I feel my jaw drop and I watch, transfixed. Then I suddenly remember my job as the News Matters photographer and lift my camera up to record what’s happening.
‘Wow,’ Woody mutters out of the corner of his mouth. ‘They are truly, truly bad.’
They sure are.
Lauren is pouting and posturing so much that she doesn’t seem to have noticed she’s sliding through lots of different key changes where there shouldn’t be any.
Joelle is strutting and jerking, unaware she looks like a mean and moody dancing chicken.
Nancy is the only one who seems uncertain; she’s blushing fit to burst, her shoulders hunched as if she wants to fold herself up and disappear.
I shoot a sideways glance at Kitt, who’s staring at the stage, her face still and unreadable.
Has she done this? Messed with their singing and dancing just enough to cheer me up? Well, it has cheered me up, but the slightly tuneless singing and the chicken dancing doesn’t really have the sparkle of errant magic about it …
‘Um, girls, girls,’ says Mr Hamdi, wincing at some of the hip-wiggling, and holding his hands up to get Lauren and her buddies to stop. ‘That’s … quite something. But it’s not what I’m after for the Frost Fair, I’m afraid. Didn’t you read the posters? We were expecting students to perform classical music, or at least music from the past.’
‘But that Beyoncé track is from the past!’ Lauren protests. ‘It’s ancient – it was a hit back in 2008!’
‘It’s not exactly what I meant,’ says Mr Hamdi.
‘Well, I told Marnie what we were going to do, and she said Beyoncé would be fine!’ Lauren insists.
‘Um, I think you and Marnie might have got your wires crossed. Modern songs like –’
‘Sorry – Joelle’s dentist thing,’ Lauren interrupts Mr Hamdi, and she’s gone, with her black ballet pumps in her hand and a glower for Marnie.
Marnie does another ‘whatever’ shrug in reply. And I’m sure I spot the tiniest twitch of a smile there too.
Both the shrug and sort-of-smile make me suddenly sure of three things:
Kitt did a catch, not errant magic.
Marnie deliberately let Lauren and her friends make fools of themselves.
Marnie Reynolds doesn’t much like Lauren Mayhew. Which means I like Marnie a lot more than I did a couple of minutes ago …
‘Right, can we get back to business?’ says Mr Hamdi, ushering Marnie towards the mic. ‘I hope you’re not going to play any R&B hits, are you, Marnie?’
‘No!’ Marnie laughs, twirling her flute in her hand. ‘I’m going to do “Greensleeves”.’
I know ‘Greensleeves’; it’s from Tudor times. We listened to it in primary school when we were learning about horrible Henry VIII being mostly mean to his six wives. I remember Keira Cochrane playing it on her recorder for the class.
Back then, Keira just sort of parped the tune, mostly hitting the right notes. It’s a different story with Marnie … I don’t know anything about classical music but, watching Marnie, it’s like we’ve turned on the telly and found ourselves watching some young flute genius on the Proms or something.
She’s bobbing and weaving, doing these incredibly complex trills and swoops within the tune. It sounds so beautiful. So stunningly beautiful that it’s making the hairs on the back of my arms prickle and tickle …
Hold on, I know that feeling. I’ve had it before, and it’s always connected to the angels.
With a heart-lurch, I glance around quickly.
Uh-oh. My friends are totally and completely transfixed by Marnie’s performance.
I just hope everyone else is too, because I don’t need anyone in this hall spotting how intensely the girls are staring at the stage, how bright – how unnaturally bright – their eyes are.
Help! I’m not sure what it is about this centuries-old music but Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl are smiling, smitten, and so worryingly lost in the sound of it they might be in danger of giving themselves away any second.
‘Kitt!’ I hiss, nudging her hard with my elbow, trying to break the spell. ‘Kitt!’
Kitt finally blinks, as if she’s surfacing from a deep sleep and some wonderful dream.
And no, no, no! Now I’ve seen something that can’t be happening.
It’s Pearl –
Her shoulder blade under the navy of her blazer … it’s quivering. There’s only a small fluttering movement under the thick cloth, but a huge disaster is about to happen if I don’t do something about it right now.
‘Take this,’ I turn and say under my breath to Woody, quickly handing him my camera.
‘Where are you going?’ he asks.
‘Loo,’ I mutter, as I stand up quickly, then reach out and grab Pearl by the elbow, dragging her with me to the swing doors.
I can see Mr Hamdi frowning at us from the stage. He probably thinks I’m being horribly rude. Instead, I’m just frantically worried.
Worried that Pearl is about to unfurl …
Sensing something …
Sunshine turns to glance over her shoulder.
Her red hair is pinned up on one side by those small multicoloured butterfly clips. The setting sun makes their plastic wing tips glint, as if they’re moving, vibrating, about to take off and soar.
She’s looking back at Pearl, checking on her.
‘Is she all right?’ I ask.
‘She’s fine,’ Sunshine reassures me, turning round and carrying on walking. ‘She’s just tired and upset with herself.’
We’re on the path by Lady Grace’s Lake, and it’s so narrow and overgrown that we’re in pairs.
Me and Sunshine are leading the way, our gloved hands pushing stray springy branches away, our wellies stomping along in the scrubby earth and patches of soggy mud.
A little way behind us, Woody chats and jokes with Marnie. Scampering behind them are Dot and Bee – like a pair of puppy pals. At the back of our line are Kitt and Pearl, arm in arm, silent and thoughtful.
‘Would she really have unfurled?’ I whisper to Sunshine, now that I have the chance to ask.
Earlier today, outside the swing doors of the school hall, I’d thrown my arms round Pearl, pressing my hands down hard on her back, whispering an urgent, ‘Stop, stop!’
In the bustling, crowded school corridor, I hoped the shuffling hordes of students might suppose that we were two giddy Year 7 girls hugging after having a falling-out.
To be honest, I didn’t mind what they thought, as long as they didn’t find out – or more importantly see – what was really going on.
And thankfully, locked in that hug with Pearl, I began to feel the flutter fade, the hint of the humps melt away and become simply skinny shoulder-blades again.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry …’ Pearl had murmured in a panicky voice, as I led her back into the hall.
Afterwards, we hadn’t been able to talk about what happened, the angels and me. There were bells and afternoon classes. There was Woody walking home with us, keen to talk about the Frost Fair and the newsletter, urging me to drop my schoolbag and head off to check out the lake together as background to our article.
And that’s where we are now, though it’s obviously not just the two of us here.
Woody had texted Marnie to meet us. ‘Since she lives nearby,’ he’d said.
I’m not sure how I feel about that, but I can hardly complain, since I’ve got all three angels, a five-year-old sort-of-stepsister and one and a half dogs tagging along with me. (If you can count Alastair as half a dog.)
‘Pearl might have realized and been able to stop herself,’ says Sunshine, but she sounds more hopeful than convinced.
‘Will she get … marked down for this?’
I’m thinking of the chart in the girls’ airy white loft room, of course, where the nine angel skills are listed and each girl’s efforts are marked on it. Pearl has an awful lot of black crosses.
And, more than that, I’m worried about the effect
on Pearl’s actual physical set of skills. Not that I can say that to Sunshine, in case she gets mad at Pearl for sharing her secret with me.
‘Kitt and I failed too,’ Sunshine suddenly surprises me by saying. Her perfect, pretty face has a frown framing it.
Wow, looks like Sunshine has too much on her own mind to go noseying into mine.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘We all heard that beautiful sound and we let ourselves be swept up in it. For a moment we all forgot what we were and why we’re here. But Kitt and I are more …’ Sunshine reaches for the right word, but either can’t find it or doesn’t want to say it. ‘Kitt and I should have held back. We didn’t look out for Pearl. So thank you, Riley, for helping.’
Sunshine puts a turquoise-gloved hand on my arm and I can feel a soothing coolness coming from the hand inside.
‘That’s OK. Of course I’ll always help you all,’ I tell her. ‘If there’s ever anything –’
Sunshine interrupts me. ‘There is. Can you distract the others? We’re sensing something …’
She looks me straight in the face, and I see that the peacock blues and greens of her irises are merging, moving, swirling. It’s coming to them … the person they need to help next. I feel a shiver of excitement, thinking of the lucky person out there who’s lost their shine, and who has no idea what’s about to happen to them.
‘OK, but don’t be long – it’s going to get dark soon.’
It was a stupid idea to come, really, since the days are short in January. But Woody had been so enthusiastic, so insistent. He’d said if we hurried we’d be able to look around the lake before the light faded. He’d persuaded me that if we took the tangly dog-walkers’ route we’d quickly end up at the side that has been cleared and landscaped, ready for the Frost Fair on Saturday.
From there, we could come out on to Golf Road, with its bright street lights buzzing on, just as the sun began to dip away.
‘We only need a few minutes,’ Sunshine assures me. With that, she stops, pretending she has her glove stuck on a prickly twig, so that Woody, Marnie and Dot have to pass her.
‘… and so I said, “Mum, you have GOT to be joking!” ’ Marnie is moaning. She and her mother don’t get on, Woody told me. Marnie only had that disastrous party of hers to spite her mum for going away on a business trip. (Doesn’t she know how grateful she should be to have a mum at all?)
‘Hey, hold on! Where are THEY going?’ says Dot, noticing that Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl are veering off down another path. And what’s really bothering her, I can tell, is that Bee has trotted off with them.
I need to distract her. Now.
‘Look, Dot! You can see the lake!’ I say enthusiastically, pointing to the open glint of water up ahead.
‘YAY!’ she shrieks, and hurtles past me, Woody and Marnie. Behind her, Alastair bumps along on the muddy earth, dragged by his lead.
‘Hey, race you!’ shouts Woody, taking off after Dot.
Marnie, left behind, same as me, gives an awkward, shy laugh.
‘I guess …’ she says, tilting her head in the direction of the tall and small runners.
‘We’d better catch them up?’ I finish her sentence just as shyly.
Marnie gives another of her ‘whatever’ shrugs, same as she did on the stage earlier today. Then out of the blue she shouts, ‘GO!’
As Marnie legs it, I hesitate for a second, grinning at her cheek. Then I begin to run after her, thinking all the while that I must ask her about the trick she played on Lauren today.
But my thoughts and my legs slow again as I hear a certain sound …
A tinkle of music. It’s the same distant, sweet old-fashioned tune I heard in the ICT room yesterday. And, just like yesterday, I’m hearing it in snatches, so I can’t make sense of it.
Where’s it coming from?
Padding into the clearing, I see the small lake in front of me, its surface vivid, rippling shades of orange and mauve, reflecting the sun and darkening sky.
I see the cleared ground around it, free of dense shrubbery and gnarled bushes, awaiting the tents and spectacle of the weekend.
I see Dot holding Alastair up for Woody to see/pat/talk to, and Marnie looking on with a smile.
I see all that, but I don’t see anything or anywhere that could be connected to the song.
‘Riley! Riley!’ Dot calls out, racing towards me now, and the music slips away on the buffeting breeze. ‘Alastair wants to give you a lick, Riley! HA, HA, HA!’
I frown at Alastair – then look at him harder.
‘Wow, that’s new!’ I say, noticing that a dangling ‘tongue’ has been doodled on to his mouth.
‘Arf!’ Woody barks as he walks over, pulling a marker pen out of his jeans pocket.
‘Isn’t it so CUTE?’ Dot giggles, obviously fine with Woody’s teeny touch of graffiti. ‘I LOVE IT! ARF, ARF, ARF!’
Then she’s off, doing a flip-flappitty skip in her wellies, holding Alastair out in front of her and gazing at him in wonder.
‘Wow, Woody – you’re, like, Hillcrest Academy’s answer to Banksy,’ Marnie drawls, talking about the famous street artist. ‘Only, you know, rubbish, obviously.’
‘I’ll graffiti YOU, if you’re not careful, Marnie Reynolds!’ Woody jokes back, whipping the top off his pen and threatening her with it.
‘Don’t you dare!’ she shrieks.
‘Just try to stop me!’ he yells.
Grinning, I watch as they shriek, snigger and tussle, Woody trying to grab her, Marnie wriggling away from him.
Then I hear a sound, a splash that makes my heart freeze …
‘Riley! Riley! HELP!’ squeals Dot.
I kick off my wellies as I speed to her. She must’ve walked out along that little wooden jetty – I’ve only just noticed it now. She’s up to her chest in the lake, and could go under any second, dragged down by the weight of her blue duffel coat.
‘Swim to me, Dot!’ I yelp, lunging into the cold of the lake, my feet slipping and sliding on the mud underfoot.
Dot just bawls in reply, shock getting the better of her.
My gut-wrenching panic subsides when I realize Dot isn’t in as much danger as I first thought. Here, at least, the lake is reasonably shallow. Water splashes and laps around my waist, and as I get to her, lifting her into my arms, I realize Dot must have been standing in the water, maybe on tiptoes in her wellies, with no real chance of drowning.
‘It’s OK, sweetie. I’ve got you,’ I tell her, as she gratefully wraps her dripping arms and legs round me.
‘Alastair! ALASTAIR!’ she screams in my ear.
‘Don’t worry – Bee’s got him,’ I hear Woody say breathlessly. ‘See, Dot?’
My dorky, wonderful friend is right next to me in the water, pointing towards the middle of the lake. I swivel Dot round, so she can see Bee swimming back to us, Alastair held tenderly in his jaws.
Then I hazily notice a flash of something disappearing under the water’s surface near Bee: a stripy woollen scarf. Dot must have had it tucked under her coat, so I wouldn’t see it. It was mine. A present in my Christmas stocking from Dad and Hazel … though that’s not exactly important at a moment like this.
‘Do you want me to take her?’ Woody offers.
‘No, it’s all right,’ I tell him, knowing that my shivering sort-of-stepsister is clinging to me so limpet-tight that she’s not likely to let go till we reach dry land.
And on dry land is the welcoming committee: Marnie, Kitt and Pearl.
Sunshine is already gliding towards us through the water, and puts her hands on Dot’s head as soon as she reaches us.
‘Poor baby,’ she mutters, as the healing warmth spills over Dot’s head – unseen by the others but working almost instantly. Dot’s shivering stops.
‘My house is two minutes away,’ Marnie calls out, talking to us but pressing her mobile to her ear. ‘I can lend you dry things and you can phone home and – Hello? Nan? Nan? It’s Marnie. Can yo
u make some hot chocolate or something? I’m at the lake – my friend’s little sister fell in and she’s really cold. No, it’s OK. Honestly, she’s not hurt or anything, just soaking wet and a bit shocked. We’re coming now … Thanks!’
‘Are you OK, Riley?’ Woody checks with me, putting his hand on my back to help me up the bank of the lake with my heavy load.
‘Mmm,’ I mumble, not quite able to put how I feel into words.
The angels will understand, though. They’ll sense my wildly thudding heart, the stress headache that’s pounding in my brain and the awful, overwhelming knowledge that my little sort-of-stepsister could’ve died just now.
And so I look to them, at their three faces, their piercing blue eyes, for the understanding I know I’ll find there.
But Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl are doing something totally unexpected.
They’re smiling.
Smiling as brightly as if we’d just won a prize instead of nearly losing Dot.
I’m suddenly worried that these strange friends are even stranger than I thought …
Seeking, searching, finding
We walk into Marnie’s flashy big kitchen and straight into an argument.
‘What on earth are you doing that needs so much milk, Mum?’ a clearly irritated woman’s voice is asking.
‘I’m making hot chocolate for Marnie and her friends!’ a clearly irritated older woman’s voice replies. ‘She called five minutes ago to say – Oh, here they are now!’
All of us hover in the extra-wide doorway between the hall and the kitchen. I think we’re all a little wary, worried about interrupting.
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Marnie!’ says the younger of the two women – Marnie’s mum, obviously. They have the same olive skin and black hair, though Mrs Reynolds’s is scraped back into a neat short ponytail. She’s dressed in razor-sharp black trousers and a soft grey jersey that looks like it might be incredibly expensive.
‘What?’ says Marnie with a shrug and a frown. ‘I haven’t opened my mouth and I’ve done something wrong?’
Angels Like Me Page 4
