Natural Born Angel (19 page)

The TV played a series of photos someone had managed to get a hold of that showed Maddy through her school years. She tried to ignore it.

Mark looked at her. “The NAS feels that, given your progress, there’s no better time than now to get you out there as a Guardian.”

Maddy’s hand unconsciously moved to the bruises on her arm from her hard fall earlier in the day during flight training.

“Progress, Mark? Do you know how I did at the desert proving grounds? I couldn’t get past the fourth pylon. I can barely fly.”

Mark’s eyes darted to the bruise and back up to Maddy’s face. She could read conflict in his steely eyes.

“What’s really going on, Mark?”

The Archangel sighed and lowered his voice, leaning in close to Maddy.

“There is a strong contingent – very strong – among the Archangels that thinks waiting to Commission you is just a waste of time and momentum. Given your special . . . position.”

“You mean my popularity?” Maddy said, getting to the point. This was no time to be humble. Something bigger than her was happening.

Mark narrowed his eyes. “Being an Angel is about a lot of things, Maddy,” he said. “Yes, making saves is a large part of that. But pleasing the public is also one of those things. Without public support, we Angels are going to have a hard time keeping Linden and his racist cronies at bay.”

“So basically I’m a great PR opportunity.”

Mark put his hand on Maddy’s shoulder. “We need to remind people of the reason they fell in love with Angels in the first place. And why they need us still. Rekindle that romance. Capture the thrill. The opportunity. You embody all that, Maddy. Whether you like it or not. It’s bigger than you, now. You’re going to be a Guardian in two weeks.”

Maddy let out a long sigh. “But what if I can’t? What if I’m not good enough?” Her voice became quieter. She looked up at the Archangel. “What if I’m not ready?”

“Well, you’re going to have to be.”

I
f Maddy had thought things were hectic before, her unforeseen Commissioning this year threw everything instantly, irrevocably into overdrive. It suddenly seemed that the amount of media coverage had doubled overnight, and Maddy was the name on everybody’s breathless lips.

The NAS had made the right bet: Maddy was becoming the biggest thing for Angels in decades. She was doing wonders for Angel publicity: her picture was everywhere; she was in demand from everyone; she even suddenly had her own action figure that came with the kid’s meal at a popular nationwide hamburger chain. For the first time in weeks, the story about Senator Linden and the Immortals Bill faded a bit into the background as everyone re-remembered the excitement of Angels, now that someone who had been born a human was officially joining their highest ranks.

As the Archangel spokesmen kept saying on TV,
“Maddy stands for the best and brightest, our new generation of Angels. She’s made so much progress, we’re all just eager to get her out there saving Protections and thrilling her fans!”

And so Maddy Montgomery Godright, recently graduated from Angel City High School and formerly a morning shift waitress at Kevin’s Diner, was their “It” girl. It was dizzying.

“Maddy, honey,” Darcy had said, looking seriously into her eyes, “you have hit the jackpot.”

Maddy wasn’t so sure about the jackpot, however, especially as the crush of photographer and interview requests grew to smothering proportions. And if she already wasn’t a favourite among the other Angels, now all of them except Jacks officially hated her. Especially those in training. They all but hissed at her when she walked by, and Emily’s friend Zoe had stopped her in a hallway and told her to her face she didn’t deserve it and everyone knew it. Emily herself had been keeping up a stream of thinly veiled insults on her Twitter feed. Even Mitch had been a bit chilly to Maddy.

It’s not my fault!
she wanted to shout out to them. But she knew it wouldn’t do any good. It didn’t matter who was behind her early advancement to Guardianship – the other nominees were going to resent her bitterly no matter what.

And Jacks? His reaction to her early Commissioning had been strangely quiet.

So then one afternoon less than a week from Commissioning, sitting in the nice air-conditioned comfort of her luxury apartment, Maddy suddenly felt like she couldn’t breathe. At all. Like there was a vice on her chest and the vice was getting tighter and there was no way to get out. She gasped for air.

She realized she was probably having a panic attack. Looking at the blogs, watching A!, checking Twitter – the tsunami of being nominated to Guardian after such little training had suddenly overwhelmed her. Catastrophe, embarrassment, shame and failure all crashed into her head at once. And capping it all was an image in her mind’s eye of her tumbling down for ever, out of the clouds, her wings flapping helplessly.

In a cold sweat, Maddy dug through her purse, searching. After fumbling through a number of canisters of lipstick and make-up – how different her life had become in just a year – Maddy found it. The card read: “U.S. Navy Aviator 1st Lieutenant Thomas Cooper.” And a phone number.

A bored voice answered the phone. “Navy.”

“Is Tom, I mean, Lieutenant Cooper there? This is Mad – his tutee.”

“Hold, please.”

The phone clicked over, and patriotic hold music played in Maddy’s ear. Her pulse was still racing from the panic. She tried to catch her breath.

The phone clicked over. Tom’s voice was on the line.

“Hello, Maddy?” the pilot said, the line crackling slightly. “Is everything all right? Our next session isn’t scheduled until Thursday, and it’s Sunday.”

“I need your help,” Maddy blurted into the phone before he’d even finished his sentence.

Avoiding the paparazzi, Maddy crept in the back door of her uncle’s diner – she still had the key – and walked through the back hall towards the dining room. She took a glance through the open door at the cluttered office as she walked by. Kevin had been meaning to clean it for about a year. She shook her head. Some things never changed.

She was surprised to find the kitchen empty. Where was her uncle?

Stepping out into the main dining room, she found Tom was already there, sitting in a booth in the corner. Kevin was standing by the table, his apron still on, chatting with her tutor.

“Speak of the devil,” Kevin said as Maddy walked up.

“Hey,” Maddy replied, giving him a hug. “You’ve met Lieutenant Cooper?”

Tom looked up at Maddy with his green eyes. He was wearing a leather motorcycle jacket over a dark T-shirt, old jeans and boots. This was the first time she’d seen him out of uniform.

“Thomas was telling me about the jets he flies – really interesting stuff,” Kevin said. “You remember how much I liked the Air and Space Museum when we went that year, Maddy?”

“Just another day at the office, sir,” Tom said. “And please, call me Tom. Only my mom calls me Thomas. And that’s when she’s mad at me.”

“Well, then, please, call me Kevin,” Maddy’s uncle said. “And don’t forget – not everybody’s office is a supersonic jet.”

Kevin looked over at the waitress, Jana, who was giving him the eye. “Looks like duty calls. Let Jana know if you need anything else. Nice meeting you, Tom.”

“Nice meeting you, too, sir.”

Standing there, relaxed, Maddy realized that she felt instantly more at ease around those who weren’t Angels, like Kevin. And even Tom. It was like taking a vacation from her new life. Sometimes there were things that only humans understood.

“So this meeting is unorthodox,” Tom said, looking at her expectantly. “But I told Susan I would help you. And it sounded like you need it. So here I am.”

“I’m sorry, I know you’re probably busy with your own work. I just didn’t know what else to do,” Maddy said. The pilot’s face remained inscrutable.

“Of course I saw the news. Everyone has. They’ve moved your Commissioning to this year? Is this – your call – about that?”

Maddy nodded.

“One second I think I have a couple of years to get used to flying,” Maddy said. “Get used to the idea of being a Guardian. How I’m going to start making my mark. Helping to work to reform some Angel practices from the inside out. And now, all of a sudden, they say I’m going to be a nominee. A year ago they were calling me an abomination. Half-human, half-Angel. Now I’m their best hope?”

“You’re different than them, Maddy,” Tom said, sounding suddenly impassioned. “You know that. Not everything’s been given to you.” He seemed to recollect himself. “I guess I have some strong opinions about Angels. Now’s probably not the time for me to share them, though.”

Maddy remembered their first meeting, when he was so cold to her. “I know, I’m different,” she said. “But I can’t even fly properly yet. I’m still not getting it. Even with your lessons. It’s like I’m unteachable. Even Jacks” – she noticed Tom’s expression slightly changed when he heard the name – “can’t help me. He doesn’t know what to say.” She looked down at the old Formica on the table. “I can flap around. It’s kind of like flying. But just not like an Angel.”

“The Angels, it’s in them already. They don’t have to work at it,” Tom said. “It’s like a bird trying to teach a fish how to fly. The bird really can’t even explain it, it just knows. So you need to have more faith in me. And yourself.”

“I guess so,” Maddy said hesitantly, trying to imagine the conversation between the bird and the fish, and instead getting a mental picture of the bird eating the poor fish.

“You’re ready, Maddy.”

“What are you suggesting?”

Tom’s green eyes deepened. “You may want to get a coat.”

The headlights of Tom’s truck climbed over the ridge as the sun set along Angel City. Maddy sat in the passenger seat as the pickup made its way to the private airfield out past the Valley. The owner of the field, wearing a big belt buckle and a cowboy hat, greeted Tom like a son as they pulled into the small gravel car park next to the field. It was closed for the day, but he had come down especially to open it up for Tom.

“She’s all fuelled up, ready to go,” the man said, pointing to the small plane on the small runway.

Soon the Cessna climbed into the sky, Maddy’s stomach dropping as she sat next to Tom in the cockpit and they quickly gained elevation. For a brief moment, the image of Angel City disappearing below them caused Maddy’s mind to flicker back to that first night Jacks took her flying.

The orb of the sun burned with colour as the plane crossed it. The Cessna was silhouetted black against the sinking blood orange disc.

Yet again, Tom seemed so confident, calm and at home behind the controls of the plane – he was a natural. He turned, glancing at Maddy for a moment from behind his aviator glasses before looking forward again. Flying was a joy for him.

After a couple of minutes, they levelled off, heading north-west along the coast towards Ventura County and Santa Barbara. Tom turned to her again.

“OK, I’m going to let you take the controls.”

“
What?
” Maddy said incredulously. “I thought— ”

“You’re flying the plane now,” Tom said, letting go of the controls in front of him.

“Are you crazy?” Maddy said, slightly panicking. The yokes floated in front of them, untouched. The plane continued flying straight ahead.

“You’d better fly, or we’re going to have some problems.”

“I can’t— ”

The plane began tilting slightly, and Maddy instinctively reached forward, grabbing the controls to right the plane.

And it was incredible.

Maddy could feel the plane respond. Tom was right.

When flying with her own wings, Maddy had tried to figure everything out, because it didn’t feel natural to her. But now, holding the controls of the plane in her hands, she was able to understand the natural way wings kept aloft – whether on a plane or an Angel.

“This is amazing!” she yelled. She felt an invigorating sensation of freedom.

“You’re doing great. Hold it steady,” he answered, a grin in his voice.

Maddy pulled the yoke back, and they began climbing even higher. She tilted it right, and the agile plane banked right.

“OK, easy, easy. Now feel the lift. You know it from the books and what I’ve told you. But just let the lift keep us up. Get familiar with it, at ease.”

“It feels so strange . . . but so right!”

“Maybe you were born to fly after all,” Tom said, the slightest smile spreading across his face.

Patiently, Tom walked her through the applications of the basic flying principles as they continued northwards. After a while he looked out west to the seemingly unending Pacific Ocean as the last of the light began vanishing in the distance

“Naval twilight,” Tom told her. The glimmering edges of purple and red were fleeting on the horizon. “Time to go home. Can you get us headed there?”

Gripping the yoke harder, Maddy pressed on it, banking them back around towards Angel City.

The dark churning waves of the Pacific crashed on the beach below them as the plane gracefully soared in a circle back to the invisible lights of the Immortal City. How different it was from her flying with her wings earlier in the day! The grace and ease she experienced was incredible. She felt as if she had control. Maybe even a little bit of skill. She couldn’t believe it – it was like something had shifted in her brain and body when she took control of the plane. She somehow intuited what was needed for her to fly with her own wings. It was going to feel natural.
Like this
, she told herself.

Tom took back the controls as they neared the city and potential air traffic. It was entirely dark as he finally touched the plane down on the runway with a screech of tyre on the tarmac.

In the truck on the way back, Maddy let the bouncing of the pickup soothe her as they drove along. Traffic was bad on some of the freeways, and Tom turned the radio on, tuned to the news station.

“Expect delays with protests across the city this evening, starting at ACX airport as presidential candidate Senator Ted Linden arrives for a two-day fundraising tour through Southern California. And his first stop? Angel City, the worldwide centre of Angel culture and home to those Senator Linden has targeted with his anti-Angel Immortals Bill.”

“Linden’s coming here?” Maddy asked, thinking of the party at the Godspeed house and Archangel Churchson’s cold statement. “Pretty bold.”

Tom merely raised an eyebrow. He looked for an exit off the trafficked freeway.

“The Immortal City, home of the gorgeous Angels and legions of fans who love them, may seem an unlikely place for the senator to raise funds for his presidential run. But spokesmen for Linden say anti-Angel sentiment in the region is only growing by the day as the Council makes threats against humans. An official Angel statement denounced the visit by the senator as yet ‘another stop on Teddy Linden’s hate-filled agenda.’”

As he whipped the truck off the freeway, Tom turned the radio off and the two rode in silence. To avoid traffic, he took them through a beautiful back route around Griffith Park, the trees lit by the spearing headlights of the old truck. The traffic seemed a world away. Tom was quiet, and they just enjoyed the drive after the flight.