Fogging Over (2 page)

Picture me lying in a hammock in the afternoon sunshine, listening to the soothing whisper of waves from the beach below, my eyes glued to a spine-chilling novel I’d found in our holiday cottage. From nearby came a babble of excited little voices as the toddlers tried to guess the mystery objects in Miss Dove’s special magic bag.

I heard the creak of a hammock and Amber sat up. “Boy, you’ve really got the bug,” she yawned. “You were reading Sherlock Holmes last time I looked!”

“I finished it last night,” I mumbled. My reading marathon started out of sheer self defence. After a hard day keeping up with the tinies, I needed to flake out and relax. Unfortunately Amber and the other volunteers were bursting to hold lengthy midnight discussions on various deep angelic issues. I didn’t want to hurt their feelings, so I had to pretend to be fascinated by the crumbling and mildewed book collection in my attic bedroom. Without me realising, one book led to another and I was now shamelessly addicted. My current read was keeping me totally mesmerised! You would not
believe
the things that happened to that poor heroine! First both her parents die in a storm at sea. Then her relatives pack her off to a typhoid-ridden boarding school on the moors, so they can cheat her out of her rightful inheritance. I was desperate to know how it would turn out.

Suddenly shrieks of excitement made me look up.

“YAYY! I guessed right!” Next minute little Maudie landed on top of me. My hammock wobbled madly, tipping both of us on the ground, and I found myself buried under a heap of giggling preschool angels.

Finally the day was over and my fellow volunteers and I tottered back to our cottage at the top of the cliffs. It was still really warm so we ate outdoors, watching the lighthouse wink on and off across the bay.

Out of the blue, Amber said, “So have you guys decided where you’re going yet?”

For the second time that day I came back to reality with a bump.

I gasped with dismay. “I can’t believe I forgot!”

Just before we broke up, Mr Allbright had announced that the History students would be going on a field trip at the beginning of the new term; a field trip with a twist. We had to pick an era in human history which genuinely interested us. If the Agency approved our choice, we’d be assigned a suitable human from that time period and we’d go to Earth to study them, like, in their natural context.

That’s what I think is so cool about angel school. We don’t just learn history from books, we visit historical eras for real. No, I mean it; we literally travel in Time!

This time we were supposed to be working in groups of three, something to do with power triangles or whatever. I had naturally assumed I’d be in a three with my fellow cosmic musketeers, Lollie and Reuben But it had been a v. stressful term and my frazzled mates couldn’t seem to agree on anything.

Lola wanted us to go back to ancient Persia where she’d done her Guardian Angel module, and Reuben had this bizarre fixation with King Arthur and his Round Table.

“Hate to burst your bubble, Reubs,” I told him, “but that King Arthur thing is just a story. Camelot never actually existed.”

As a pure angel Reuben sometimes struggles to grasp quite basic concepts, such as the difference between human history and fairy tales. In the end both my mates got really grumpy with me.

“You decide then,” Lola said irritably.

“Yeah, since you know so much,” Reuben growled.

“Ok,” I said huffily. “I will.” And then, I’d immediately put it to the back of my mind. After all, I had the whole summer in front of me.

Now the holidays were over and I still hadn’t thought of a destination. You see, I wanted it to be somewhere truly amazing. I mean, obviously I wanted my mates to have a great time, but most of all I wanted to wow them with my super de luxe five-star decision-making skills. Unfortunately under that kind of pressure my mind totally turns to pink bubblegum, incapable of making even weedy one-star decisions.

I wasn’t even back at school yet but my stress levels were soaring dangerously. So I took myself off to have a calming read in the bath.

I lit a small army of candles, climbed into the old-fashioned tub, lay back in the hot water and settled down to finish my old fashioned mystery story. The pages started to go wavy in the steam, but I refused to budge until the evil rellies got their just desserts. At last I closed the book with a sigh of satisfaction. Then I shot bolt upright, sending bath foam everywhere. I had had the most
fantabulous
idea!

I quickly towelled myself dry, put on the
Treat me like a Princess T-shirt
that I wear for a nightie, and flew up to my room to investigate my old-fashioned book collection.

Every title literally gave me goosebumps.
The Story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
,
The Woman in White
,
Collected Ghost Stories
by Charles Dickens, and most spine-tingling of all, real-life reports of the case of Jack the Ripper! And all these books had been written in the exact same era; Victorian times. Well, was that a sign, or was that a sign?

I grabbed the Ripper book and screwed my eyes tight shut. “Just give me a date,” I muttered. “Any date will do.” I opened the book at random and peeped out from under my lashes.

There it was, bang in the middle of the page. 1888!

By total fluke, I’d found the perfect destination for our Time trip. Lola, Reubs and I could do a spot of enjoyable time-tourism, plus we’d easily be able to collect enough info on social conditions and whatever to satisfy Mr Allbright.

Now I could relax and enjoy the last few hours of my holiday with a clear conscience. I was so impressed with myself that it never once occurred to me that my mates might not be quite as thrilled with my genius idea!

Have you noticed how the moments you most look forward to are usually the ones that are a total let-down?

The instant I got back to school, I hurtled along to Lollie’s room to tell her the good news, but she still hadn’t returned from her extreme adventure experience. So I dashed along to my room and called Reuben’s number. Reuben
had
to be back, surely. Only he wasn’t.

I collapsed on to my narrow bed and gazed out over the heavenly rooftops. It was evening and lights were coming on all over the city, like sprinkles of little stars. But tonight all this heavenly beauty just made me depressed. “Hi, I’m back,” I told my empty room. And then I said, “Well, can’t sit about here all day.”

I unpacked my bags, singing along to my current fave single, a sweet little hip hop track called True Colours. After that, I had a shower, washing, conditioning and then drying my hair slowly and carefully. After that, I gave my little orange tree some overdue TLC, lovingly polishing every leaf with Leaf Shine. But there was still no sign of Lola.

“I’ll lie down for a minute,” I told myself. “I won’t go to sleep. I’ll just rest my eyes.”

The next thing I knew, my room was full of dazzling celestial sunlight. Someone had posted a message under my door while I was sleeping. With a rush of happiness I recognised Lola’s handwriting.

My soul-mate was back in town!

Guru’s chef must have been making their special chocolate brownies when I arrived, because the cafe smelled divine.

I heard a husky chuckle and spotted my friend’s mad dark curls over by the window. She was chatting to some real outdoor types, looking incredibly pretty in a cute red dress I’d never seen before.

Pure happiness fizzed up inside me. I planned to sneak up and put my hands over her eyes. Ta da!

Before I could reach her, Brice burst through the kitchen doors, waving a bottle of maple syrup. “Here you are, princess! You can’t eat pancakes without maple syrup.” He sat down beside her, draping an arm round the back of her chair.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“This isn’t happening!” I whispered. But it was.

My best friend and my old enemy were an item.

Chapter Two

I
wanted to run but I was so shocked I couldn’t seem to move. Anyway, it was too late - Lola had already spotted me.

“Boo!” she shrieked. “Omigosh! I’ve missed you so much!”

I
have no idea why Lola calls me Boo. She loves giving her friends crazy nicknames.

Lola poked Brice in the ribs. “Don’t just sit there you monster! Find her a chair!”

My soul-mate seemed to think everything was quite normal. Like, “Hey, I’ve just spent my entire holidays with a cosmic juvenile delinquent. No big deal.”

Well, it was a big deal to me. I was completely traumatised. So much so that I behaved like a complete child, blanking Brice and babbling to my friend as if we were alone.

“Guess what, babe!” I wittered. “I had this brilliant idea for Mr Allbright’s time project. And I’m thinking Victorian times, because they—”

“That’s great,” Lola said politely. “Though I have to tell you, after the summer we’ve had, schoolwork seems kind of irrelevant. Oh, Mel, I wish you’d come with us! We had such a fabulous time, didn’t we?” She beamed at Brice. “You should have seen us canoeing down that waterfall! Those canoes are unbelievably tiny, I don’t know how we both—”

“Tell me the details later,” I said hastily. “Look, about that project—”

“You’ve
got
to come with us next time!” Lola interrupted. “It’s SO sublime, isn’t it Brice? We used to take our sleeping bags outside and just lie staring up at the stars. Oh, but one night, something really funny happened.” Lollie gave her husky chuckle. “It makes me laugh just thinking about it!”

Just then Reuben came in. Unlike me, Reuben has a deeply forgiving nature. So when he saw our best friend openly sharing maple syrup with the thug who’d put him in the hospital, he didn’t seem to think anything of it.

Brice also seemed to think it was all water under the bridge.“Have my seat, mate,” he told Reuben. “They’re expecting me down at the Agency.”

“Why? Got an appointment with your probation officer?” I said spitefully.

Brice just blew me a kiss on his way out. Good riddance, I thought. Lola had started chatting to someone else about her holiday, but I didn’t want to hear any more about her and Brice gazing up at the stars, so I hastily hooked my arm through Reuben’s. “Reubs, I was just telling Lola about this idea I had for our project.”

“Can’t it wait!” he protested. “I literally just got back five minutes ago!”

I know, but they’re expecting us down at the Agency any minute and they’ll ask us where we’re going, so you’ve got to back me up and say we want to go to London in 1888.”

He looked suspicious. “What’s so special about 1888?”

“Oh, loads of stuff,” I said enthusiastically, to cover the fact that my mind had gone embarrassingly blank.

“Name one,” he insisted.

“Well, um - for one thing, Jack the Ripper was stalking the streets!” I remembered triumphantly.

“Doing what?” Reuben couldn’t have looked less impressed.

” Murdering people, what else! The Ripper has to be the most famous serial killer in history.”

Reuben’s expression went from blank, to confused, to totally appalled. “You’re kidding? They made someone famous because he murdered people?”

I took a deep breath, reminding myself that Reuben often finds it hard to understand human behaviour. “I suppose it’s because he was never caught,” I explained. “It makes him seem immortal, kind of; like he’s still out there somewhere.”

“But that’s
really
sick.”

“Hey, don’t blame me,” I snapped. “It’s history, OK! You can’t just pick out the pretty bits.”

“Well, you’ll have to count me out,” Reuben said to my dismay. “I promised I’d help Chase with this tiger conservation thing.”

I was genuinely shocked. I couldn’t believe Reubs was ducking out.

“But you
have
to come!” I wailed. “Mr Allbright said we had to work in threes!”

“Then find someone else.” Reuben glanced at his watch. “We’d better run. We’re due down at the Agency building in five minutes.”

The Agency, if you hadn’t guessed, is the angelic organisation which keeps the whole of Creation running smoothly, so the Agency building is kind of Angel HQ.