“Are you okay?” I ask.
He nods. “You know, seeing your courage back at the school the other night is what’s given me the courage to do this.”
I want to say, I wish everybody’d stop talking about how brave and smart and everything I’m supposed to be. What happened on Halloween was just dumb luck. But I know he needs to go through these gates, and I know his thinking I’m brave is what’s letting him believe he can do this. So I just squeeze his hand, then draw him close for a hug.
“Send me a postcard,” I say.
“Yeah, I ...”
He hugs me back, then steps away. He looks from me to the angel.
“So I just walk through?” he asks.
The angel nods.
Adrian turns back to me. I can’t read what’s in his eyes anymore. The light coming through the gates is reflecting too strongly in them.
“I like to pretend,” he says, “that if I hadn’t died ... you know, if we’d met when I was alive ... we might have been friends.”
“Absolutely,” I tell him.
He looks like he’s got something else to say, but then he just smiles and walks away, into the light.
There’s a flare as he steps through, so bright that it leaves me blinking with the afterflash. I hear a joyous sound. Then he’s gone, and I find I have what feels like this big hole in my chest and I’m crying. I don’t even know why.
“It’s always hardest for those who must stay behind,” the angel says.
But that’s not it. I’m not sad that he’s really dead now, or that I’ll miss him, even though I’ve got this empty feeling inside. I’m not sad at all, really, or if I am, it’s a bittersweet kind of sadness. It’s thinking of him living by himself for all those years, a lonely ghost in a school he hated, with no companions except for the mean-spirited fairies who were responsible for his death in the first place. He went through all of that, when he could have had this.
I wipe my eyes on the sleeve of my sweater and look at the angel. The residue of the bright flash is pretty much gone, and I can see properly again.
“Whatever,” I say.
“You are an interesting individual,” he tells me. “You’re so very here, so very present. And you certainly take all of this very much in stride.”
“After the week I just had,” I tell him, “this seems almost normal.” But then I look at the gate again. “Well, except for that ...”
I turn away again to look at him, because that’s way easier.
“You’re not exactly my picture of an angel,” I say. “I’m not an angel. I just help the lost dead to move on.”
“Like on that show Dead Like Me.”
“We don’t get television here—”
“It’s on cable, anyway.”
“—and I doubt it’s anything the same.”
“So how you’d get the job?”
“I was like your friend Adrian. I wasn’t ready to go on. But then, when I was ready, I realized it was more important to help others overcome their fears.”
“How’d you die?”
“I was hit by a car.”
I don’t really know what to say, so I just nod.
He goes on. “I think it’s always harder for those of us who were taken before our time. You know, suddenly, in an accident.”
Like diving off the roof of a school, I think.
“We don’t accept what’s happened,” he explains, “and so we aren’t ready to move on.”
“I get it.”
“Well, no offense,” he says, “but I hope we never see each other again.”
I smile. “I plan to be an old, old lady before I go.”
“I hope that works out for you.”
He steps up to me and puts his hand on the top of my head. Before I can back off, or ask him what he thinks he’s doing, I have this moment of vertigo—like when Pelly took me traveling through the back of the closet—and the next thing I know, I’m in my room, standing at the window.
Like it was all a dream, except I’m still dressed in my jeans and sweater.
Okay, I think. That was weird. Maybe the weirdest thing yet out of all of this.
I check my reflection in the dresser mirror.
Still blue-skinned and blue-haired.
Maybe I should dye my hair orange before I go to school. I mean, if you’re going to stand out, you might as well really stand out.
Instead, I get ready for bed.
Lying there, I think about that light that Adrian walked into. I think about people dying, lost and alone like he did. I think about all the people who are like him right now, living somewhere, all by themselves, no friends, no family. Maybe not even a home. Just a cardboard box in some doorway.
There’s a lot worse things than being a blue girl.
I want to go into Mom’s and Jared’s bedrooms and tell them I love them, but they’ll just think I’m weird, waking them up at, what? I look at the bedside clock—three in the morning. I can’t call Maxine either because I’d probably wake her mom.
But there is someone I can call.
I dial Thomas’s number. He’s got a roommate, but their bedrooms are on opposite sides of their apartment. The phone rings a couple of times on his end before his sleepy voice comes on the line.
“Hey,” I say.
“Imogene?” I can hear him waking up by the third syllable of my name. “Is everything okay?”
“It is now. I just wanted someone to talk to.”
I don’t say “someone real,” but that’s what I mean.
“Sorry ’bout waking you,” I add.
“No, that’s okay. I’m glad you called.”
I laugh. “At three o’clock in the morning?”
“Is that what time it is?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Three A.M.’s an especially good time to get a phone call from your girlfriend. So long as she’s not breaking up with you.You’re not breaking up with me, are you?”
“No, I just miss you.”
And see, he’s such a good boyfriend that he doesn’t say something like, “But we just saw each other this afternoon.” He says, “Me, 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 short story collection Moonlight and Vines; its stories are set in de Lint’s popular fictional city of Newford, as were those in two previous story collections, Dreams Underfoot and The Ivory and the Horn.
His novels and short stories have received glowing reviews and numerous other awards, including the singular honor of having eight books chosen for the Modern Library’s reader-selected list of the “Top 100 Books of the Twentieth Century.”
A respected critic in his field, de Lint has been a judge for several prestigious awards, and 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. Their respective Web sites are www.charlesdelint.com and www.reclectica.com.
Table of Contents
CHARLES de LINT IS BACK IN NEWFORD
The Blue Girl
Books by Charles de Lint
Title Page
VIKING
Dedication
Epigraph
NOW: Imogene
THEN: Imogene
THEN: Adrian
THEN: Imogene
NOW: Maxine
THEN: Imogene
THEN: Adrian
THEN: Imogene
THEN: Adrian
THEN: Imogene
NOW: Maxine
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Adrian
NOW: Maxine
NOW: Imo
gene
NOW: Maxine
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Adrian
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Adrian
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Maxine
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Adrian
NOW: Maxine
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Adrian
NOW: Maxine
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Maxine
NOW: Adrian
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Maxine
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Maxine
NOW: Imogene
NOW: Imogene
About the Author
Charles de Lint, The Blue Girl
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