Winging It by Annie Dalton Read Free Book Online Page B

that.”
    “Yeah, like what?” I said, still depressed at being the slowest learner in Heaven.
    His eyes shone. “You plug into the angel power supply and find your very best self!” he said.
    “And you feel all safe and smiley,” said the hairband girl.
    “Smiley,” echoed the littlest angel hoarsely.
    “It actually makes you glow!” said another little boy.
    I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. In two seconds flat, these tots had solved my problem! “And that’s all?” I gasped.
    “Not exactly ALL,” he admitted. “Miss says we’ll understand the rest when we’re ready.”
    “But how do you, you know, plug in?” I asked.
    “Oh, that’s lemon squeezy,” boasted the sparkly hairband girl. “Here’s what you do, OK? First you get really quiet inside.”
    The littlest angel waved her hand. “Let me, let me!”
    “Go on then, Maudie,” everyone sighed.
    Maudie took a big breath. “You let yourself feel all safe and smiley,” she recited in a hoarse little voice. “Then you picture being the best self you know! And then guess what!” she beamed. “You ARE it.
    “Miss says when we use the Link, we’re connected to every angel that ever was or ever will be,” my little Buddha explained.
    “Come on,” said the hairband girl impatiently. “Miss Dove says to bring Melanie back with us.”
    The children started tugging me along the beach.
    “Miss said we’d find you here,” the little Buddha beamed.
    I stopped in my tracks. “But how did she know?”
    “You asked for help, silly!” whispered the littlest angel.
    She clearly saw nothing weird about pre-schoolers picking up someone’s personal distress signals. But I was in a total spin.
    Melanie Beeby , I scolded myself. Four-year-olds know more than you. You should be ashamed. Go home and read your Handbook from cover to cover .
    I didn’t, though. Want to know what I did? I spent the afternoon in nursery school!
    First we did cutting and sticking, involving more glitter than you could possibly imagine. Small angels adore anything sparkly, apparently.
    Then Miss Dove said we were going to grow tiny orange trees in pots. I thought this sounded almost as boring as normal school. But all the little angels immediately went “Yay!” like this was some big treat!
    “You too, Melanie,” Miss Dove beamed.
    “Oh, that’s OK, I’ll just watch,” I said hastily.
    It turns out that no-one EVER just watches in Miss Dove’s class. She wouldn’t take no for an answer, just briskly handed me my personal tree-growing kit: a little pip and a pot of dirt. And we all solemnly planted and watered them.
    At this point, things got a little different to my usual school seed-planting experiments. Miss Dove made us hold our pots in both hands. “Now I want everyone to go quiet inside and plug into the angel power supply,” she said in her special nursery-teacher voice.
    And guess what! With no effort at all, I pictured myself being the best self I could be, just like Miss Dove said, and all at once I felt all that cosmic electricity whooshing through me, as if I really was connecting with all the angels in existence.
    Next Miss Dove showed us how to beam this energy into our little pots of dirt. “Gently, gently,” she kept saying. “We don’t want to fry them now, children, do we?”
    Then we all popped our pots on the window-sill in the sun, and Miss Dove told the children to sing me a new song they’d been learning. I don’t know why, but something about their little voices reminded me of those wonderful cosmic sounds which lulled me to sleep every night.
    During the singing, something extraordinary happened. Our orange pips began to put out shiny green shoots! By the time the children had reached the last verse, each pot contained a perfect miniature orange tree!
    And I know this sounds silly, but mine seemed to recognise me, because when I picked it up, it instantly burst into sweet-smelling blossom.
    “I grew a tree!” I breathed