Pink Smog

by Francesca Lia Block

  It shouldn’t have mattered that much. Winter and Staci, I mean. But it did. Winter had become the substitute for my dad since the day that beautiful boy pulled my mother from the pool. One phone call, a few photos, a few shirts and scripts, and a box of my own baby teeth was about all I had left of Charlie. Even though I had hardly spent any time with Winter and even though I spent almost all of my time with Bobby and Lily now, Winter was still who I secretly relied on in my imagination, who I thought of every night before I went to bed to help me both feel connected to my dad and forget that he was gone. I’d linked Winter and my father in my mind and so it mattered much more than it would have otherwise that a boy I hardly knew was acting like a freak and going out with another girl. It mattered way, way too much. I needed to stop thinking about both Winter and my dad. Solving mysteries might be one way to forget.

  At home that evening I went to my ballerina music box and took out the note from the Hollywood Museum. I had put it out of my mind but now, while the music tink-tinkled and the ballerina turned on one toe, I read the note over and over again. Fee Fi Fo Fum. Giants. And something about bones. The bones of an extinct one. I remembered the tiny bone jewelry Annabelle had made for her poor, trapped Barbies. Was there some connection between Annabelle and the notes? Or was that just another weird coincidence in my weird life? No matter what, I wanted to find out what the notes meant. The last note had taken me somewhere I needed to go, somewhere that made me feel better, and maybe this one would do the same. I sure needed it. It seemed unlikely that Annabelle would have been involved in sending me to the Hollywood Museum just so I would hear that I was a mousette and cry about Marilyn’s last check. There were too many good things there—like that dress from Let’s Make Love with its halter top and flowing skirt dyed in gradations of pink, from blush to rose to hot, and wigs made of gold dust—for it to have been her. But if not Annabelle, then who? And where was I supposed to go next?

  Extinct one.

  Who was extinct? The little Weetzie who had believed that everyone would be okay, that her family would live happily ever after, that no monsters named fire or fear or anger or leaving would come.

  Through my window I smelled a whiff of tar from the freshly applied blacktop.

  With that inhale, I remembered something from a time, before.

  Little Weetzie running barefoot down a grassy bank toward some water. Her father is following her. He doesn’t want her to go there but she isn’t listening to him, just giggling, running down the hill through the sunshine above and squishy mud below. But the water is black! She stops. It smells funny. Her dad picks her up and puts her on his shoulders. He carries her across the park to the big black pit of tar behind the chain-link fence. He is trying to distract her, make her smile at the statues of the elephants in the murky, bubbling pond. But she starts to cry when she sees them. Because while the daddy and the baby elephant stand on the bank, the mother is drowning in tar.

  They’re not elephants, he tells her. They’re mastodons, they’re extinct. But that doesn’t cheer her up at all. In fact, it makes things worse.

  Once, in prehistoric times, Los Angeles had just been this big pit of black tar and then it became a city and they built a museum on top of the tar pits. That’s where I went the next day after school, when I figured out what the note meant. I didn’t invite Bobby and Lily because it seemed important for me to have another date with myself after everything that had happened.

  I went into the actual museum first, and saw the gold-framed paintings of ladies reclining in rose gardens, the portraits of stiff-looking royalty in ermine, velvet, and jewels, the statues of fauns chasing nymphs, the ancient gold necklaces glimmering in glass boxes.

  “This is not a museum,” my dad used to say. “Where are the van Goghs? Where are the twenty-foot Buddhas? Someday I’ll take you to the Met.”

  It wasn’t New York, but still, it was culture (culture with statues of extinct animals popping out at you along the paths surrounding the museum).

  I crossed the broad expanse of lawn and stood at the fence watching the mastodons. The family was in exactly the same position as always, the baby and the daddy watching the mama sink into black ooze, forever and ever.

  I felt a little like the now-extinct baby statue when my father left. It was my father and not my mother who left, but my mother was sinking, too.

  Why had I been sent here? To be reminded of this? I thought of Annabelle again, but, of course, she didn’t know about my experience with the tar pits. Only my parents knew and Charlie couldn’t have written the notes—he was too far away, and my mom was too drunk all the time.

  I went back toward the museum and sat in the courtyard where we used to come to watch the mimes on weekends. My dad imitated them behind their backs and once one almost got into a fistfight with him. I don’t even think it was a pretend mime-style fistfight but we didn’t have time to find out because my mother and a lady mime, who was imitating her without her knowing it, intervened.

  I hadn’t seen a mime in quite some time so I was surprised when I turned and noticed what appeared to be a statue of one standing behind me. Of course, if you know anything about pesky mimes, you’ll know it wasn’t a statue but a mime doing one of their mimey games. This one had on red-and-white-striped tights, black knickers, a long-sleeved black shirt, and a black top hat. His face was painted white with red circles on his cheeks and lots of black makeup around his eyes. He had that eerie mime-ishness and I just stared at him, waiting for him to stop being a statue. Finally, I got tired of waiting and so I got up to leave. But somehow as I crossed the courtyard he was there, on the other side as if he’d just appeared—poof! It was freaky. I frowned at him and he bowed and tipped his hat, offered me an imaginary rose to sniff. I pretended it was stinky. He seemed to like that because he doubled over in hysterical, silent mime laughter. His teeth looked very yellow against his white face. After a few more convulsions he sobered up, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a silver envelope.

  Just like the other two I’d received.

  “Where’d you get that?” I yelped. But, of course, mimes aren’t the best people to ask about this type of thing. Or anything, actually. “Please tell me!”

  He handed me the letter, bowed, and scamper-pranced off. I considered running after him but the idea of chasing a mime all through the tarry park just sounded too ridiculous to handle right then. Besides, I had a letter to open.

  I opened it.

  The note was just like the others. There was silver glitter inside and the letters were cut out from magazines. They spelled this:

  Welcome Beauty, banish fear

  My movie queen and mistress here

  Kiss your wishes, speak your will

  Swift obedience meets them still.

  It was just as mysterious as the other ones had been. I would have to study it and figure out what it meant. But for now I had other things to think about—even the mime with the message hadn’t been enough to distract me from my worries about my dad. And Winter.

  HALLOWEETZIE

  It was Halloween. I was home with Bobby and Lily, painting black marks on their white-powdered faces to make them look like skulls. Bobby wore a top hat and a black suit with a white shirt, a black bolo tie, and cowboy boots. Lily wore a high-collared white-lace dress. I still hadn’t decided what to put on. My hair was in tiny pigtails and I had on my polyester gym sweats with holes in them and one of my dad’s ratty T-shirts. My friends and I had thought we were going to go trick-or-treating but it seemed childish and we were afraid no one would give us candy because we were way too big. We wanted to go see The Exorcist but it wasn’t playing anywhere and it was rated R anyway. So we were home stuffing our faces with the 3 Musketeers bars Bobby had brought over for trick-or-treaters and wondering what we were going to do later.

  The doorbell rang and we went to the door together. My mom had locked herself in her bedroom to avoid the noise. For a second I checked my reflection in the oval mirror
with the gilt frame. I looked bad but so what? It was just little kids out there, kids in masks that obscured their vision. Plus, they only had eyes for the candy anyway, right?

  But it wasn’t little kids.

  Two people stood at my door.

  Staci Nettles was dressed as Cleopatra in a black wig, a gold bikini top, and a long, gold skirt. She had a gold snake bracelet winding up her arm and gold sandals on her feet.

  She had a chain and it was attached to the neck of a male slave dressed only in harem pants and flip-flops.

  I dug my nails into Bobby’s arm and he flinched but didn’t pull away.

  It was Winter. His eyes were blank discs like he’d been drugged. He was mumbling to himself and wouldn’t look at me. My heart felt like a smashed and rotting pumpkin.

  “Trick or treat,” Staci said brightly. She batted her fake gold eyelashes at me and held out a pillowcase full of candy.

  “Aren’t you too old for this?” Bobby said. My hands were shaking like the fronds on the palm trees outside but I forced myself to give out the chocolates. Staci smiled and led Winter away. Behind them, then, I saw a third person. She was dressed in a low-cut pink satin gown. There was a long chiffon scarf around her neck and it looked like it had been dipped in blood. She had a black pillowcase over her head and in her hand was a mannequin’s head in a blonde wig, also painted with blood.

  “Who are you supposed to be?” Bobby couldn’t help it—she just looked too weird.

  The girl only held out her bag, and Lily put some candy in.

  “Are you with them?” Bobby asked her but she had already left.

  He turned to Lily. “Why’d you give her anything? She’s another of Staci’s freak friends, probably.”

  Lily was still watching the girl walk away and so was

  I. “I didn’t want a trick from her,” Lily said.

  I hugged her. I was always hugging Lily. I had gotten it into my mind that I might be able to get her to eat more if she had enough touch. Maybe I just needed it, too. “You’re right,” I said. But I didn’t tell them how I knew she was—I recognized the girl.

  We went inside. None of us felt like doing anything after that. Together they took turns painting my face white with a black triangle over my nose, black slashes around my mouth, and black hollows around my eyes to look like a skull. It was how I felt, but the touch of the makeup brush was soothing, tender, just a little ticklish. We ate 3 Musketeers bars (or Bobby and I did), watched Addams Family and Twilight Zone reruns on TV, and fell asleep in a heap on my bed. We didn’t talk about what had happened and I was grateful. I was glad they were there.

  A few days later I got up the courage to knock on Winter’s door. It was afternoon and the sun was shining but the air was chilly. I stood shivering on his doorstep, waiting. This time I didn’t just have his sister and his dogs and a confrontation with his mother to be afraid of. Staci might be with him and I’d have to face the fact that they were actually together.

  After a long time he answered. He was wearing a dirty T-shirt and rumpled jeans, rubbing his eyes as if he’d been sleeping. He just stared at me.

  “Do you even know who I am?” I said.

  It took a while for him to answer. “That Bat girl, right? I think I know your dad or something? Are you here to see Anna?”

  “Winter!” I raised my voice this time. “What are you doing? What’s wrong with you?”

  He ran a hand through his greasy hair. There were dark circles under his eyes like the ones my friends and I had painted on for Halloween.

  “Is she home?” I asked, more softly. “Your sister?”

  “No. I don’t know where she goes. She takes the dogs and goes out for hours.”

  “How about your girlfriend, Staci?”

  “Staci.” He smiled like a five-year-old who had just received some candy. Then he looked worried. “She’s not here.”

  “What about your mom?” This time I would give the purple lady a piece of my mind.

  I brushed past Winter. He didn’t stop me.

  I went into his sister’s room and looked around. A pink dress was tossed over a chair and a mannequin head with a blonde wig was on the dressing table next to a black-and-white photo of the ’50s actress Jayne Mansfield. I noticed there were other photos of her on the walls, next to pictures of James Dean, Sal Mineo, Marilyn Monroe, and a dancer I recognized as Isadora Duncan, the one who died when her flowing scarf got caught in the wheel of the car she was driving in. A black pillowcase lay on the floor, overflowing with candy bars.

  I went to the dressing table. Two dolls were seated on it. The Barbie had a hard, simpering smile on her little face and hard plastic breasts jutting out under her striped sweater. She was holding a small chain, like the ones we all wore around our necks then, dangling with gold charms. The chain was fastened around the neck of the Ken doll that sat beside her. He was tall and blonde. He had a small, black blindfold covering his eyes.

  I ran out of the room and found Winter lying on his bed staring at the ceiling. I grabbed his hand and he got up slowly.

  “Look!” I shouted at him, dragging him into his sister’s room. “Don’t you see what she’s doing?”

  Winter looked around at the pictures of dead stars, at the spilled candy and the wig and the dolls. Nothing registered in his eyes.

  That was when I heard the door open and the sound of the dogs scrambling in. They appeared at the bedroom door, growling, with the girl behind them.

  “What is she doing in my room?” She was talking to her brother but her eyes were fiercely locked on me as if she could keep me from moving with her stare. It worked. She was wearing the puffed sleeved dress and her saddle shoes. I saw one of the dog’s black lips curl so that its teeth showed.

  I looked at Winter and something changed in his eyes. He commanded the dogs to go to their beds and took me by the arm.

  “She was just leaving,” he said.

  Annabelle watched us go. She had the same snarl on her mouth as her chow had worn. I wondered who had thought of it first.

  At the door I turned to Winter and held his wrist with both my hands. “Please,” I said. “Please come talk to me.”

  The look of recognition and concern was gone. He slipped out of my grip and stared down at the ground, rolling onto the outer edges of his feet. That was how he remained, standing like that in the doorway of number 13, as I left him.

  Bobby wasn’t good at keeping his mouth shut and I loved that about him and because of it I especially loved how he had avoided talking to me about Winter, even after the weirdness he had witnessed. Finally, though, after that last visit, I told him and Lily the whole story, except the part about my dad. I just said that Winter had happened to be protective of me in those situations with his sister and Staci.

  “It sounds wicked to me,” Bobby said. We were sitting at our usual lunch spot and I wanted him to lower his voice in case someone heard. “All of it. I’d avoid them all if I were you.”

  Lily was watching me intently. “It’s not that easy, Bobby.” She gave him a meaningful look that was supposed to convey something along the lines of She’s got a huge crush on the guy, you dork, but he ignored it. Well, mostly.

  “Foxiness is as foxiness does,” he said, so I guess he did get what she was saying. “We need to find you someone better to crush on.”

  “It’s not that! I don’t like like him. I just think something really weird is going on.”

  “Obviously weird shit is happening but we don’t need to get involved. Let them voodoo themselves to death. What do you care?” Bobby took a bite out of his bologna sandwich, made a face, and tossed it into the trash bin.

  I stared at my checkerboard Vans. They were the same ones Winter wore.

  “She cares,” Lily said, clutching her apple.

  So Bobby dropped the subject. I guess the look on my face was clear enough.

  I really didn’t want to get involved. I wanted to walk away from the whole thing. Winter and Staci
and the creepy sister and the purple-eyed betrayer. I had enough to worry about. But it was more complicated than that. Annabelle had seen me in her room. She’d already attacked me for less.

  The next few days I walked around like a hunted deer, perking up my ears, startling at every loud sound, flashing my gaze in every direction. I almost wished she’d show up, just to get it over with. But she never came.

  Not much happened at all. My mom continued to sit around watching TV and drinking. A couple of times I tried to ask her if she had any idea what the notes I’d gotten meant or who she thought had sent them but she told me she had no idea what I was talking about and once actually started whistling.

  She went out, disguised as much as possible in huge sunglasses and a head scarf—only to cash the checks she received in the mail so I could use them to buy groceries. The checks were from my dad but there was never a return address or even a note in them.

  He didn’t call. I kept expecting him to call and he didn’t and finally I stopped jumping every time the phone rang.

  Winter and Staci hung out and he always had the same blank expression on his face.

  I spent as much time as possible with Bobby and Lily. It was the only way I felt halfway okay. Luckily, we all felt like that, so none of us noticed or at least minded the desperate way we clung to each other.

  I found out more about them. Bobby’s mother never came home when we were over there but his sister was a skinny, brown-skinned blonde with a shag haircut who grunted at us when she got home, went into her bedroom, and shut the door. He rolled his eyes and called her Miss Mean Jeans. They had different dads and neither had bothered to stick around. I got the feeling that Bobby’s mother did something illegal for a living but he never really said. I’d seen her picture—blonde hair like the sister, giant breasts, and the same green cat eyes as Bobby. He said his father was a Mexican drug lord but I had no idea if it was true. Bobby always had new clothes and albums and sometimes pot and I wondered where he got the money for that but he just shrugged, batted his cartoon eyelashes, and looked mysterious when I hinted that he must have a pretty big allowance or a secret job he wasn’t telling us about.