When he got home Duck looked at his face in the mirror and saw that the bay windows in his eyes had clouded over and there was a roughness about his chin now. What story do I have to tell? Duck wondered.
The next night in his acting class Duck asked Preston Delbert if he could perform a monologue. Preston Delbert looked suspicious.
“I’d forgotten all about you, Duck,” he said. “I don’t think invisibility and muteness are very good traits for an actor.”
“I know,” said Duck. “But I have something to say now.”
Duck got up in front of the class. His hands felt like they were covered with ice cream. He started to sit back down. Then he heard the voice asking if he had a story to tell. So Duck told the class the story of his mother and father and brothers and sisters. He told the story of Harley and Cherish Marine. And then Duck told the story of Bam-Bam. The class was silent. Some people had tears in their eyes. Duck felt as if his heart was an angel. Bam-Bam’s sidewalk angel—that light, that full of light.
Soon Duck will meet his love. When Duck sees his love he will know that the rest of his story has begun. It will not be too late for either of them. The sweetness and openness they were born with will come back when they see each other in the swimming, surfing lights.
And we are still young, Duck will think. I wish I had met you when I was born, but we are still young pups.
They will still be young enough to do everything either of them has ever dreamed of doing, to feel everything they have always wanted to feel.
When they first kiss, there on the beach, they will kneel at the edge of the Pacific and say a prayer of thanks, sending all the stories of love inside them out in a fleet of bottles all across the oceans of the world.
And the story was over. Dirk felt he had lived it. Was it a story told to him by the man in the turban who now sat watching him from the foot of the bed? Had he dreamed it? Told it to himself? Whatever it was, it was already fading away leaving its warmth and tingle like the sun’s rays after a day of surfing, still in the cells when evening comes.
“Who are you?” Dirk asked the man, his voice surfing over the waves of tears in his throat. “Who is Duck?”
“You know who I am, I think. You can call me by a lot of names. Stranger. Devil. Angel. Spirit. Guardian. You can call me Dirk. Genius if I do say so myself. Genie.
“Duck—you’ll find out who he is someday.”
“Why are you here?”
“Think about the word destroy,” the man said. “Do you know what it is? De-story. Destroy. Destory. You see. And restore. That’s re-story. Do you know that only two things have been proven to help survivors of the Holocaust? Massage is one. Telling their story is another. Being touched and touching. Telling your story is touching. It sets you free.
“You set some spirits free, Dirk,” he went on. “You gave your story. And you have received the story that hasn’t happened yet.”
Dirk knew he had been given more than that. He was alive. He didn’t hate himself now. There was love waiting; love would come.
He was aware, suddenly, of being in a dark tunnel, as if his body was the train full of fathers speeding through space toward a strange and glowing luminescence. He wanted that light more than he had wanted anything in his life. It was like Dirby, brilliant and bracing; it was a poem animating objects, animating his heart, pulling him toward it; it was a huge dazzling theater of love. On the stage that was that light he saw Gazelle in white crystal satin and lace chrysanthemums dancing with the genie, spinning round and round like folds of saltwater taffy. Dirk also saw the slim treelike form of a man in top hat and tails, surrounded with butterflies. When he looked more closely Dirk saw that they were not regular butterflies at all but butterfly wings attached to tiny naked girls who resembled young Fifis. Grandfather Derwood, Dirk thought. And Dirk saw Dirby too, Be-Bop Bo-Peep, tossing into the air wineglasses that became stars while Just Silver, balanced on the skull of death, held up her long ring-flashing hands and moved her head back and forth on her neck. He wanted to go to them. But there was one thing they were all saying to him over and over again.
“Not yet, not your time.”
Dirk McDonald saw his Grandma Fifi sitting beside him, her hair cotton-candy pink as the morning sun streamed in on it.
“Grandma,” Dirk whispered. He looked around. White walls. The smell of disinfectant. Liquids dripping in tubes, into him.
“Where are we?”
“The hospital,” Fifi said. “How do you feel?”
“Better.”
“The doctor says you’re going to be just fine.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Oh, quite some time now. We’ve been telling each other stories, you and I, Baby Be-Bop. Past present future. Body mind soul,” and Grandma Fifi squeezed Dirk’s hand, knowing everything, loving him anyway.
Dirk closed his eyes. There was no tunnel but there was light—a sunflower-haired boy riding on waves the ever-changing colors of his irises.
Stories are like genies, Dirk thought. They can carry us into and through our sorrows. Sometimes they burn, sometimes they dance, sometimes they weep, sometimes they sing. Like genies, everyone has one. Like genies, sometimes we forget that we do.
Our stories can set us free, Dirk thought. When we set them free.
Acknowledgments
Special thanks to Gilda Block, Lydia Wills, and all the people who contributed to this edition.
About the Author
In addition to the Weetzie Bat books, Francesca Lia Block is the award-winning author of the Los Angeles Times bestsellers NECKLACE OF KISSES, GUARDING THE MOON, THE ROSE AND THE BEAST, and VIOLET & CLAIRE, as well as PSYCHE IN A DRESS, WASTELAND, ECHO, THE HANGED MAN, GIRL GODDESS #9, I WAS A TENNAGE FAIRY, and—written with Carmen Staton—RUBY. Her work is published around the world. Visit her online at www.francescaliablock.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Critical Acclaim for The Weetzie Bat Books…
“Magic is everywhere in Block’s lyrical and resonant fables, which always point back to the primacy of family, friends, love, location, food, and music. At once modern and mythic, her series deserves as much space as it can command of daydream nation’s shrinking bookshelves.”
—The Village Voice
“A poetic series of books celebrating love, art, and the imagination, all in hyper-lyrical language.”
—Spin
“Ms. Block’s far-ranging free association has been controlled and shaped into a story with sensual characters. The language is inventive Californian hip, but the patterns are compactly folkloristic and the theme is transcendent.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“[Block’s] extravagantly imaginative setting and finely honed perspectives remind the reader that there is magic everywhere.”
—Publishers Weekly
Weetzie Bat…
“[WEETZIE BAT is] one of the most original books of the last ten years.”
—The Los Angeles Times
“WEETZIE BAT burst on the scene like a rainbow bubble showering clouds of roses, feathers, tiny shells, and a rubber chicken. Hardened critics were astonished by the freshness of Francesca Lia Block’s voice.”
—The New York Times
“Francesca Lia Block’s writing style is a dream—minimalist yet poetic.”
—Sassy
Witch Baby…
“This sequel to the extraordinary WEETZIE BAT revisits L.A.’s frenetic pop world, again using exquisitely crafted language to tell a story whose glitzy surface veils thoughtful consideration of profound contemporary themes.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Wonderful.”
—The Los Angeles Times
“Sparkling writing.”
—Publishers Weekly
Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys…
“Ms. Block writes about the real Los Angeles better than anybody
since Raymond Chandler.”
—The New York Times
“Not to be missed.”
—Kirkus Reviews
Missing Angel Juan…
“An engagingly eccentric mix of fantasy and reality, enhanced by mystery and suspense…. Magical, moving, mischievous, and—literally—marvelous.”
—School Library Journal
“This moving novel shares the super-hip aesthetic of its predecessors.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Uniquely fascinating and provocative.”
—Kirkus Reviews
And Baby Be-Bop
“The writing is as fevered as life in Los Angeles.”
—The Horn Book
“BABY BE-BOP can be read for the straightforward story and then re-read to enjoy the sumptuous layers upon layers of meaning, which cover each other like fine gauze.”
—Sassy
Also by Francesca Lia Block:
Weetzie Bat
Girl Goddess #9: Nine Stories
The Hanged Man
I Was a Teenage Fairy
Violet & Claire
The Rose and the Beast
Echo
Guarding the Moon
Wasteland
Goat Girls: Two Weetzie Bat Books
Beautiful Boys: Two Weetzie Bat Books
Necklace of Kisses
Psyche in a Dress
With Carmon Staton:
Ruby
Credits
Cover art © 2006 by Suza Scalora
Cover design by Neil Swaab
Copyright
DANGEROUS ANGELS: The Weetzie Bat Books. Copyright © 1998 by Francesca Lia Block. Weetzie Bat copyright © 1989 by Francesca Lia Block. Witch Baby copyright © 1991 by Francesca Lia Block. Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys copyright © 1992 by Francesca Lia Block. Missing Angel Juan copyright © 1993 by Francesca Lia Block. Baby Be-Bop copyright © 1995 by Francesca Lia Block. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition May 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-186205-2
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