Feeling the Vibes Read online

  First published in Great Britain by Harper Collins Children’s Books in 2008

  This updated and revised edition published by Lazy Chair Press in 2013

  Text copyright (c) Annie Dalton 2001

  The author and illustrator assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

  This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be leant, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form (including digital form) other than this in which it is published, and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This book is for Matt who was patient and clever, Claire for her sensitive comments, Andrea who kept me well-fed, and for all you undercover angels everywhere

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Also by Annie Dalton

  Credits

  Chapter One

  When I was human I had it all sussed. I knew exactly where I was headed. As soon as I was old enough, I was going to leave my estate in London’s gritty inner city and become incredibly rich and famous, ideally by getting on TV.

  That was it. That was my grand plan. Get on TV!

  The local angels must have been tearing out their hair! Nice priorities, Melanie! You do know we’re in the middle of a cosmic war!

  In fact I had no clue. Despite living in the twenty-first century, where the evidence was (still is) stacking up night and day - insane bombings, famine, global warming - I still didn’t get it. I was just la la la, in my own little bubble, dreaming about being a weathergirl or whatever.

  Then I won a surprise scholarship to angel school and BOOM! All my limited little notions got blown sky high.

  Take something as basic as where you go when you die.

  I’d always pictured dying as being a bit like the slow fade to black at the end of a movie. One minute you were starring in your own groovy feature film, the next you disappeared into spooky black nothingness. Nothing good would ever happen to you again. You were just - GONE.

  But guess what!

  DYING WAS NOT THE END OF MY MOVIE!

  When I touched down outside the Angel Academy that first day, I didn’t even realise these beautiful shimmery buildings were a school. I watched all the angel kids hurrying in through the gates, laughing and chatting, and they were shimmery too. I didn’t know they were angel kids. I didn’t know what was going on. I felt like a shocked little butterfly that has just popped out of its thingummy, its chrysalis, all trembly and fragile, like I might blow away on the next puff of wind.

  I just kept whispering, “I didn’t disappear. I didn’t disappear.”

  * * *

  Surprisingly soon my new life started to feel normal.

  It was normal to look in the mirror without squeaking with shock to see a shimmery angel version of myself looking back. It was normal to sit in class and hear kids’ beepers going off because some new cosmic crisis had kicked off and the Agency needed extra back-up.

  At my old school, when they wanted to teach us about responsibility, they let us take the hamster home for the holidays. At the Angel Academy we literally hold human destinies in our hands.

  It’s not ideal, putting angel high-school kids up against the Powers of Darkness. But even with the Agency’s spangly new fast-track training scheme, there’s a drastic shortage of celestial personnel, and someone has to keep humans safe, because like our teachers are always saying, “The Powers of Darkness never sleep.”

  Did you ever see one of those Buzz Lightyear dolls? My mum got one off eBay for my little sister not long before I died. All day long, perky little Buzz would be going, “To infinity and BEYOND!”

  As I got deeper into my training, I felt a lot like Buzz, constantly stretched beyond my old human limits, studying bizarre angelic subjects I never knew existed, alongside super-brainy angel kids from times and places I’d never heard of. The fact that I even survived my first term was entirely down to my brilliant best friend Lola Sanchez.

  In those early days I was constantly rushing round to her room with some dramatic new reason why I’d never make it in the angel biz. Example: “I’ll never be an angel because I can’t morph through walls. Don’t laugh, Lollie! It makes me feel REALLY pukey. How cool will I look if I have to wait for humans to let me IN?”

  She gave a deep sigh. “You know what, Boo? You try too hard.”

  I stared at her, amazed. No one at my old schoolhad ever accused me of trying too hard!

  “Morphing is not brain surgery, sweetie,” she said firmly. “Give your molecules time to make friends with the little wall molecules! Just go with the flow and you’ll be fine.”

  My jaw dropped. “You’re seriously telling me I’ve got to be MATES with a bunch of molecules?”

  Suddenly we were laughing so hard we started crying. That was actually a major cosmic turning point. Lola made me see it didn’t matter if I was occasionally clueless, or if I didn’t have every angelic technique down. I just had to be open to the total amazingness of it all. Going with the flow is the only thing TO do when you don’t know from one day to the next what’s going to happen!

  It sounds scary and it was, yet I’d never ever felt so alive.

  But, and it’s a really big but, no one just becomes an angel in a mighty flash of light. In the cartoon version of the Universe maybe, but in real life it’s a process which can take like, aeons.

  One reason it takes so long could be that our teachers expect us to figure out every little tiny detail for ourselves! When I started my training I was constantly tripping over these baffling cosmic mysteries which no one seemed willing to explain.

  Like, six weeks into the first term I was the only angel kid in my class who didn’t have a special place to go on Wednesday afternoons, to “nourish my soul”, as our teacher Mr Allbright put it. Lola went off by herself to sing in some lonely beauty spot by the ocean. Our buddy Reuben spent his afternoon at the dojo doing martial arts.

  Me? I skulked in my room, flipping through old magazines.

  Our teacher said it didn’t matter where we went or what we did so long as it made our souls happy. Well, I’m sorry, but I’d only just found out I had a soul! I had no clue what made it happy and even less idea how to find out. It was like some v. deep riddle that everyone knew the answer to except the dopey new scholarship kid.

  I started getting SERIOUS Wednesday phobia, let me tell you. One afternoon I was skulking pathetically as usual, when a voice in my head suddenly commanded, GO TO THE BEACH!

  It was Helix, my inner angel, addressing me directly for the first time ever. Helix is the part of me that lives in inner space so has like, a cosmic overview of what’s going on.

  At the time, though, I was like, WHAAT! As if it isn’t bad enough being the school ditz, now I’m the ditz who hears VOICES!

  At that moment, it seemed like I had two choices. I could stay in my teeny-tiny room being harassed by imaginary voices - or I could go to the beach.

  I’v
e always loved it by the sea. This particular afternoon the sea was making soft soothing sounds, like: sssh, sssh, everything’s going to be fine. Suddenly I heard excited voices calling my name. A bunch of little nursery-school angels came scampering across the sand, looking v. delighted with themselves.

  “Melanie, we found you!” one little boy said, beaming. “Now you can play with us.” He looked exactly like a tiny four-year-old buddha. He had a totally luminous smile, barely-there eyebrows and absolutely no hair. I fell in love with him on the spot.

  I explained sheepishly that I wasn’t really up for playing. I was supposed to be figuring out what to do for Private Study.

  My little buddha took my hand. He had a surprisingly firm grip. “We know,” he said calmly. “We asked Miss Dove how to help you and she says you have to come back to the nursery with us.”

  Totally humbling, right? But like Mr Allbright says, the Universe works in SUCH mysterious ways!

  I let myself be dragged back to their classroom where we had a surprisingly fun afternoon cutting and sticking.

  By the time school ended, I looked like Miss Glitter Glue but I was SO happy! I finally knew what I needed to nourish my soul. My soul wanted to be needed and Miss Dove’s children needed me. That’s not just my opinion either. Miss Dove said I had “a natural aptitude for working with preschoolers”. I know!

  I helped at the nursery every week after that unless I was on a mission. You mustn’t have favourites with little kids and I was always careful to treat all the littlies the same. But from the start Obi and I always had a really strong connection.

  In a funny way, I actually felt calmer for knowing him, almost like Obi’s own calmness was rubbing off. Being an angel trainee is totally and utterly luminous, but at times it felt just a smidge too luminous, if you get me? I never knew where I’d be or what I’d be doing from one moment to the next.

  Obi, though, for all he was so calm and wise, was still only four and had a little four-year-old’s routine. Anywhere in the Universe I could look at my watch and go, Obi’s having storytime now (or swimming or angel martial arts), and just knowing that somehow made my amazing new life seem more manageable.

  Every time I got back from a stressful mission, I’d grab a quick shower, then first chance I got I’d run down to the nursery to get my “Obi fix”.

  I thought it would always be like that. I’d go off on dangerous missions and return home to Obi’s rapturous welcome. Obviously there’d be changes. He’d learn to tell the time, start riding a bike without stabilisers. But he’d be there.

  It never once occurred to me that Obi had just been lent to me; that he had his own awesome destiny which would take him away from the gentle shimmery world of Miss Dove’s nursery school, away from Heaven and away from me.

  Chapter Two

  One morning I couldn’t get out of bed.

  Everything else was like usual. Rays of celestial sunshine making wavy patterns on my rug, small birds fluttering outside my window, the familiar sounds of the Heavenly City floating up from below.

  Usually I’m set to go from the moment I open my eyes. In fact I don’t even have to open my eyes. I feel those zingy cosmic vibes rushing to meet me in my dreams and something in my heart shouts, “Yay, let’s go and save the Universe!”

  But today there was no shout, just a pathetic whimper like, “Nooooo.”

  I pulled my pillow over my head, but I couldn’t totally block out the sounds of doors banging all along the corridor as my angel buddies scooted off to class. They were off saving the Universe and I didn’t have the energy to sit up and comb my hair. I huddled under my covers in a state of absolute black despair.

  Obviously, this depression didn’t just arrive out of the blue. Recently I’d gone through one shattering cosmic experience after another. Being fast-tracked is one thing, but sometimes it felt like the Universe had completely jammed on fast forward, ruthlessly rushing me through all these huge changes at the speed of light. The Test had been the last, the final straw.

  The Test is an ancient (and hideously harrowing) angelic ordeal which I didn’t actually know existed until I got time-napped back to Cleopatra’s times and found myself confronting my Dark twin.

  To be a true angel, you see, you have to be able to walk into situations of utter evil chaos and still think and behave like an angel.

  The Dark Powers can sniff out your most secret weakness in a flash. If they find one, they’ll use it against you, no question. This is why, at a certain stage in our training, every angel has to come face to face with her Dark side.

  To face it for real, though, you have to believe you’re completely and utterly alone in the Universe. Not alone as in “Melanie no mates”, but as in totally cut off from your divine radar, a.k.a. your inner angel.

  After our first surprise communication, I’d increasingly come to rely on Helix.

  Then - nothing.

  Now I get that Helix had tactfully backed off to give me the space to become a stronger, wiser angel, but I didn’t know that then. I didn’t even know she’d gone! I just felt utterly lost.

  Unfortunately I was also temporarily off my head on cosmic vibes. With no Helix to keep me on track, I went bombing off to Egypt to save the world, or possibly the entire Universe, I don’t remember now, though it all seemed blazingly clear at the time.

  I made a complete muppet of myself, but with Lola’s help I came safely out the other side.

  It sounds like a happy ending and it kind of was, until I got back to Heaven and, like I said, I suddenly couldn’t get out of bed.

  I had found out how far I had to go to be a real angel. Extremely, depressingly far. And to make it worse Helix hadn’t come back.

  Why didn’t she come back? The Test was over -wasn’t it?

  That was my secret terror. That the Test hadn’t finished with me and I’d have to relive my gruelling confrontation with the Dark Powers all over again.

  Lola had tried to get me to talk about what had happened, bless her, but I was too disgusted with myself. OK, face your Dark side, but how the sassafras do you go on from there?

  I’d almost betrayed my best friend - to the Powers of Darkness (PODS). I had talked about Lola to a PODS. I had sniggered about her with a PODS. I had callously abandoned my soul-mate in a foreign country to hang out with a PODS. I didn’t know Maia was a PODS, admittedly, but what kind of lame excuse is THAT?

  OK, so I’d caught on - eventually. I banished Maia back to the Hell dimensions where she belonged. Lola has a huge heart and instantly forgave me; in fact she insisted there was nothing to forgive.

  I just couldn’t forgive myself.

  As you probably guessed, though, Lola is not a friend who can be fobbed off for long. She knows all about angelic burnout; she’s been there herself. But at last she decided enough was enough.

  One afternoon she stealthily let herself into my room carrying two steaming mugs. Lola got her legendary hot-chocolate recipe from her granny who traced it back to the ancient Mayans. Sanchez-style hot chocolate is spiked with cinnamon and chillies and is so unbelievably thick you can literally eat it with a spoon. I’ve seen it bring burned-out angel trainees back from the brink.

  But not this time. “I’m not actually up to chocolate,” I said in a croaky, invalid voice and feebly pushed my mug away.

  Lola looked so disturbed when she left, I knew she was going to call Michael. The thought of our headmaster seeing me in this skanky state made me cringe, but not so I actually thought of getting up.

  I was still wallowing in self-pity when Lola popped her head round my door. “Hey, babe! Someone wants to see you.”

  “I knew you were going to call Michael,” I wailed. “Now he’ll make me go into angelic counselling or whatever.”

  Lola marched over to my window, pulled up the blind and heaved the window open, letting in a rush of sweet-smelling air. “I didn’t call Michael, sweetie.”

  The sunlight streaming into my room was so dazzling I had
to shield my eyes. “I’m really not up to visitors either,” I whimpered.

  “You’ll be up to this one; he’s cute!”

  “Omigosh,” I squeaked. “Reuben can’t see me like this!”

  Lola’s eyebrows went up. “Interesting reaction! But the angel boy I’m talking about is only so high.”

  “Obi’s here? What’s wrong!” I was so shocked I didn’t notice I was talking in a normal voice, instead of feeble croaks. I grabbed my hair brush and started ripping at the tangles.

  “Not sure. He seems a bit…”

  “Upset?” I said, still frantically detangling.

  “Not upset exactly. He isn’t actually making much sense. He said he’s got to see you because he’s going away. I think he said next week?”

  I was on my feet in a heartbeat.

  “I’ll just jump in the shower!” I said urgently. “I’ll be two ticks.”

  Chapter Three

  Obi hovered just inside my door, looking like he wasn’t sure if he should come in. I’d never seen him like this. Not upset, but something.

  “I waited and waited,” he said in a small voice, “but you didn’t come to school. Miss Dove said you were too busy, but I said she’s always busy and she always, always comes.”

  I was SO ashamed. Since I got back from Egypt, I hadn’t given Obi one thought. That Miss Dove had made excuses for me only made it worse.

  “I know I haven’t been into the nursery for a while,” I blustered, “but I had to go on a really difficult mission, and then—”

  Obi’s face lit up. “I’m going on a difficult mission as well. A really LONG mission.”

  “Oh, right! Wow! That is a surprise.”

  He came over, looking up confidingly into my face.

  “I told Miss Dove you’d be sad if I went without saying goodbye. You would be really sad if I did that, wouldn’t you, Melanie?”

  Lola was right. Obi wasn’t making a lot of sense.

  “You know what we’re going to do now, sweetie?” I said, borrowing Miss Dove’s upbeat nursery-school voice.