Heaven Sent
E. Van Lowe
Praise for E. Van Lowe's Falling Angels Saga:
"A thrilling suspense mystery fantasy book mixed with reality and some romance scenes that will get you hooked up till the end." -Lalaine Faye, Lalaine's Fiction Book Reviews
"Boyfriend From Hell was a great surprise. I didn't know what to expect before reading it but it was a fast and fun read that made me laugh more than once. What made Boyfriend from Hell unique to me was the sometimes tongue-in-cheek tone it had. It's a great YA that's also poking fun at some of the predictable Young Adult clichés. If you like paranormal YA but sometimes find yourself rolling your eyes at the way the characters are acting, you'll love this book too." -Lisa Choboter, Cold Moon Violet Books
"E. Van Lowe's fluid and masterful writing made this book one that I needed to finish." -Elizabeth Talbott, Fishmuffins of Doom
"E. Van Lowe does a great job of capturing teenage angst, dating woes, and parental issues without over-doing it. Earth Angel was just as fun to read as Boyfriend From Hell." -Nicole Etolen, Pretty Opinionated
"I just finished the last sentence and I'm left stung that I have to wait for the final book to come out. I can't wait! I loved the first book, and was so excited by a story of a girl battling Satan. I mean, how cool is that?" -Freda Mans, Freda's Voice
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
About the Author
Welcome to White Whisker Books
Heaven
Sent
(Book 3 in The Falling Angels Saga)
by E. Van Lowe
White Whisker Books
Other Books by E. Van Lowe:
Boyfriend From Hell (Book 1 in the Falling Angels Saga)
Earth Angel (Book 2 in the Falling Angels Saga)
Never Slow Dance with a Zombie
The Zombie Only Knocks Twice
*
Copyright © 2012 by E. Van Lowe
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Printed Version ISBN: 978-0-9836329-5-5
Library of Congress Control Number:
To request permission to reprint any portion of the book, e-mail [email protected] and in the subject heading, write the name of the book.
Editor, Christopher Meeks
Book Design, Adara Rosalie
Published by White Whisker Books, Los Angeles, 2012
A Word From The Author
Dear friends and fans, on the last page of Earth Angel, I told you Heaven Sent would be the final installment of The Falling Angels Saga. I was premature in saying that. Last December, as I laid out the book you are about to read, I realized there was too much story left for it to end here. So this will be the next-to-the-last installment of the saga. I hope that puts a smile on your face knowing you will get to spend more time with Megan, Guy, Suze and the others. Enjoy. ~E.
Heaven
Sent
“Better is open rebuke than hidden love. Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.”
Proverbs 27:5-6
Chapter One
Summer had arrived, and love was in the air—although not for me. Definitely not for me.
The arrival of summer in America usually invokes visions of beach parties and bikini tops, summer barbecues and family softball games, sharing kisses with the one you love by the lake or by the light of a shimmery moon. The summertime grass is lush and green, thick like a shag carpet; the birds are singing happy songs as wild flowers drip a rainbow of color across a canvas of green.
Unfortunately, my America is the land known as Glendale, Arizona, where grass and flowers give way to sand and sagebrush, where summertime temperatures can reach a scorchy one hundred and fifteen by mid-afternoon. A walk from the car parked in your driveway to your front door can have a girl’s sneakers melting into the pavement as if she’s walking on fresh-chewed bubble gum. That same girl will be sweating like a basketball player in the NBA finals before she gets her key in the door. And, by the way, summers in Glendale start around mid-May and can stretch into October. So much for summer fun.
Even more unfortunate than the summertime heat, however, is when your best friend is so madly in love with the cute guy she met at The Explosion, she doesn’t seem to notice the blasted summertime heat. That can be more annoying than the heat itself.
“Hurry it up, Megan. We’ll be late,” called Maudrina. We were standing in her kitchen where she had just finished loading up a picnic basket with sandwiches, bags of chips, and fresh-baked cupcakes courtesy of Aunt Jaz. It was the last weekend before the final days of school. The prisoners were about to be sprung from the confining walls of Glendale Union High and were throwing themselves a party to celebrate their summertime escape. Maudrina was wearing the cutest black bikini under a sheer cover-up for the occasion, both of which were going to get her lots of attention.
“Will you please chill, Maudrina. We’re early—half an hour early. Besides, it’s hot as a stove top out there, and I’m in no hurry for every boy we know to see me sweating like a pig in an overcoat.” I was standing by the table in Maudrina’s kitchen, fanning myself with the church lady fan she kept handy for days like these.
“It’s only ninety degrees this afternoon,” she said, mashing down on the lid of the overstuffed picnic basket, trying to get it to close securely.
“No sane person uses the words only and ninety degrees in the same sentence,” I responded, continuing to fan myself, although it was doing no good.
Maudrina and I were new to hanging out with the Poplarati. For most of our high school careers, we’d been invisible to the popular crowd. Then the angel I was in love with saved the event of the year from sure disaster, catapulting us into the social stratosphere.
Maudrina gazed at me with an indulgent smile. “You need to get ready.” She opened the basket and removed a bag of Cheetos the size of a small car.
“I want to get ready, I really do, but I have a bad feeling about today,” I said, lowering my voice for dramatic effect. I was wearing the jeans and tee I’d worn over to her house. My one piece swim suit was still stuffed into my bag because I was debating if the dive-in movie at Splashtopia waterpark was truly for me.
Maudrina stopped what she was doing and gave me a long stare. “You have a bad feeling every time I try to get you to do something social.”
“No, I don’t,” I said, my voice rising in false protest.
“You have to pick up the pieces, Sweetie.” She was staring at me with what I had begun to think of as pity eyes.
“I’m not saying I’m not going. I’m just saying I’ve got a bad feeling is all. You can’t ignore a bad feeling. Not with all I’ve been through.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You need to get ready.” Whatever pity may have been in her eyes a few moments earlier vanished a
long with my resolve. She again closed the basket lid and snapped the latch in place. “There,” she said, as if that was my cue to get moving.
Right then I came up with a simple plan—agree to go to the Dive-In Movie at Splashtopia, pretend to be enjoying myself, fake a headache after an hour or so, and so as not to spoil anyone’s fun—take a cab home, where I could mope around the house in peace.
“All right, all right,” I squawked in response to Maudrina’s cue. “But if some demented demon rises up out of the pavement by the wave pool and attacks us, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I won’t. Now, get dressed.”
Maudrina was my best friend. She was only looking out for me. She knew I wouldn’t go anywhere if she didn’t drag me. It was hard for me to be social these days because I was in mourning. I’d been in mourning for the past eight weeks, ever since mid-March when my earth angel and the love of my life, Guy Matson, went away leaving behind a cryptic message implying he would not be coming back.
Many sit at his right hand
Two have fallen in the quest for man
Two have fallen, one will rise
The one to help you claim the prize
So even though your heart may yearn
Two have fallen, but only one shall return
The message stated my heart would yearn, meaning the one who returned would not be Guy. Who else would my heart yearn for? I guess the message wasn’t so cryptic after all.
I grabbed my bag off the counter and headed for the bathroom. I even smiled when I said “be right back” to let her know she’d won me over—NOT!
“Maybe you’ll even meet somebody today.”
“Hey, wouldn’t that be nice,” I called in response. My back was to her so she couldn’t see the disgusted look on my face at the thought of meeting somebody.
Maudrina’s toy poodle, Piddles, danced around my feet as I walked. Both Piddles and Maudrina’s aging boxer, Sam, were gluttons for attention.
“Stop bothering Auntie Megan,” called Maudrina.
There was a time I found it odd that Maudrina treated her pets as though they were her children. Now it felt normal.
“Auntie Megan will be right out, Pids,” I said, scratching the top of Piddles’ head. “I need to get ready to meet somebody.” As I eased shut the bathroom door, Piddles shouted a few protesting barks from the other side before moving away. He didn’t want me meeting anyone, either.
I understood the value of having a pet now more than ever. Dogs were friends who would never desert you and could distract you when you needed distracting. I needed distracting—big time.
I unzipped my jeans and removed my swim suit from the bag. Thoughts of Guy began flooding in. That was the problem when dealing with a loss. You’d do something, or hear a song on the radio, or catch the smell of jasmine in the air, and the next thing you knew, you’d be transported back to the happy times, giving you a momentary feeling of elation as the happy thoughts washed over you, before reality returned leaving you shipwrecked upon the rocky shores of now… It’s amazing how poetic a girl can get when she’s in the dumps.
I’d never worn the swim suit before, and yet it reminded me of Guy. The silky fabric against my fingers conjured up all the dreams I’d had back at the beginning of the year of sharing summer adventures with him—adventures that would never be shared.
Then there was the pink-and-gray friendship bracelet on my left wrist. The bracelet was not only a constant reminder that Guy was gone; it was also a reminder of my role in his not being here. I fingered the braided bracelet. “Come back to me,” I whispered. As I sniffed back a tear, I realized this summer was going to be long and hot… and lonely.
Maudrina had said I needed to pick up the pieces. I’d tried. Well, not at first. The days right after Guy walked out of my life and returned to heaven carrying Roxanne, a beautiful, dying angel who had helped me rescue him, I had attempted to ignore the cryptic message. Back then, I saw Guy everywhere—in the stairwell at school between classes, on the bottom step of the bleachers bathed in sunlight, only to arrive and discover it was someone else. It was always someone else.
As much as my heart ached in those early days, there was always an ember of hope illuminating a tiny corner, keeping it warm with thoughts of his return. After a month of seeing him everywhere yet finding him nowhere, I had sunk into a deep depression, and eventually the fire went out.
You have to pick up the pieces.
It wasn’t as easy as she made it seem. Every day I started out moving in the
right direction, away from the storm cloud that hung over my life, yet at some point during the day I’d feel my energy dipping, hear the thunder claps catching up to me, and realize I had failed—again. I’d heard that time made the bad feelings go away. When? When was the pain of my loss going to stop?
“Are you all right in there?” Maudrina was outside the bathroom door. I hadn’t heard her approach.
“Yeah, I’m getting dressed, remember?” I gave her a dose of my snarky tone.
“That must be one heckuva swim suit you got there. You’ve been putting it on for ten minutes.”
Ten minutes already? Wow.
“Coming right out, Miss Official Timekeeper,” I called, sarcastic yet playful.
“That’s my job, and I plan on keepin’ it,” she called back. I could picture the smile blossoming on her face on the other side of the door. I was smiling, too. I was lucky to have a friend like Maudrina, even if at times she was a real pain in the behind. I guess when you’re trying to get over the loss of a loved one, a well-meaning pain in the behind is exactly what you need.
*
On Saturday evenings in May and June, before the weather got too hot (yeah, right!), Splashtopia hosted what they called Dive-in Movie Nights. These are evenings where young people can come and enjoy the waterpark until sundown and afterwards enjoy a movie on the lawn by the wave pool.
The movie was usually a horror flick that most of us had already seen, but the movie wasn’t the attraction. Arizona is a land-locked state. Dive-in Movie Nights are our version of Beach Blanket Bingo—for you trivia buffs, that’s an old beach party movie starring Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello—and when you live in Arizona, you don’t get many shots at those.
When we arrived at Splashtopia, the sun had not yet begun its descent into the mountains. Most of the guests were huddled under trees or beneath one of the colorful man-made shade structures to escape the beat-down the sun was handing out. As we pulled into the parking lot, Curtis pointed toward a stand of shade structures under which the Poplarati were starting to gather.
“There they are,” he said.
Maudrina and Curtis were now officially dating. I’d been cautious of their relationship in the beginning. Curtis didn’t go to G.U. He attended Jennings, a snooty private school for the sons and daughters of the valley’s rich. At first I feared he might be slumming with Maudrina—looking for a quick hit before retreating to the safety of his own herd. But my fears proved to be unfounded. Curtis was a gentleman who worshiped the ground Maudrina walked on.
“Hey, Zim, let me carry the picnic basket for you. It feels heavy,” he said as He unloaded our gear from the rear deck of his Explorer.
“I got it, Professor Membrane. Besides, you’re already carrying the cooler.”
They had chosen nicknames for themselves from a Nickelodeon cartoon series they had fallen in love with and watched over and over. The new nicknames were either incredibly cute, or up-chuck disgusting. I opted for the latter, although I kept my opinion to myself.
“Still, I’d feel better if you let me take it,” Curtis said, gently easing the basket from Maudrina’s hand.
She shot me a quick look, and I could tell that on the inside she was beaming with pride. Curtis was a hot, square-jawed sixteen-year-old with dark coloring who reminded me of an old-time Hollywood movie star. He had gleaming white teeth and eyes that crinkled at the corners when he laughed. He liked to laugh
.
When I looked at Curtis, I thought of Guy. Guy was a gentleman just like Curtis was.
“This is going to be so fun,” chimed Maudrina.
“Yeah, right.” It was still close to ninety degrees out with just an hour or so of sunlight left. I had a feeling things weren’t going to cool much once the sun went down. I wondered how long I’d have to fake having fun before my headache flared up.
“Come on, Megan. It’s not so bad. Really. It’s a dry heat,” Maudrina said in response to my mood.
I jumped all over that one: “When people say it’s a dry heat, what they mean is instead of being hot like a steam bath, it’s hot like a sauna.”
Curtis burst into laughter. “That’s a good one, Megan. I’m gonna use that one. Count on it.”
“Be my guest.”
“I’m sure it’s going to be a great evening,” Maudrina said, still hoping to change my mood. “I’m so happy you’re here.” She nudged Curtis.
“Yeah, me too,” he said quickly.
“Me three,” I said, not exactly ecstatic over my third person in the room status. It’ll be over soon, I thought as we headed toward the group.
They were all there—the most popular kids at Glendale Union High. The Poplarati. Ashley Scott and Heather McNamara were in string bikinis that showed off their tanned bosoms and a whole lot more. Jeremy Bowen and Alonzo Briggs were shirtless, wearing colorful calf-length board shorts that accented their athletic torsos. They greeted us warmly, as if they’d hung with us all their lives, instead of only the past two months.
“How they hangin’, Barnett?” called Jeremy with a grin. “Ready for Kilimanjaro?”
“Yeah, right,” I replied, realizing I’d been saying yeah right a lot lately. “Slim chance I’ll be skyrocketing down Kilimanjaro today or any other day.”
