When Angels Call (Working Title)
an excerpt

“God damn it Drake!”

Drake. That mysterious, pretty-boy with the perfectly unmanageable, untameable hair, the good grades, a new ditzy blonde by his side every day, and a ‘just-got-out-of-bed’ huskiness to his voice that makes girls scream to the heavens and fall head over ‘way-too-high-heels’ in love with the idiot.

And also Penelope’s worst enemy.

“What’s your problem?!” she shouted, trying to mask the unmistakable strangled quality to her voice.

Drake’s hand fell from Penelope’s mess of hair, ruffled by the daily noogie he’d just given her. A wicked smirk spread across his face and he started laughing, which was soon copied by his sickly minions.

“Problem? Oh, no no, Penny. I have no problem. No problem at all.”

He drew out the last word like it was sickly sweet caramel, and then paused for what seemed like an eternity. Penelope felt a hot blush creep up to her cheeks and she realised that you never, never, never speak to Drake Mellows like that and get away with it. He stalked forwards towards her, causing her to back up three steps at a time. Her back hit the corridor wall with a sickening thud and she resisted the urge to shove pretty-boy aside and begin the horrible task of picking off all the gum that was probably now stuck to her back.

And still he kept coming towards her, with that stupid pretty-boy hair and that wicked glint in his one visible eye that wasn’t covered by that stupid, unmanageable, untameable hair. His breath stank of peppermint and she could even make out the little flicks of grey in his piercing blue eyes. She felt exposed whenever he was this close, and it scared her to wits end (although she’d never admit it).

His face twisted into an even sicker smile and took hold of her shoulders before bringing their noses only mere millimetres apart. If she didn’t know better, she’d think he wanted to kiss her. Her mind replayed the image over and over again and she thought she might be sick, right there and then. She tried to snarl back at him, to show him that he was the lowest of the low to her, only to end up losing the willpower to do so half way through and so it turned in to a, quite frankly pathetic, nervous lip biting movement.

“I think it’s,” he paused again, as if treading carefully with his words, Penelope just found it downright annoying, “you that has the problem here Penny.”