The Blue Girl

  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 than good—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 at school, and maybe even stay out of trouble for a change.

  Her first friend at Redding High, Maxine, is her exact opposite. Everyone considers Maxine a straight-A loser, but as Imogene soon learns, it’s really Maxine’s mother whose rules make it impossible for her to speak up for her true self. Oddly, the friendship works. Imogene helps Maxine loosen up, and in turn, Maxine keeps Imogene in line.

  But trouble shows up anyway. Imogene catches the eye of Reddings bullies, as well as the school’s resident teenage ghost. Then she gets on the wrong side of a gang of malicious fairies. When her imaginary 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 by her side, 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 urban fantasy Moonheart (1984). He has been a seventeen-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award, winning in 2000 for his collection Moonlight and Vines; its stories are set in de Lint’s popular fictional city of Newford, as are those in the collections Dreams Underfoot, The Ivory and the How, and Tapping the Dream Tree.

  His novels and short stories have received glowing reviews and numerous other awards, including the singular honor of having eight books chosen for the reader-selected Modern Library “Top 100 Books of the Twentieth Century,”

  He is currently the primary book reviewer for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

  A professional musician for over twenty-five years, specializing in traditional and contemporary Celtic and 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 respective Web sites are www.charlesdelint.com and www.reclectica.com.

  Jacket illustration copyright © Cliff Nielsen, 2004 Jacket design by Jim Hoover

  VIKING

  A Division of Penguin Young Readers Group 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014 Visit us at www.penguin.com/youngreaders Printed in U.S.A.

  “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 went on. “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 the end 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 a start.

  “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.

  * Books by Charles de Lint *

  The Riddle of the Wren

  I’ll Be Watching You (as Samuel M. Key)

  Moonheart: A Romance

  The Wild Wood

  The Harp of the Grey Rose

  Memory and Dream

  Mulenegro: A Romany Tale

  The Ivory and the Horn (collection)

  Yarrow: An Autumn Tale

  Jack of Kinrowan

  Jack, the Giant Killer

  Trader

  Greenmantle

  Someplace to be Flying

  Wolf Moon

  Moonlight and Vines (collection)

  Svaha

  Forests of the Heart

  The Valley of Thunder

  Triskell Tales:

  22 Years of Chapbooks (collection)

  Drink Down the Moon

  The Road to Lisdoonvarna

  Ghostwood

  The Onion Girl

  Angel of Darkness

  (as Samuel M. Key)

  Seven Wild Sisters

  The Dreaming Place

  A Handful of Coppers (collection)

  The Little Country

  Waifs and Strays (collection)

  From a Whisper to a Scream

  (as Samuel M. Key)

  Tapping the Dream Tree (collection)

  Spiritwalk

  A Circle of Cats (picture book)

  Dreams Underfoot (collection)

  Spirits in the Wires

  Into the Green

  Medicine Road

  The Blue Girl

  VIKING

  Published by Penguin Group Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue,Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

  First published in 2004 by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  3579 10 8642

  Copyright © Charles de Lint, 2004 All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  ISBN: 0-670-05924-2

  Printed in U.S.A.

  Set in Bembo Book design by Jim Hoover

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

  FOR MY NIECES,

  CASSIE, JAZ, & KMORÉ

  with special thanks

  for astute editorial advice to

  Julie Bartel, Sharyn November,

  and my dea
r wife MaryAnn

  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)

  It starts with this faint sound that pulls me out of sleep: a sort of calliope music played on an ensemble of toy instruments. You know, as though there’s a raggedy orchestra playing quietly in some hidden corner of my bedroom, like the echo of a Tom Waits song heard through the walls from the apartment next door. Rinky-dink piano, tinny horns and kazoos, miniature guitars with plastic strings, weird percussion.

  I don’t really wake up until I hear a creak from inside my closet. I know exactly what it is: the old wooden chest where I store my childhood treasures. I lie there, staring up at the ceiling, straining to hear more over the insistent whisper of the music, because now I know that all these nursery rhymes and fairy tales are creeping out of the books I used to read when I was a kid. A hinge squeaks on the closet door—the one I’m always telling myself I have to oil, but promptly forget before I actually get to it—and out 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 too much shadow and spookiness in the room, so I only catch glimpses of them as they emerge, and I 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 closet and into the shadows around my bed. And in among them, standing a lot taller than the rest, so I can see his features in the light that comes through my window from the streetlamp outside, is my old imaginary friend, Pell-mell.

  I used to call him Pelly and stopped playing with him a good seven years ago, when I was ten. I haven’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 cross between a hedgehog and a boy, with floppy rabbit ears and a monkey’s prehensile tale. He used to be so sweet, but now he has all the innocence of a dead child’s ghost. It’s in those big eyes of his. He knows too much. He’s seen too much.

  He steps up to the bed and lays his hands on my comforter. The fingers seem too long, like they have 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 I could fall right into them.

  “Imogene,” he says. His voice is a husky rasp and harmonizes with the faint calliope music. “I’ve missed you sideways.”

  His hand lifts from the comforter and reaches for my face.

  And then I wake up for real.

  “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 my first lunch break at my new school. I’d just transferred to Redding High, after my mom moved us from Tyson to Newford so that we could “find ourselves.” Find herself, she really meant. Neither my brother Jared 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 on his radar, you have to have the right attitude about the right band at the right point in their career. I think my ways way more fair. Or at least more inventive.

  Maxine didn’t really look like the imaginary childhood playmate I could barely recall, never mind describe—I remembered there’d been something about ears like a rabbit’s and a tail like a monkey’s. I was pretty sure that Maxine was completely human, though she could be hiding a tail under that knee-length skirt of hers. It was hard to tell. What couldn’t be argued was that she was a slender girl with auburn hair and taller than me. But then most people were. Taller, I mean. And while she was also pretty enough to be popular, when I stepped out into the schoolyard, she was sitting by herself on a bench by the 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 time I’d align myself with only one person. A special person, someone who cared as little for the social merry-go-round as I did. Sitting by herself the way she was, Maxine seemed a likely candidate, so that was 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 still some mystery. Not, “Go away.” Not, “Yes, what took you so long to find me again?”—although that might 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.”

  “Mine’s Imogene.”

  “For real?”

  I nodded. Considering the way my imagination tends to spill out of my mouth, it was a fair question, not to mention an astute one on Maxine’s part, her having just met me and all.

  “My mother got it from this book she bought while she was pregnant with me. It’s about this irrepressible little girl who wakes up one morning with antlers.”

  “So, in other words, you grew into the name.”

  I beamed at her. “This,” I said, “feels like the beginning of a great friendship.”

  Maxine shook her head.

  “Why ever not?”

  “The best thing you could do right now is to say something mean to me and then walk away. And never talk to me again—unless it’s to say more mean things.”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m like a pariah around here.”

  I tilted my head. “I’ve never heard that word used in a conversation before.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So am I. It’s weird how certain words are really just book words and hardly ever get used in regular conversations. I wonder why that is. And pariah is one of those interesting ones that sounds like it means. There’s a word for that, too, isn’t there?”

  “Onomatopoeia.”

  “Which, in itself, is an interesting word.”

  Maxine could only shake her head. “Are you always like this?”

  “Pretty much. So what’s so bad about you?”

  “Oh, who knows? I suppose it started because I was too smart and showed it.”

  I gave her a slow nod of understanding.

  “Have you ever noticed,” I said, “how everyone says they want to be different, but as soon as they meet someone who really is different, they ostracize them?”

  “Exactly. And now it’s just a habit—the making fun of me, I mean.”

  “I don’t care. I’d still rather be your friend.”

  “But you haven’t met anybody else. They could be wonderfully interesting.”

  “Not to mention mean. Why would I want to be friends with people like that?”

  Maxine shrugged. “I don’t know. Most people just do. I did once, but they never gave me the chance.”

  “And besides,” I went on. “I’m sure I’m weirder than you. So being your friend is like a preventative measure.”

  “How’s that?”

  I grinned. “This way I’m sure of having one friend.”

  �
�You are weirder than me.”

  “And besides all of that, our names have a nice rhythm when they’re put together. Maxine and Imogene.”

  “Except yours has one more syllable than mine does.”

  “So you’ll just have to catch up.”

  Maxine shook her head and really smiled for the first time. “I’m not sure I ever could.”

  * * *

  Later than afternoon, a girl named Valerie Clarke approached me at my locker between classes. She was very cute, blonde, and had obviously taken her fashion tips from an MTV video—one by a boy band, mind you, not some slinky rap one. Short little skirt, perky shoes, sleeveless top, all of them just right. I didn’t know what clique she was with, exactly, but I knew she belonged to one from the little gaggle of clones that stood in a cluster behind her, listening in.

  “So you’re the new girl,” she said.

  It wasn’t a particularly endearing opening line—not at all like the one I’d used with Maxine—but then I don’t think it was supposed to be.

  “Apparently,” I said and offered her a low-watt smile.

  I was willing to be amicable so long as it didn’t take a lot of work on my part, nor entail my having to join her clique. Not that I thought an invitation was forthcoming, but you never know. Little Bob, a hillbilly kid back at my old school, swore it once rained snails up in the mountains where he lives, so stranger things have happened.

  “Where did you transfer from?” Valerie asked.

  “It wasn’t in the newspaper? I was sure it made all the gossip sections.”

  “What?”

  From the confused expression on her perfectly made-up face, she obviously didn’t get that I was joking. And okay, I wasn’t trying too hard to make nice. But kids like that have always rubbed me the wrong way, all intimidation and cooler-than-thou. Please. Still, I relented.