Budding Star (16 page)

“It’ll be harsh sometimes. People won’t always understand what you or your music are about, and some days you’ll feel like you’re all alone in a huge meaningless Universe,” I added.

“Yeah yeah, Auntie, and I’ll eat all my vegetables and I will never ever talk to strangers!” she teased.

“But you’re not alone,” I went on fiercely. “You’re NEVER alone. Everything and everyone in this Universe is—”

Reuben nudged me. “I think it’s time for her to go,” he whispered.

I saw a familiar figure strolling towards us. He was not only
much
less hairy, the hermit also looked decades younger, and his eyes were far more twinkly, than the first time we met him. Awed little girls bowed their heads reverently on either side, like flowers in a meadow. They knew what I’d only just realised. Our hermit was Jizo, the kindly children’s god who refuses to enter the Pure Land until every lost soul is safe inside.

He looked into Tsubomi’s eyes and smiled. “Are you ready to go back?”

Tsubomi nodded. “Yes.” She gave us a sudden beseeching look. “Will I see you again?”

“For sure,” Reuben promised.

“And remember,” I called, “everything and everyone in the Universe is—”

The god and the teenage pop star were swallowed in a blaze of golden light.

“—connected,” I whispered.

Chapter Nine

I
don’t understand why you feel so bad. You guys totally saved her from being rubbed out by the PODS. You should be over the moon!” To my relief, Lola had totally forgiven me. Her eyes were dark with sympathy.

“I
am
over the moon, mostly, it’s just…” I tried to put my feelings into words. “I know Tsubomi’s really talented and everything, but deep down she’s just like we were, Lollie. She’s pure magic, a real undercover angel. And she’s had to cope with all this stuff.”

Lola took a sip of her smoothie. “It’s not easy growing up magic on planet Earth.”

“That’s why I wish I’d helped her more,” I said, dejected.

Lola and I were sitting at a pavement table, outside Guru, our fave student cafe. We’d been there since they opened; working our way through their yummy celestial breakfast special, ordering a succession of smoothies and talking.

“I just feel like I missed such a valuable opportunity,” I said wistfully. “If you have an encounter with angels, you should come out of it knowing all this, like, totally luminous stuff, right? Reuben was great with her, telling her how to deal with stress and whatever. She’ll remember that next time, I know she will.”

“You must have talked to her too?”

“Yeah, about hip-hop,” I sighed. “Oh, and we had a heated discussion about whether combats are on the way out.”

“NO way,” said Lola fiercely.

I grinned. “Exactly what I said.”

“So what would you have told her, angel girl?”

“I’d have told her all that stuff that trainee angels take for granted. Like those cosmic strings Mr Allbright was telling us about the other day.”

Lola looked amazed. “Strings? Was I away that lesson?”

“OK, maybe they’re not actually strings. Maybe it’s more like an energy grid.”

“An energy grid?” Lola seemed to be in severe physical pain.

“OK, scrub the grid. Stick with the string. Imagine there’s a HUGE game of cat’s cradle, but the strings are so fine and so closely interwoven it’s like this big shimmery mesh.”

My soul-mate frowned. “How big?”

“Didn’t I say? It’s exactly the same size as the cosmos, duh! Forgot that bit!”

Lola nodded. “It’s OK, I’ve got it now. Shimmery strings forming a humongous cosmic cat’s cradle. Now what?”

“Ah, but they’re not really strings, you see,” I explained patiently. “It’s more like a net made out of incredibly subtle cosmic energy. Mr Allbright says ancient Hindus knew all about it, but humans don’t usually see it, unless they’re like, massively spiritual.”

“Or smoking something they shouldn’t,” Lola suggested with a laugh. “So what does it do, this shimmery energy net that no one’s seen and I’ve totally never heard of?”

“Don’t mock the net, angel girl, this net is really, really, cool. It’s like this live shimmery information system that connects absolutely everything and everyone to everyone and everything else.”

Lola frowned. “You mean info literally goes whizzing down the strings - like, even between Heaven and Earth and whatever?”

I nodded. “All those times on Earth, when you knew something you couldn’t possibly have known! You just downloaded it from the energy net, without realising!”

Lola was genuinely impressed. “Hey that IS cool! That explains so much!”

“I know. Like the guy in the record store ‘accidentally’ giving me that Japanese harp CD, like, hours before I go to save a girl whose dad makes Japanese harps.”

“So how does it actually work?” she asked abruptly.

“I knew you were going to ask me that,” I wailed. “Look, I totally understood it when Mr Allbright explained it, OK?”

Lola tactfully helped me to three more pancakes. “Have you heard how Tsubomi’s getting on these days? Is she OK?”

“According to Sam, she’s back in school and living with her dad.” I took a big bite of pancake.

Lola’s eyes went huge. “You guys went through all that and then she gave up
singing
!”

“No, sorry, sorry,” I said with my mouth full. “Tsubomi’s just dropped the touring and the promotional stuff. Sam says she’s focusing on her song-writing for now. She’s putting some amazing album together.” I gave Lola a meaningful look. “Apparently it was inspired by some experiences she had during her illness.”

“Oh, wow, just imagine that video,” Lola said enviously.

Glossy MTV images flitted through my mind; the pale underworld princess being tempted by a bowl of mouth-watering strawberries, an action princess in sexy ninja costume, abseiling over a moat of lava to steal a phoenix egg from a fire demon, a lonely princess in an ice palace full of frozen lords and ladies, one cold crystal tear sliding down her cheek.

Lola looked dreamy. “I wonder who they’ll get to play you and Reubs?”

I sighed. “I miss her, Lollie. I know I’m going on and on about it, but it was the most amazing mission.”

“I know. Reuben says just the same.” She gave me a sideways glance. “You and he got quite close on this trip, right?”

“We’ve always been close,” I said in surprise. “It was just really special to be able to share the experience with a friend.”

“Sure,” she said hastily. “Hey, it was your last mission. A last mission is supposed to be fabulous. I’m glad, honestly.” Lola couldn’t seem to meet my eyes.

My hands flew to my mouth. “I’m such a ditz! I can’t believe I didn’t tell you! I’m not quitting.”

Pure relief dawned in her eyes. “You’re not? You’re REALLY not?”

I patted her hand. “I’m really not. I lost it for a bit, that’s all. I think I was kind of burned out. Ancient Rome, Brice’s mission to Jamaica—”

“—your best friend getting cosmic amnesia,” Lola said softly.

“All that,” I agreed. “I’d let everything get on top of me. I guess I needed a break.”

My mate shook her head. “Sorry,
carita
, but chasing a confused soul through a Limbo dimension isn’t my idea of a picnic in the park.”

“OK, it wasn’t exactly a picnic, but it was different to anything I’d ever done before. In some weird way it helped me get my confidence back. I discovered all these other aspects of me I didn’t even know I had. Can you believe I could fight like a ninja? And I was making up all this v. deep poetry! I mean seriously making it up, like, right there on the spot!”

I took a deep breath. “I’m not ready to hang up my combats, Lollie. I want to go on fighting the PODS with you guys.”

“And this is really what you want, Boo? It’s not because I threw a Sanchez-sized tantrum?” Lola looked guilty.

I shook my head. “It’s more like I can’t stand to think of you all going off and having thrilling adventures without me!”

Lola produced a gift-wrapped package and pushed it across the table.

“What’s this?” I said in surprise. “My birthday isn’t for weeks.”

“I know that, but I thought you were giving up trouble-shooting, didn’t I? I wanted to give you a pressie, to show my support for your stupid wrong-headed decision.”

I unwrapped the layers of spangly bright pink tissue. “Ohh, Lola, that is the most darling thing!”

My mate had made me a photo frame, and decorated it with heavenly love hearts! Each heart had a cute message like, “Celestial Chick”, or “No Angel”! Inside the frame was a mad picture Brice had taken of Lola, me and Reuben on a recent Angel Academy field trip.

“Yeah, well totally pointless gesture as it turns out,” Lola said grumpily.

“I love it, Lollie, thanks SO much!”

I smiled down at our three laughing faces in their frame. Reuben can look really daffy in photos, but Brice had managed to catch him off guard. That boy is something else, I thought. How did he even know to smile at Tsubomi at that precise moment? Our mission had brought out all these hidden depths in him that I’d never remotely suspected. I could see now why Tanya fancied him. I could almost have fancied him myself, you know, if he wasn’t such a good mate.

I carefully rewrapped the photo frame. I wondered if Lola had heard anything about our buddy’s mysterious love interest?

I was about to pump her for info, when she came out with a mind-blowing suggestion. “You could put it in a book,” she said thickly through her pancake.

I was lost. “Put what in a book, babe?”

“All that crucial cosmic information you didn’t get a chance to tell her! You could write an unofficial cosmic handbook for human kids like Tsubomi. Hey, forget humans,
I’d
use it! The one the school gives out is really heavy going. I zonk out after about half a chapter.”

“I’ve read like two chapters since I’ve been here,” I confessed.

Lola beamed. “My point exactly. The Universe needs your handbook, Boo. You should definitely do it.”

I found myself getting cautiously excited.“I’d have to write it how I talk.”

“Kids would LOVE that! You could tell them about that shimmery net and how everything is connected and how the Universe always has to answer when you call.”

“We’d have to tell them the dark stuff too,” I said.

Lola nodded eagerly. “Absolutely. It would be like, a survival guide for undercover angels who have to live on Earth.”

“Lollie, that’s the most completely luminous idea! I couldn’t do it on my own, though. You’d help me, right?” I asked anxiously.

She looked wistful suddenly. “I know cosmic timing is always perfect, but I can’t help wishing someone could have thought of it before. A book like that could have made all the difference to me when I was alive.”

“Me too,” I said softly. “Oh, babe, me too, me too.”

About the Author

Annie Dalton has been shortlisted for the Carnegie medal and won the Nottingham Children’s Book Award and the Portsmouth Children’s Book Award.The twelve Angel Academy books (previously known as Agent Angel), became an international best selling series. Annie lives overlooking a Norfolk meadow with a ruined castle, in a row of cottages that were rescued from bulldozers and lovingly rebuilt by a band of hippies.

www.anniedaltonwriter.co.uk

Also by Annie Dalton

Urban Fantasy Books

Night Maze

The Alpha Box

Naming the Dark

The Rules of Magic

Angel Academy Series

Winging it

Losing the Plot

Flying High

Calling the Shots

Fogging Over

Fighting Fit

Making Waves

Budding Star

Keeping it Real

Going for Gold

Feeling the Vibes

Living the Dream

The Afterdark Trilogy

The Afterdark Princess