Making Waves Read Free Page A

it’s a bit out of character,” I said with a grin.
    I genuinely meant it as a joke, but Brice just muttered something uncomplimentary and stormed out.
    Lola and I looked at each other.
    “That went well,” she said in a small voice.
    I felt like a really bad person, but I wasn’t ready to admit it. “That boy has such a major chip,” I complained.
    Our buddy Reuben came over. “What’s up?”
    Lola started to explain but other library users started ssshing.
    “Let’s go to Guru,” Reuben suggested. “You can tell me there.”
    “Why not,” Lola said with a sigh. “My concentration’s totally shot.”
    Guru is less than five minutes’ walk from our school. We grabbed an outdoor table in the sun and ordered the cafe’s special Aztec hot chocolate, otherwise known as the trainee angel’s cure-all.
    Mo, the guy who runs Guru now, must have sensed something was up, because when he brought our order he tactfully left us lots of extra marshmallows.
    Lola was too upset to notice. “It’s really hard for Brice to ask people for help,” she said miserably. “And we just laughed in his face.”
    “We did NOT laugh in his face,” I objected. “We were just - surprised.”
    “You basically told him he was a phoney,” Reuben pointed out.
    “It was a joke , all right! The guy used to live in the Hell dimensions! I can’t believe he’s that sensitive.”
    “Believe it,” said Reuben.
    Lola’s eyes were dark with worry. “This is a really tough time for Brice, Melanie. He’s on probation and everyone at our school knows it. He feels like everyone is watching him, waiting for him to screw up again.”
    The extra marshmallows were going to waste so I popped two into my hot chocolate and immediately felt ashamed.
    When Brice first got a scholarship to the Angel Academy, I’m sure he secretly dreamed of climbing all the way to the top of that dizzy ladder to the stars. Instead, he tripped over a monster snake and went slipping and sliding all the way back to square one. Now he’d got to start that gruelling game of cosmic snakes and ladders all over again. Only this time, like Lola said, everyone was watching…
    “Winning a HALO would be like saying he was rehabilitated,” Lola was saying earnestly. “He wouldn’t have to spend his angelic career looking over his shoulder.”
    “Lollie, if this was me, you’d tell me to get over it, you know you would.”
    She patted my hand. “True! But if you asked us to back you, we’d do it like a shot. We wouldn’t even think about it.”
    I felt myself go all emotional. “Really?”
    My mates nodded vigorously.
    A worry slid into my mind. “You don’t think Brice was like, testing us do you? Like checking to see if we’re really his friends?”
    Reuben winced. “Actually—”
    “Oh, whaaat!” I wailed. ” Now he’s going to think we’ve been faking. We’ve got to go and find him.”
    “Too obvious,” Reuben advised. “He’d hate it if he knew we’d been talking about him. Bring it up casually next time you see him.”
    “Why do I have to bring it up?” I whinged. “Why can’t Lola?”
    She went pink. “Because it would be better coming from you.”
    I got my chance that night at the Babylon Cafe.
    The Babylon is our new preferred place to go dancing. They have the best live music in Ambrosia, that’s like the vibey student area. But if you want to cool off or just chill with your mates, you can go outside into their magical gardens. They’re designed so they literally seem suspended in midair. At night they’re all lit up with twinkly white lights.
    I’d gone out for some air when I spotted Brice in the shadows, watching the dancers. It was a warm night, but he wore his jacket collar turned up, and his hands were jammed into his pockets. Somehow Brice was always on the outside, looking in. The thought gave me a funny pang in my heart, because I still remembered how that feels.
    I took a deep breath and went up to him.