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The Blue Girl

Charles de LintISBN 0-670-05924-2

OCR from PDF.



CHARLES de LINT

IS BACK IN NEWFORD—

AND AT HIS MAGICAL BEST.SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD Imogene’s tough, rebellious nature has caused her more harm thangood—so when her family moves to Newford, she decides to reinvent herself.She won’t lose her punk/thrift-shop look, but she’ll try to avoid the gangs, work a little harder atschool, and maybe even stay out of trouble for a change.Her first friend at Redding High, Maxine, is her exact opposite. Everyone considers Maxine astraight-A loser, but as Imogene soon learns, it’s really Maxine’s mother whose rules make it impossiblefor her to speak up for her true self. Oddly, the friendship works. Imogene helps Maxine loosen up, andin turn, Maxine keeps Imogene in line.But trouble shows up anyway. Imogene catches the eye of Redding’s bullies, as well as the school’sresident teenage ghost. Then she gets on the wrong side of a gang of malicious fairies. When herimaginary childhood friend, Pelly, actually manifests, Imogene realizes that the impossible is all too real.And it’s dangerous. If she wants to survive high school—not to mention stay alive—she has to fall back on the skills she picked up running with a gang. Even with Maxine and some unexpected allies

herside, will she be able to make it?This compelling novel from Charles de Lint, the acknowledged founder of the “urban fantasy” genre,is set in Newford, home to some of his best stories. After reading it, you’ll want to live in Newford, too.Charles de Lint is widely credited as having pioneered the contemporary fantasy genre with his urbanfantasy

Moonheart

(1984). He has been a seventeen-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award, winningin 2000 for

his collection

Moonlight and Vines;

its stories are set

de Lint’s popular fictional city of Newford,as are those in the collections

Dreams Underfoot, The Ivory and the Horn,

and

Tapping the DreamTree.

His novels and short stories have received glowing reviews and numerous other awards, includingthe singular honor of having eight books chosen for the reader-selected Modern Library “Top 100Books of the Twentieth Century”He is currently the primary book reviewer for

The Magazine

Fantasy and Science Fiction.

A professional musician for over twenty-five years, specializing in traditional and contemporary Celticand American roots music, he frequently performs with his wife, MaryAnn Harris—fellow musician,artist, and kindred spirit.

Charles de Lint and MaryAnn Harris live in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada—and their respectiveWeb sites are

www.charlesdelint.com

and

www.reclectica.com.



“WHO’S THAT?” I ASKED.

I nodded to where a line of kids were waiting to be served what passed for food in the cafeteria.“Who’s who?” Maxine replied.“The tall, pale guy with the Harry Potter glasses?”“I don’t see a tall, pale guy, with or without glasses?’I glanced at her, then looked back, but he wasn’t there anymore. “Though I’m surprised,” she wenton. “I would have thought you’d reference Buddy Holly. Or at least Elvis Costello?’—“That’s funny?’“It wasn’t that funny.”“No, I mean, funny-strange,” I said. “He’s gone. But where could he have gone? He was right by theend of that line and it’s too far to the door for him to have slipped out. I only looked away for a second.”Maxine got an odd look. “You must have seen Ghost.” This was good, I thought. A nickname was astart.“How’d he get the name?” I asked, though I could guess from the way he kept disappearing on me.“Because he really is a ghost. People have been seeing him for years.”I waited for a punch line, but it didn’t come.“You’re kidding,” I said.

FOR MY NIECES,CASSIE, JAZ, & KMORE

with special thanks for astute editorial advice to

Julie Bartel, Sharyn November,

and my dear wife Marydnn



If I can dream of waking in a dream, how can I tell

I’m

not dreaming now?

—

SASKIA MADDING,FROM “THINKING AFTER MIDNIGHT”

(SPIRITS

AND GHOSTS,

2000)

NOW:

mogene

It starts with this faint sound that pulls me out of sleep: a sort of calliope music played on an ensembleof toy instruments. You know, as though there’s a raggedy orchestra playing quietly in some hiddencorner of my bedroom, like the echo of a Tom Waits song heard through the walls from the apartmentnext door. Rinky-dink piano, tinny horns and kazoos, miniature guitars with plastic strings, weirdpercussion.I don’t really wake up until I hear a creak from inside my closet. I know exactly what it is: the oldwooden chest where I store my childhood treasures. I lie there, staring up at the ceiling, straining to hearmore over the insistent whisper of the music, because now I know that all these nursery rhymes and fairytales are creeping out of the books I used to read when I was a kid. A hinge squeaks on the closetdoor—the one I’m always telling myself I have to oil, but promptly forget before I actually get to it—andout they come, one by one, their feet making little scratchy noises on the wood floor.I don’t know if they’re the actual characters from the books or something else again: patchwork creatures made out of words and rags and twigs, of bits of wool and fur, skin and bone. There’s toomuch shadow and spookiness in the room, so I only catch glimpses of them as they emerge, andI don’t want to lean over the side of the bed to have a better look. All I know for sure is that they

come from the books. A pack of strange little creatures, shuffling and dancing their way out of the closetand into the shadows around my bed. And in among them, standing a lot taller than the rest, so I can seehis features in the light that comes through my window from the streetlamp outside, is my old imaginaryfriend, Pell-mell.I used to call him Pelly and stopped playing with him a good seven years ago, when I was ten. Ihaven’t really thought much about him since then, except for that day when I first met Maxine.He hasn’t grown the way I did, so he’s still only around four feet tall, this weird, skinny crossbetween a hedgehog and a boy, with floppy rabbit ears and a monkey’s prehensile tale. He used to be sosweet, but now he has all the innocence of a dead child’s ghost. It’s in those big eyes of his. He knowstoo much. He’s seen too much.He steps up to the bed and lays his hands on my comforter. The fingers seem too long, like theyhave an extra joint. I don’t remember that from before, either. His face leans close to mine. My gaze lifts,and now all I can see are those big, strange eyes of his. They’re deep and luminous, and I feel like Icould fall right into them.“Imogene,” he says. His voice is a husky rasp and harmo—nizes with the faint calliope music. “I’ve missed you sideways?’ His hand lifts from the comforter andreaches for my face. And then I wake up for real.

THEN:

Imogene

“You look just like the imaginary friend I had when I was a kid. Only older, you know?”That was the first thing I ever said to Maxine. We were both sixteen, and it happened midterm on myfirst lunch break at my new school. I’d just transferred to Redding High, after my mom moved us fromTyson to Newford so that we could “find ourselves.” Find

herself,

she really meant. Neither my brotherJared nor I was particularly lost.The words were a test of sorts, the sort of peculiar thing that’s always popping out of my mouth.How people react lets me gauge their possible compatibility. Jared uses music. To register positively onhis radar, you have to have the right attitude about the right band at the right point in their career. I think my way’s way more fair. Or at least more inventive.Maxine didn’t really look like the imaginary childhood playmate I could barely recall, never minddescribe—I remembered there’d been something about ears like a rabbit’s and a tail like a monkey’s. Iwas pretty sure that Maxine was completely human, though she could be hiding a tail under thatknee-length skirt of hers. It was hard to tell. What couldn’t be argued was that she was a slender girl withauburn hair and taller than me. But then most people were. Taller, I mean. And while she was also prettyenough to be popular, when I stepped out into the schoolyard, she was sitting by herself on a bench bythe baseball diamond, eating her lunch while she looked out across the playing field.I’d gotten really tired of the endlessly shifting cliques at my old school, so I’d decided that this timeI’d align myself with only one person. A special person, someone who cared as little for the socialmerry-go-round as I did. Sitting by herself the way she was, Maxine seemed a likely candidate, so thatwas why I’d walked over to the bench, sat down, and delivered my pronouncement.Maxine gave me a cool look after I spoke, but the hint of a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.“Maybe I am,” she said.I smiled happily. It was the perfect response. Playing along, but not committing, so there was stillsome mystery. Not, “Go away.” Not, “Yes, what took you so long to find me again?”—although thatmight have proved interesting.“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s all hazy, but I seem to remember something about floppy ears and a tail.”Maxine shrugged. “People change.”“Even when they’re imaginary?”“Probably more so then.”“You’re probably right.”“My name’s Maxine.”