by Sally Rippin
As they left the tunnel behind, Pik skipped up beside her. ‘Is it really an angel?’ He touched its wings with sticky fingers. The angel lifted its head to look at Pik and its pointy chin bobbed on Jelly’s shoulder.
‘Yep. A real angel. Look, it’s got wings and everything. But it’s just a little one, Pikky. Just a baby who’s lost its way.’
‘Poor angel,’ said Pik. ‘What are you going to do with it, Jelly? Where are you going to put it?’
‘She doesn’t know yet,’ Gino said. ‘She’s thinking.’
Jelly headed down the creek path. She always got her best ideas while walking and, to her delight, it came to her at once.
She knew the perfect place.
3
a place to hide
On the other side of the creek, over the road bridge, was a primary school abandoned for the summer. A tall wire fence ran all the way around the shadowy playground and the school gates were padlocked.
‘There must be somewhere we can get under,’ Jelly said, adjusting her hold on the angel’s damp body.
The angel hunched still and silent against Jelly’s chest as they walked around the fence. Its left wing was folded neatly against its spine, but the right wing hung loosely over Jelly’s arm. The longest feathers almost grazed her knee. Every now and then it would lift its head to see where they were going then settle again with a sigh.
Pik trailed behind Gino, yawning and rubbing his eyes. ‘Are you okay—’ Jelly started to say, when a beam of light swung across a telegraph pole in front of them. A car turned into the street.
‘Quick,’ Jelly said to Gino. ‘Grab Pik.’
She flattened herself against the fence under an enormous mulberry tree that leaned out over the footpath. Gino pulled Pik in alongside him and they huddled together, blocking the angel from view. The beam slid over the footpath in front of their feet, lighting up fat mulberries splattered across the concrete, then it passed. It wasn’t until the car’s taillights were tiny in the distance that Jelly let go of her breath and unstuck her sweaty palms from the angel’s scrunched-up dress.
Pik buried his face into Jelly’s hip. ‘Can we go home now?’
‘Soon, Pikky. Be patient.’
‘Here,’ Gino said. ‘I’ve found a way in.’
The roots of the mulberry tree pushed through the wire fence and it curled away from the footpath. Gino pulled the wire upwards. The gap was wide enough for them to slide through.
‘Will you get under with the angel, Jel?’
Jelly bent forward, the angel hanging off her chest. ‘I don’t think so. I’ll go first then you can pass me the angel, Gino. Pik, you can hold up the fence.’
Jelly unhooked a spindly hand from her arm. The angel’s nails had left tiny pink crescents on her skin. She tried to prise the angel away but its head jerked and its heart began to knock around in its chest. It squealed. Pik stumbled backwards, sticking his fingers into his ears. Even Gino moved away.
‘Great,’ Jelly shouted over the squeals. ‘Thanks for your help, guys.’
In one rapid movement Jelly caught both of the angel’s arms, pulled it from her and shoved it through the gap. The angel scuttled forward on all fours. Its wings flicked out and for a moment it looked like it might take off. But then its damaged wing buckled and it hurtled forward onto the concrete.
Jelly scraped her knees and elbow as she rushed under the fence, but the angel hadn’t got far. When she reached it, it was huddled, shivering, against the bike racks. Jelly pulled it into her arms as Gino and Pik squeezed through the fence behind her.
‘You guys are hopeless,’ Jelly said.
They grinned sheepishly at her.
The three of them crept across the school grounds, reverently quiet, as if crossing the threshold of a church. A light in the hallway of a red-brick building shone a pale yellow square over a hopscotch game, marked in faded chalk on the concrete. The swings in the playground creaked.
There was something eerie about a school at night. It was like a ghost-town, ringing with the squeals of a hundred vanished children. And then Jelly heard a real shout, and the swish of bike wheels from the other side of the fence. Three boys were pedalling down the middle of the empty street, looping in and out of each other.
‘Budge. Hey, Budge.’
One of them let out a wolfish howl.
‘Get back,’ she whispered, tugging on Pik’s arm. They huddled in a doorway of the old school building. ‘Did they see us?’ Gino asked.
‘Don’t think so.’ Jelly stood for a moment listening to the night: a whistle, a bird, the clacking of a tram. ‘I’ve seen those boys around before. They’re from Northbridge High, I think.’
‘Your new school?’
‘Unfortunately.’
Finally they spied what they were looking for— a tool shed. Unlocked. The perfect place to keep an angel. Gino pushed open the squeaky metal door. Inside were some old paint tins, a flattened soccer ball and one lonely bike with a missing wheel. A plastic skylight let in yellow light from the streetlamps.
‘The angel should be okay here,’ Gino said. ‘What do you think?’
‘Perfect.’ Jelly sat down in the corner and tucked the angel into her lap. Gino and Pik crouched beside her.
‘Can I have a hold?’ Pik asked.
‘Not yet,’ Jelly said. ‘Maybe tomorrow. How about you and Gino get some food and blankets while I stay here with the angel?
‘Why don’t you go?’ Gino said. ‘I can stay with it. I haven’t had a turn yet.’
‘It doesn’t want you, Gino. It only wants me. I have to stay.’
‘What if I get caught?’
‘Don’t! And watch out for those boys.’
Gino and Pik crept out of the shed and pulled the door behind them. Jelly leaned back against the cool metal wall. She stroked the angel’s hair. Its eyes closed and soon its breathing slowed. Jelly was filled with pride. The angel trusted her. This strange, wild creature trusted her enough to fall asleep in her lap. As she watched the angel sleep, a sense of calm came over her, like warm honey trickling through her bones.
She forgot, for a moment, that high school was starting in five weeks, that her parents had sold their beautiful house in the outer suburbs to buy a rundown old dump in the city so that she could go to Northbridge High. She even forgot about Stef, and the conversation where her parents had promised her she’d make new friends. Jelly was certain she’d never find a friend as good as Stef. They’d known each other since Prep.
The angel’s limbs were folded loosely across her knees. Long pale lashes spread out over the crest of its cheek. Jelly picked up a clump of soft white hair. Now that it was no longer wet, when she blew gently it floated like a spider’s web.
Jelly had never held anything so precious or so lovely. Looking down at the sleeping angel made her heart hurt. Even the baby birds that her dad had brought into school last year weren’t as fragile as this. The enormity of what she was doing suddenly flooded through her and she remembered everything.
The next day was Christmas: Gino and Pik would go home and then Jelly would be by herself again. Without a single friend in the world. Stef was too far away and too busy with her family to come and help her. No, Jelly needed Gino. She couldn’t do this on her own. He needed to stay for the holidays. Jelly prayed for him to hurry. In her damp clothes, now that she was sitting still, she felt the cool of the night shrinking around her.
‘Please,’ she whispered, stroking the angel’s feathers. ‘Make something happen so that Gino has to stay. And Pik too, if he’s allowed.’ The angel stirred and a shiver passed through it like the faintest breeze.
Jelly leaned against the shed wall. Time passed. One minute, ten minutes. How long had the boys been gone? A car started up and she heard people leave a party up the road, their laughter melting into the night.
Then Jelly recognised the sound of Gino’s sneakers on the concrete outside. Finally! She sat up expectantly as he opened the door. He was puffing
, his hands empty. His eyes darted about. ‘You gotta come,’ he said. ‘It’s Nonna. She’s in hospital!’
4
nonna
After all her complaining about her gummy knees and aching back and tired old eyes, finally it was Nonna’s heart that caved in. Her heart, which Jelly thought would have been about the biggest, healthiest part of her body, stopped working right between the Christmas cake and coffee.
By the time Jelly and Gino got home the ambulance had gone, and their mums and dads with it, and only Maureen from next door was there to look after them and put baby Sophia to bed. Pik was crying in the kitchen, where all the coffee cups were half-full on the bench and the dishes still everywhere.
‘Is Nonna okay?’ Jelly asked, out of breath from running up the creek bank faster than she’d ever done.
‘She’ll be fine, honey,’ Maureen said, reaching her hand out to Jelly. But Jelly didn’t take it and Maureen let it drop back into her lap, her long red fingernails clicking against each other like cicada wings. Maureen was wearing Nonna’s special flowery apron. No one was allowed to wear that apron except for Nonna.
How do you know? Jelly wanted to ask. How do you know Nonna will be fine? But she didn’t. She didn’t feel like asking something she knew Maureen couldn’t really answer.
‘Well, kids, I’d say it was way past your bedtime, wouldn’t you? Your mum said you’ll know where the spare bedding is, Ange—’ ‘
It’s Jelly. That’s what everyone calls me.’
‘Right. Jelly.’ Maureen tottered into the kitchen.
‘Aren’t they coming back tonight?’ Even though Jelly was trying her best not to cry, her throat began to clog. She ran her hands briskly over her eyes to shoo away the tears.
‘Not tonight,’ Maureen said, stacking coffee cups onto a tray. ‘They’ll need to stay with your grandma for a while.’
‘Nonna,’ said Jelly under her breath. Why was there a near-stranger in their house at a time like this?
Pik ran out from under the kitchen bench and into the lounge room. Jelly followed him. Gino was bunched up on the couch, tears running down his cheeks. Jelly took a sharp breath. She wouldn’t cry in front of Maureen.
‘What about Christmas?’ Gino said, in a small voice. ‘What about our presents?’
‘I don’t think that’s the most appropriate thing to be worrying about right now,’ Maureen called from the kitchen. ‘Bedtime.’
Jelly, Gino and Pik trudged upstairs with a bundle of bedding in their arms. Pik was almost falling over with tiredness so Jelly tucked him in her bed, where he immediately fell asleep. She and Gino made nests on the floor. Her clothes were still damp but she couldn’t face changing and doing her teeth. And there were no parents to bother them about those things anyway. She curled up in her blankets.
‘Are we in trouble?’ she whispered to Gino. ‘Do our parents know where we were?’
‘No,’ said Gino. ‘I mean, yes. Dad shouted at me for being out at night without asking them, but they think we were just at the playground. He would’ve killed me if he knew we’d taken Pik down to the creek.’ He paused. ‘Jelly?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Do you think Nonna’s going to be all right?’
‘Of course she will,’ said Jelly, but her heart felt squeezed. ‘What about the angel? We didn’t leave it any food or water,’ she said.
‘We’ll go tomorrow morning,’ Gino mumbled. ‘It’ll be fine.’
But Jelly wasn’t so sure. It was such a little thing. So small and skinny and afraid. And now she didn’t know who she was more worried about: Nonna or the angel. At least Nonna had people with her. She wasn’t alone.
Everything that had happened felt so mixed-up and frightening and strange, as if the world she knew had been turned upside down and shaken all about. Moving house, Nonna sick, her parents gone in the middle of the night—all of it forced its way up through Jelly’s chest. And even though she squeezed her eyes shut, long silky tears streamed down her cheeks, while Gino snored in the pile of blankets next to her.
That night Jelly had the strangest dream. She dreamed she was walking along the creek with her dad as he pointed out birds. As they approached the tunnel it grew dark. Not a gentle dark like night falling but the kind where great plum-coloured clouds bloom in the sky like ink in water.
‘We’d better hide in the tunnel,’ said Dad. ‘It looks like rain.’
But as Jelly watched, the tunnel came alive and began to transform. Its monstrous jaws opened wide. Jelly turned to her father, but he was gone. She was about to run back the way they had come when she saw something deep inside the monster’s belly. It was Nonna. She was sitting in her favourite chair, smiling and beckoning. Heavy raindrops began to fall and Nonna called more impatiently for Jelly to get out of the rain. Jelly desperately wanted to go to her, but she couldn’t bring herself to walk into the monster’s wide, snapping jaws.
While she was deliberating, one of the cockatoos in a nearby tree swooped down and flew into the darkness. As it approached Nonna its wings grew larger and its body grew longer until soon it was a full-grown angel with long white curls that whipped about its face. Nonna reached up. The angel grasped her wrists and pulled her into the air. As they flew out of the tunnel, Nonna and the angel turned into two noisy cockatoos—flashes of white against the inky sky. When Jelly turned back to the tunnel the monster had disappeared.
5
christmas
Jelly woke the next morning in her grubby clothes in a twisted pile of blankets on the floor. It took her a moment to realise where she was, but then she heard Gino rustling next to her. When she sat up, she saw Pik asleep in her bed, dribbling onto her pillow. Jelly’s heart sank. It was Christmas. Downstairs was a towering tree, draped in tinsel and hung with baubles. The star that Jelly had made years before sat crookedly on top. But, unless their parents had come back in the night, Jelly knew there’d be nothing under it. She couldn’t imagine a worse way to wake up on Christmas morning—Nonna in hospital, her parents gone and Maureen snoring on the couch downstairs.
Then she remembered. And despite everything, her heart leapt.
‘Gino,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going down to see the angel. Come with me?’
‘Me too,’ said Pik, sitting upright, immediately awake. He jumped out of bed, onto the pile of blankets that was his brother.
‘Get off.’ Gino shoved him.
‘I’m not taking Pik on my own,’ Jelly said.
‘All right, I’m coming,’ Gino said. ‘What about Maureen?’
‘We’ll leave her a note. Come on, Gino. The angel’s probably starving.’
‘I’m starving,’ said Pik.
‘You can wait.’ Gino pushed him out the way as he got up.
They crept down the stairs, past Maureen who was sprawled across the couch with her eyes shut and her mouth open, even though the sunlight was slanting in through the window right over her face. The fairy lights on the Christmas tree still blinked hopefully but, as Jelly had expected, there was nothing underneath. Pik stopped to check behind the tree.
In the kitchen, Jelly found a note from her mum wedged under the biscuit tin. She must have scribbled it before they left last night.
Jelly, Dad and I have gone to the hospital with Nonna. I expect we won’t be around much over the next few days, at least until we know Nonna’s going to be all right. I’ll need you to help Maureen with the kids. Sorry, sweetheart. We’ll have an extra-special Christmas when everything is okay again. Love, Mum.
Nonna would be all right, Jelly told herself. She had to be. She went back to Pik. ‘It’s okay, Pikster.’ She steered him into the kitchen. ‘Santa’s just waiting for Nonna to get better.’
They packed bread, grapes, water, bandages and other things, and the old picnic blanket from under the stairs. Jelly left a note in red texta for Maureen: Gone to pick flowers for Nonna. Once again her brilliant mind astonished her.
In the daylight, the tunnel seemed smaller an
d less frightening than the night before. Pik poked his tongue out at it as they passed. Birds swooped in and out of the peppercorn trees, squawking loudly, but the streets were quiet. Not a car or person in sight. Everyone was probably doing what people normally did on Christmas morning: sleeping in or opening presents. Not wandering the streets like orphans before the sun was fully up. They reached the mulberry tree and crawled under the fence into the school.
When Jelly opened the door to the shed, she couldn’t see anything in the shadows. Then she noticed a small pile of droppings, like black pebbles. Where was the angel? Her heart lurched. She and Gino stepped into the shed, but Pik stayed outside.
‘Stinks,’ Gino said, wrinkling his nose. Jelly took another step forward. Suddenly there was a terrible squeal and the angel scuttled out from behind the door. Jelly fell against the side of the shed as the angel clambered up her, clawing at her T-shirt and drooling into her face. Its breath was as foul as dirty vase water.
‘Get it off me! Get it off me!’ she pleaded, her heart banging around in her chest, but Gino was laughing so hard he could barely stand up. Pik peered around the door, sniggering.
‘It only wants you, Jelly,’ Gino said. ‘Not me. Remember?’
Jelly pulled at the angel, but it was holding on so tight its skinny fingertips were bruising her ribs. She stumbled and the angel came with her. As they landed on its injured wing, the angel bucked in pain and Jelly pulled herself free. She staggered backwards, but when she saw the angel crumple over its twisted wing she knelt down to scoop it up again.
‘Stop laughing, Gino,’ she said. ‘It’s really hurt.’