Budding Star (3 page)

I love that arty boho look, don’t get me wrong. It was the kids who got right up my nose. They ignored me for ages, showing off tediously amongst themselves about some play they were involved in.

At last the vampire-coat boy deigned to notice me. “I don’t think I saw you on Soul-Retrieval for Beginners, did I?” He had one of those plumy voices like he rather fancied himself as an actor.

I attempted a smile. “Actually this is the first one I’ve been to.”

“Residential are usually for intermediate students,” he said in a disapproving tone.

Thanks for nothing, Fern
.

“They really just asked me to make up the numbers,” I explained.

“Well, so long as you can keep up,” he said in a doubtful voice.

“We’re SO lucky to get Jessica,” gushed a girl wearing what looked like a milkmaid’s smock. “What she doesn’t know about DS and SR just isn’t worth knowing.”

The boy in the flying jacket threw me a pitying look. “DS is—”

“I DO know about Dark Studies, thanks,” I said quickly.

They all exchanged glances, like, “Woo, has
she
got a chip!”

I slid down in my seat. This was going to be a
really
long weekend.

The bus turned off the main road and went bumping down a track. After a few minutes of jolting along in the ruts, periodically banging our heads on the roof, we came to a rambling country house.

Fern had told me that Rose Hall is used purely for soul-retrieval courses. Maybe that explains its truly amazing atmosphere. It feels like, aeons and aeons ago, someone struck a heavenly tuning fork and that same pure, lovely vibe is still chiming on and on.

We all went to freshen up after the journey (we didn’t have to share rooms, thank goodness), then came back down to dinner. I got a bit lost actually. That house is a total maze.

A delicious buffet had been left out for us. There must have been staff behind the scenes, preparing our food and keeping everything pristine, but we never saw them. It felt a bit like being looked after by friendly, but very shy, elves!

We were still eating when Reuben rolled up, lugging his ancient rucksack. A few days of living in the open had turned his skin to a warm gold, the colour of cinnamon toast. I was so relieved to see him I just threw my arms around him.

He solemnly presented me with an enormous tropical flower. “It’s a bit stinky,” he said apologetically. “You don’t notice it in the rain forest.”

It was extremely stinky, but the gesture touched me more than I could say.

“Thanks, Sweetpea.”

“Did you get my message?” he asked in a low voice.

I was still gazing at the flower. It was beautiful just so long as you didn’t inhale.

“Yeah, v. impressive transmitting skills,” I whispered. “But how did you
know
?”

“I was sitting in a tree, watching the sun come up over a water hole, and I just got the feeling you were having a rough time,” he explained.

“Only my most humiliating moment ever,” I told him, careful to keep my voice down. “I lost it totally.”

Indigo seemed to be miffed at not being the centre of attention. He read out the message on Reub’s T-shirt in his actor’s voice. “We all know love is the answer,” he said with an annoying smirk. “But what, exactly, is the question?”

Reuben gave him the mischievous smile that lets you see what he must have been like as a little angel kid. “Doesn’t matter, mate. The answer’s always the same.”

“You might want to grab some of this food before it disappears,” I suggested hastily.

The instant Reuben went off to fill his plate, the girls decided to introduce themselves! My buddy had obviously made a bit of an impression. They all wanted to know if “Sweetpea” was his real name!

I explained that Lola originally called him Sweetpea as a private joke and now it had stuck. “Lola’s always making up mad names for her mates. I’m ‘Boo’, I don’t know why,” I giggled.

Tanya (that was the petticoat girl) was totally starry-eyed. “It REALLY suits him,” she sighed. “The way he gave you that flower; I’ve never seen anything so romantic.”

I almost laughed.
Romantic
? Reuben? But I’m really proud of Reubs, so I boasted, “He uses Sweetpea as his DJ name now.”

“He does deejaying,” gasped Tanya. “I bet he’s good, isn’t he?”

“Unbelievable,” I said truthfully. “He does gigs on the beach most weekends. You should come and check him out.”

She gave me a sideways look. “So are you and he…?”

This time I laughed outright. “No WAY! Reubs is just a mate.”

My buddy strolled back, munching happily, “Has Jess arrived yet?”

Everyone’s mouths fell open.

“You actually
know
Jessica Lightfoot?” breathed the milkmaid girl.

“We used to train at the same dojo.” He chuckled. “She might be old, but man, can she fight!”

It was like someone had flipped a switch. In a heartbeat Reuben and I were upgraded from course outsiders to its stars!

Next morning, I dragged on some jeans, threw on a T-shirt that said SOCIAL BUTTERFLY (mostly to annoy Indigo!), and went down to join the others.

Can you believe Indigo even wore his coat at breakfast!

“Do you think he sleeps in it?” I whispered to Reubs.

“Yeah, in a lead-lined coffin!” he whispered back.

Indigo was being v. charming this morning, giving me a special smile every time he passed me the marmalade, inquiring what I did at weekends and if I’d been to FEATHERS, a new club that had recently opened up.

Reuben whispered, “He fancies you.”

I went pink. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed!” he teased.

We quickly disposed of the continental breakfast laid on by the Rose Hall elves, then made our way to the lecture theatre.

Like everything else at Rose Hall it was simple and old-fashioned, with polished oak panelling and rows of plain wooden benches. The benches had also been polished to a high shine, and I immediately slid straight off! At that moment Jessica Lightpath walked into the lecture theatre.

Have you ever met anyone who literally makes the air shimmer?

Jessica’s hair must originally have been jet black; now it was streaked with pure white, and twisted into a smooth knot on the back of her neck. She wore a dazzling white shirt, blue jeans and pristine white trainers; also masses of turquoise jewellery, making me wonder if she’d been Native American in a past life.

Reuben reckons Jessica has “long-distance eyes”. And I know what he means. They’re pure and clear, like they’re seeing people and places no one else has ever seen.

Jessica started by explaining that souls usually “lose” themselves after death, for one of two reasons. “The human may have experienced terrible trauma - war, natural disaster, a plane crash - and be temporarily confused. Just occasionally souls get lost for their own evolutionary purposes.”

I felt v. sophisticated, sitting in a grown-up lecture theatre, furiously scribbling down phrases like “evolutionary purposes”!

There was something magic about that weekend. This is just one example; the third or fourth time Jessica mentioned human souls, a tiny blue butterfly flew in through the open window! I know!

I continued jotting down the Ten Key Points of Soul-Retrieval (or however many there were), but I could still feel the butterfly fluttering around the room, almost like I was tracking it with my nerve endings.

Suddenly I felt a touch, light as a flower petal, as the butterfly settled on my wrist, and perched there, gently fanning its wings looking totally at home.

Jessica could see I was a bit surprised. “Butterflies are strongly attracted to soul work,” she explained.

Indigo flashed me his intense smile. “This one seems quite attracted to Melanie!”

“You old smoothie,” Reubs muttered.

Jessica quickly got everyone back on track. “How many of you go dancing?” she asked.

People nervously put up their hands, wondering what the sassafras this had to do with soul-retrieval.

She laughed. “Ah, but how many of you really
love
to dance? All of you? Wonderful! So you all understand that you can only dance well, when you let yourself feel the music?”

“Yeah, of course,” everyone agreed. We angels tend to be a dancey lot!

“Well, soul-retrieval is a lot like dancing,” Jessica explained. “Everything in the Universe has its own note, its own song. We must attune ourselves to the music of this lost soul until we literally feel it inside our own hearts. Then, no matter where the soul goes, we will follow. We won’t have to think. It will come quite naturally.” She suddenly swooped on Reuben, literally pulling him out of his seat. “You are the soul,” she announced. “You try to surprise me and I’ll do my best to follow.”

The rest of us went weak with relief that she hadn’t picked on us.

But that kind of thing doesn’t bother Reubs. He and Jessica immediately began to improvise a surprisingly sexy little tango. Reuben was easily able to catch Jessica out at first, but as the dance went on, she began anticipating his moves so accurately it was uncanny. Suddenly it didn’t seem like two people dancing, there was just this
one
thing - this beautiful breathtaking dance.

“Thank you, take a bow!” Jessica told him.

Reuben came back to his seat, grinning. Everyone clapped and cheered.

“A good dancer must be sensitive both to the music and to his or her partner!” smiled Jessica. “It’s the same with soul-retrieval. In this beautiful and frequently dangerous cosmic dance, the soul leads and we follow. If the soul strays into a Limbo dimension, we follow. If the soul is badly confused and accidentally wanders into the Hell dimensions…” Jessica cupped her ear expectantly.

“We follow!” we all chorused.

“Is she serious?” one girl whispered. “We’d have to follow it into the Hell dimensions? Don’t they have specialists for that?”

Jessica seemed to be controlling her temper. “Yes they do! That’s why the Agency runs these courses, to train you all to do this difficult and demanding work.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” the girl said humbly.

“You are new to soul-retrieval, my dear, so I will make allowances. This subject can be quite alarming at first.”

If you ask me, Jessica is quite alarming herself, I told my new best friend, the butterfly; but I wasn’t silly enough to say this aloud.

“For convenience agents use the term ‘lost soul’,” Jessica went on. “In reality, human souls never cease to be under Agency protection. But even though we know the happiness that awaits this confused soul in the Afterlife, we cannot force it to come with us. And so we play a patient waiting game. We wait, we watch, we follow, and we never cease to surround this soul with uplifting vibrations!”

“Sounds really boring,” the flying-jacket boy muttered to his mates.

“Let me remind you that we’re talking about saving an immortal soul. Our feelings really don’t come into it.” Jessica shot him a sharp look. “You do understand that being permitted to do this work is an honour?”

“Yes,” he said hastily. “I realise that.”

Jessica fixed us with her beautiful-but-alarming long-distance eyes. “If all goes well, you will get to experience that miraculous moment when the soul accepts your help, and of its own free will, decides to move on to the next stage of existence.”

She went to stand by a door that I totally hadn’t noticed until now. “And now for the fun part of the course,” she smiled. “Behind this door is a simulation chamber designed to replicate the type of conditions you can expect to find in Limbo dimensions!”

Promise not to laugh, but when I first got here, I thought “limbo” was the name of that embarrassing dance my step-dad tried to do one Christmas when he’d had a few too many Bacardi Breezers!! I couldn’t understand why our teachers kept banging on about it! Then I flicked to the back of the Angel Handbook and discovered that “limbo” is also the name of the cosmic no-man’s-land that exists between the human world of Time and Space and the shimmery light fields of the Afterlife.

I can’t stand angels who talk shop, so I’m not going to burble on about our experiences at Rose Hall. But I will just say that Jessica Lightpath is a truly inspiring teacher. Which is also exactly what Tanya said when she presented her with a big bunch of flowers at the end of the course. Jessica was so surprised and touched she actually had tears in her eyes.

I felt quite emotional myself. After a weekend playing “agents and souls”, I’d become really close to everyone on the course in a way that’s hard to explain. When I first became an angel trainee, working in a team was a major challenge; now it was the thing about my work I loved the most. And I was on the verge of giving it all up to teach baby angels.

Going home on the bus, everyone was exchanging phone numbers. Indigo leaned over my seat, and gave me his special smile. “How does it feel to be the class butterfly magnet, Melanie?”

I tried to smile back. “Makes it quite tricky to take notes.”

“I can lend you mine, if you want to write it up,” he offered/

“Oh, thanks. Actually, I don’t know if -”

“You can copy my notes,” Reuben said in my ear, “if you can read my spidery handwriting.”

“Thanks, Sweetpea,” I said, feeling like a lying monster.

I still hadn’t told him about my new career plans. I pretended it was because the Soul-retrieval course was so full-on, but I was really just being a wuss.

On the long journey home, I felt more confused than ever. Don’t get me wrong, I still thought that teaching baby angels was a v. worthwhile career. I just couldn’t help thinking it might be a teensy bit samey, when you had to do it day after day after day. How was I going to feel,
really
, when the highlight of my week was teaching baby angels the actions to “Five Fat Sausages”?

I stared out of the window at the moonlit landscape, remembering how I’d felt when I walked into the portal, and suddenly found I couldn’t breathe.

I told myself there was nothing to be ashamed of. What was so cool about constantly exposing yourself to the Powers of Darkness? What was so wonderful about taking constant cosmic risks?