Hi all
Just browsing these forums and found this one. Interesting to find others whose love of reading has led them to dabble in writing. Thought I'd post the first chapter of a novel I've been playing with for years, aimed at early teens. It's called Friends Forever. Any comments welcome.
Friends Forever
Chapter One
It all happened so fast. One minute I’m standing on the school field half-heartedly trying to look like I’d catch a ball if it came my way and the next I’m in this room full of people. There are these scary-looking guys with clipboards going up and down and the people are waiting in queues like the check-in at Heathrow on that Airport TV programme. I’m just trying to figure out where the rest of the rounders team went when someone taps me on the shoulder.
I turn round and I’m staring into these gorgeous green eyes, I mean GORGEOUS. If I was the poetic type (which I’m not – ask Miss Allen, my English teacher) I’d probably use words like azure and oceanic, but you’ll just have to take my word for it, I went weak at the knees.
“Helen Ashby? I’m afraid there has been a bit of a mistake.” he said.
Too right, I thought. I’ve got Miss Arnaud for double French next and for once I’ve actually done my homework. I opened my mouth to demand assertively just what the Hell was going on, but what came out was a pathetic little-girl squeak. I hate that. Inside I’m all girl power and attitude but then faced with some authority-figure – policeman, headteacher, genuine green-eyed love-God, my inner child takes over and turns me into Minnie Mouse. Except that he didn’t actually look all that authoritative.
“Would you mind … uh, could you, um, follow me?”
He led the way to a heavy-looking, dark wood door, and held it open for me. Inside was a fairly standard office. He shut the door and went and leaned back against the desk, facing me.
“There’s something …”
“Where …”
We’d both started talking at once, so I grinned and made flapping motions to indicate that he should carry on, which he did while I stared at him. I’d noticed that he was wearing a long, loose type of robe thing that was so white it seemed to glow. He could have stepped out of a washing powder commercial. Really showed off his deep golden tan, though, and those eyes, and his sandy-blond, slightly messy hair …
I suddenly became aware that he had stopped talking and seemed to be waiting for some kind of response from me. I grinned again apologetically and re-wound my mental tape of the last couple of minutes’ conversation.
“I’m sorry, I was miles away, I actually thought I just heard you say this was the Pearly Gates! Aha, ha, ha …” My attempt at hearty laughter faded away as I realised he wasn’t joining in. He was just sitting there looking at me with a kind of patient pity. It was a look I’d seen on maths teachers as they explained something basic to me for the tenth time.
“What? No way! … No that’s not right… because then I’d have to be … no way!” I gabbled as I waited for him to admit that it was all part of a stitch up, that a camera crew was going to jump out and tell me how my mates had helped them trick me. He still wasn’t smiling, and he looked like he could sit there forever.
“’Pearly Gates’ is not the phrase I used, it’s the one your brain chose to hear. We are a waypoint, a clearing house.” he said. He noticed my blank look.
“Oh I don’t seem to be explaining this at all well. I know, have a look through that window.”
I gave him a glare and stomped over to the heavy velvet curtain and pulled it back. I looked down onto a drizzly grey rounders pitch where a group of girls in PE kits crowded around a horribly familiar-looking body. . I recognised the trainers I had nagged mum for on the ends of two skinny white legs. As I watched, an ambulance rolled over the grass leaving brown tracks in the wet grass. Jimmy the janitor was going to have a fit. Mr Williams was kneeling in the mud next to the body and doing sort of press-ups with his shoulders, Jennifer Patterson was crying. She had a rounders bat still dangling from one hand. I was beginning to put the clues together and not at all liking the picture my brain was offering me. All those people, most of them quite old, but all looking happy enough to be waiting in line, the glowing Adonis in the white sheet, the way even as I watched his lips form the words “clearing house” I distinctly heard “Pearly Gates”.
“You begin to understand now?”
I looked back at him, still sitting with his slightly embarrassed, patient look. I wanted to slap him, to make him understand some of the shock and horror I was beginning to feel. I wanted to scream at him and shake him till he stopped being so bloody calm. Casting around for something, anything to say, or to shout at him I hit upon a straw and clutched at it wildly.
“Wait! You said there had been a mistake! It’s all a mistake, you said so!”
“Yes, that is true.” he said, coming to stand by me which, given the way my temper was gearing up, was either brave or very stupid.
“Then put me back! You send me back right now!” Infuriatingly, small tears welled up in my eyes and overflowed down my cheek. Damn it! I wanted to be in control of myself so I could force him to sort this out, not snivelling like a wimp. I brushed the tears away with the back of my hand and glared up at him.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Helen.” he said, sounding really quite sorry. He gestured for me to look out of the window again. This time I was looking down on a different body, a young boy with dark skin on an operating table.
“Time doesn’t have much meaning here,” he said “Your parents sat by your bedside for three weeks praying you’d get better. They finally accepted the doctors’ advice that you weren’t going to wake up and agreed that since you carried a donor card, using your organs to help others live is what you would have wanted.
This time I didn’t try to stop my tears. I thought about my mum and dad listening to a machine beep, finally having to make the awful decision to switch it off. I thought about my little sister Carrie – who’d been looking after her? I thought about school and my friends sitting in assembly being told how I had been a popular and well-liked pupil. Mr Stone, the Head, using words like adventurous and confident when he meant cheeky and disobedient. It wasn’t fair. I was 13 years old, I went to bed early, never smoked, didn’t bunk school very often and ate up all my broccoli – well sometimes. And it was all over, because Jennifer Patterson whacked the rounders ball for once in her life and I happened to be in the way.
After a while he left me alone, and I used the big white handkerchief he’d given me to wipe my face. I still felt sad and a bit scared, but somehow there’s a limit to how much snivelling and sobbing you can do, and in the end I just stopped. I tried looking out of the window again, but all I could see was this thin grey mist. I was looking at a painting when he came back. It was old-fashioned, but sort of new-looking and showed lots of flabby people with not much on.
“I’ve brought you something to eat. Strictly speaking you don’t need it, of course, but I’ve noticed that familiar rituals can be comforting.” he waited until I sat on a chair and placed a tray with sandwiches and a cup of tea on my lap.
“How are you feeling now?” he asked. He went to sit behind the desk but sprang up again straight away and started manoeuvering the chair out and round so he could sit facing me. In the process he knocked over a lamp and tangled himself in a telephone cable. “I’m terribly sorry. This is turning out to be a rotten day!”
“Yeah. It hasn’t been great for me so far either.” I said grumpily, and then smiled because he looked so forlorn and suddenly so young. I realised he didn’t seem to be that much older than me. He looked like he was about to burst into tears.
“It’s all such a mess!” he said.
“Tell me about it.” I said.
“I know, I’m sorry – you’ve had a shock today …” he began.
“No,” I said, “I mean it. Tell me about your day.” I took a sip of the tea just to be friendly and a bite of the sandwich and did a double-take. Chocolate hobnob sandwiches! My favourite thing in the entire world! How had he known?
“Oh. I see, um, right! Well, where to start? I am Memuneh Melachi-sharet Kaladriel.”
I blinked at him. “That’s a bit of a mouthful!”
“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” The Memuneh Melachi-sharet part is sort of a job title. It means administrator and protector. My given name is Kaladriel, which means Landscape of Dreams.”
“Kaladriel. That’s nice.” I said “and you’re an angel?”
“Yes. I did general administration, but just recently they gave me a soul to protect. It’s a great responsibility for someone so young, a great trust has been placed in me … oh dear!” he was beginning to sniffle, so I jumped in to keep him talking.
“So you’re, like, a Guardian Angel?”
“Yes, that’s exactly right. A Guardian Angel. But it’s so hard, you see, there’s so much to attend to, I only turned my back for a moment …”
“… and I got killed.” I finished for him.
“No! Well, yes, but that’s not it exactly. You see it wasn’t you I was meant to be protecting.”
“Oh.” I felt a bit disappointed. The way he said it sounded as if I didn’t matter.
I kept him talking and finally got the story out of him. He told me how there are angels monitoring our lives all the time, all of us. Watching what we do and how we live our lives. They can’t make us do things because we have what’s called “Free Will”. He talked about it like it was the greatest gift ever, like we were so special because we could choose what we do, whether to be good or bad, how to live our lives. The Angels follow us and watch but what we do is down to us, the choices we make.
Everyone’s choice affects everyone else, little ripples spreading out like when you step in a puddle, bumping into all the other little choices until the world is changed forever. The Angels are there to keep the balance.
And it turns out it was really all about Jennifer Patterson. The ripples on the cosmic puddle all came from her. Kaladriel was given the role of protecting her, because she’s special. Some time in the future she’s going to face a choice that could change the whole world, forever.
And that’s when he told me how they wanted me to help them put things right...
