Authors: Annie Dalton
Living the Dream (4 page)
T
he DVD had finished half an hour ago, but I still couldn’t stop crying. The worst part, because I have a horribly vivid imagination, was the frog story (which isn’t actually about frogs).
The guy who made the movie said that if you just lob a bunch of frogs into a pan of boiling water, they’re going to die in shrieking agony. But if you place the frogs into cold water, then slowly heat frogs AND water at the same time, they will never even know they’re being stewed.
The movie guy said that’s exactly what’s been happening to the human race. Earth’s problems have been creeping up so slowly, humans are all like, “La la la!” When they actually need to jump out of that freaking pot and turn off the heat quick-smart!
I was blowing my nose for the twentieth time when I heard someone hammering on my door. “
Carita
, open up! This food is HOT!” Only one person calls me “
Carita
“.
I squeezed my way to the door and there was my soul-mate Lola Sanchez, clutching a sparkly takeaway bag from The Silver Lychee. Coming face to face with the wall of books, she said, without batting an eyelash, “OK, back to mine then!”
As soon as we were back in Lola’s room, we hugged and screamed, then we jumped up and down, and hugged some more. Then I got my first proper look at my best friend. Reubs was right to be worried about her. Lola was trying to be her normal upbeat self, but her eyes looked totally haunted.
I didn’t know what to say. I gave her another rather awkward hug. “Babe, you’ve been away too long!”
“Too long to live on trail mix.” Lola started pulling cartons out of the bag. “That’s why I stopped off at the Lychee. I went a bit mad though!” Delicious food smells were wafting around the room.
“No, you got just the right amount!” I said greedily. We arranged everything on Lola’s coffee table and dived in with our freebie chopsticks.
“I ran into Reubs as I was coming out of Arrivals,” Lola told me, shovelling in noodles. “So he finally told you! I was getting worried I’d have to tell you myself!”
I stared at her. “Tell me what?”
Lola looked thrown. “Oh, I thought he—”
I felt myself blushing to the tips of my ears. “There was maybe something he wanted to say,” I confessed. “He gave me a CD, Lola. He’s written me a song!”
Her hand flew to her heart. “Oh, that’s SO sweet!”
“Then Mo interrupted, and Chase called to say they got the snow leopard gig, and then Brice rocked up, you know how it is…”
“No, actually
chica
, how is it?” Lola suddenly narrowed her eyes. “You’ve obviously been crying. You look like you haven’t slept in a year, and who exactly designated your room as the ecology section of the school library?”
That’s how it is with soul-mates. While I’d been reading Lola, she’d been reading me, and I’m telling you, when Lola Sanchez gets that look in her eye, she could squeeze a secret out of pure granite.
“If I tell you, you won’t think I’m - what’s that thing trainees aren’t supposed to be - grandiose?”
Lola helped herself to fried rice. “We’re best friends! If you go grandiose on me, I’ll pop your little bubble in a heartbeat!”
“You might not say that when I’ve finished,” I said unhappily.
I started to describe my night-time ordeals. Lola’s expression got more and more sphinx-like. I felt my palms begin to sweat. I burbled on desperately, having no clue what she was thinking.
“Then today in the library he like, forced me into reading about American Indians for no reason!” I didn’t want to disrespect a divine being, but it had to be said. “Actually, Lollie, I think he might be a teensy bit deranged.”
My friend set down her chopsticks with a click. “Want me to tell you what I think is going on?” She sounded v. fierce. I nodded, gulping. “I think the Creation angels tried everything they know to wake humans up and take responsibility. They came out of the few remaining wild places, places where you can still hear Earth’s heartbeat, and they visited humans in their homes, offices, universities, science labs. They sought out tribal people, scientists, artists, feisty grannies, teenage kids with tattoos, old hippies, anyone who might, just might, give a damn. It worked.”
My heart gave a leap. “Seriously?”
Lola quickly shook her head. “People are starting to wake up, but it isn’t enough, Mel. It’s too little too late. Then the angels heard about you saving your little buddha, chasing him through Time and Space, protecting him from the Dark Powers. They thought you were just the mad, gutsy kind of angel girl they needed.” She gave me an affectionate pat. “So your maverick angel volunteered to follow you home to Heaven, and plead with you to help. They must think you’re really something,” she added huskily.
“Will you PLEASE not say that!” I wailed. “What I know about the environment would fit on the back of a teeny-tiny Post-it note!”
“What does Michael say?”
My hands drifted down from my face. “Actually—”
“You HAVE told him?”
“Not yet,” I admitted.
“You told someone though?”
“I told you,” I said in a small voice.
Lola was appalled. “I don’t believe you, Mel Beeby. You’ve been sitting on this for - what - FOUR weeks now!”
“You don’t know what it was like!” I burst out. “I’d just come back from a Mumbai slum. I’d said goodbye to Obi for like, ninety-five years. But still I thought I’d done a pretty good job, you know? And suddenly there’s a deranged Creation angel in my room going, ‘Thanks for saving the baby buddha, angel girl, but he might not live to BE a world peacemaker if the glaciers keep on disappearing from the Himalayas, and the world’s rivers dry up and millions of humans lose their drinking water…’”
“Ha! So you DO know stuff about the environment.” Lola sounded like she’d caught me out.
“No, Lola, I don’t! I watched a DVD, that’s all!”
I suddenly remembered that my best friend had just returned from a super-tough mission and here I was being all me me me.
“I’m sorry—” I started.
“No,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I can’t even imagine what it was like.”
“No, honestly, I was being a diva. Want that spring roll?”
“I’ll split it with you! I’m catching up on my carbs!”
We ate in friendly silence, then I took a breath. “Lollie, there’s a chance the angel’s gone back to Earth, but just in case he hasn’t, could I sleep in your room tonight?”
“You don’t have to ask, you wally, but you’ve got to promise me you’ll talk to Michael. If Creation angels are going to start leaving Earth, Michael needs to be told.”
“But—” I started.
“But nothing! You’re phoning him first thing tomorrow, or I’m marching you back to your room and locking you in with the deranged angel.”
“Jeez, I promise!” But I was laughing. I felt better than I had in ages.
While Lola had a shower, I fetched my duvet and made up a cosy nest with her cushions. We got under our quilts and Lola turned out the light.
“How was your mission anyway?” I remembered. “You never said where you went.” When she didn’t answer, I raised myself on one elbow. “Lola?”
All I heard was breathing.
My exhausted friend had fallen asleep in fifty seconds flat.
I
was in Michael’s office (not the swanky suite of offices he uses down at the Agency, but his little cubbyhole office at school) waiting for him to come out of a meeting.
His assistant Sam had wangled me an appointment. As archangel with special responsibility for humankind, Michael is constantly being called to human trouble spots. Every time I see him he’s either just leaving for Earth or he’s just come back. Yet despite his hectic cosmic schedule, he somehow always manages to be there when we really need him.
A
whoosh
of energy parted my hair as Michael walked in. He has the most beautiful eyes. Beautiful, scary, totally all-seeing.
“I was wondering when you’d come,” he said, smiling. My heart sank into my boots. Michael had known about the angel ALL the time.
Of course he knew, you birdbrain
, I scolded myself.
He’s an all-seeing, all-knowing being.
In one part of my mind I know this perfectly well, yet I still try to keep these lame little secrets. I started stammering out excuses. “I just - I couldn’t understand why he chose me - I suppose I thought it was another mistake.”
Michael looked puzzled. “Another mistake?”
Like being made an angel
. It had taken me two terms to grasp that my surprise fast-track scholarship wasn’t down to some embarrassing cosmic computer error.
“I just thought it had to be a mistake,” I repeated pathetically. The longer Michael looked at me the more I squirmed.
“Ambriel,” he said.
I had no idea what “ambriel” meant. It sounded like a dessert.
Michael smiled. “The Creation angel who came to you for help. His name is Ambriel.” I’m ashamed to say it had never once occurred to me to ask the angel’s name.
“When you were helping at the nursery, did you ever hear Miss Dove telling the children the story of Creation?” Michael asked. I’ve got used to Michael’s apparently random changes of subject. I shook my head, waiting for him to explain.
“She tells them how a star exploded, and the Creation angels took some of the molten star material and made a new planet. They took more star stuff and dreamed it into oceans, forests, mountains and deserts. When the planet was up and running, seas teeming with fish, trees heavy with fruit, beehives full of honey, they used the remaining star material to make humans. For thousands of years, humans lived contentedly. When disputes broke out, they always remembered that all Earth’s life forms were connected. They had all come from inside the same star.”
“That must have been a long time ago,” I said huskily. Miss Dove’s Creation story had left me with a funny little ache in my chest.
Michael nodded. “You’re right. Humans gradually forgot who they were and why they came to live on Earth. But we expected that, Melanie. It’s part of the journey of human evolution. The question is, what happens now?”
“Humans DO get it together though?” I asked anxiously. “Lola’s from the twenty-second century so the human race can’t like, totally go up in flames?”
“That’s a tricky one!” Michael sighed. “It depends on humans in your century waking up. It depends if they’re ready to live the dream.”
“Michael, sorry to butt in.” Sam, Michael’s assistant, had come in without me noticing. “We’ve really got to decide what to do about Cody Fortuna.”
I’ve been an angel long enough to realise that I’m just one tiny piece of pepperoni on the cosmic pizza. Stars are born, stars die, centuries come and go, but a human in trouble has top priority.
“I should go. There’s loads of stuff I should be doing,” I said quickly.
To my surprise Michael asked me to stay. “If you can spare the time?”
Each time I replay that moment I get the shivers. You seem to be heading merrily in one direction, then at the last minute -
whoosh
! - you make some random little decision that alters the entire direction of your life. I might not have stepped out on to that pedestrian crossing, I might not have stayed to hear Cody Fortuna’s story, then I never would have found out how I’m supposed to help save the world.
T
he screen on Michael’s laptop filled with falling leaves, spinning down from the trees and lying on the towpath of a canal. Some floated on the surface of the water looking like layers of colour in an oil painting. The location typed itself neatly across the screen:
Potomac, Montgomery County, Maryland, USA
.
The Agency camera showed a dark-haired girl in a padded jacket being tugged along the towpath by six pedigree dogs. Three were so dinky you could have hung them off your car mirror. One was a giant labradoodle that looked like it had got a curly perm. Two were gorgeous huskies.
“Cody set up her own dog-walking business a few months ago,” Sam explained. “The family was struggling to pay her mum’s medical bills.”
