trick, she’s come face-to-face with me instead of Woody.

  ‘It was him!’ I say quickly.

  I don’t know Marnie that well. I mean, I did go to her (disastrous) party a few weeks ago, but that was just cos Kitt planted the idea to invite me in Marnie’s head, not because she actually likes me or anything.

  ‘It was her!’ Woody jokes, pointing back at me.

  Marnie’s stern expression softens and she rolls her eyes at Woody. He’s in her class – she knows he’s a total spoofer.

  ‘Sorry,’ I mutter to Marnie, then shove past Woody and hurry – pink-cheeked – to Mr Edwards’s class.

  (I can hear Woody sniggering behind me, the big dork.)

  ‘Good to see you, guys. Welcome back!’ says Mr Edwards, ushering us both into his room, where Hannah and Daniel are already hunched at a computer. ‘Just got to wait for Billy and Ceyda, and we’ll all be here.’

  As I shrug my blazer off, I’m vaguely aware of a sweet-sounding, old-fashioned song drifting along the corridor – from one of the music rooms, I suppose. Someone already rehearsing for the audition maybe?

  ‘It’s OK, Woody – just leave it like that till the others arrive,’ Mr Edwards is saying.

  Ah, Woody was about to close the door. I’m glad it’s staying open; I can’t make out what that tinkly song is, and I’m trying to tune in. Random notes are niggling in my head, nudging me to recognize them.

  ‘So, started on the new issue already?’ Woody asks, walking over to join Hannah and Daniel. He drops his bag on to the desk with an ominous clunk. I don’t think he’s quite used to carrying a laptop in there yet. The school gave it to him to help him with his coursework, since anyone who has dyslexia tends to do better on keyboards and screens. I just hope they don’t expect him to give it back in one piece …

  (What IS that tune? I think again, slightly distracted.)

  ‘Yeah. The January issues of magazines and newsletters always have a round-up of the previous year,’ mutters Daniel, moving text around. ‘Thought we might use this as the opener.’

  He clicks on an image and expands it so we can clearly see that it’s the photo I took of Mrs Sharma, my form teacher. Or at least Mrs Sharma was my form teacher till she went and practically had her baby on the site manager’s office floor.

  In the photo, Mrs Sharma has her tiny newborn daughter Raina in her arms and is gazing lovingly down at her.

  ‘Yeah, it’s good,’ says Woody, nodding. ‘It’d look better if she wasn’t holding that big potato, though!’

  ‘She’s cuddling her baby, you idiot!’ Hannah turns and snaps at Woody.

  Poor Hannah hasn’t quite got used to Woody’s dumb sense of humour yet.

  ‘Oh yeah!’ says Woody, leaning in towards the screen and pretending to realize his mistake.

  Meanwhile, I hover behind Daniel, staring too. But I find myself drifting away, half trying to place the faint snatches of the song I can hear, and half thinking about Dot and her goofy idea of New Year ‘Wishes’.

  You know, if my sort-of-stepsister was here right now, and I had another chance to answer, I’d tell her this: I wish I could feel as close to my mum as Mrs Sharma is to little Raina.

  ‘Hi!’ comes a boy’s voice at the door, and we all turn to see our two missing News Matters reporters. Ceyda waves her hello, and Billy is about to shut the door behind him.

  ‘Uh, can you maybe leave it open?’ I ask him. ‘I like the music.’

  Billy pauses, looking confused, then sticks his head back out into the corridor.

  ‘Am I going deaf?’ he asks. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

  Sure enough, the song has faded away.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I say, turning back to the image of Mrs Sharma and Raina on the screen.

  My wish is a bit stupid, I know.

  I mean, I was only a few months older than Raina is now when Mum died in the traffic accident. So the chances of my dumb New Year Wish coming true …

  That’s about as likely as looking up and seeing penguins and dodos flapping and swooping in the sky, isn’t it?

  The sugar-coated telling-off

  Flop!

  That’s all I want to do. Thunder up these stairs and then collapse on my bed. Kick my school shoes off and lie there, arms outstretched, till teatime. (Which’ll be soon – I’m pretty late home from school.)

  First days of term always get me like this. All that concentrating is hard on a brain that’s been on holiday for a fortnight.

  Plus me and Woody and Danny and everyone got together after school and did a load of work on the latest newsletter. It’ll go out next week, with a special report on the Frost Fair – me and Woody offered to cover it this Saturday.

  As I take the steps two at a time, I realize I’m humming four random notes over and over again. I’ve been doing it ever since lunchtime, since I heard that snatch of a song drifting down the school corridor.

  Aargh! Like a bad case of hiccups that won’t go away, the tune just –

  I stop dead at my bedroom door.

  There are giggles coming from inside. Two sets of giggles.

  One giggler is bound to be Dot.

  The other will be her best friend, Coco, who comes to ours for a playdate so often it’s like she lives here.

  Blam!

  With a big grin, I barge right in.

  They both jump, just like I planned.

  But, whoa … I’m totally taken aback when I see what they’re up to.

  All I can do is raise my eyebrows and stare hard at my little sort-of-stepsister and wait for an explanation.

  But what explanation can there be for Dot and Coco pinging my pants at each other?!

  ‘RILEY!’ Dot exclaims, lowering the blue spotty knickers she was about to catapult at Coco.

  (My floral-patterned knickers are dangling from Dot’s shoulder. Looks like Coco nearly got a bullseye.)

  ‘What are you doing?’ I squeak, finding my voice at last, and stomping over to them.

  ‘It was … it was an ACCIDENT!’ Dot announces uselessly, as I grab my dangling underwear.

  Coco nods.

  ‘So you just “accidentally” came into my room without permission,’ I say, hurriedly stuffing my pants back in the open drawer the girls stole them from. ‘Then “accidentally” rummaged in here –’ I slam the drawer shut – ‘and “accidentally” played with my … my stuff?’

  Dot blinks up at me. I think she’s a bit stunned.

  I’m a bit stunned too. Stunned that Dot’s been so thoughtless with my things, and stunned at how cross I am. I’m never usually cross with her – she’s as cute as a bucketful of kittens.

  I guess it’s not just because of the pants – embarrassing as that is.

  It’s also because I keep my little photo album hidden away in my knicker drawer. My few precious pictures of Mum are in there, and Dot and Coco are too young to understand what they mean to me.

  They might get fingerprints on Mum without meaning too, or laugh at some out-of-date fashion she’s wearing, and I couldn’t bear that.

  My panicky wave of crossness makes me remember something else.

  ‘And you’ve been using my nail varnish without asking, Dot, haven’t you?’

  Three things happen pretty quickly:

  1. Dot says no, then hides her guilty hands behind her back.

  2. Coco starts crying.

  3. Dad’s girlfriend, Hazel, appears at the bedroom door.

  ‘What on EARTH is going on here?’ she asks, walking in and straight away wrapping a comforting arm round Coco.

  ‘Riley’s being sort of shouty, Mummy,’ says Dot, shuffling into Hazel’s side – the one that doesn’t have Coco cuddled into it.

  ‘I heard,’ says Hazel, frowning at me.

  At me!

  My cheeks are pink-hot with crossness and now a dollop of unfairness too.

  ‘They were playing with my pants!’

  As soon as I say it, I know how silly it sounds.
<
br />   Hazel rolls her eyes at me. ‘For goodness’ sake, Riley, they’re only five years old. And look how upset you’ve made Coco!’

  With that, Hazel shuffles both girls out of my room, muttering something about cookies and hot chocolate.

  I can’t believe it … If I went rifling through Hazel’s underwear drawer and then pinged her bras all over the place, she’d hardly reward me with drinks and snacks, would she?

  I bang my bedroom door closed, kick my shoes off so hard they smack against the wall, and crumple down on to the bed.

  Then I see her and instantly calm down …

  Mum.

  She’s on my bedside table, in the pretty mirror-edged frame that the angels gave me for my birthday. She’s standing on the top of Folly Hill with her arms outstretched, her eyes to the skies, and a smile a mile wide.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ I say softly, managing a wobbly smile of my own.

  I often wonder what it would be like to have her around. But right now I wonder what it would be like to have a mum to stick up for you. (Dot doesn’t know how lucky she is …)

  Tugging the drawer open again, I rummage through the rumpus of rumpled knickers for my photo album. My fingers quickly find the cool plastic of its cover.

  I pull it out, set it on my lap, and stare down at the small square album. In the middle, a smaller square has been cut out of the shiny white plastic, and through it Mum is smiling up at me.

  ‘Am I anything like you?’ I murmur to her, thinking I must remind the angels of their promise to help me find out more about Mum. Though at the moment they just seem so absorbed in seeking the next –

  ‘Knock, knock?’

  Dad’s in the room before I know it, and before I get the chance to hide the album. OK, so he might have given me the photos I keep in here (he left them on my bed not so long ago, wrapped in ribbon), but he finds it kind of hard to talk about Mum. Actually, make that totally impossible. It hurts him too much.

  ‘Hi,’ I say nervously, putting both hands over the album in my lap, in an effort to hide it.

  ‘Don’t worry – I’m not here to have a go at you,’ says Dad, coming over and sitting down beside me.