Baby Be-Bop Read online

  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 besidehim, 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.

  About the Author

  FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK is the author of five Weetzie Bat books: WEETZIE BAT, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults and an ALA Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Adult Readers; WITCH BABY, a School Library Journal Best Book and an ALA Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Adult Readers; CHEROKEE BAT AND THE GOAT GUYS, a New York Times Book Review Notable Book, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and an ALA Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Adult Readers; MISSING ANGEL JUAN, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, an ALA Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Adult Readers, and a School Library Journal Best Book; and most recently, BABY BEBOP. She is also the author of THE HANGED MAN, an ALA Recommended Book for Reluctant Young Adult Readers and a School Library Journal Best Book; and GIRL GODDESS #9: Nine Stories. Ms. Block lives in Los Angeles, California.

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  Also by Francesca Lia Block

  Weetzie Bat

  Witch Baby

  Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys

  Missing Angel Juan

  The Hanged Man

  Girl Goddess #9

  Copyright

  HarperCollins®, ®, and Harper Trophy® are

  registered trademarks of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

  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.

  EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER ISBN: 978-0-062-03592-9

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Block, Francesca Lia.

  Baby be-bop / Francesca Lia Block.

  p. cm.

  “Joanna Cotler books.”

  Summary: Dirk McDonald, a sixteen-year-old boy living in Los Angeles, comes to terms with being gay after he receives surreal storytelling visitations.

  ISBN 0-06-024879-3. — ISBN 0-06-024880-7 (lib. bdg.) ISBN 0-06-447176-4 (pbk.)

  [1. Homosexuality—Fiction. 2. Ghosts—Fiction. 3. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B61945ab 1995 94-44314

  [Fic]—dc20 CIP

  AC

  * * *

  Typography by Steven M. Scott

  First Harper Trophy edition, 1997

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