Daddy's Little Angel

by Shani Petroff

  “Can you believe what she did? I hate her,” I heard him say.

  Who was her? Was he talking about me? It suddenly occurred to me that maybe he was really angry about the hair pulling incident.

  “Dude, relax. It’s not that bad,” Reid told him.

  But then Cole came back with, “It’s pretty bad, all right,” and I felt I had to chime in.

  “I’m so sorry, Cole,” I told him. My voice cracked a little, but I don’t think he noticed.

  “Thanks.” He shook his head. “But my whole year is over.”

  My God. What had I done that was so unforgivable? I knew it was bad, but enough to destroy his whole eighth-grade experience? At this rate it was only a matter of seconds before he had me banished from the table and his life. “I feel terrible,” I added.

  “Thanks.” He gripped the back of his head. “Did you hear what she said?”

  Did he just say she? She was good. She meant it wasn’t me he was talking about this whole time. I shook my head no.

  “Right after homeroom, Mrs. Laurel reamed me out for never handing in my homework last week. In front of everyone,” Cole began. “She said if I keep it up, she’s going to have the coach pull me from the basketball team.”

  Such good news! Well, not that Cole was in danger of getting kicked off of the team, but that it was our science teacher, Mrs. Laurel, whom he hated and not me.

  My relief must have messed with my brain because the next thing I knew I was offering to help him with his science homework. “I’m pretty good at science,” I told him. I couldn’t believe myself. Partially because I’d just offered to help Cole Daniels and partially because I stink at science.

  “Enough already,” Courtney whined. “This is my day. We’re supposed to be celebrating my part.” Then she turned her whole body my direction. “Besides, didn’t you get enough attention when you practically tore Cole’s head off in class this morning? I heard it was crazy embarrassing.” She bit off part of a french fry for emphasis.

  Someone needed to kill me right then.

  “I was just trying to save him from a bee,” I tried to explain.

  “Whatever. Still embarrassing.”

  The expression on my face must have shown just how mortified I was because Courtney burst out laughing.

  “Hey, do you protect everyone, or just Cole?” Reid said. “I wouldn’t mind a personal body guard. Especially one who is on a first-name basis with Mara’s Daughters.”

  “Everyone,” I said quickly. “If anyone sees a bee, just give me a holler. I’m here to help. Cole was just my first.” Hopefully that little bit of acting was enough to throw people off the scent of my crush.

  The top of Cole’s cheeks turned a light shade of red, and he quickly picked up his juice and took a gulp. He was blushing. I allowed myself to pretend it was because he had a crush on me, before I faced the fact that he was probably just embarrassed. “No way,” Courtney shrieked just in time to break up the one-way staring contest I was having with Cole before I blew my own cover.

  Courtney was reacting to a huge ketchup blob on her sweater—right on her left boob. She turned away so she wasn’t facing the boys and furiously rubbed a napkin over the spot.

  “You need water,” Jaydin said, and squirted some from her bottle onto the stain.

  “Cut it out. You’re making it worse. Just great,” Courtney hissed. “Like anyone needs another reason to stare at my chest.”

  I wished I had her problem. The big chest, not the ketchup stain. “Do you want me to get you a shirt from your locker?” I asked.

  “I don’t have an extra one,” she moaned.

  “I might. I can go look.”

  She gave me a once-over. “Please. Like anything of yours would fit over my chest.”

  Ouch. She didn’t need to rub it in. But I didn’t let that dissuade me from helping her. “I have an idea. Take your ponytail down.”

  “Why?”

  “Simple,” I said as she let her hair fall loosely around her. “It’s long enough. It can cover the stain.”

  Courtney cocked her head to one side and scrutinized me. “It looks like you may come in handy after all. Congratulations, Angel. You pass. You get to sit with us from now on.”

  Thank goodness! I did it! I made it to the next round on Survivor: Goode Middle School. I was golden. Better than golden. I was platinum. This ranked even higher than going on stage with Mara’s Daughters.

  It was amazing, and yet it was incredibly awful, too. What on earth was I supposed to do about Gabi?

  chapter 17

  From the moment I left school that day, I couldn’t stop thinking about Gabi. What kind of person ditched their best friend in the cafeteria and wanted to do it again? I was a horrible human being. If that’s what I even was. Maybe my devil half had taken control of my mind. The old me would never have considered leaving Gabi to fend for herself at lunch.

  At home, I found my mother standing over the stove stirring white rose petals, sugar, and honey into a pot of boiling liquid. I recognized this one, all right. She was putting the final touches on her “Sweetness Serum.” She’s made me have a shot of it once a week, ever since I was two.

  “Love and kindness fill this brew. Make the drinker a good person in everything they do,” she chanted, and the more I watched, the more anger (or maybe it was the bad blood I inherited) bubbled up inside of me. I wasn’t good. I never was. And this was her fault. She helped make me this way. How could my mother—a woman who was always searching for a way to ward off evil and find eternal bliss—wind up with the devil for a husband and me for a kid?

  “How could you marry the devil?” I finally shouted.

  Mom dropped her spoon in the pot. “Angel, you startled me,” she said, fishing out the utensil with a ladle. Her back was still toward me.

  “Well?”

  Mom lowered the stove to a simmer and took a few of her meditation breaths. “Ohm. Ohm. Ohmmmm.”

  “Mom,” I interrupted.

  “Just a few more. Please,” she said. “You too.”

  I joined in, if only because I didn’t want my bad side to take over again. But I couldn’t focus. I didn’t want to breathe. Well, not that kind of breathing, anyway. So, I let her take two more breaths, and then I demanded an answer.

  “I knew you’d ask,” she said as she moved to sit on Buddha. I took the seat next to her. “I thought I’d know what to say,” she started, “but I don’t.” There was a moment of silence, then it all started pouring out.

  “I didn’t know he was the devil—not at first,” she began. “I had a completely different life back then. I certainly didn’t make potions and play with crystals. In fact, I didn’t even believe in the supernatural, or heaven, or anything like that.”

  I couldn’t imagine my mother back before she got into cleansing spells and all that junk she adored.

  “My name was Margaret Mitt,” she continued. “I was an assistant professor at NYU. Lou was a professor there, too.” She shook her head. “I only found out later that he took the job as part of a bet with one of his shady friends to see how many souls he could muster up in one semester.” She took a deep breath. “We fell in love. At least, I did. It was hard not to. He was charming, handsome, smart. We got into all sorts of debates over spirituality and good versus evil. I didn’t know he had inside knowledge.”

  She looked down as she went on. “We got married, I got pregnant, and then I saw him trying to get one of the freshmen to sign over her soul. He whipped a contract out of thin air, then made it disappear in a burst of fire. I called him on it, and he told me everything. I was terrified. I packed my bags. I had to get away from him. And I was going to, but not surprisingly he’s a pretty convincing guy. He promised me that he’d change his ways—that he’d quit being the devil. I loved him, so I stayed.”

  I hadn’t noticed that my nails were digging into my palms until Mom took my hands. She breathed in and out a few more times then continued with her story. She to
ld me she came home early one day and heard Lou talking on the phone. He was bragging about how he got the soul of one of the deans. That’s when she decided to leave for good. He tried to convince her to stay, but she didn’t want me growing up with him as a father.

  Mom squeezed my hands hard. “I made him promise to stay away. He said he would, but only until you were an adult. I got as far away as I could. I gave up my career, changed my name, and learned everything possible about the devil and how to ward off evil. I thought I could keep him out of our lives. Obviously it didn’t work.”

  It was a lot to take in. Mom pulled me in for a hug. I rested my head on her chest. I wasn’t angry anymore, but I was kind of scared. I still had one more question. “Am I evil?”

  “Of course not,” she said holding me tighter.

  “How do you know? I’m part him.”

  Mom moved me back so I was looking right at her. “Because I know,” she said. “I know you. You’re nothing like him.” Only, when she said that last part, her voice got higher. It was her tell-tale sign. Whenever she spoke like that, she was lying.

  “Oh my God,” I shouted, and leaped to my feet. “You think I’m a mini-devil. That’s why you’re always praying for my soul.”

  Mom stood. “No, no, no. It’s not that. I know you’re good.” She made me sit back down. “It’s just . . . I don’t want you to panic.”

  Okay, if she didn’t want me to panic she shouldn’t have said, “I don’t want you to panic.”

  “But,” she continued, “there’s a fifty percent chance you inherited his powers.”

  chapter 18

  Powers!? There was no way. I couldn’t even do a card trick, forget something supernatural. “This is a mistake,” I shouted as I fumbled with the salt and pepper shakers. “I must be in the percentile that doesn’t have them. I’d have known if I could steal souls, make fireballs shoot from my nose, or whatever it is that evil can do.”

  Mom put her hands on both my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “It’ll be okay. Powers are what you make of them. You can use them for good. But you don’t have to use them at all. I actually hope that you don’t.”

  “You’re not going to have to worry about it because I don’t have them.” I went and grabbed a carton of orange juice from the fridge. Something a girl with powers would never have done. She would have just made it magically appear in her hands.

  “Angel, you’re going to have to face this,” Mom said, trailing after me.

  “No, I’m not. Because I don’t have powers.” I slammed the refrigerator door shut. “There’s a fifty-fifty shot. And I know I’m in the clear.”

  I refused to turn around. Instead I pretended to study the word magnets on the freezer. As I stood there innocently reading the Gaelic incantation my mom had constructed, the magnets started to move. First they jumbled together, then they sank down to the bottom left corner of the freezer, leaving lots of room on top. Then several word magnets shot up and filled that empty space. They formed a sentence:

  Why not try and see?

  No. This wasn’t happening. I swiped the magnets to the ground, but more magnets flew back up.

  Try and activate them. Then you will know for sure.

  “Lou, stop it,” I screamed.

  I went to take the magnets down again but Mom caught hold of my arm. “It’ll be okay,” she said. “If you end up having powers, look at them as a gift. Something to make you even more special.”

  I sure didn’t feel special. I felt cursed. “Right. That’s why you spent the last thirteen years trying to keep my dad from me and attempting to ward off evil.”

  “It’s not that,” she stammered. “I thought it would be easier for you not to know. But now that you do . . .” I moved away from my mother and fidgeted with some of the angel figurines she had on the windowsill. I can’t have powers, I thought. Can I?

  Mom moved to the stove. “Why don’t we have a nice, hot drink and relax?” She ladled some of her potion into a tea cup.

  She did think I was evil. “No thanks,” I shouted, then stormed up to my room and crawled into bed.

  I felt like someone dumped a truckload of ice cubes on me. I couldn’t get rid of the chills. I mean, what if I did have powers and I decided to give them a try—would I be able to control them? Or if they had evil aftereffects and caused anyone I helped to get hairy, webbed fingers? The possibilities for doom and destruction were endless. It was too risky. I mean, I always wanted something that made me stand out. Like being able to run a crazy-fast mile, do a quadruple back flip, paint like Monet or Picasso or one of those famous dead guys we learned about in art class, remember all the lines to every movie I’ve seen. Anything. Well, almost anything. I didn’t want tainted powers. No, powers from some radioactive spider or a wish-granting genie would have been an entirely different story. I’d have been all over those. But these were evil.

  I walked over to my window and stared out. Things had been a lot simpler when I was twelve. This new revelation was completely clogging up my brain. Was it possible that these powers and Lou really weren’t so bad? Or was it the dumbest idea in the galaxy to think that the devil or his daughter could possibly use their powers for good?

  It didn’t seem likely, so I made up my mind. There was no way I was checking to see if I had powers. I wasn’t even going to tell Gabi about any of this. Not after the way she reacted when we left the Mara’s Daughters concert. She would totally try to tempt me to give them a try and whip her up a Tony Award or a really early acceptance letter to Julliard. But I couldn’t do it. Powers from the devil had to come with a catch. And I wasn’t going to risk that.

  Checking to see if I had powers was now 100 percent off-limits.

  chapter 19

  For the next day and a quarter it felt like I was one of the group—one of the popular kids. But P.E. was about to end all of that. I stuck my head into the gym to survey the situation, and as soon as Jaydin spotted me, she waved me over. No one (well, maybe Courtney) kept Jaydin waiting, so I made my way to her.

  “Gross,” Jaydin said, slapping my hand away from my mouth.

  I had been biting the skin around my thumb. “Sorry,” I said, and put my hands into the pockets of my one-size-too-small, red gym shorts. Fortunately, the shirt was two sizes too big, so it hid my butt. “I kind of stink at volleyball.”

  Jaydin shrugged her shoulders. “Just let Reid or Lana hit the ball for you.”

  Was it really that easy? I didn’t ask, I didn’t want to sound like an ignoramus, but the truth was I was terrified that my sports skills, or lack thereof, would obliterate my newfound popularity. I stink at anything that involves eye-hand coordination, with the exception of skee ball, which I’ve inexplicably mastered on Gabi’s Wii.

  Mrs. Taylor blew her whistle and told us to line up to pick teams. Max shuffled right over to me. “Hi, Angel.”

  “Hi,” I mumbled, focusing solely on my feet. I didn’t want to be mean, but being seen with Max wasn’t going to help keep my standing in Courtney’s crowd.

  “Did you download the CD I gave you? I have tons more you can have, too, if you want.”

  “Thanks.” I could feel Jaydin’s eyes on me. That was bad. She was going to think I hung out with Max all the time. Everyone was going to. I’d never get picked for a team that way. It was going to be just like always.

  “Just tell me which other bands you like,” Max went on.

  I nodded, but when Max opened his mouth again, I squatted down and examined my sneaker. I looked for the imaginary pebble stuck inside until Mrs. Taylor chose Lana and Reid for captains and told the rest of us to quiet down.

  Max was still standing next to me, but so was Jaydin. I prayed that her status was enough to even out the nerd karma trying to suck me in.

  Reid won the coin toss. I crossed my fingers that he wouldn’t choose me dead last this time, now that he knew who I was. “Angel,” he said.

  Was he asking me a question or taking me on his team?


  “Go.” Jaydin shoved me as I tried to figure it out.

  No way! That meant Reid had picked me first—before everyone. I did a little victory dance in my head as I took my spot next to him. I wondered if Courtney had been in my class, would Reid have chosen her before me? Not that it really mattered. I was getting treated just like one of the popular kids.

  Lana ended up with the last pick—her choice was either this girl Leslie who’s always one of the last to get picked, or Max. I felt bad for them. I definitely knew what it was like to be where they were. They both looked pretty anxious. When Lana called Max’s name, his shoulders slumped, even more than usual, and he let out a sigh. It was like he almost wanted to be last. Then I figured out why. He looked over at me and frowned. He had wanted to be on my team. I pretended like I didn’t notice.

  During the game, I tried not to be obvious about watching Cole across the net from me, but he was definitely a lot more interesting than the match. I basically was just standing around, while Reid and Allison hit any ball that came in my direction.

  But that ended when Lana served. It was like slow motion. The ball was spiraling right at me. Allison and Reid ran to help, but weren’t going to get there in time. And it was a good thing, because it wasn’t a normal volleyball anymore. Right where the word Spalding was supposed to be were Lou’s eyes. His smile and big white teeth appeared not too far below. It was like a Mr. Potato Head volleyball. From the Underworld.

  “No,” I screamed, hitting it away with all my might. The ball went flying back over the net.

  “Way to go, Garrett,” Reid called out.

  I don’t know what shocked me more—seeing part of my dad’s face in the middle of gym class or the fact that I made actual contact with the volleyball and gained control back for my team.

  “Good job, Angel,” Max yelled, as Lana glared at him. He threw me the ball, only he overshot it, and I had to chase it halfway across the gym. But I wasn’t the only one who ran after it. Cole was by my side.