Angels Like Me

by Karen McCombie

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ I reply, after giving myself a shake and remembering to act normal. I need to act like I’m here to talk about school gossip and funny YouTube clips with my friends, instead of grilling them about what strangeness happened at Marnie’s house this afternoon.

  ‘Good, good,’ says Mrs Angelo, closing the front door behind me. ‘We’ve just finished tea, and the girls have gone upstairs to do their homework.’

  Bet they’re not doing that, I think, smiling to myself and bounding up the stairs. The angels don’t need to study for any schoolwork. Somehow, somewhere, they’ve been primed with all they need to know to fit in at school and pass as (almost) everyday students.

  Two flights of stairs up, and I’m slightly out of breath and lifting my hand to tap-tap on the loft-room door.

  ‘Hi,’ says Kitt, opening it up before I’ve even started knocking. She really is very good at catching, I think, as I walk in, passing the skills chart on the wall. (For a second, I see it the way Mr and Mrs Angelo do, with the cutesy ‘WELCOME TO OUR HOME SWEET HOME!’ message – then I blink and it’s back to the chart dotted with ticks and crosses.)

  ‘Hi,’ I reply to Kitt, and wave at Sunshine and Pearl, who are sitting on the floor of this airy sky-blue and cloud-white room. You know, I always get a thrill walking in here; the loft now seems impossibly big, much, much bigger than it was when it was Tia’s bedroom.

  Together with Kitt, I flop down on to one of the fluffy white pillows piled on the white-painted floorboards. Even Bee is resting his shaggy head and paws on one.

  Since the angels aren’t really into small talk, as soon as I get settled, I ask the obvious question. ‘So how did it happen? How did Alastair come to life? Who did the errant magic?’

  ‘Bee!’ Pearl answers brightly. Then her face falls when she realizes how much her sisters are suddenly frowning at her.

  I’m doing the opposite of frowning. My eyebrows have shot halfway up my forehead, I’m sure.

  Bee?

  I am so surprised I can hardly breathe.

  BEE?!

  Shock has hit me hard in the chest, like I just did the worst bellyflop in the history of the local leisure centre swimming pool.

  ‘Are you ill, Riley?’ asks Pearl, tilting her head as she stares at me.

  They’re all staring at me. Pearl, Sunshine, Kitt – and Bee.

  ‘Bee … can do that stuff?’ I check. ‘But he’s a dog. How is that possible?’

  Sunshine seems about to talk, possibly to spin me a line, and then she pauses, dropping her head.

  The pause lasts for a long, long time.

  And then, finally, she brushes her long waves of hair away from her face and tells me the truth. ‘Because he’s an angel too.’

  She said that so matter-of-factly.

  But Bee being an angel, it doesn’t sound like something that’s very matter-of-fact to me.

  A whole silent minute has passed and I still can’t take it in. I stare down at Bee, who pounds his tail happily on the floor.

  ‘Bee felt so sorry for Etta that he just … slipped,’ Pearl dips back into her explanation.

  ‘All this time,’ I say, still staring at their fluffy, fuzzy mound of dog, ‘he’s been a trainee angel, same as you?’

  I guess it makes sense. Bee’s always seemed way too smart for even the smartest of dogs. I mean, he walks with us to school every day, then takes himself off home, waiting patiently at the crossing on Meadow Lane till the green man comes on, and he can cross the dual carriageway safely. He scampers up and down the treehouse ladder without the slightest hesitation. And it’s always seemed uncanny the way he tunes into everything that Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl say and do.

  ‘Oh, he’s not a trainee,’ Kitt informs me, stroking Bee’s head. ‘He’s our guide.’

  Thump.

  Another ripple of aftershock slams me hard in the chest.

  ‘He’s an older, wiser one,’ Sunshine adds, trying to be helpful, though I still don’t really understand.

  Meanwhile, Bee – who’s always had the doggy grin of a golden retriever – positively beams at me now, his tail drumming manically on the floorboards.

  ‘If we get really stuck, he can give us advice,’ says Pearl.

  And then I remember times when Pearl has piped up, ‘Should we ask for help?’ and her sisters have shushed her. She was talking about Bee. Four-legged, fuzzy angel-in-charge Bee. Older, wiser, waggier.

  How am I going to get my head round this?

  And, hey, the other day in the treehouse, when I thought Pearl was saying someone else’s words, they were his, weren’t they? And when she ‘accidentally’ held Bee too tight … she was covering his ears so he couldn’t hear, wasn’t she? So she wouldn’t get into trouble for talking to me about things she shouldn’t.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  Head-spinningly bizarre as this moment is, ordinary life has come knocking.

  ‘Come in!’ Sunshine calls out, and Mr Angelo’s head pops round the door.

  ‘Hi, girls! Can I grab a couple of you to help me get the washing in? I forgot it was out there, and the rain’s just starting.’

  Sunshine and Pearl jump to their feet and follow him straight away. Which leaves me and Kitt.

  Earlier in the week, I’d hoped to get her on her own, and now here we are. Only we aren’t quite as alone as I’d expected.

  ‘So … can I talk to him?’ I ask her.

  ‘Not the way we can, no,’ says Kitt. ‘You can scratch his ears, though. He likes that.’

  ‘But he’s not a dog,’ I say stupidly, cos my head has melted.

  ‘Well, no.’ Kitt laughs at my dopiness. ‘Though we’re not like this either, are we?’ She points at her schoolgirl self.

  ‘You mean –’ I stumble, struggling with this new information – ‘if I took a photo of him …’

  ‘It would be the same as us,’ says Kitt, beating me to it. ‘Yes.’

  Bee the dog would be a dancing twinkle of light, just as Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl are in the photo I took of them up at Folly Hill.

  ‘Kitt …’ I begin. It’s the perfect point to ask about where the angels came from, but the problem is that my tongue – as well as my head – is in a knot.

  ‘Wait. Let me see,’ Kitt orders in her no-messing style, and leans over to stare into my eyes.

  And so I relax. I pull some kind of mental curtain back and allow Kitt’s darkening eyes to bore into my feeble, crashed brain. Will she make any sense of what’s in there?

  She blinks, and her eyes return to the grey-blue of the sky outside the loft windows.

  Is she done?

  Does she have an answer for me?

  ‘You’ve seen them,’ says Kitt, confusing me. ‘Pearl showed you.’

  No! What have I done? I fret, dropping my head into my hands.

  When Kitt stared into my messed-up bedroom of a head just now, my question must have been hiding under some chucked-aside clothes on the floor.

  Instead, Kitt’s camera-sharp vision zoomed in on that moment a few weeks ago in Marnie’s garden, the day of the party. Where delicately, with a shaking, nervous hand, Pearl had untied the small, so-soft, blue silk bundle and shown me her very own set of skills. Those tiny, trembling spheres with a texture like gel. I can still picture the way they’d quivered and shivered, bumped and jerkily spun.

  Pearl shouldn’t have shown me. She knew it was wrong; revealing this ultimate secret would be worse in her sisters’ eyes than being discovered doing any amount of errant magic.

  And now here I was, spilling my friend’s deepest, brightest secret without meaning to … Kitt will be furious with her. Sunshine’s calm face will tighten with anger. Bee will … I don’t know what Bee will do. Growl?

  A weight lands on my lap and I let my hands drop away.

  Bee’s head is on me and, same as any loving, lovable dog, he makes puppy eyes at us, as if he wants to cheer me up.

  ‘Here,’ says Kitt, who must have moved away while my eye
s were shut, because she’s shuffling back to me now. ‘These are mine …’

  Kitt pulls a thin metallic thread, and a blue silk bag opens up, falling away like delicate petals. And there, cupped in the centre of her palm, are nine shining, glowing, pulsating orbs. They roll around each other smoothly and freely, turning and tumbling.

  Thud-thud, goes my heart, dazed.

  Tell me more, goes my head, charmed.

  ‘They’re different from Pearl’s,’ I comment, hoping I’m not saying something out of turn, that I’m not marking Pearl down or something.

  ‘I’m a little more advanced, remember,’ Kitt says, gazing down at her skills with obvious pride. ‘But Pearl’s are better and brighter since you last saw them.’

  I feel reassured. Pearl only showed them to me because she was worried, scared that the errant magic she’d done was damaging them.

  ‘You can touch them if you like,’ Kitt offers.

  ‘Really?’ I gasp, thrilled that she trusts me with her most precious –

  Rat-a-tat! A banging comes from the loft door.

  ‘Hi!’ says Woody, grinning his way into the room before Kitt has a chance to invite him in. ‘Hey, Kitt, your, er … I mean, Mr Angelo said I should come right up!’

  Has Woody noticed what Kitt was holding? Is he at all curious about the bundle she’s now shoved under the nearest pillow on the floor?

  ‘So … you guys OK?’ he asks with a grin, hovering by the door and not sure what to do with himself. Woody might be a dork but he can definitely sense an atmosphere of some kind.

  Kitt’s face is clouded, I notice. Is she disappointed with herself? Catching is one of her best skills, but she was so busy showing me her own secret skill set that she didn’t sense Woody’s presence in the house, his Vans thumping up the stairs towards us.

  ‘Um, yeah,’ I reply, hoping I can act normal. Though that’s a big ask, considering what I’ve found out and been shown in the last few minutes.

  ‘I went round to your place a minute ago, Riley,’ Woody chatters on, ‘but your dad said you were here.’

  ‘I am … here,’ I say slightly uselessly, but that’s because I can see Bee nuzzling an escaped skill back under the pillow with his nose.

  ‘Well, I just wanted to catch up,’ he carries on. ‘I heard at school about what you guys did in your music lesson today. Heard it was pretty awesome.’

  He’s directing his words to Kitt, and I can see him gazing around, wondering where her sisters are, since they’re nearly always together.

  ‘It was pretty awesome,’ I tell him, as Kitt has temporarily forgotten that human conversation needs people to respond to each other.

  ‘Well, hey, I was thinking,’ Woody carries on. ‘We should do an interview for News Matters, with Sunshine and Pearl too?’

  He’s holding up his phone, since that’s what he plans to record the interview on.

  He has no idea that two of his interviewees are standing silently behind him in the doorway.

  He is grinning in his dorky, hopeful way, unaware that Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl are communicating an urgent thought to each other.

  My friends are trying to work out what he saw, if he saw, and whether or not they need to rewind him.

  But a rewind is tough. The hardest of the skills, it’s tiring and draining to take people back, even just to return them in time by a few minutes. If the angels don’t need to, they shouldn’t.

  And I might be a skill-free, semi-useless non-angel, but I can read body language. And Woody’s relaxed, dorky-as-usual body language is telling me that he saw nothing he shouldn’t have.

  How do I let the angels know that?

  Sunshine and Pearl’s eyes are twinkling behind him, as they get ready to make the magic happen.

  I bite my lip, then feel myself frantically humming the four notes of the earworm tune that’s been coming to me this week.

  Something about humming them fast seems to clear my mind.

  All I need is to shout one word.

  DON’T, I yell with all my might, but in the privacy of my head.

  It’s worked! They heard …

  Sunshine and Pearl, Kitt and Bee. They all turn to stare at me – but their eyes are returning to normal, the brightness fading.

  ‘So, what do you think?’ Woody asks, scratching casually at his freckly nose.

  I smile to myself. I think you have no idea what nearly happened to you …

  The face in the photo

  It’s Friday. We’re in a News Matters meeting. And I’m saying yes to something I can’t possibly do.

  ‘So, we’ll need a photo of Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl to go with their interview,’ Daniel is saying. ‘You OK to sort that out, Riley?’

  ‘Yes,’ I lie.

  Of course I can’t take a photo of them. I can’t exactly download an image of three dots of light and tell the team it’s the best I can do.

  But, hey, I’m not worrying about my lie. I plan on taking so many good photos at the Frost Fair tomorrow that Daniel and the rest of the school-newsletter team will forget all about a picture to go with the girls’ interview. (It helps that Marnie is planning to wear a green-velvet medieval-style dress that our drama teacher found left over from a Shakespeare production.)

  ‘And you two are all set to cover the fair tomorrow?’ Hannah checks with me and Woody. She has a pad in front of her, a pencil scritch-scratching notes of our meeting.

  ‘Yep, me and Riley are set,’ says Woody, answering for us both. ‘And I’ve got a whole load of background information. I even found out that people tried to revive the Frost Fair about ten years ago, but it never happened.’

  Woody pulls out photocopied pages from old editions of the local paper. He’s been busy.

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s all sounding pretty organized,’ says Mr Edwards. ‘But I think you still need something else in this issue. Anyone got any other ideas? Maybe something to do with resolutions, since it’s the first newsletter of the year?’

  There’s silence for a moment as we all think.

  We jump when Ceyda coughs, expecting some fab suggestion, but turns out it was just a cough.

  ‘Hey, I know!’

  We all jump again at Woody’s short, sharp exclamation.

  ‘Riley’s little sister came up with this kind of cool idea the other day.’

  I don’t correct Woody (it takes too long to say she’s my little sort-of-stepsister cos Dad and Hazel aren’t married). Also, I’m curious to find out what he’s on about.

  ‘We were up on Folly Hill on Monday, weren’t we, Riley?’ Woody begins to explain.

  Wow, Monday seems like forever ago now. This week’s been such an up-high, down-low, twisty-turny roller-coaster of a ride so far.

  Woody takes my nod for agreement and carries on.

  ‘Now Dot’s only five, right? And she asks us this pretty funny question. She obviously doesn’t know what a resolution is, so she asked us what our New Year Wish would be. So how about we do a vox pop around school? Find out what people’s New Year Wishes are?’

  ‘Bet we’d get some pretty random answers!’ says Billy, grinning.

  ‘We could ask teachers and staff as well as students,’ Daniel adds enthusiastically.

  And they’re all off, a chattering huddle of suggestions and ideas.

  Which leaves me to sit back and drift off for a moment, lost in a snapshot memory of Folly Hill on Monday, wind whipping, clouds dashing.

  Of course, none of my random three New Year’s Wishes could be used in the News Matters feature.

  I can’t exactly shout to the world that my friends are angels.

  That I’m so proud and happy that they like me enough to be my friend.

  Or that I’d love to feel close to my mum …

  Well, I guess they could print that last one, but it might sound as if I’m feeling horribly sorry for myself. Then again, people could end up feeling horribly sorry for me, and I’d have to hear ‘Do you know what happened to Riley�
��s mum?’ whispers in the playground.

  So yeah, I’d better put that particular wish out of my mind.

  Same as the angels seem to have put Mum out of their minds. Pearl/Bee said I’d find out more about her ‘soon’, but just how long is ‘soon’? The girls have been so wrapped up in important stuff like seeking and searching and sharpening their skills that soon seems very far away from where I’m standing …

  And then my eyes dip down to the scatter of pages Woody has spread out on the desk.

  Black type on white paper.

  Columns of words, blocks of headlines.

  Photos of the lake, with its halo of tangled shrubs around it.

  Photos of someone smiling.

  Someone smiling out at me.

  Someone I know better than anyone, though I don’t really know her at all …

  Brrrriiingggggg!

  As the bell jangles everyone into action, chairs are scraped back, bags are grabbed and the pieces of paper are scooped up in Woody’s hands.

  ‘Please – can I see those?’ I ask Woody urgently, once we’re out of the classroom and in the stream of students in the corridor.

  ‘Uh, sure … why?’ Woody asks, handing me the untidy bundle of A4 sheets.

  My hands are shaking as I take them and shuffle through them, trying to find her again.

  ‘Here,’ I say, as her face appears. ‘This … this is my mum.’

  ‘Yeah? Wow – so your mum was leading the Frost Fair campaign back then,’ says Woody, tapping on the paper. ‘You never told me!’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I say, stunned and surprised as I scan the article.

  But there she is, talking. Or as close to talking as I can get. Those quote marks round Mum’s words make her feel almost alive to me as I read them aloud.

  ‘ “Organized by Lord Hillcrest and his daughter Grace, the Frost Fair of 1814 was a fantastic community event,” says Annie Roberts. “It could be a fantastic community event again, even if it is on dry land this time! And if we could work towards restoring Lady Grace’s Lake to its former beauty, that would be wonderful too.” ’

  ‘Well, you’d better have this, then,’ Woody tells me. He doesn’t ask any more, probably because I don’t really talk about Mum. I mean, he’s seen her photo on my bedside table, and knows she died when I was a baby, but that’s it.