Living the Dream (8 page)

He seemed surprised that I’d used his name. He thought for a moment, then experimentally stuck up a giant shimmery thumb. I burst out laughing. A billion-year- old angel and he’d just cracked his first joke!

Seconds later we heard a ruckus in the foyer.

“I don’t care if you’ve driven all the way from Timbuktu, lady! You can’t leave that rust-bucket out front with the engine running. How do I know you don’t have a ticking bomb in there?” It sounded like the security guy. Then I heard a female voice trying to smooth things over, maybe the director of the home.

Suddenly a young woman burst in. “Is Cody Fortuna in here?”

Cody looked alarmed. “Did I do something wrong?”

“You’re Cody, right? We need you to help us out. You’ve got some…” the woman seemed to be struggling for the right words “…some visitors. We told them it’s not a visiting day, and they need to go through the proper channels, but they say they’ve driven up from Arizona especially and they need to see you.”

“But I don’t know anyone in Arizona.” Cody looked alarmed.

“Hey, /’// have ‘em if she don’t want ‘em!” Emo Girl joked.

“If you could help us sort this out,” the woman said anxiously. Cody and I followed her up to reception, my giant angel buddy tagging on behind. When she saw the three old ladies waiting at the desk, Cody stopped dead in her tracks.

To be strictly accurate, there was only one really old lady, plus two not so old but not exactly young either, ladies. I knew they had to be sisters; their wrinkly, apple-like faces were so spookily similar. It was like they were really all the same person, just at different stages. Through the open door I saw an ancient pick-up truck blasting out toxic exhaust fumes.

“Here, give me the keys! I’ll turn off the fricking engine if you won’t!” The security guy was turning brick-red with frustration.

“You do that, mister, and you’ll be pushing us back to Arizona!” This was the oldest, fiercest lady who had more tattoos than Popeye. I didn’t know old Native American ladies got tattoos, but then I hadn’t pictured them wearing velour trackie bottoms either!

“We got battery problems,” explained the youngest old lady. “It dies the minute it’s switched off.”

“I’m supposed to believe you drove all the way from the Navajo reservation and you didn’t stop for gas?” The security guy snorted disbelievingly. “Is that some kind of Indian hoodoo?”

“We stopped for gas plenty times, mister,” the fierce one flashed back. “But as you mighta noticed we ain’t so cute as we used to be. It’s harder to sweet-talk truckers into giving us a jump-start. We don’t stop more than we have to. We just need to see Martin’s girl, then we’ll—”

The sisters suddenly clutched at each other. They had seen Cody. Their eyes thirstily drank her in. “That’s her!” breathed the youngest old lady. “Oh, my stars! She’s his spitting image!”

Cody went rigid with tension. What little colour there was in her cheeks drained away. “Who are you? How do you know my dad?”

The middle sister took a step towards Cody. “Honey, you ain’t seen us since you were a little baby, but we’re your aunts, your great aunts strictly speaking. This scary old hag is your Great Aunt Bonita, this is Great Aunt Jeannie, the baby of the family, and I’m the sane one, Great Aunt Evalina.” Cody opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

“Ladies, it’s wonderful that you came all this way to see your great niece,” said the director smoothly. “Now I suggest you book yourselves into a nice motel, get in touch with the appropriate agencies, file the relevant paperwork; you might be able to visit her later in the week.”

Aunt Bonita folded her arms. “Sugar, I’m seventy-eight years old. We’ve been on the road three days. I can’t hardly tell day from night. I’ve drunk so much coffee I could get your security fella in a neck lock and not break a sweat. Don’t tell me I can’t see my kin because I will blow up worse than any of them terrorist devices you hear about.” Cody looked awed and probably I did too!

How did they
know
! How could these old women know what had happened to their great niece when there had been no contact between the Navajo and Anglo sides of the family since Cody was two years old? And how did they know where to find her when she had only just got here herself!

Without seeming to move, Aunt Bonita was suddenly in arm’s reach of Cody. She tweaked off her beanie and gave a funny little nod. “You’ve had that neatened up some since I last saw you.”

Cody snatched back her hat. “The last time you saw me I was two, according to you!” she flashed.

“No, honey, Bonita saw you in a dream the other night,” Aunt Jeannie said eagerly. “She saw you were in trouble and she called us both up to say we were driving up to Maryland to—”

“Jeannie, we got no time for chit-chat,” Aunt Bonita interrupted. “We got a truck out there trying to shake itself to pieces.” She fixed Cody with tiny glittering eyes. “We got a proposition for you. We want you to stay with us until your mama’s fully recovered. Will you come?”

Cody looked as if a bomb had gone off in her head. Long-lost Navajo aunts who claim to have seen you in a dream and who drive through the night to rescue you - it’s a lot to take in.

“You want me to come with you to the reservation?” she asked incredulously.

The aunts nodded simultaneously, looking like a set of unusual car ornaments.

I could feel something in Cody being powerfully drawn to these eccentric old women. She’d been coping on her own for so long. Now, suddenly, someone wanted her; they’d actually gone out of their way to find her. But it was like coming out into too-bright sunshine after living too long in the dark. It was too much.

I knew she was going to turn them down and I thought she was right. She knew nothing about these old women. Plus, in my century, you can’t just turn up at a children’s home, declare you’re a relative and take a child out of care. There are procedures, police checks, whatever - or there should be.

Next minute the reception area looked like it had been dropped into the blazing white-hot heart of a star. So much cosmic energy was circulating around Cody all of a sudden that my hair literally blew back from my face with the force.

I’m pretty hot at sending vibes these days, but I can’t generate that much power, no trainee angel can. I turned to see what Ambriel made of all this. He gave me a calm thumbs up, like, sorted.

“That was
you
!” I was astounded. “Are you even supposed to USE that much cosmic energy on humans?”

The angel just pulled a face, like:
Pouf! Who cares about rules? We invented cosmic rules.

WOOHOO! What a BLAST! cheered a voice from inner space. That was ANGELTASTIC! Attracted by the unusual cosmic activity Helix had come - or possibly been blown - online.

“Actually, it wasn’t ‘angeltastic’, Helix,” I said angrily. “Asking for TROUBLE, that’s what that was! You’d better hope he didn’t fry anyone’s brains.”

I couldn’t believe Helix was being so irresponsible! Ambriel was used to dealing with oceans, forests, Earth’s molten inner core and whatever. If you start throwing raw creation energy at human beings, you have to expect the unexpected. I definitely didn’t expect what happened next as Cody took a tentative but life-changing step towards the aunts.

“I’ll come,” she said huskily. “Just till Mum’s better though.” Again I heard that annoying cheer from inner space.

“Well, thanks again for your support!” I snapped. A deranged angel turns your nice tidy plans upside down and stomps them into the ground, and your inner angel says it’s a blast!

It took just a few phone calls to make the kind of complicated arrangements that normally take months. Finally Celia Lee came down to take the aunts’ contact details. The children’s home director seemed surprised to learn they had telephones on the reservation.

“Phones, microwave, satellite dish,” Aunt Bonita reeled off carelessly. “Of course, being backward tribal folk, we got NO electricity to power them!”

Aunt Evalina shot her a nasty glare. “My sister has a weird sense of humour,” she apologised to the director. “The Navajo Nation’s power supply ain’t all it might be, but we got a back-up generator. Cody will have all the comforts she’s used to.”

Just like that it was settled. I was forced to hurry after Cody as she trundled her wheelie case towards the madly vibrating truck. Before I climbed inside, I turned to look for Ambriel, but having mashed up my mission and danced on all the tiny little pieces he was nowhere to be seen.

Just go with the flow
, Helix said serenely.
It’ll be fine
. What I said back to Helix is not repeatable.

Aunt Bonita put her foot down and we roared out into oncoming traffic to angry hoots from the other motorists.
If you want the Universe to laugh out loud
… I thought bitterly.

Mr Allbright says we will eventually learn that some missions take on an uncanny life of their own from the beginning. He says you should always start out with a game plan, but sometimes you just have to chuck it away, climb on board and let the Universe carry you where it wants you to go.

I blew out my breath. It seemed like the Universe was working from an unnecessarily complicated script if you asked me: interfering Creation angels, and a road trip into the Arizona desert with Navajo aunts from the same family that allegedly put Cody and her mum under a curse…

Feeling exceptionally stressed, I fired off a text to Sam explaining that Cody’s rellies had shown up and we were unexpectedly en route to the Navajo reservation. As I pressed SEND I had a sudden mad flash of hope. Maybe they’d decided Cody didn’t need me. Then I could fly off to the Himalayas to join the search party for Reuben.

Sam’s reply pinged back in a matter of seconds:
Advise u 2 stay w the programme til furth notice.

I was like, thanks a LOT, Sam. Whose programme would that be exactly? It would be REALLY good to know.

Meanwhile, as any angel could have predicted, the humans were crashing down from Ambriel’s massive cosmic high. Cody looked utterly freaked by what she’d done. Aunt Bonita just seemed determined to pick a fight.

“You and your mama lived in Potomac, right?” she shot at Cody. Cody gave a tight little nod.

“You realise that town was built on stolen Indian land? And inside those pretty fancy houses what football team do you think those rich white men support? The Washington Redskins! Ha!” Cody’s aunt banged on the steering wheel for emphasis like she’d scored a point.

“I never actually thought about it,” Cody admitted stiffly.

Aunt Bonita was quiet for a few seconds then she began to sing in a screechy voice, using notes I never would have imagined any human (not in severe pain) could produce, like, “HEYA HEYA HEYA HEYA!!!”

You could see Cody sliding down in her seat, probably willing herself to be invisible to the startled motorists. Aunt Bonita gave a witchy laugh which turned into a rattling smoker’s cough. “You don’t like your people’s music, Cody?”

“What music?” snapped Aunt Evalina. “All the child can hear is you wailing like a
chiindi
!”

“Roll me a cigarette,” Aunt Bonita ordered her. “I can’t find the Beltway without some fresh nicotine in my bloodstream.”

“Let one of us drive then if you’re so tired and cranky,” Aunt Jeannie complained. “Doesn’t make sense to drag us all the way from Arizona, then hog the driver’s seat yourself.”

“Bonita’s a control freak,” Aunt Evalina announced. “Always was.”

“You shouldn’t force your passengers to breathe your smoke.” Cody’s voice was shaky but defiant. “You could give them cancer.”

The aunts gawped at her as if she’d just sprouted horns. Aunt Bonita couldn’t speak she was so shocked. When Aunt Jeannie recovered, she said quietly, “Cody, in our culture what you did just then was very insulting. Navajo children never talk back to their elders. It’s not your fault, honey. You’ve been brought up by white people. You never had nobody to teach you good manners. We understand that and now we’ve explained, I’m sure we won’t need to speak of it again.”

Aunt Evalina made a soft grunt of agreement. Cody had flushed dark red to her ears. Aunt Bonita stared stonily at the road ahead. Neither of them spoke.

“Now who wants candy?” Aunt Jeannie asked brightly.

Chapter Eleven

W
e were sitting at a gas station, waiting for Aunt Jeannie and Aunt Evalina to come out of Dunkin’ Donuts. We were technically at a standstill, but with the engine running, the aunts’ ancient truck was rocking and shuddering, as if it just might go roaring off to Arizona on its own. While we waited I composed a new text to Reuben:

The Agency wil find u, so stay strong. Wish I ws with ur srch party, not stuck in a truck with 3 crazy women.

Once, on our soul-retrieval mission, Reubs saved the whole situation with a smile. He couldn’t be gone. How could he be gone when I could hear his husky, teasing voice inside my head as clear as day?

Please don’t let the PODS have got him
, I prayed with a pang of terror.

To stop myself going mad, I tried calling Lola. She should have arrived in the Himalayas by now. But her phone was switched off and I just got a perky message.