Keeping it Real

by Annie Dalton

  First published in Great Britain by Harper Collins Children’s Books in 2005

  This updated and revised edition published by Lazy Chair Press in 2013

  Text copyright (c) Annie Dalton 2001

  The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

  This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be leant, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form (including digital form) other than this in which it is published, and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is for Matt who was patient and clever, Claire for her sensitive comments, Andrea who kept me well-fed, and for all you undercover angels everywhere

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  About the Author

  Also by Annie Dalton

  Credits

  Chapter One

  I‘d hate to shock any true angel believers out there, but before I died and became one myself, I didn’t really believe in angels at all!

  I don’t blame myself too much for that. It’s a natural mistake to make, if you grow up in a part of London where they put security guards inside Santa’s Grotto to stop all the dads and big bros pinching the toys. In my neighbourhood, if you couldn’t break it, kick it, spray graffiti on it or nick it, it probably didn’t exist.

  If I HAD believed in angels, though, I’d have told you they definitely had everything sussed.

  This belief has caused me SOO much trouble. I made so many major bloopers when I got here. Even now just thinking about them makes me cringe…However I couldn’t exactly go back to being human, so I decided I’d just wing it. I winged my way so brilliantly through those first terms at the Angel Academy you have no idea.

  I took weekend courses in v. deep subjects like soul retrieval. I picked up a LOT of fancy angel jargon. Seriously, if you’d seen me sitting with my angel buddies in our fave student hangouts, nodding solemnly as they chatted on about Dark Studies, I totally blended in!

  During waking hours that is. Don’t know if you’ve tried, but you can’t actually fake it in your sleep.

  I only had to lie down and close my eyes, and I’d go slap-bang into a terrifying nightmare. Like all bad dreams, the plots were kind of samey. Usually I was trying to rescue my little sister from the hideous evil beings who’d taken over my planet since I’d been dead.

  When I wasn’t dreaming about my family, I dreamed about my old human mates. In dream after dream they angrily turned their backs on me - especially Sky who simply refused to understand why I had to leave.

  I couldn’t understand it myself. I’d clamber out of my narrow little bed and go to stare out at the twinkling lights of the Heavenly City and I’d think. Why me? Did some sharp-eyed Agency scout scan every single pupil in every single classroom at Park Hall Community High School, scribbling comments on her clipboard. Nope, nope, nope. Wait! That girl at the back! The ditzy one touching up her nail polish, let’s take her!

  I can’t honestly imagine anyone looking at the Park Hall Mel Beeby and seeing potential angel material. Yet I somehow scored an Agency scholarship to the coolest school in the cosmos and all my mates got left behind.

  Here’s how it happened, you know, how I died.

  It was the day after my thirteenth birthday; a bright, summery, completely happy day. I had a wodge of birthday cash in my purse and I was off to meet my mates for a BIG shopping splurge.

  I glanced both ways, like you do, and stepped on to the pedestrian crossing just as an ancient Ford Fiesta screeched around the corner burning rubber. It was the last thing I saw: rusty metal and a white-faced boy gripping the wheel.

  BANG!! The Universe went supernaturally quiet.

  For a long moment nothing whatsoever happened. Then, to my surprise, I kind of slipped out of my body. It was effortless, like a pea slipping out of its pod.

  Next minute I was soaring over the city; and I just kept on soaring higher and higher, until I soared right out of the solar system!

  Strangely, the idea of turning back never occurred to me. It had something to do with the music: sweet throbbing chords which sounded as if they came from some giant humming top. I couldn’t help myself - I started flying faster and faster, with a growing sense of excitement. I remember having a childish thought that when the music stopped my cosmic mystery tour would be over. But when I reached the light fields where Heaven begins, the music didn’t stop; it just faded, weaving its otherworldly harmonies into the everyday hum of Heaven. And this was only the beginning of the cosmic mysteries…

  Like, what are the chances of meeting your true soul-mate on your first day at angel school? Imagine two girls from two totally different centuries meeting outside those fabulous glimmery mother-of-pearl gates at the Angel Academy and instantly recognising each other. Doesn’t that give you goose bumps? You know the first thing Lola Sanchez said to me? “Do I know you?” That’s what it’s like when you meet a true soul-mate.

  I should probably explain that soul-mates aren’t like, an exclusive angel phenomenon. People run into their soul-mates on Earth all the time. But on Earth there’s an unfortunate complication known as the Powers of Darkness.

  For reasons of their own, the PODS would prefer it if humans never hooked up with their soul-mates. They’d prefer you never to have any friends full stop. They want you to feel you can’t trust anyone, EVER, most of all they don’t want you to trust yourself. It’s harder to recognise a soul-mate if you don’t feel good inside your own skin. It’s also harder to be a soul-mate.

  Don’t get me wrong, my human mates and I did our best to look out for each other. At times Sky and I were so close we were almost like sisters. But we always kept that teeny-tiny something back, at least Sky did; like, deep down, she didn’t actually trust you.

  But Lola and I had total trust between us from the start. All friendships, have their ups and downs, even in Heaven, but when you trust someone, you get through it, right?

  Considering my soul-mate comes from a vibey city a hundred years in my future, it’s unbelievable how much Lola and I have in common. We literally chat away non-stop about anything that jumps into our heads, from purely frivolous stuff like, should we just give in to fashion and get those cute forehead jewels (like a few of the older angel girls are wearing again at school), or is that too totally angel for words, to huge cosmic topics like Space and Time.

  I have never been able to get my head around the concept of two kinds of time. I’m sorry but to me ‘Time’ means the system I learned in primary school, which we do use in Heaven mostly. But apparently there’s also Cosmic Time - like, the Boss of time -which can just kick in, totally overruling the first kind, if, but only if, the Universe decides…

  I have a good reason for telling you all this. I must have been at the Angel Academy for well over a year when it finally dawned on me that I hadn’t had a birthday!

  I know! I’d attended other kids’ celebrations. I’d actually organised Lola’s. Yet it never seemed to be my turn.

  I tried
bringing this up with my friends, but you’d think I was spying for the Dark Powers the way everyone fobbed me off. They reckoned it was something I had to discover for myself.

  This is one of the things about angelic life that makes me want to scream. Everything has to be a Big Mystery! What if I didn’t discover it for myself? Was I supposed to stay thirteen for ever?

  One night, I was watering my baby orange tree, in a real grump, when for no reason a memory from my human life came flitting into my head.

  It was my little sister’s fourth birthday. All afternoon, Jade and her pre-school playmates charged around our flat leaving a trail of torn wrapping paper and burst balloons. Finally the littlies went home clutching goody bags. When I went into Jade’s room later, to say goodnight, she was staring dreamily out of the window into the dark. She turned to me with an awed expression. “Mel, the moon is smiling. It knows it’s my birthday!”

  And I knew exactly what she meant. On your birthday you don’t just feel special to your friends and family, you feel special to the entire Universe! It was this memory that finally pushed me over the edge. So what if I hadn’t solved the Big Mystery? This angel’s birthday was seriously overdue!!

  I reached for my diary and flipped it open. Picking a Friday at random, I daringly circled it in sparkly felt-tip. Sorted!

  I ran to Lola’s room to tell her I was having a birthday party at Rainbow Cove, which was the first venue to pop into my head. I had no idea how she’d react but to my surprise and relief her face lit up. “Yay, an excuse to go shopping!”

  I spent the evening on the phone inviting everyone I could think of. Nobody raised an objection. They just went “OK, cool!” Our best buddy Reuben said he and Chase would organise the music and lighting. Finally I phoned Mo, who runs Guru, our fave student hangout, and asked if he’d take care of catering. He said he’d be delighted!

  I’d have given myself a DIY b-day months ago, if I’d known it was going to be this easy.

  Suspiciously easy is what it was.

  Maybe it’s just me and birthdays? Something cosmic always seems to happen on or around mine. But I never imagined that my first heavenly birthday would make all my most terrifying nightmares come true.

  Chapter Two

  The Saturday before my official birthday, Lola and I scoured our fave department stores for suitable party clothes. As the birthday girl AND the birthday girl’s best friend, we obviously had to look especially divine. In the end I bought the sweetest slip dress in shimmery lilac. Since it was a beach party, I was planning to wear my dress with flip-flops, but v. v. cosmic flip-flops, decorated with big sparkly stars,

  Unfortunately, my soul-mate and I got a tiny bit too wrapped up in our party plans, so much that we totally forgot the joint assignment we were supposed to be writing on the Hell dimensions!

  We’d already blagged two extensions and Mr Allbright was running out of patience. By a cruel incidence, the Friday I’d unthinkingly picked for my birthday was also the absolute final deadline for our assignment, a fact I totally failed to remember until my alarm went off on Friday morning.

  As you’ve probably realised, angelic education is radically different to the human kind. For one thing, angel high school kids aren’t known as ‘pupils’ we’re called ‘trainees’, and I don’t think a day goes by without our teacher banging on about how “you must remember you are being groomed to be the angel agents of the future!”

  This is a fact we’re not really likely to forget, since every heavenly high school kid over the age of twelve is expected to do hands-on work experience for a cosmic outfit we just call the Agency, a super-massive organisation dedicated to protecting Earth from the Powers of Darkness.

  Obviously in an ideal Universe, they wouldn’t send inexperienced angel kids on dangerous time-travel missions. But as the Agency doesn’t have anything like enough trained agents to meet human demand, they end up using us to fill the gaps.

  Given we’re under so much pressure, wouldn’t you think our teachers would be a teensy bit more understanding?

  Yeah, right. You could have been on Planet Earth for weeks, wearing the same skanky combats, with nothing but angel trail mix between you and near-starvation, but the instant you get back, you’d better get that essay finished or you’re in DEEP poo, let me tell you!

  Anyway, when Friday morning arrived I woke up and blinked sleepily at the pretty patterns the heavenly sunlight was making on the ceiling, with a vague feeling there was something I should be doing.

  Then I’m like, oh, duh! It’s my birthday. “Happy birthday, angel girl,” I told myself happily. Then I let out a shriek.

  I ran to Lola’s room and hammered on her door.

  My friend finally came to the door, with such a bad case of bed-hair you couldn’t actually see her face.

  “You did remember, didn’t you?” I pleaded. “You hate handing in work late, I know you do. I bet you sat up all night.”

  “I fell asleep in the bath,” she said shamefaced.

  ”Lollie! I was relying on you!” I tried to think. “OK, Mr Albright’s class isn’t ‘til eleven. If we sprint to the school library now we should just have time to dash off an outline. He’ll have to see we’re showing willing, right?”

  “I thought Mr Allbright said all the serious Hell materials are in the town library?” Lola objected.

  “OK, so we’ll have to sprint faster. Grab your clothes, babe, and let’s go, go, go!”

  When we told the librarian what we wanted, she immediately asked to see our IDs then looked outraged. “I can’t help you,” she said stiffly. “The books on your list are extremely dark Hell texts which have to be kept in the vaults.”

  “Can’t we read them down there?” Lola pleaded.

  “Only senior trainees have pass keys,” sniffed the librarian.

  “Couldn’t you make an exception?” Lola wheedled. “We won’t tell anyone, I swear.”

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” the librarian said frostily, and she flounced off pushing a trolley loaded with returned books.

  “Psst!”

  We both jumped as Lola’s boyfriend appeared grinning like the Cheshire cat through a gap in the bookshelves.

  Having got our attention, he mooched over to meet us, wearing his usual uniform of ripped jeans and a scuzzy Astral Garbage T-shirt.

  Don’t tell Lola, but I still find it really hard to think of Brice as an angel. This is a true story, yeah? So I have to tell you that when I found out about his budding romance with my soul-mate, I was not a happy seraph. OK, so I’ve fancied a bad boy or two in my time, but I never went for an actual evil assassin!

  At first we couldn’t figure out why Brice kept popping up on our Time missions like a bad smell. Lola says it was destiny. I think it was more like desperation.

  Brice was v. v. screwed up when he dropped out of angel school. I’m guessing that by the time we met him, he had become totally sickened at the work he was doing for the Dark Agencies, and was secretly deeply homesick for Heaven. I think harassing angels was the closest he could get.

  It can’t have been easy, but somehow Michael our headmaster staunchly went on believing in Brice whatever, and to the shock of our entire school, eventually persuaded the School Council to take him back on probation.

  As a born cosmic outlaw, Brice found his probationary period incredibly humiliating. He stuck it out though, passed his retakes, and recently moved up to the upper school where he’s doing really well, Lola says.

  All the same, you never quite know where that boy is coming from and Lola was visibly astonished, not to say extremely suspicious, to see him in the library. Her eyes narrowed. “Weren’t you due at the Agency like an hour ago?”

  “Nah, still got five minutes,” he said carelessly. “Had to check something out in the Hell-dimensions vault before I take off. Thought you might like to borrow this?” Brice fished around in his pocket, quickly made sure the librarian wasn’t looking and surreptitiously flashed
a glimmery blue card.

  “You stole a celestial pass key!” I breathed.

  “Do you want to say that a bit louder, sweetheart! For your information, I am now legally entitled to a pass key to any library in the Heavenly City.”

  “Sorry,” I said humbly, “I keep forgetting you’re a senior now.”

  He slid the pass key into a little gizmo on the wall and we saw a blue flash. Interesting clanking sounds came up the shaft.

  Brice grabbed Lola’s wrist to check her watch. “OK, seriously gotta go,” he said in a rush. “The hell materials are in the lower basement. Save me some birthday cake, girls, yeah?”

  We watched him disappear through the swing doors.

  “We should really buy that boy a new T-shirt,” I told Lola.

  ”Carita, let me tell you, Brice has a whole drawer full of Astral Garbage T-shirts. All exactly the same!”

  “His hair looks so much better though,” I said approvingly.

  Instead of the scary bleached mullet he had before, Brice now wore his naturally-dark hair in gelled spikes, with occasional blond flashes.

  “Where’s your bad boy going anyway?” I asked Lola.

  “Not sure,” she said vaguely. “Some mission to do with a disturbed kid, I think he said.”

  “Bit sudden,” I objected. “He was coming to my party last I heard.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah well, the Agency moves in mysterious ways and whatever.”

  A bell pinged and the lift doors slid open. I glanced round guiltily to make sure the librarian wasn’t watching.

  “It’s OK, she’s gone for her break,” Lola hissed.

  We hopped in the lift and went humming down for miles.

  When the doors opened again, we both breathed, “Wow!”

  From floor to ceiling, the library vaults were totally bathed in intense azure light. We tiptoed around in the eerie blue silence, trying to find the right section. The hard-core Hell materials turned out to be kept in special cases. You had to switch on a teeny-tiny light and read them through the glass.