Angels Like Me Read online

  Contents

  I wish I could tell …

  Three shades of blue

  Watch the wonder

  The sugar-coated telling-off

  The question and the answer?

  Spot the catch

  Sensing something …

  Seeking, searching, finding

  Hold breath, cross fingers

  The story of the lost shine …

  Older, wiser, waggier

  The face in the photo

  The spring and the secrets

  With a scream and a splash

  From Mum to me …

  Closer than close …

  Acknowledgements

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Bestselling author Karen McCombie trained as a magazine journalist in her native Scotland before moving to London. After several years working on teen favourites Just 17 and Sugar, she turned to fiction, with her first series, Ally’s World, becoming an instant success. In total she’s had more than seventy books published and translated around the world, and more than a million books sold.

  Karen lives in north London with her very Scottish husband, Tom, her sunshiny daughter, Milly, a demented cat called Dizzy, and Biscuit, the button-obsessed hamster.

  Find out more about Karen at:

  www.karenmccombie.com

  Books by Karen McCombie

  ANGELS NEXT DOOR

  ANGELS IN TRAINING

  ANGELS LIKE ME

  For Damie Joyce, who’s a little ray of sunshine, with hair the colour of sunsets

  I wish I could tell …

  I have something amazing to say.

  And I want to YELL it from the top of this hill.

  But shy girls like me aren’t so good at yelling, so I do something else.

  ‘Happy New Year, Riley Roberts,’ I whisper instead.

  Here’s what’s amazing – I hadn’t expected to be happy this year.

  But then I hadn’t expected my new next-door neighbours to end up being my best friends.

  Or that they’d be real-life angels …

  ‘Oi, Riley!’

  That’s my other new best friend, calling out to me as he goofs around, waving at me to join in. Woody’s not an angel, in case you were wondering. He’s more of a dork, but that’s OK. In fact, it’s a lot of fun.

  ‘In a second,’ I call out to him, resting my back against a large block of white marble.

  Perched on the block is another angel, wings and all. But this one’s made of stone, a statue who’s been staring out from the top of Folly Hill for a couple of hundred years or more.

  Copying her, I take in the view too, but use my camera to pan around and film the jumble of streets and buildings of the town. Dad’s print shop is down there on the High Road; the hospital where his girlfriend, Hazel, works is that big white block; and down by the station, that’s where Mum’s florist’s was, though that’s long gone now …

  ‘Aw, c’mon, Riley!’ begs Woody, as he rushes by, chasing my little sort-of-stepsister, Dot. ‘Put down the camera and help me catch her!’

  ‘In a sec!’ I say again, smiling at the two of them as they lollop around like a pair of puppies.

  The thing is, I’m not in the mood to play some dumb, but fun, game quite yet.

  Just for a minute, I want to hold on to my happy new-year feeling. I’m just so glad to be back here after two weeks away. The whole of the Christmas holidays was spent in relatives’ overheated houses or stuck in our stuffy car on endless motorways between visits.

  All that time – even when I was having fun, getting nice presents, staying up late on New Year’s Eve – I kept pining for home. Well, for Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl, really …

  Before I went away, when we were saying our byes and see-you-soons, Pearl had hugged me and said, ‘Oh, I can’t WAIT till you’re back, Riley. It’s going to be amazing!’

  I’d been about to ask her what she meant, but then Dad had honked the car horn for me to hurry up and there was no time. Apart from that, Sunshine and Kitt looked wary, the way they do when they think Pearl has said too much …

  So I won’t make a big deal of it when I see them. I won’t ask and risk getting Pearl into trouble. I’ll just be patient and see what unfolds.

  Maybe the girls are going to tell me more about themselves. (I know their present, but not much about their past or future.)

  Or maybe they’ll let me help find the next person who needs fixing. (I don’t have nine angelic skills like they do, but I’ll do my best.)

  Or perhaps they’ll keep their promise and find out more about Mum for me (since Dad won’t tell me anything).

  Thinking of my special friends, I feel a flutter of nervous excitement in my tummy and lower my camera, glancing towards the semicircles of roads at the foot of the hill.

  One of them is Chestnut Crescent. It’s easy to make out because of the giant, solid chestnut tree in the garden of number thirty-three, the house next door to mine. My best friend Tia used to live there, but she’s far away on the other side of the world, probably plunging into a pool in the New Zealand summer.

  Here, of course, it’s winter, and number thirty-three is now home to my new, magical best friends.

  I just hope they hurry up and come – the air up here is so frost-prickly cold that my bare fingers are in danger of falling off. (Yes, Hazel was annoyingly right when she shouted after me that I’d need my gloves today.)

  ‘Arf! Arf! Arf!’

  I jump as a small log is shoved in front of my face.

  It has two googly eyes stuck on it, and a nose and mouth drawn on long ago (by me) in marker pen. It’s Dot’s beloved pet ‘dog’, Alastair: a lumpy, bumpy chunk of driftwood that does look vaguely like a pooch if you squint at it funny.

  It doesn’t bark for real, though. My dorky friend Woody is helping out with the sound effects.

  ‘Fancy translating?’ I ask him. Woody grins at me, his gelled spikes of dark hair flopping forward on to his forehead.

  ‘I will!’ Dot bursts in first, full of bouncy five-year-old enthusiasm. ‘Alastair wants you to come and play, Riley. NOW!’

  She grabs my stiff, cold fingers in her fuzzy, warm mittens, but I resist. ‘I’m fine here, looking at the view,’ I tell her.

  ‘What view?’ Dot frowns, coming to stand next to me. ‘It’s just buildings and cars and BORING stuff.’

  OK, so views are about as exciting as a trip to the paint aisle of a DIY store when you’re a kid.

  ‘It’s not all boring!’ I say, wondering how I can make it interesting for her. ‘Why don’t you try to imagine what the Angel statue saw when she was first here, years and years ago?’

  My little sort-of-stepsister looks up at me, then gazes thoughtfully around.

  ‘Did she see dinosaurs?’ Dot finally suggests.

  I laugh. ‘She’s not that old!’

  I’m just about to tell Dot that, back in the early 1800s, the Angel would’ve looked out on:

  fields upon fields of crops and cows (instead of rows upon rows of streets and houses)

  the grand Hillcrest Manor (though my modern, blocky secondary school has taken its place)

  a winding country track called Meadow Lane (now a noisy dual carriageway, still – stupidly – called Meadow Lane)

  an ornamental lake named after the daughter of some posh old lord of Hillcrest (which is a scruffy, bramble-tangled dog-walkers’ spot these days).

  But, before I can speak, Dot’s mind – as usual – jumps off like a frog.

  ‘What’s your New Year Wish, Riley?’ she turns and asks me.

  ‘My New Year Wish?’ I check with her. ‘Don’t you mean my new year’s resolution?’

  Dot narrows her eyes, as if I’ve just spoken to her in an ancient Inca dialect.
‘No. Not one of them,’ she says with an earnest shake of the head. ‘Your New Year Wish.’

  I turn my snigger into a thoughtful ‘Hmm …’ and do some fake-thinking. Meanwhile, Dot slips off her mittens and flaps her hands madly.

  ‘My New Year Wish is that I could be a penguin and fly to the Arctic!’ she trills, and spins.

  Woody and me, we swap quick glances. Of course, one of us could be a spoilsport and point out that penguins actually:

  live in the Antarctic and

  don’t fly.

  Luckily for Dot, neither of us are that mean. And, hey, she’ll learn stuff like that in class soon enough. Maybe even tomorrow, since it’s the first day of term.

  ‘Wow, that sounds great, Dot!’ Woody says instead. ‘Well, for my New Year Wish, I’d like to bring an extinct dodo back to life, and it could fly with you!’

  ‘Yay!’ cheers Dot, too busy flapping to spot Woody winking at me.

  Wait a minute – what’s that smudged all over Dot’s nails? Pale blue varnish with sparkles in it. Exactly like the nail varnish Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl bought me as a Christmas present. In fact, it is the nail varnish that Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl bought me as a Christmas present.

  I’m just about to give Dot a slightly stern big sort-of-stepsister talk about using things without asking permission when I see them …

  (My heart thud-thuds.)

  Three girls – and their white-blond fuzzy dog – meandering up the crunchy flint path that leads here, to the Angel, and to us.

  Sunshine is the tallest, her waist-length wavy hair fluttering around her head like a rust-red festival banner.

  Beside her, shorter, is Kitt, the lenses of her thick black-rimmed glasses catching the light.

  Pearl waves at me, and, even though she’s too far away for me to see her face clearly, I know she’ll be smiling, because she’s the cutest, friendliest person I’ve ever met. Even if she isn’t technically a person …

  I wave back, and know instantly what my REAL New Year Wish would be: I wish I could tell the world that these girls are angels.

  Actual, amazing, awesome angels.

  And I wish I could tell the world something else, something I can hardly believe: that these amazing, awesome angels like me. Ordinary, mortal, un-amazing ME!

  Dot spots that I’m not paying her any attention and looks where I’m looking. As soon as she sees Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl, she takes off, shrieking ‘HELLOOOOO!’ as she hurtles down the hill, all ready to give their dog, Bee, a hug.

  Then I notice Dot slow down. I think she’s confused and it’s obvious why. Instead of waving back, the three girls have turned away from her and are staring around in different directions, as if the view is calling to them.

  Which it is, sort of.

  ‘What are they doing?’ Woody asks, frowning at our friends. Of course, he doesn’t know what I know.

  He doesn’t know what Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl really are.

  He doesn’t know they’re trainee angels, or that they have hidden-away wings that could unfurl before his very eyes.

  He doesn’t know they’re learning how to use their skills to heal troubled hearts.

  He doesn’t know I was the very first person who they helped.

  He doesn’t know he was the second.

  He doesn’t know that right at this moment Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl are ‘seeking’, trying to tune into the THIRD person who’s lost their shine.

  He doesn’t know that today, tomorrow or very soon a new adventure will begin for someone, thanks to those three strange girls.

  But what I don’t realize is that I’ve been grinning to myself while I’ve been thinking about all of this.

  ‘You know something?’ says Woody, waggling Alastair the log dog in my face. ‘I think you’re as weird as they are, Riley Roberts.’

  Ha! If only he knew the truth …

  Three shades of blue

  The shimmer of a peacock feather. (Sunshine.)

  Any shade the sky happens to be. (Kitt.)

  Piercing pale husky. (Pearl.)

  Gaze into each of the angels’ eyes and their intense colour will give you the shivers.

  My eyes? If you want to know, they’re muddy-puddle brown (boo).

  It’s not only a question of eye colour. The truth is, in every way, I could never be as weird and wonderful as Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl. I’ll never have their talents, their wings, their effortless cool at school. And I’ll never have what Pearl once showed me: a silk bag full of shimmering, trembling ‘marbles’ – tiny orbs that glow brighter the more her skills grow.

  So, yeah, I’m hopelessly ordinary Riley Roberts, but I’ll happily settle for being the angels’ friend, for peeking into their world whenever they let me.

  And here and now, sitting in assembly, they’re letting me …

  ‘I want you all to think of today, this new term, as a fresh start,’ Mr Thomlinson, our deputy headteacher, is saying up on the stage. ‘I want to see positive attitudes to your work. I want to see …’

  As Mr Thomlinson talks, Pearl leans her elbow on my shoulder, and instantly I feel a low, intense vibration. (It makes the hairs on my arms prickle and tickle.)

  I know what it is, of course. All three girls are concentrating hard, using one of their nine skills to scan the school hall, hoping to find the next person who needs their help, the next person who’s lost their shine.

  But the vibration is as far as it goes for me; I don’t sense the world the way the angels do. So while my friends quietly tune in, scanning and seeking, all I’m aware of is Mr Thomlinson droning on about his expectations of us.

  Though I’m also aware of the students around me, I guess.

  Everyone’s either:

  listening politely,

  pretending to listen politely but daydreaming about something else, or

  ignoring Mr Thomlinson altogether and chatting to their mates.

  When it comes to that last point, I’m talking about queen of mean Lauren Mayhew and her two horrible best buddies, Joelle and Nancy. Unfortunately, they’re in my form class, and are currently sitting in the row in front of me.

  ‘And now on to something rather exciting,’ booms Mr Thomlinson.

  ‘I bet it’s not!’ hisses Lauren, tossing her long blonde hair over the back of her chair, practically letting it land on my lap. Joelle and Nancy sit either side of her, snickering like a pair of pet hyenas.

  ‘Some of you,’ Mr Thomlinson continues, ‘may well have seen posters around town publicizing the Frost Fair that’s happening next Saturday.’

  ‘Told you!’ says Lauren, yawning theatrically. Next thing, she stuffs some chewing gum in her mouth and starts chomp-chomp-chomping loudly.

  I glance down the end of the row at our form teacher, Mrs Mahoney, who hasn’t noticed what Lauren’s up to.

  ‘For those who don’t know, the last Frost Fair happened here during the very cold winter of 1814. It was held on the frozen ice of Lady Grace’s Lake, when the lake itself was part of the extensive Hillcrest estate.’

  Lauren yawns louder.

  Joelle and Nancy are giddy with sniggers.

  Still Mrs Mahoney doesn’t seem to notice.

  It’s so unfair! Anyone else would get the glower of gloom for being disruptive (even I have), but Lauren’s just one of those teacher-friendly girls who miraculously gets away with it.

  ‘Needless to say, the present-day Frost Fair isn’t going to be on ice. First, because there’s no ice, and, second, it would, of course, be banned for health and safety reasons!’ Mr Thomlinson tries to joke. No one laughs. ‘But it will be held around the lake, as a fundraiser. Organizers are hoping to get enough money to restore the site to its former glory.’

  ‘Wow, I couldn’t be less interested,’ whispers Lauren, tossing her head back again; finding her own sneering words incredibly funny, I’m sure.

  Wow, she is SO rude, I think to myself, moving to avoid her stupid glossy hair, which is now actually brushin
g my knees.

  ‘And what’s exciting is that our school has been invited to send students to perform at the fair.’

  ‘Yesss! Now you’re talking. Me and my girls will have a bit of that,’ says Lauren, while Joelle and Nancy join in with air punches and act like Lauren’s the most entertaining – and not the most annoying – person in the history of Hillcrest Academy. ‘Bring it on! We’re the best!’

  I gaze over at Mrs Mahoney, but she’s still missing this. Then I notice that I’m being stared at by Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl.

  ‘You’re a little bit purple, Riley,’ Pearl whispers, her blonde eyebrows all furrowed with worry.

  Uh-oh. Stress shows up as a mauve cloud, Pearl once told me. Through the angels’ eyes I must have a halo of it hovering over me now, which means my friends can sense I’m wound up, but they don’t know why.

  I can hardly say it out loud, of course. But there is a way I can tell them what I’m thinking, without being caught by Mrs Mahoney … I can let the girls read my mind. All I have to do is relax and let them in.

  So – deep, slow breath – that’s what I do.

  Three sets of differently blue eyes momentarily darken to something stormier.

  They read me, I’m sure.

  Then, surprisingly, all three turn their gaze back to the front of the hall and carry on listening – or pretending to listen – to what Mr Thomlinson has to say.

  Huh? Is that it? They really aren’t at all interested in my feelings?

  I guess maybe Sunshine, Kitt and Pearl think my irritation with Lauren is silly and unimportant. (They think LOTS of human emotions are silly and unimportant.)

  But then Lauren did bully me when my old friend Tia moved away, so you can’t exactly blame me for being her biggest non-fan …

  ‘So if anyone’s keen to represent the school at this important local event,’ Mr Thomlinson carries on, ‘then please come to the auditions being held here in the hall tomorrow lunchtime.’

  ‘We’ll be there, so no point any losers bothering to show up, right?’ I hear Lauren say boastfully to her friends, before she bends over and grabs her bag, ready to leave the millisecond Mr Thomlinson says we’re excused.