Pink Smog Read online

“Guardian angels?” I said. “Do you mean Winter?”

  “Winter, spring, summer, fall. It’s just a figure of speech, love.” He winked at me. “But you do have some nice neighbors.”

  “And a few creepy ones,” I said. “Or at least we did.”

  “There’s always some creepy ones.”

  “But why did you write the notes at all?”

  “I thought it might be good for you in some way, help you grow a little since I couldn’t be there to take you places. I thought it might be fun.”

  “Freaky mimes and evil Tomato Heads aren’t fun. And you could have just given me the plane ticket instead of making me wait all those months.”

  He kissed my cheek. “I guess I needed to get ready for you, too.”

  The air never cooled for the entire time I was there. It hung over us so thickly, stinking of garbage. The heat seemed to effect the sound levels, making every construction site and honking horn and subway train louder as noise bounced off the wall of humidity.

  Still, I loved being with Charlie. We rested in his tiny brownstone apartment during the day and at night when the heat seemed romantic instead of wicked, we walked everywhere. We had gnocchi and ravioli, Indian curries and samosas, pork buns and chow mein. We visited the museum that felt strange and magical at night, like a fairy palace, chamber music drifting through the great hall from some unseen source. We visited the elegant shops and the small boutiques and my dad showed me where the beat poets used to gather and where the new music scene was coming alive at Max’s Kansas City and CBGB. I stayed for two weeks but I missed Monroe and my city and my mom and so even though I was sad to leave Charlie I was ready. I had started counting off the time until my return on the second day when the garbage smells rose up like monsters while we went to buy oranges, milk, and cornflakes at the corner market. My father’s apartment felt cramped and hot and I longed for Los Angeles with its smog and flowers. I just wished he’d come there, too.

  I didn’t ask my dad about Annabelle and Hypatia—not once. I didn’t want to hear what he had to say. Maybe it wasn’t true anyway, I thought. Annabelle was crazy and could have made up anything. Maybe she was some kind of demon, some manifestation of the angry, lost part of myself. Now my business was forgetting. And imagining.

  I imagined that when I got back to school in the fall I would have new friends, really cool friends like Skye and Karma Grier, but ones who would never leave me. I closed my eyes and saw a tall, dark, handsome boy who looked scary but was really quite shy and gentle and a cute blonde surfer boy with a funny, snorty laugh and the easiest shoulders. I imagined a boy with dreadlocks and a girl with hair like flowers. And I thought of a boy in a fedora hat and a trench coat, like a funny detective, like a secret agent man, with green eyes that were full of mystery and familiarity at the same time. I saw us all sitting around eating lunch together and laughing. Maybe we would be friends forever. Maybe we would all live together someday, in a sunny cottage like the one I lived in when I was born.

  When I got back to L.A. and started school again, none of my imaginary friends showed up. I felt even more sharply that Lily and Bobby and Winter were gone and that they wouldn’t be coming back.

  But I was a kid and I had already lost pretty much everything so I decided to just go on as if I hadn’t, as if everything was okay. That’s what kids can do.

  One good thing: Annabelle was gone. Also I still had my mom and Monroe and I had my dad every so often. He visited and took me out to dinner and told me he loved me and I got to visit him in the summer. That was better than some kids had. I had a new sewing machine from Charlie for Christmas and roller skates to take me where I wanted to go. I had this city and I decided that I had better fall in love with her again because she wasn’t going anywhere and neither was I.

  The black pavement, dark to hide the dirt, sparkled with diamond chips in the burning sun. Poisonous but gorgeous flowers bloomed in white, coral, magenta, and red. The sunsets in L.A. were pink with smog. At night the lethal freeways became the Milky Way.

  No matter how bad things get, you can always see the beauty in them. The worse things get, the more you have to make yourself see the magic in order to survive.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Charlotte Zolotow and Joanna Cotler for publishing Weetzie Bat, my editor Tara Weikum, and everyone at Harper.

  EXCERPT FROM WEETZIE BAT

  Once upon a time in a land called Shangri-L.A., a bleach-blonde punk pixie named Weetzie Bat lived a life of surf and slam until three wishes changed her life forever…

  WEETZIE AND DIRK

  The reason Weetzie Bat hated high school was because no one understood. They didn’t even realize where they were living. They didn’t care that Marilyn’s prints were practically in their backyard at Graumann’s; that you could buy tomahawks and plastic palm tree wallets at Farmer’s Market, and the wildest, cheapest cheese and bean and hot dog and pastrami burritos at Oki Dogs; that the waitresses wore skates at the Jetsonstyle Tiny Naylor’s; that there was a fountain that turned tropical soda-pop colors, and a canyon where Jim Morrison and Houdini used to live, and all-night potato knishes at Canter’s, and not too far away was Venice, with columns, and canals, even, like the real Venice but maybe cooler because of the surfers. There was no one who cared. Until Dirk.

  Dirk was the best-looking guy at school. He wore his hair in a shoe-polish-black Mohawk and he drove a red ’55 Pontiac. All the girls were infatuated with Dirk; he wouldn’t pay any attention to them. But on the first day of the semester, Dirk saw Weetzie in his art class. She was a skinny girl with a bleach-blonde flat-top. Under the pink Harlequin sunglasses, strawberry lipstick, earrings dangling charms, and sugar-frosted eye shadow she was really almost beautiful. Sometimes she wore Levi’s with white-suede fringe sewn down the legs and a feathered Indian headdress, sometimes old fifties’ taffeta dresses covered with poetry written in glitter, or dresses made of kids’ sheets printed with pink piglets or Disney characters.

  “That’s a great outfit,” Dirk said. Weetzie was wearing her feathered headdress and her moccasins and a pink fringed mini dress.

  “Thanks. I made it,” she said, snapping her strawberry bubble gum. “I’m into Indians,” she said. “They were here first and we treated them like shit.”

  “Yeah,” Dirk said, touching his Mohawk. He smiled. “You want to go to a movie tonight? There’s a Jayne Mansfield film festival. The Girl Can’t Help It.”

  “Oh, I love that movie!” Weetzie said in her scratchiest voice.

  Weetzie and Dirk saw The Girl Can’t Help It, and Weetzie practiced walking like Jayne Mansfield and making siren noises all the way to the car.

  “This really is the most slinkster-cool car I have ever seen!” she said.

  “His name’s Jerry,” Dirk said, beaming. “Because he reminds me of Jerry Lewis. I think Jerry likes you. Let’s go out in him again.”

  Weetzie and Dirk went to shows at the Starwood, the Whiskey, the Vex, and Cathay de Grande. They drank beers or bright-colored canned Club drinks in Jerry and told each other how cool they were. Then they went into the clubs dressed to kill in sunglasses and leather, jewels and skeletons, rosaries and fur and silver. They held on like waltzers and plunged in slamming around the pit below the stage. Weetzie spat on any skinhead who was too rough, but she always got away with it by batting her eyelashes and blowing a bubble with her gum. Sometimes Dirk dove offstage into the crowd. Weetzie hated that, but of course everyone always caught him because, with his black leather and Mohawk and armloads of chain and his dark-smudged eyes, Dirk was the coolest. After the shows, sweaty and shaky, they went to Oki Dogs for a burrito.

  In the daytime, they went to matinees on Hollywood Boulevard, had strawberry sundaes with marshmallow topping at Schwab’s, or went to the beach. Dirk taught Weetzie to surf. It was her lifelong dream to surf—along with playing the drums in front of a stadium of adoring fans while wearing gorgeous pajamas. Dirk and Weetzie got tan and ate cheese-and-avo
cado sandwiches on whole-wheat bread and slept on the beach. Sometimes they skated on the boardwalk. Slinkster Dog went with them wherever they went.

  When they were tired or needed comforting, Dirk and Weetzie and Slinkster Dog went to Dirk’s Grandma Fifi’s cottage, where Dirk had lived since his parents died. Grandma Fifi was a sweet, powdery old lady who baked tiny, white, sugar-coated pastries for them, played them tunes on a music box with a little dancing monkey on top, had two canaries she sang to, and had hair Weetzie envied—perfect white hair that sometimes had lovely blue or pink tints. Grandma Fifi had Dirk and Weetzie bring her groceries, show her their new clothes, and answer the same questions over and over again. They felt very safe and close in Fifi’s cottage.

  “You’re my best friend in the whole world,” Dirk said to Weetzie one night. They were sitting in Jerry drinking Club coladas with Slinkster Dog curled up between them.

  “You’re my best friend in the whole world,” Weetzie said to Dirk.

  Slinkster Dog’s stomach gurgled with pleasure. He was very happy, because Weetzie was so happy now and her new friend Dirk let him ride in Jerry as long as he didn’t pee, and they gave him pizza pie for dinner instead of that weird meat that Weetzie’s mom, Brandy-Lynn, tried to dish out when he was left at home.

  One night, Weetzie and Dirk and Slinkster Dog were driving down Sunset in Jerry on their way to the Odyssey. Weetzie was leaning out the window holding Rubber Chicken by his long, red toe. The breeze was filling Rubber Chicken so that he blew up like a fat, pocked balloon.

  At the stoplight, a long, black limo pulled up next to Jerry. The driver leaned out and looked at Rubber Chicken.

  “That is one bald-looking chicken!”

  The driver threw something into the car and it landed on Weetzie’s lap. She screamed.

  “What is it?” Dirk exclaimed.

  A hairy, black thing was perched on Weetzie’s knees.

  “It’s a hairpiece for that bald eagle you’ve got there. Belonged to Burt Reynolds,” the driver said, and he drove off.

  Weetzie put the toupee on Rubber Chicken. Really, it looked quite nice. It made Rubber Chicken look just like the lead singer of a heavy-metal band. Dirk and Weetzie wondered how they could have let him go bald for so long.

  “Weetzie, I have something to tell you,” Dirk said.

  “What?”

  “I have to wait till we get to the Odyssey.”

  At the Odyssey, Weetzie and Dirk bought a pack of cigarettes and two Cokes. Dirk poured rum from the little bottle he kept in his jacket pocket into the Cokes. They sat next to the d.j. booth watching the Lanka girls in spandy-wear dancing around.

  “What were you going to tell me?” Weetzie asked.

  “I’m gay,” Dirk said.

  “Who, what, when, where, how—well, not how,” Weetzie said. “It doesn’t matter one bit, honey-honey,” she said, giving him a hug.

  Dirk took a swig of his drink. “But you know I’ll always love you the best and think you are a beautiful, sexy girl,” he said.

  “Now we can Duck hunt together,” Weetzie said, taking his hand.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK, winner of the prestigious Margaret A. Edwards Award, is the author of many acclaimed and bestselling books, including WEETZIE BAT; the book collections DANGEROUS ANGELS: The Weetzie Bat Books and ROSES AND BONES: Myths, Tales, and Secrets; the illustrated novella HOUSE OF DOLLS; the vampire romance novel PRETTY DEAD; and the gothic werewolf novel THE FRENZY. Her work is published around the world. You can visit her online at www.francescaliablock.com.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.

  CREDITS

  Cover art © 2012 by Anette Schive

  Covert design by Michelle Taormina

  OTHER WORKS

  WEETZIE BAT

  MISSING ANGEL JUAN

  GIRL GODDESS #9: NINE STORIES

  THE HANGED MAN

  DANGEROUS ANGELS: THE WEETZIE BAT BOOKS

  I WAS A TEENAGE FAIRY

  VIOLET & CLAIRE

  GUARDING THE MOON

  WASTELAND

  GOAT GIRLS: TWO WEETZIE BAT BOOKS

  BEAUTIFUL BOYS: TWO WEETZIE BAT BOOKS

  NECKLACE OF KISSES

  BLOOD ROSES

  HOW TO (UN) CAGE A GIRL

  THE WATERS & THE WILD

  PRETTY DEAD

  THE FRENZY

  HOUSE OF DOLLS

  ROSES AND BONES: MYTHS, TALES, AND SECRETS

  BACK AD

  COPYRIGHT

  PINK SMOG

  Copyright © 2012 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, downloaded, 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.

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Block, Francesca Lia.

  Pink smog : becoming Weetzie / Francesca Lia Block.— 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Prequel to: Weetzie Bat.

  Summary: When Weetzie Bat is a thirteen-year-old junior high school outcast mourning the life her family lost when their cottage in the Los Angeles hills burned down, her father leaves her alcoholic mother without telling either of them where he is going and Weetzie learns how to stand up for herself and to find beauty in even the most difficult situations.

  ISBN 978-0-06-156598-4

  EPub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780062102010

  [1. Self-reliance—Fiction. 2. Fathers and daughters—Fiction. 3. Divorce—Fiction. 4. Individuality—Fiction. 5. Junior high schools—Fiction. 6. Schools—Fiction. 7. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B61945Pi 2012

  2011010028

  [Fic]—dc22

  * * *

  11 12 13 14 15 CG/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  First Edition

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