Fighting Fit Read online

  First published in Great Britain by Harper Collins Children’s Books in 2003

  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 dedicated to Terri, Toni and Steph, for inspiring the plot of Fighting Fit, to Amber, for showing me round Bath’s Roman baths, and to Maria for everything. Also my grateful thanks to Vivian French, Derek Levick, and Liz Nair, for suggesting books and research materials on Ancient Rome. Any major bloopers are purely the responsibility of the author.

  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

  About the Author

  Also by Annie Dalton

  Credits

  Chapter One

  I used to think that being an angel was going to be all sweetness and light. I pictured myself zipping off to Earth, bringing peace, harmony and whatever to humankind. Then I’d zoom back to the Angel Academy, jump out of my combats, fling on a sparkly midriff top and swan off with my mates to dance till dawn.

  If only…

  I adore my work, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that the angel business turns out to have a dark side.

  The official term for the Powers of Darkness is the Opposition. My mates and I just call them PODS. PODS agents are opposite to ours in every way. Unlike us they have no bodies or personalities of their own. Over the centuries, PODS have developed the creepy ability to morph into any shape they like. But though PODS can disguise their appearance, their toxic vibes are a dead give-away - to angels anyway. We can suss out Dark agents in a heartbeat. So can sensitive humans; kids especially. But the majority of people have the attitude that if it looks human and acts human, it obviously has to be human. They don’t notice how this ‘person’ makes them feel.

  If you’re exposed to PODS toxins for any length of time, you become poisoned, it’s as basic as that. Life becomes hideously hard work. You’ll go, “Life is pointless. Why should I care what happens to this stupid planet? Just turn up the TV and let someone else worry.”

  See what I mean? That’s not you! That’s PODS talk. The Dark Powers want you to think life on Earth is ugly and meaningless. They want you to be depressed. Of course they do. When humans despair, it’s MUCH harder for us to get through to you.

  So far I’ve managed to come back from Earth unscathed. But agents do get seriously injured. Angel trainees are especially vulnerable. That’s why our school makes Dark Studies compulsory.

  I HATE Dark Study days. We stay cooped up inside the Agency building for what feels like aeons, while professional celestial agents put us through one simulated PODS encounter after another. These PODS setups are the safest way to train inexperienced angel kids and teach them to deal with the real thing. But the simulations are just SO real. By the end of the day you feel as if you’ve literally been dragged through the Hell dimensions and back.

  After the last D.S. day, we didn’t get back to our dorm until the small hours. I had a long hot shower to wash off any lingering PODS pongs (I told you simulations are realistic) and threw on my old T-shirt that says, You’re no Angel. I felt too hyper to sleep, so I went along to Lola’s room to see if I could beg a mug of her special hot chocolate.

  Before I could knock, the door flew open. Lollie popped her head out, scarcely recognisable under her spooky face-pack. Without a word, she pulled me into her room, plunked a steaming mug of hot chocolate in my hand, plumped up my favourite floor cushion so I could sit down, then calmly got on with her beauty routine.

  Lola Sanchez, Lollie to her friends, is the soul-mate I’ve been looking for since the universe began. We’re so alike it’s unbelievable. We both have long legs and hair that refuses to be tamed. We have almost the exact same taste in music. We even dress similarly, though being from my future, Lola is that bit more out there. She also has this mad habit of giving her friends nicknames. Our big buddy, Reuben, is Sweetpea and I’m Boo. I have no idea why!

  I curled up on my floor cushion, sipping my drink and moaning about my life. “You never get any time off in this business. It takes over your ENTIRE existence.”

  “That’s because we’re on the fast track.” Lola had to mumble through stiff lips because of her face-pack.

  “What does that even mean, ‘fast track’?” I objected. “Fast track to where?”

  “The fast track to evolution, stupid.”

  “I am SO sick of that word!” I complained. “Why does everything always have to keep evolving into something else? Like, forests turn into coal and coal turns into diamonds, and humans turn into angels and angels turn into - whatever angels turn into. Talk about a hyperactive universe. Why can’t it just chill out and stay put for a change!”

  “You know what Mr Allbright says,” my mate said in her face-pack voice, “Don’t knock evolution, it’s—”’

  ”’-the only game in town’, yeah, yeah,” I said gloomily.

  Lola went into the bathroom to wash her face. “Heavenly vibes don’t just make us peachy on the outside, you know,” she called through running water. “They’re transforming us on the inside. This school is basically a cosmic hothouse. That’s why it gets so intense.”

  I sighed. “I don’t feel like I’m on the fast track to anywhere. I feel like a complete fake.”

  Lola is the kind of angel girl who says what she thinks. “OK, as a human, maybe you were a bit of a ditz,” she agreed. “But you’ve changed a lot, Mel Beeby!” She came out blotting her face with a towel.

  “Orlando doesn’t think so,” I sighed. “We were in the same group all day and he totally ignored me.

  My friend gave me a severe look. “How did Mr Cutie Pie sneak into this conversation? I thought we were having a serious discussion about angelic stress.”

  “I’m an angel aren’t I?” I sighed. “Plus I’m seriously stressed!”

  I was beyond stressed actually. I was terminally confused. You see back on Earth, I always knew I was going to meet this special somebody. You know how the story goes, one day our eyes would meet and it’d be like DING! Now your real life can begin!!

  But thanks to a hit and run joyrider my ‘real life’ ended dramatically the day after I turned thirteen. On the upside, all my human problems instantly became irrelevant. What I didn’t reckon on, was a whole new set. For example, Dating in the Afterlife is not a subject teen advice columns tend to cover.

  That’s why I had no idea what to do about Orlando. Even Lola admits that Orlando is the most gorgeous boy in our school. He literally looks like an angel in one of those old Italian paintings: olive skin, dark eyes and a smile so sweet it ought to be illegal.

  You’re probably thinking; and this is a problem?

  Er, no! My problem is that Orlando is a genius. Lola told me from the start that all Orlando thinks about is work. “He has NO idea of the effect he has on girls,” she warned.

  I remember watching Orlando walk through the library, soon after I started at the
Academy. I’m not exaggerating, every single girl turned to look at him like sun-starved sunflowers yearning after the light, and like Lola said, Orlando didn’t even notice.

  I totally despise girls who whinge on and on about boys who don’t know they exist, and I immediately made up my mind that I would never join Orlando’s sad little groupies. But then I got all confused. You see there were definitely times when Orlando did seem to notice me. (I wasn’t just imagining it, I swear.) And each time it happened, my heart totally stood still. That has to be love, right?

  Just thinking about it now made me sigh heavily into my frothy hot chocolate. “I just don’t know where I am,” I whimpered. “Remember the night before our guardian angel assignments? Orlando went out of his way to walk me back to the dorm. He was SO sweet! But today I might as well have been invisible.”

  My friend was brushing her glossy black curls so hard, I could see sparks. “Mel, you do know you are driving everyone nuts? There’s a big beautiful universe out there. And you’re boringly fixated on one good-looking boy.”

  “Hello! One drop-dead gorgeous boy, thank you.”

  “One drop-dead, gorgeous, mysteriously unavailable boy,” Lola pointed out brutally.

  I stared at her. “I don’t believe you just said that! That is SO callous!”

  “It’s the truth! You’re obsessed, girl. Every time we have a conversation it always comes back to Mr Cutie Pie. We could be talking about cats and you’d go, ‘Do you think Orlando likes cats? Maybe I could give him a sweet little kitten? Perhaps he’d notice me then?‘“Lola mimicked my yearning expression with depressing accuracy.

  She’s right, I thought. I attempted a smile. “It’s true. I’m a hopeless case. Do you think I need help?”

  “I think you need a boot up your sorry angel behind,” she told me with a grin. “Come to the gym with me, angel girl! Wake up those dozy celestial cells!”

  I shook my head. “I keep telling you, I’m not a gym kind of girl.”

  “Correction,” Lola said. “You WEREN’T a gym kind of girl. But in your new incarnation they will call you the Workout Princess!”

  Since she got back from her adventure holiday last summer, my soul-mate had totally converted to the healthy life and I had to admit her fitness regime was paying off. Angels always have a special glow, but my friend looked stunningly healthy and toned.

  Miaow! I thought. Exercise really does make a girl look good! A glorious fantasy flashed through my mind. A super-toned and dynamic moi sauntering across the campus, the sunlight glinting on my hair. Suddenly Orlando catches sight of me. I’ve been SO blind, he thinks. This is the girl I’ve been waiting for. And he rushes up to me and - well I’m sure you get the picture!

  “Sweating into Lycra isn’t normally my idea of fun, but I suppose I could give it a try,” I sighed.

  Lola threw her arms around me. “You won’t regret it, I swear! Today is the first day of the rest of your life, Mel Beeby!”

  I didn’t tell her that my motives weren’t quite as pure as she thought.

  The workout routine was agony to begin with. Lola literally had to drag me out of bed. But after a month or so, a miracle happened. I started waking up before my alarm went off. And check this - I was actually looking forward to my morning run!

  I LOVED it. Isn’t that unbelievable? I truly loved that moment when Lola and I sprinted out of the door into the pearly light of early morning and jogged down to the beach. I loved running along by the water’s edge, feeling tiny shells scrunch under my trainers, then looking back and seeing our two sets of footprints in the damp sand. I even loved the ache in my muscles afterwards that told me I’d worked them to the max.

  Now that I’d got started, Lola refused to let me slack. At lunchtime we’d grab a healthy salad from the cafeteria then head for the gym. She even got Reuben to make us a hip hop remix of her cover version of Sisters are Doing it for Themselves. (I should explain that Lola literally sings like an angel.) “We can listen to it on our headsets,” she beamed. “It’ll give us added motivation!”

  We got so motivated we started singing aloud while we were working out! All the other gym users started clapping and cheering. “Look out PODS!” one boy teased. “The scary singing sisters are coming to get you!”

  Next Lola decided I was ready for the advanced martial arts class she goes to with Reuben. All trainees study martial arts as part of their angel training. Like Mr Allbright told me when I first got here, “You can’t just charm your way out of a sticky cosmic situation, Melanie. There are times when angels have to fight back.”

  For Reubs, martial arts is more than just a module on the heavenly school curriculum. It’s a way of life. Our buddy got talent-spotted back in kindergarten and he’s been training at a dojo in every spare moment ever since.

  The dojo has to be the simplest, loveliest building in the city. It’s basically just a roof, supported on carved wooden pillars made from some kind of sublime smelling heavenly wood. Bamboo blinds keep the dojo blissfully shady and silk banners flutter in the breeze. Some banners have mantras painted on them in ancient angelic script. One just says Breathe.

  The dojo master stepped out of the shadows to greet us. Reuben introduced us and we bowed respectfully to each other. Students in baggy fighting clothes were arriving in twos and threes. Like us, they bowed to the master then silently got on with warm-up stretches.

  I was instantly filled with longing to be calm and pure just like them.

  I started going down to the dojo twice a week after school. Brice came along some nights. It’s part of his rehabilitation programme. I was getting used to seeing my old enemy around the campus these days. OK, I’ll admit to a few bad moments when I first found out he and Lola had got alarmingly close, on holiday. But in a way you can understand it. Lola has a warm heart and as you know, a bad boy with a past is kind of hard to resist.

  What I couldn’t understand is why Reuben and Brice were such great mates.

  “You do remember that he beat you up?” I asked Reubs one night, when we were working on my sword-fighting technique.

  He shook his baby dreads out of his eyes. “Of course I remember. I’m not completely stupid!” He assumed a defensive crouch.

  To look at him you’d never guess Reuben is a martial arts genius. He’s just a skinny honey-coloured kid with incredibly clear green eyes. Yet he has this amazing strength. Not just physical strength. It’s a kind of calm inner strength.

  “But don’t you mind seeing Brice every day?” I asked.

  He looked blank. “Why should I mind?”

  “Um, because he tried to destroy you?”

  “He was working for the PODS. He did what he had to do.” Reuben made a surprise lunge, piercing me with ruthless efficiency through the chest.

  “Hey, you cheater, I wasn’t ready,” I complained.

  “Try telling that to the PODS,” he said with a grin.

  Heavenly swords have light-beams instead of blades, so Reuben and I were able to slash at each other quite viciously without so much as a scratch. At worst, we just got a cosmic Light overdose and went a bit dizzy. If you used the same weapon on the PODS, however, they’d instantly dissolve into evil mush.

  “He left scars, Reubs,” I persisted.

  With a lightning move my buddy captured my sword arm. “I got caught off-guard,” he said quietly. “I won’t do that again in a hurry. Brice taught me a valuable lesson.”

  I freed myself with a new gravity-defying jump and was impressed to find myself hovering over Reuben’s head. “Don’t you worry he might, like, defect back to the Dark Powers?”

  “No, I don’t,” said Reuben in a firm voice. “Now drop it, OK?”

  “OK,” I agreed reluctantly.

  Unlike me and Lola, Reuben is pure angel and has never lived on Earth. Human concepts like holding a grudge are completely alien to him. So far as he was concerned, Brice had turned over a new leaf and that was that.

  He grinned up at me. “Are you
planning to stay up there all night?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said anxiously. “I can’t seem to get back down.”

  Reuben gave me a funny little smile. “Seen Orlando lately?”

  I went crashing painfully to the floor. “You big pig!” I complained. “That was SO mean!”

  “Focus, Melanie-san,” the dojo master said sternly. “An angel warrior must be empty like the wind. No past. No future. Only NOW.”

  But I obviously had a long way to go before I became a true angel warrior. It took one mention of Orlando and my mind was instantly racing a like a dog after a rabbit. It suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t seen this beautiful angel boy for weeks. Was he even safe? Officially he’s still at school, but like I said, the boy’s a brainbox and the Agency already sends him on solo missions.

  Next day followed the new hectic pattern: running at dawn, followed by a healthy breakfast and lessons, a quick salad and gym at lunchtime, then afternoon school. I was going to have to skip the dojo that evening. Mr Allbright wanted to talk to me about my progress. I felt a familiar sinking feeling as I went into our classroom.

  I was not what you’d call a big success at my Earth comprehensive and at times I still find it hard to believe that my new life is for real. It’s like, deep down, I’m always secretly waiting to be exposed as a fraud.

  But to my relief and surprise it was all good news.

  “I’m impressed,” my teacher beamed. “If you keep this up, you could find yourself in line for a HALO award one of these days.”

  “You are kidding,” I breathed.

  Mr Allbright’s praise made me glow all the way back across the campus. I danced down the path towards our dorm, singing a happily off-key version of Sisters are Doing it for Themselves. (Lola sings like an angel. I sing like a tiny cartoon frog.)

  Suddenly my heart jolted in my chest. Orlando was walking towards me. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere, Mel! Where’ve you been?” he called and gave me his heart-melting smile.

  Did that just happen? I thought. Could destiny really be this kind? I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t quite take in what Orlando was actually saying. I vaguely heard him ask me to meet him at the library later so we could talk, and I heard myself babble out some kind of reply. Then I flew upstairs to my room, carefully shut myself in behind my door and finally allowed myself to scream with joy!