Celestial Secrets by E. Dandrow Mosolovich (little red riding hood read aloud txt) 📖

Prologue.

Kelly Gardner can see angels.

Ever since she was four years old, since she survived the car accident that took the lives of her parents and two-year-old brother, Kelly knew she could see them. Sometimes it was just a glimmer of yellow and white, a wing here and there, but as she got older, they turned into full body visions. Kelly knew that angels didn’t really have bodies; they just appeared that way. After she knew she could see them, she read everything she could about them, but she soon learned to keep her visions a secret.

When she was seven, Kelly had once told her grandmother, her mother's mother and legal guardian, that an angel followed her around the house. Gran had smiled and told that she was right; everyone had a guardian angel, watching over them. But when Kelly described what she (the angel had looked like a she, even though Kelly knew angels didn’t have genders) looked like, Gran had scolded her for making up stories. After that, Kelly realized that she had a special gift, and that only she could see the angels.

The angel Kelly really wanted to see, and never did, however, was her own guardian angel. If she could see other people’s protectors, why couldn’t she see hers? It didn’t seem fair to her. Didn’t she have one? That’s what Gran had told her, but Gran couldn’t see angels, so how did she know? Kelly was convinced that, since she had this gift, she hadn’t been given a guardian. When she had presented this theory to Gran, however, she had argued, saying that surely she wouldn’t have survived the car accident if she didn’t have a guardian angel hovering around? Kelly hadn’t been able to answer that.

Many times Kelly’s thoughts went to that car accident. That night was known to her and Gran as Black Bumper Night. When Kelly reflected about why she had lived and her parents and brother hadn’t, she could only think it somehow tied in with her gift; that she was supposed to do something about it.

And when she was ten, Kelly found out what her purpose was. The same way she could see angels, she could see demons and Fallen, angels who turned away from God and fell from Heaven.

Kelly saw her very first one at a store, standing in line behind Gran, whispering to a teenage boy. She heard it urging the boy to try some beer from his parents’ refrigerator when he got home. Kelly knew that was wrong, and so did the boy it seemed, for he looked unsure, but the Fallen was insistent. So Kelly went up to the boy and asked him he wanted some water, right out of the blue, glaring at the Fallen.

The boy had been startled, and, calling her a weirdo, ran off. But the Fallen knew that Kelly could see it, and, being frightened, also ran off, but in a different direction than the boy. Pleased that her plan at worked, Kelly realized what she was meant to do. And she did her duty gladly for seven years afterward, discouraging people from the harmful seeds that the Fallen were planting in their minds. Every time she did, though, she wondered where those people’s guardian angels were. Perhaps the Fallen had overpowered them?

Or, maybe, just maybe, she

was their guardian?


Chapter One

Kelly was dozing off in class when her friend, Sharon Smith, saved her from the ridicule of being caught sleeping by the teacher by elbowing her in the ribs. Kelly, startled, bolted upright, ready and awake. Sharon giggled a little bit at her friend’s reaction.

“What’s wrong, Kelly? Not sleeping well?” she teased. Sharon had rosy cheeks and a light complexion. With her golden blond hair and baby-blue eyes, Sharon, to everyone else, looked like an angel herself, and she used it to her advantage. Sharon had had at least seven boyfriends that Kelly knew of.

Though she absolutely hated it, Sharon wore the girls’ uniform: white blouse, light blue skirt and black shoes. It didn’t matter for the shoes, as long as they were black and not heels. Sharon had combat boots on, a sign of rebellion for which she couldn’t get in trouble. For make-up, she had red lipstick, some mascara, and ‘rust’ eye-shadow, as it were. Kelly didn’t really care much about make-up, but did make an effort to look nice.

Kelly glared at her friend, brushing her blond hair out of her green eyes. But then she smiled and mouthed ‘Thank-you’ at her. Sharon just waved it away. Then she turned her attention to the teacher, who was calling on random people to read out loud.

While half-listening to Mr. Burt go on about the Revolutionary War, Kelly looked around the room, smiling at the angels who waved at her, which was about all of them. There were thirty-two in all, each one for every kid and Mr. Burt, excluding her. A lot of times the angels talked amongst themselves, or said a few things to her. They understood she couldn’t say anything directly to them in public, so the things they said were usually a yes or no question, ones she could answer with a nod or shake of her head.

After social studies was over, there was study hall, so Kelly and Sharon went to the lunch room for that period, where they did more chatting than studying. Now Sharon was telling her about the new transfer student, Luce Daemon.

“Where did he come from?” Kelly asked, balancing her math and English textbooks in one hand and her science and Lit textbooks in the other.

“I think he might have come from Israel. But he wasn’t born there; he was born in the U.S. His parents went over there for summer vacation or something, but died from some fever there, and now he’s living in their old house. He’s eighteen, so he can, like, inherit it, I guess.” Sharon knew the scoop on everyone in school; she was a reporter for the school paper, after all.

“Wow,” Kelly said, feeling sorry for the boy. “It must be hard to lose your parents so suddenly like that.” Her thoughts flashed back to that dark, rainy night thirteen years ago. Her parents, little brother and her had just driven out of the parking lot of Friendly’s, when another car, going eighty-five miles per hour, rammed into them, making them spin and almost go over the side of a cliff.

“It’s not that bad,” a voice said. The two girls’ heads shot up to see a pale, black-haired, blue-eyed boy standing at their table. He wore the regular uniform for boys (stiff white undershirt, black jacket and black pants), a stack of books in his arms. Sharon looked at him and thought she must be dreaming, and Kelly just stared, her mind a blank.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” the boy asked. Sharon and Kelly shook their heads and Kelly moved over to give the boy some room to sit down. He was good-looking, and seemed nice enough. What Kelly found shocking, though, was that she could see no angel near the boy; rather there was just a black glow around the edges of his body. That disturbed the girl, but when she looked closer at the boy, the black shine was gone. Thinking it had just been a figment of her imagination, Kelly shook it off. Though the mystery of why the boy didn’t have a Guardian hovering around him was still unsolved…

The boy’s books took up half the table, and Kelly wondered if he really was just going to study. Nothing wrong with that, Kelly told herself. But she had yet to see a high school student, particularly a guy, devote very much time to their studies, and especially not when girls were around.

“Luce Daemon,” the boy said, sticking his hand out to Kelly for her to shake. She did, and introduced herself to Luce, being calm and polite. Sharon, on the other hand, practically jumped over the table to shake Luce’s hand, giggling while she told him her name.
Looking at his stack of books, Sharon batted her eyelashes shamelessly at Luce and said in a girly, flirtatious voice,

“Do you, like, um, enjoy studying?” Luce, however, was not in the mood to flirt. He just shrugged and mumbled something about keeping appearances up so his aunt wouldn’t worry about his school work and get on his case. But this confused Kelly. Didn’t he live in his parents’ old house by himself? Where did the aunt come in?

“But I thought you lived alone in your old house.” Kelly said. But then she wanted to kick herself. She had gotten that information from Sharon, and as much as a truthful reporter her friend was, Sharon might have just heard the gossip. But Luce nodded and told her that he did live alone, but that his aunt checked up on him every once in awhile.

“She still thinks she needs to be my legal guardian, even though I’m eighteen,” he said, and the girls saw how resentful he was of the treatment. But then he brightened up and asked about their home lives and schedules. They found out that Luce was in every class that Kelly was except for two, social studies and French. He shared Spanish with Sharon, and no one they knew was in his social studies class.

Just then the bell rang, and the three of them gathered up their books and Luce and Sharon went off to Spanish, saying good-bye to Kelly, who had French next. As the two walked to their class, Kelly saw Luce asking a lot of questions, and was surprised to see Sharon look bored and annoyed after a little while. That wasn’t like her.

Kelly shrugged it off as nothing, and walked to class.


Chapter Two

Sharon was not a happy girl.

At first, the girl had been ecstatic that she shared a class with this new hottie, but the first words out of his mouth after they left Kelly were questions about

Kelly. What was her favorite food, color? Did she have a hobby, and if so, what? Where did she like to eat? It went on like that, and by the time Sharon and Luce arrived at their classroom, she wanted to strangle the boy, and a little friend called envy had invaded her thoughts.

To her credit, Sharon kept arguing with herself. There was no way Kelly knew that Luce liked her that much. And even if she did, she would never go out with him if her friend wasn’t comfortable with it. It wasn’t her fault that Luce admired her as much as he did. Sharon tried to stop thinking bad thoughts about her friend, but jealously is a very persistent thing, and while her conscience kept telling her what was right, Sharon finally succumbed to the resentment in her heart.

(--)

Kelly tapped her fingernails on her desk nervously. Going to bite them and realizing they were bitten to the quick, she starting to gnaw on her lip. She had totally forgotten about the test they were having today, and she wasn’t that good in French. While she had wanted to learn it ever since she was little, she hadn’t realized how hard it would be to master a second language.

Staring at the paper before her, she took a deep breathe