Making Waves Read Free Page B

“Hi.”
    “Nice dress.” There was absolutely no expression in his voice.
    “Thanks. About this morning—”
    Brice’s jaw muscles tensed. “It was a dumb idea.”
    “It wasn’t. I was tired and crabby. I wasn’t thinking.”
    He shrugged. “Whatever.”
    I almost stamped with frustration. “Could you just listen?”
    ” You listen,” he snapped. “You were right the first time. I am not the HALO type.”
    “There isn’t a HALO type, fool! That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’d love to enter the awards with you.”
    “Yeah, right,” he jeered. “I saw how you both rushed to sign up.”
    “I mean it! I’ve never won anything in my entire existence. OK, at my old school, I won a box of cheap chocs in a raffle. But I’ve never won an actual award. It’d be cool to win a HALO, like getting an angel Oscar.”
    Brice scowled. “Have you finished your speech? Will you stop bugging me now?”
    “No, actually,” I said sweetly. “I’m going to keep bugging you until you tell me what we have to do to enter.”
    There was an interesting silence while Brice chewed at his lip, then he shuffled his trainers a bit, then he cleared his throat.
    “Well ,for a start, we have to fill in a ton of forms,” he said cautiously. “The HALO judges might not accept us. They don’t always.”
    “They will! I know they will!” I bubbled. “Oh, this is SO great! Let’s do it first thing tomorrow.”
    “If you want,” he shrugged. “It’s really no biggie.”
    Liar, I thought. This was obviously HUGE for Brice. I could tell he still felt really bruised.
    You know that thing? That bimbo thing that I’m not meant to do any more? I think maybe I do it because I don’t know what else TO do.
    I looked at him under my lashes. “Brice, how do HALOs work at high-school level exactly? At the angel nursery where I help out, the kids are doing really cute projects.”
    “Perhaps you didn’t notice, but I don’t do ‘cute’,” he said with distaste. “We’d be in the advanced section, obviously.”
    But I could feel him thawing slightly, so I did another Bambi-eyed flutter. “But I still don’t quite understand. What would we actually have to do?”
    “We’d have to go on a blind date with destiny.”
    I stared at him. “I have no idea what that means,” I confessed.
    “We volunteer for an unknown mission,” Brice explained. “The HALO panel put their heads together to discuss our various strengths and weaknesses. On that basis, they decide what cosmic experiences are likely to stretch us and take us to the next angelic level, yadda yadda.”
    “Yadda yadda,” I echoed, to show I was keeping up.
    “They pick a suitable time and place, and off we go.”
    “Sounds like quite a challenge,” I said in my most impressed voice.
    “I think that’s the general idea,” said Brice. “Evolution and all that.”
    “Well, definitely count me in,” I said enthusiastically.
    He frowned. “What about Lola? Is she in too?”
    “Oh, I really couldn’t say,” I said innocently. “You’ll have to ask her.”
    He grinned. “Yeah right! Like you two don’t discuss everything*”
    I blushed. Brice definitely wouldn’t want me to know about the night he and Lola got all romantic under the stars last holidays!
    “Oh, look! Lollie’s over there by the fountains!” I exclaimed with relief. “You can ask her yourself.”
    Brice sauntered over. I saw him and Lola deep in conversation through veils of falling water.
    Yess! My ploy had worked!
    I know! I’m in Heaven now. I should drop the airhead disguise, but sometimes it comes in SO useful!!
    The judges did accept our entry as I somehow knew they would.
    And now it’s confession time. On the day Mr Allbright was due to announce our time destinations for the HALO, I had genuinely good intentions, I really did! I was all set to take notes and ask questions. And believe me, I wish I had.
    But when our teacher told us we’d be going to seventeenth-century