Living the Dream (6 page)

However, that’s no excuse to just flit about in trackie bottoms, right? Clothes matter to me and I could tell they mattered to Cody. I was going to copy Cody’s quirky, layered style, but instead of all the grungy grey, my layers were shimmery earth colours.

I was pleased with my look, but I was proudest of my basketball boots, hand-painted with teeny birds and butterflies, as totally opposite from skulls as you can get.

Lola came by as I was folding a jewel-green top in tissue. She gave me an approving once-over. “I’m loving the boots,
carita
! Is this how Cody dresses?”

“Her style, not her colours. This girl is deep, Lollie. Sam says she has special cosmic needs - whatever that means,” I added doubtfully.

“She’s got to be quite special if she’s got through five guardian angels! Anyone would think she’s trying for a record. Wish I was coming with you,” she added with a sigh. “I’d rather help with Cody than be stuck in the library watching grisly tapes of human prejudice field trips. Who knew the angel biz could get so - you know,
dark
.” That new haunted look came and went so quickly from her face, I wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination.

“You still haven’t told me what happened on your trip,” I said, feeling guilty that I hadn’t tried harder to find out.

Her face clouded. “I know. I wanted to. I wanted to tell you ever since I got back. I just—”

Lola wandered over to my window. I hadn’t bothered to pull down the blind and I could see city lights winking and twinkling behind her. I went to join her and realised she was trying not to cry.

“Lollie, isn’t there anything I can do?” I was nearly crying in sympathy even though I had no clue what was wrong.

I don’t think she heard me. She seemed to be looking through the divine shimmer of the Heavenly City into something unbelievably dark.

“Would it help to talk about it?” I started, but she softly interrupted me.

“Know why I got so mad with you about Ambriel? It’s because of where I’ve been. Because of what I’ve seen.”

Lola reached into her pocket and took out a shimmery cosmic memory stick, half the size of her little finger. “I’ll show you. If you think you’re up to it?” she added anxiously.

“No, I want to see.” I’d lived in a Mumbai slum; I thought I was unshockable. I fetched my laptop and we sat down together on my rug. Lola plugged in the memory stick. The screen went foggy, and my tiny room filled with sounds of dripping water. I adjusted the brightness gizmo, but it still took a while to make out the anxious faces in the gloom.

“That’s where I’ve been living,” Lola said quietly. “Nine little kids and three adults living in this like, leaky hut on stilts.” Lola’s camera panned across a vast shanty town on stilts, built over dirty, stagnant water. Rain was pouring down out of a sky the colour of lead. There are places on Planet Earth that look like they’re twinned withthe Hell dimensions.

“I was there in the rainy season,” she said. “People’s blankets, clothes, everything are constantly wringing wet. You smell drains and sewage all the time.”

Lola explained that this family’s world hadn’t always been this way. “But all the fertile land where people used to grow their crops is now regularly flooded with salty water, so even when the floods die down, nothing can grow.”

I thought I’d seen all the global-warming nightmares. This was one Ambriel had missed. We watched footage of little children swimming around like fish in the polluted water. You could hear their chirpy little voices laughing and teasing, sounding like kids sound everywhere.

“Don’t they get sick from going in the water?”

Lola nodded. “All the time. Most kids never reach the age of four.”

I stared at her in horror. “You mean they DIE?”

“The families are so poor, they can’t afford to take their children to a doctor.”

A police cruiser zipped by, churning up water. The younger children had to cling to the struts not to be swept away. Grim-faced cops scanned the floating slum through binoculars.

“The kids don’t get any education and there are almost no jobs,” Lola went on bleakly. “Pretty much the only way to make money is by selling drugs.” She paused the picture on a skinny laughing boy. He was pretending to be a sea monster chasing the younger kids, making them giggle and shriek.

“That’s Miguel, the boy I was sent to watch over. While I was there he got caught up in a gang war. There was nothing I could do. He died, Mel. He was eleven years old.”

Lola leaned wearily against my shoulder and I knew her sadness was too deep for tears. I didn’t try to comfort her. What could I say? Scientists in my century are constantly warning governments that Planet Earth is in for a hellish future if they refuse to take action. But for far too many vulnerable humans that future is here and now. For families like Miguel’s, like families I saw in the slums of Mumbai, time has already run out. That’s why Ambriel followed me back to Heaven in a last-ditch attempt to turn the tide.

Now, instead of helping him, I’d committed myself to getting just one human soul back on track. My decision didn’t make a lot of sense, with the world going up in flames, but I knew I had to help Cody Fortuna. From the moment I saw her being pulled along the towpath by six panting dogs, I knew.

“I wish I could meet Cody,” Lola said softly, reading my mind.

I perked up. “You can! Well, kind of. Michael gave me her Agency co-ordinates, so I can send vibes before I leave. You could help!” I said hopefully.

Lola managed a smile. “Let’s do it!”

The truth is, unless we’re total burned-out wrecks, angels actually feel heaps better doing angel work!

I double-clicked on Cody’s divine computer link. The screen brightened and a new location flashed up:
Bethesda, Maryland, USA
. The care authorities must have moved her.

Cody and the tired social worker I’d seen earlier were waiting in yet another shabby outer office. A clock said 7:15. Outside it was pitch dark, but people were still tapping wearily at computer keyboards and making calls. Cody had stopped asking if she could see her mum. Her eyes were so bleak I longed to give her a hug.

A woman came out to see them. “Ms Lee?” she said sharply, though they were the only people waiting.

“I’m Celia Lee and this is Cody Fortuna,” said the social worker. “We talked earlier on the phone.”

The woman totally ignored Cody, talking over her head. “You’re very lucky,” she snapped, as if Ms Lee didn’t deserve luck. “Mrs LaPlante says she’ll take her. Her son is driving her over.”

“Can’t Mrs LaPlante drive?” asked Ms Lee, surprised.

“She’s older than our usual foster mothers,” the woman admitted. “A little set in her ways. Driving makes her nervous. Does the kid own a dress? Mrs LaPlante doesn’t like her girls to wear jeans or sneakers.”

“I never saw her in a dress,” Ms Lee admitted.

“Could someone just
talk
to the
child
!” Lola yelled at my laptop.

“All that long hair will have to go,” the woman added, sounding pleased for the first time. “Mrs LaPlante has this thing about…” she dropped her voice, “
infestation
.”

A light started flashing in the corner of my screen.

“What’s happening?” Lola asked in alarm.

“Don’t ask me,” I wailed. “I never did this before.”

Lola peered at my laptop. “There’s another camera we’re supposed to be using. Click up here.”

A second camera showed a couple hurrying into the building and handing in their ID to the security guy. I heard Lola suck in her breath. It wasn’t just that Mrs LaPlante was old and puffy-faced and had a hairstyle that looked like it had been glued on to her head in the 1950s, or even that her son wore those icky white towelling socks with carefully ironed jeans. It was their eyes. When people get that close to the Dark Powers, there is just pure emptiness looking back at you.

“No, no,
no
! This mustn’t happen!” Lola was tugging at her hair.

Jamming on my headset I was already on it. “Cody, you’re in danger! Do anything it takes to buy yourself some time, but you must NOT go with these people!”

I’d been in some cosmic situations, but this was the first time I’d tried to outwit the PODS from my bedroom! Lola and I beamed the same urgent message over and over.
Do NOT go with the LaPlantes. Save yourself NOW! Do NOT go with
…”

“Ms Lee,” Cody said abruptly. “My stomach feels weird again. I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Oh, good GIRL!” exclaimed Lola. Cody bolted into the ladies’ room.

“Cody has a nervous stomach,” Celia Lee said in an undertone. “Her file says she also suffers from night terrors.”

The woman’s mouth tightened like a purse. “A half-breed Indian kid with so many problems. Mrs LaPlante is going to have her work cut out.”

Half-breed? Hello
! I thought.
Is she a child or a dog
?

Lola was clicking on different cameras. Suddenly we were back with Cody. She was staring at herself in the mirror as if she had no idea what she was doing here.

“We can’t help you out with this one, Cody,” I told her. “You’re going to have to come up with something on your own, and it’s got to be drastic, OK?”

I could see her thinking frantically. Suddenly she reached into her bag and took out a pair of vicious-looking nail scissors.

We both yelled, “CODY, NO!”

Cody didn’t try to harm herself, but what she did was nearly as shocking. She lifted handfuls of her long, blue-black hair and started hacking off random chunks.

Lola let out a shriek. “Oh, now that’s drastic!”

Cody worked super-fast. You could just hear tiny snipping sounds and the panicky sound of her breathing. She didn’t glance in the mirror once, doing it all by feel, like she didn’t even care what the end result looked like. When she’d finished, I wanted to cry.

She looked like a bird, a frightened fledgeling bird that just fell out of its nest.

Still avoiding her reflection, she was about to leave when I saw a flash of something in her eyes. She swiftly gathered up the mass of fallen hair then stuffed it down the toilet, flushing several times.

It’s what you do in some cultures if you think something evil is after you. Something with your energy in it - hair, nail clippings - could give them power over you. But Cody hadn’t grown up in that kind of culture. It was like some deep part of her, her Navajo DNA or whatever, had flagged up a warning.

Lola clicked back on the first camera. We saw the women’s astonished faces as Cody emerged from the bathroom minus her hair. Ms Lee actually gasped. “What were you
thinking
?”

Cody’s expression was carefully blank like always, but you could see she was trying not to cry. “I cut it short for Mrs LaPlante,” she said in a trembling voice.

“There’s short, young lady, and there’s looking like you’ve been savaged by killer rats,” snapped the child-care woman. “I’m telling you right now that Mrs LaPlante will not take on any kid who looks as - as bizarre - as you do now.”

Yess! Thank you, Universe!

Cody’s cosmic cheerleaders jumped up and down, clapping and whooping.

“Man, we are SO hot,” said Lola gleefully. Then she said excitedly, “Mel, check out Celia! The angel vibes got her too!”

Ms Lee was watching Cody with a totally new expression. Until now I think she’d been trying to keep her heart closed to Cody, treating her as just one more case, but in that moment she stopped being Cody’s social worker and became a real human being.

“You know what?” she said abruptly “I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I need food. How about you?”

Cody looked wary. Like, Why’s she acting so friendly?

“I don’t just mean any food.” Ms Lee said, smiling. “I’m talking about TASTEES. It’s one of Bethesda’s institutions, the original greasy Diner. They do the most fabulous fried chicken sandwiches,” she told Cody. “And downright evil chocolate pancakes. Shall we give it a shot?”

Cody’s hand crept up to her mutilated hair.

Ms Lee laughed. “No one will give you a second glance at TASTEES. We’ll fill up on bad carbs, then you can stay the night at my place. You’ll have to sleep on the sofa, and my dogs will insist on sharing it with you.”

“I like dogs,” Cody half whispered.

“So let’s go!” said Ms Lee. “And tomorrow, cross my heart, Cody, I’ll pull out all the stops for you. I’m not taking any crap from anybody, I swear!”

The child-care lady was fuming. “This is highly irregular!”

“Yes, it is,” said Ms Lee sweetly. “Feel free to file a report.”

Cody and Celia walked out through the swing doors, past the sitting area where the LaPlantes were waiting.

“Change of plan,” Celia Lee called cheerily. “So sorry you had to be inconvenienced, sir, madam!”

Back in my bedroom, my knees totally turned to water.

“That was a bit too close for comfort,” I told Lola shakily. “The PODS produced those creeps so fast, It’s like they’ve just been waiting till she hit rock bottom.”

“Eight homes in three years. Five guardian angels. Mum in and out of psychiatric hospital. Dad dead in a car smash. I’d say they’ve been doing more than waiting,” said Lola fiercely. “Sounds like they’ve been out to make her hit rock bottom from day one.”

“But WHY? Why target Cody?”

“All I know is she didn’t come to their attention for no reason. If she has ‘special cosmic needs’, or whatever Sam said, you can bet the PODS know about it.” Lola stood up and swayed on her feet.

“Bed,” I told her sternly. I pushed her towards the door, but she suddenly swung to face me. For an instant it was like someone else was looking out through my best friend’s eyes. Someone calm and old and scarily wise.

“You think Cody’s a safe Mel Beeby type mission, don’t you?” she demanded. “But saving the world, that’s too big to handle.”

When someone sees you more clearly than you see yourself, it’s deeply disturbing. “How did you know I thought that?” I said uncomfortably. I hadn’t known it myself till Lola said it out loud!

“I get more psychic, remember, the tireder I get! And I’m telling you that’s not how it is.” Lola closed her eyes like she was channelling info from far far away.