Lonely City
A tangly-haired, purple-eyed girl named Witch Baby lives in glitzy L.A. She loves a guy named Angel Juan. When he leaves for New York she knows she must find him.
Looking For Love
So she heads for the city of glittery buildings and garbage and Chinese food and drug dealers and subways and kids playing hip-hopscotch.
Finding Trouble
Her clues are an empty tree house in the park, a postcard on the street, a mannequin in a diner. Angel Juan is in danger, and only Witch Baby's heart-magic can make him safe.
When Angel Juan leaves L. A.—and Witch Baby—to play his music and find himself in New York, Witch Baby, wild and restless without him, follows. The story that ensues "is an engagingly eccentric mix of fantasy and reality, enhanced—this time—by mystery and suspense. It is also magical, moving and mischievous, and—literally—marvelous."—SLJ.
Angel Juan and I walk through a funky green fog. It smells like hamburgers and jasmine. We don't see anybody, not even a shadow behind a curtain in the tall houses. Like the fog swirled in through all the windows, down the halls, up the staircases, into the bedrooms and took everybody away. Then fog beasties breathed clouds onto the mirrors, checked out the bookshelves, sniffed at the refrigerator--whispering. We hear one playing drums in a room in a tower.
Angel Juan stops to listen, slinking his shoulders to the beat. "Not as good as you," he says.
I play an imaginary drum with imaginary sticks. I am writing a new song for him in my head.
He sees something on the other side of a wall and picks me up. I feel his arms hard against the bottom of my ribs. Jungle garden. Water rushes. Dark house. Bright window. A piano with the head of Miss Nefertiti-ti on top.
"You look like her," he says. "Your eyes and your skinny flower-stem neck."
"But she doesn't have my snarl-ball hair or my curly toes." My toes curl like cashew nuts. He puts me down and messes up my messy hair the way he used to do when we were little kids. Before he ever kissed me.
A black cat with a question-mark tail follows us for blocks. He has fur just like Angel Juan's hair. Angel Juan crouches down to stroke him and I stroke Angel Juan. We are all three electric in the fog. The cat keeps following us. I hear him wailing for a long time after he disappears into the wet cloud air. Angel Juan has one arm around me and is holding my inside hand with his outside hand. It is our brother grip. We are bound together. My outside hand is at his skinny hips, quick and sleeky-sleek like a cat's hips. I could put one finger into the change pocket of his black Levi's.
I want to take his photograph with his hand at the cat's throat, his eyes closed, feeling the purr in his fingers. I want to take his picture naked in the fog.
The shiny brown St. John's bread pods crack open under our feet and their cocoa smell makes me dizzy and hungry.
Then Angel Juan stops walking. It's so quiet. Nothing moves. There's a shiver in the branches like a cat's spine when you stroke it. The green druggy fog.
I remember the first time he ever kissed me. I mean really kissed me. We had just finished a gig with our band The Goat Guys and he put his hands on my shoulders. His hair was slicked back and it gleamed, his lips were tangy and his fingers were callusy and we were both so sweaty that we stuck together. Our eyelashes brushed like they would weave together by themselves turning us into one wild thing.
I say, "I think I missed you before I met you even."
"Witch Baby," he says. He never calls me that. Nina Bruja or Baby or Lamb but never Witch Baby. I start to feel a little sick to my stomach. Queased out. Angel Juan's eyes look different. Like somebody else's eyes stuck in his head. Why did I say that about missing him? I never say clutchy stuff like that.
"I'm going to New York."
New York. We were going to go there. We were going to play music on the street. What is he saying? He just told me I looked like Nefertiti. He just had his arms around me in our brother grip.
"You're always taking pictures of me and writing songs for me but that's not me. That's who you make up. And in the band. I feel like I'm just backing up the rest of you. I've got to play my own music."
"Just go do it with her," I say.
"There's no her. I don't even feel like sex at all. Nothing feels safe."
For the last few weeks we've been snuggling but that's about it. I've been telling myself it's just because Angel Juan's been tired from working so much at the restaurant.
"But we've only ever been with us."
"Do we want to be together...
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