WHOOPS!
Nancy Springer

The day her client took a commuting job, Opal Grumbridge was issued new equipment: a breastplate, a crested helm, a large but lightweight curved sword, and a big horse, white of course. She was told to wear the helm and breastplate, brandish the sword in her hand, carry her wings smartly above her head, and ride the horse. It's ridiculous for me to wear armor, she protested. I'm already dead; what's the use of armor? It's ridiculous for me to ride a horse; I can fly. But she could complain all she liked and get nowhere. It was all up to the client. In Christian iconography, armor meant defense against sin, and somewhere or other Meg, the client, had seen a statue or something, sort of an angel-cum-Joan-of-Arc, including a horse of course because the horse signified war, and now Meg was imagining her guardian angel this way.

Merciful heavens, Opal sighed.

Opal Grumbridge, guardian angel, had been a schoolteacher who had died a virgin, of stomach cancer, at the age of forty-eight; she had gotten through her genteel fife without once straddling a horse, and she did not much care for the idea of getting on top of one now. But the needs of the client came first. Therefore it was on a white charger, with sword in hand and eyes rolling toward the sunrise, that Opal sallied forth to oversee Meggie's first day on the freeway.

Meggie drove a raisin-colored Saab and drove it hesitantly. Meggie was one of the most inoffensive persons on the face of the earth; most of the time Opal wanted to take her and shake some starch into her, but this was of course not possible. Opal could not give Meggie a good talking-to, could not even attempt communication with Meggie unless Meggie addressed her first. Almost everything depended on the client. Meggie was not a difficult client, but often a frustrating one. When would she ever take hold? There she was right now, inching down the entrance ramp toward morning rush hour on the beltway, just inching along. Turning her thin young face skyward, closing her eyes behind their thick lenses when she should have been watching, what she was doing. Praying.

Meggie's prayer sounded right inside Opal's incorporeal head: "Sir or ma'am, if you're up there, please help me."

Open your eyes, sit up straight, girl, and think what you're doing. Now. Velocity times mass equals-something or other. Floor it, floor it! There you go.

Meggie bumbled onto the six-lane. Upon her white destrier, Opal galloped above and slightly behind Meggie's Saab, or to one side, keeping an eye on her. The horse, blessedly, having been imagined by a person (Meggie) who knew nothing whatsoever about horses, was a paragon of superequine good behavior, cantering along smoothly on nothing but air, and Opal actually began to enjoy her ride. Up there on that magnificent curveting steed with impeccable skyward-position wing posture and her cerulean blue gown flowing to her riding-booted feet and her breastplate shining to match her halo just so and with her sword flashing in her hand, Opal was sure she looked just smashing if anyone could have seen her, which of course no one could.

Then, just as she began to relax and enjoy, Opal felt the most astonishing, upsetting, disturbing, never-before-experienced sensation in the region of her nethers.

Simultaneously a horn sounded from the bumper-to-bumper multi-lane traffic whizzing below her. Meggie had perturbed someone.

More about Meggie, quickly: her belief in angels was sincere (necessarily so, in order for Opal to have taken her on as a client), creative, non-denominational and rather poorly thought-out, being somehow syncretized with her vegetarianism. On her Saab's bumper rode a large green-and-white sticker which admonished, "Do Not Drive Faster Than Your Angel Can Fly," but apparently Meggie had not considered how fast angels must travel to get where they have to go. Meggie drove under the speed limit. Always.

Once more Opal felt the astonishing WHOOPS! in that part of her most closely approximated to the horses back, and simultaneously she saw someone thrust his shaking hand out of his car window and make a most exceedingly vulgar gesture at Meggie.

Oh, for heaven's sake.

Traffic was lumping up all around Meggie. Driving in the middle lane, with commuters rocketing past her on the left and the right then swerving in from opposite directions to claim the space in front of her, with other, more trepid drivers trapped behind her, Meggie was creating a massive, honking clot in the vehicular artery. Meggie, Opal urged, bending the rules a bit-well, Meggie had called upon her not lone before-please, Meggie, drive a little faster, that's a dear.

But Meggie did not drive a little faster. Opal could see her in her pitiful little car, hunched over the wheel, her thin shoulders rigid-Meggie was scared. Moreover, while Opal always heard all too clearly whatever Meggie had to say to her-or pray to her-unfairly, communication the other way seemed to work intermittently at best.

WHOOPS!

This was most unpleasant. Every time one of the other drivers gave Meggie a single-fingered salute, Opal felt it. Of course one of the rules was that truly fervid prayer could be received by somebody else's guardian angel; when it came to humankind's emotional extremes, angels played zone, not one-on-one. But certainly Opal had never before thought that this, ah, this particular non-verbal message could be construed as prayer.

Evidently it could.

WHOOPS! How disgusting.

Meggie, drive faster!

But Meggie didn't. Knowing Meggie-as Opal had known Meggie since her conception twenty-two years before-Meggie quite simply couldn't.

Focused straight ahead through the windshield and those awful glasses of hers, Meggie might be largely unaware of the impression she was making on her fellow commuters. Opal hoped so.

WHOOPS!

Oh, dear, another unfriendly hand was projecting out of another window. There was certainly a lot of traffic on the beltway this morning. Aggressive traffic. Luckily, Meggie's exit was coming up in a few miles.

A leadfoot Meggie was not. Creative thought processes, though, Meggie could handle quite well.

Meggie, Opal entreated earnestly, imagine me in full armor from now on. Do you understand, dear? Meggie? I am feeling the need of some, ah, posterior protection, Meggie. Full armor, Meggie, please.

Meggie responded quite well, as it turned out. But full armor didn't help. Opal found that out on Meggie's way to work the next day.

"Sir or ma'am, help me, I am going to die."

Just drive a little faster! WHOOPS!

In Opal's wishful imaginings, the shiny surface of the ineffable metal would deflect certain sorts of, ah, nether prayer and turn them back upon the senders in the most netherly appropriate manner-but in actuality, nothing seemed to penetrate like this kind of prayer. Except, possibly, that which it symbolized. However, Opal couldn't say. And she certainly didn't care to think about it.

Part of the problem, she decided, might be the horse. Or, rather, the regrettable horseback-riding position, in which one was spread in such an unseemly manner, carried along in such a, uh, pelvically rhythmic way.

WHOOPS! Another fervid single-fingered prayer had just issued from a frustrated auto parts clerk in a high-rider pickup. Meggie was driving Forty-five precisely. It was hard for the supernatural horse to gallop slowly enough to follow her, Opal opined, knowing it would have been hard for her, the guardian angel, to fly slowly enough. Contrary to Meggie's bumper sticker, angels preferred flying at approximately the speed of light, which was why they sometimes appeared to be made of that whitely colorful insubstance. While ubiquity was a theological attribute of deity and only the deity, nevertheless an angel, when properly motivated, could fly so fast it was very nearly in two places at once. Opal almost knew how the drivers trapped behind Meggie felt; she would have found flying behind Meggie insufferably boring. But at least she would have been able to position her legs decently together.

WHOOPS!

Meggie, Opal requested firmly, I want you to eschew this horse.

"Aaaaaaaaah!"

Meggie's uncouth petition was not a reply to Opal's attempted message, but a yawp of terror. "Aaaaaaaah, what's he doing?"

He was running her off the road, was what he was doing.

A bandanna-headed guy in a grotty old maggot-mobile panel van. He didn't care if he hurt it. He forced her off onto the shoulder, and it was to Meggie's credit that she didn't lose control of either the car or her bladder. With not a clue what else to do she bumped to a stop, and the man in the van slewed to a gravel-spraying movie-maneuver halt diagonally across her front left fender, trapping her where she was. He got out. He had a strong, unpleasant smell, and there was an even stronger, more unpleasant emotion contorting his face.

And he had a gun.

Opal had never materialized before. Materializing was considered a most unwise last resort.

But there wasn't time to think. She plummeted straight down off title horse, landing between Meggie and the bandanna-man in an instant, in less than an eyeblink, landing THUMP on her solid and exceedingly visible booted feet, five fearsome feet tall and shinily armored from her ankles to her neck, a crested helm on her poodle-permed head, wings upswept at the optimal forty-five degree angle, sword upraised, fists and jaw clenched, eyes steely as only a lifetime of teaching sixth graders can make them. Sheltering Meggie and the Saab between her upspread wings, she confronted the man with the gun. What in heaven's name did he think he was doing, frightening Meggie that way? "You put that down right now" she told him.

Instead he waved it about in an ineffectual manner. Perhaps he was not too bright. The expression on his face indicated mental incapacity.

"Young man, I said put that nasty thing down!"

To her annoyance he did not obey her. He turned and ran away from her, lunging into his van in a blundering hurry. Too late for her to do anything about it, he lifted a reflexive finger as he roared away.

WHOOPsie. "Stop that!" She turned to face Meggie. "Why must they all do that!"

Meggie's expression was no more astute than the uncharming gentleman's had been, which was exasperating, because Opal knew Meggie to be an intelligent girl.

"Heavens, close your mouth before something flies in. Shake your mind into some sort of order, child." Opal felt a borderless buzz, a distancing rather like the deathbed experience of leaving the body behind, and realized that she was starting to fade. She spoke rapidly. "Listen, Meggie, we must do away with the horse, do you understand? I shall ride on your roof from now on." Indeed, the horse had galloped off somewhere. Opal could have flown, of course. But as slowly as Meggie drove, it would be a great deal less taxing to ride.

With a single downward stroke of her wings Opal swooped up and settled herself above the windshield, scraping and clunking unpleasantly against the metal of the Saab's roof, legs crossed in a ladylike fashion insofar as she was able to cross them at all. Armor certainly was a nuisance. Now sit up straight, Meggie, pay attention to what you're doing-floor it, floor it! Very good.

Back on the freeway, Meggie drove, if possible, even more timidly than usual. The trouble with Meggie, Opal mused with a sigh, was that those parents of hers had potty-trained her way too early. They were loving, fussy people, Meggie was their only child, and they had painstakingly raised her to be a quintessential victim, just the sort of person to attract a ne'er-do-well with a gun. In sixth grade Meggie had been the class scapegoat. Thereafter, the school nerd. She had gone to community college and lived at home. Her mouse-colored hair fluffed baby-fine around her thin face and her thick glasses. She peered. She had nice manners, yes, ma'am, yes, sir. She had found a job as the research assistant of an elderly expert on chalk dust by-products.

Horns blared constantly, their cacophony almost as distressing as-WHOOPS! Opal tried a different position, though she knew in her sinking incorporeal heart that it wouldn't help.

What Meggie needed was some backbone. Opal had instructed Meggie in the womb, and felt certain Meggie had had some backbone then. She ought to have it still if she could only locate it.

"G-g-g-guardian angel?" Meggie whispered a few feet below.

Yes?

"Are-are you really there, guardian angel? I saw you-I mean, at least I think I saw you-and I can near you, I mean I think I hear you, out just barely."

I am most certainly here. My name is Opal. Opal Grumbridge.

"O-O-Opal?"

That's right.

"You're on top of my car?"

Yes, dear. Why are you calling me? What do you want?

"I-I don't know. They're going to say I'm crazy."

The meek shall inherit-WHOOPS! This was getting most excessively tiresome. Opal dropped all thoughts of meekness and communicated to her charge with considerable force, Meggie, you really could drive faster.

"Yes, ma'am. But I-I don't feel good. That man's-s-s-scared me. People are so mean." So Meggie had noticed at least some of what was going on.

Poor Meggie. Opal's tone of mind softened. Sweetie, you need to toughen up. Poor dear, it was. a blessing that she could hear her now, it was a blessing to be able to talk with her even though Opal knew she would get the very dickens from her supervisor when she reported that she had materialized, however briefly. You need to stand up for yourself. Chin up,

shoulders back, chest out. On the car roof Opal demonstrated, sure that if anyone could see her she would look quite stunning with her helm shining to match her sword and her face to the wind and a simply divine wingspread-

Beep. Honk. WHOOPS.

Aaaaaaaugh! Opal had just been whoopsed once too often.

The offending hand protruded from a Pontiac LeMans just then passing Meggie on the right. Without even thinking about it, in pure-hearted vexation, Opal swept her sword down. Being a fully motivated angel, she moved quite fast.

It really was a very nice sharp sword.

Meggie doggedly progressed onward, eyes upon her exit sign, that green gate of heaven standing half a mile ahead, oblivious to the way the cars behind her were swerving to avoid the freshly-severed hand lying on the pavement.

Oh, dear. Opal wondered whether that had been the wise thing to do.

But on the other hand-excuse the expression-why had they given her a sword if they didn't want her to use it?

And an angel with a mission really could move very, very fast. Maybe even fast enough to-forestall them? Do unto them before they could-do unto her?

Opal Grumbridge smiled. Chin up. Chest out. Halo tucked tidily under her helm.

On her way home with Meggie that evening, Opal left eight hands strewn on the beltway and didn't get whoopsed once.

"Someone took your license number, miss. And we have quite a few witnesses who accurately described your car. You seem to have achieved a certain degree of notoriety among the beltway populace within the past couple of days, miss."

In the little grubby room at the police station Meggie sat as if her bones were spaghetti noodles, head practically invading her navel; frizzy-haired, she resembled a large piece of dryer lint. Overhead Opal hovered, blessedly out of armor for the evening-for some reason Meggie was imagining her in a crimson robe. Although she felt very anxious, Opal made herself stay quiet. It would not do to nave Meggie addressing her under these circumstances; Opal knew that law enforcers throughout the centuries have taken a jaundiced view of those who talk to angels. Meggie's parents, thank goodness, were not present. They had accompanied Meggie to the station but were obliged to confine their hysterics to the waiting area. Thank heavens. It was too bad Meggie was being questioned this way, but it would have been even worse with her parents answering for her.

"Miss?"

"Yes, sir."

"You admit that you were driving your car on the beltway at the time of the incidents?"

"Yes, sir," Meggie said to her navel. "I was coming home from work."

"Were you present at the scenes of any of the reported incidents?"

"I-I guess so, sir. After a while I began to notice that cars were swerving away from me."

"Cars swerving? Did you see anything else?"

"No, sir. I was concentrating on my driving."

"We found a few scratches on your roof. Any idea how they got there?"

"No, sir."

"You sure? It looks like you might have had some sort of mechanism stuck up there. Something with a magnetic base, maybe."

Meggie just sat, spaghetti topped with dryer lint.

"Miss," the police officer said in condescending tones, "you might as well tell us about it. What sort of weapon or device did you have sitting on top of your car?"

Meggie's head came up. With astonishment and pleasure Opal noted the firm thrust of Meggie's chin. Meggie said, "Did your witnesses see something on my roof?"

"I asked you a question, miss."

Meggie straightened. Meggie sat with chest out, shoulders back. Meggie said, "I think you're crazy."

Very good! Opal blurted.

"If you think there was something on my roof," Meggie said, "you go find it."

Excellent! Nobody could have seen Opal, and she hoped Meggie knew it.

"Meanwhile," Meggie said, "you have no reason to keep me here, because I didn't do anything." Meggie stood up. "I'm going home."

"Sit down, miss."

"Arrest me if you think I did anything," Meggie said, and she walked out.

Before rejoining her parents, however, Meggie detoured into a ladies' room, where she sat in a stall and shook.

Meggie, you were wonderful! Magnificent! Such starch. Such backbone. And with an exalted heart Opal knew that the girl had done it to protect her. I am so proud of you.

"Opal," the girl whispered, huge-eyed, "I don't think you'd better, uh, you know what, anymore."

Opal had come to the same conclusion, out did not say so. All you have to do is imagine me without the sword. There was a definite risk in explaining these things to the child-suppose Meggie got angry at her some day and imagined her away altogether? Still, Meggie was-not a child. A young woman. And needed to know so. All you have to do is take control, Meggie, Opal told her. You're the one in charge.

The next morning, joining Meggie, for her commute, Opal sat like a figurehead just above her windshield again, wings lifted in a smart vee-but this time Meggie had imagined her, bless the sweet girl, in a very comfortable gold brocade robe with rich blue velvet trim, very nattering. No more armor for the time being. Not that the armor was unattractive-certainly its golden sheen had been rather distinguished-but it was so stiff and ungainly, Opal certainly did not miss it. It had not protected her from anything.

Least of all from the wretched hand gestures. If only Meggie would drive a little faster.

"Floor it, floor it," Meggie whispered to, herself, getting onto the beltway.

The youngster was learning.

However, once having achieved the center lane, Meggie did not drive an iota faster than forty-five. Opal sighed and sat waiting with clenched fundament.

After a few minutes, however, she sat more airily erect and looked around, pleasantly realizing: today was different. Nobody was passing Meggie. The nearest vehicles were trailing a cautious six car lengths behind her, and behind them traffic was backing up for miles, all those shiny-it suddenly occurred to Opal that a car is nothing more than armor on wheels-all those commuters in shining armor ranked like a monarch's entourage. A few shoulder-riders came veering crazily along the edges, then slowed abruptly when they saw Meggie and hung back like the others, joining the dignified procession. And through all of this no horns traumatized the dawn; a thousand vehicles moved along in an almost holy silence. Apparently nobody wanted to take any chances with anybody after what the nice anchor-persons had been saying on the news. Nobody, not even the shoulder-riders, seemed to be giving anyone the single-fingered salute today.

Far back in the metallic cavalcade one rash horn sounded. "Aaaaah, give it a rest, cabbagehead," Meggie muttered.

Opal blinked. She had never heard Meggie say anything so harsh.

Quite suddenly Opal felt her outfit transmogrifying right on her insubstantial body. She glanced down; over her robe she was wearing a breastplate now. On her head she felt her golden helm-good; she considered that she looked quite fetching in the helm. If anyone could see.

In her hand she held her sword.

"Opal?" Meggie asked.

Yes, dear.

"Hi! Good morning!"

Good morning to you too, dear. Ah, Meggie, did you just decide you wanted me carrying this sword after all?

"Yepperooni. I think I like you that way. Beautiful day, isn't it? And traffic is really light."

There seems to be nothing at all for miles in front of us, Opal agreed.

Meggie certainly seemed full of herself. Meggie continued to chatter. "I've been thinking," Meggie said, "and I've decided I'm going to ask people to start calling me Megan. 'Meggie' sounds too much like a high-cholesterol breakfast dish."

My goodness. I mean-that sounds like a very good idea, sweetheart. Uh, Megan.

"I think so," Megan said. "You want to go a little faster? Hang on. Whoops!" With a surprised lurch the Saab surged forward as Meggie-Megan-pushed it up to fifty.