Beautiful Boys by Francesca Lia Block

pleated tunic. I pray in a gleamy white temple. I ride on the Nile in a barge and play drums. I carve pictures of my family on stone walls. I have a slinkster cat with a gold hoop in its ear that sits on my shoulder and helps me understand mysteries. When I die I’ll be put in a tomb and my organs will be put in jars. If somebody finds me centuries later they will know exactly where my heart is.
    On the way back through, Charlie leads me into atiny room. Nobody else is here. I’m blind after the brightness of the temple. The darkness feels like it’s seeping into me, drugging me like spooky smoke, mystery incense taking me into an ancient desert.
    Then I see the hipster king and queen from the postcard standing together with their organ jars next to them, staring out at me like, Hello, we are perfect twins and who are you?
    “Hello, we are perfect twins and who are you?”
    “Did you say something, Charlie?”
    “Not me.”
    “Well don’t tell me they said it.” I lower my voice, hiss-whisper. “Charlie, what’s going on?”
    “Maybe you should introduce yourself.”
    “Oh right. Okay. My name is Witch Baby. I shouldn’t be surprised that statues are talking to me. I’ve already seen tree spirits and my best friend almost-grandpa is a ghost. This is Charlie.”
    “Hello, Witch Baby. Charlie.” Two voices—a drum and a flute, one song.
    I look at the pair of statues with their matching smooth golden faces, high eyebrows, far-apart eyes, small noses, graceful necks. Part of me wishes thatthat was me and Angel Juan—together forever with our hearts in jars. Better than not knowing where his heart is.
    No. Shut your clutch thoughts up, Witch Baby. You don’t wish that.
    “You are alive. Remember. As long as you are alive you’ll know where his heart is. It will be in you.”
    “Like Charlie will always be alive in Weetzie and me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Charlie, did those statues really talk to me?”
    “I’m not in a good position not to believe that, being myself a…well you know. Anyway, you heard what you needed to hear. Maybe I did too.
    “Shall we try China?”
    In China there is a room full of beamy-faced people doing yoga. They make a wreath around me, flower children breathing peace. The Egyptians were so much in the world with all their gold and stuff but these guys are like from some other world. They don’t have wings but they remind me of angels.
    In a room with a high ceiling I stand at the solid feet of a massive Buddha dude. His stone robes arecovered with petals and they fall like silk. His hands are gone. I wonder what happened to them.
    He has a topknot, droopy earlobes and a gentle mouth. He is gazing down at me like, Everything will be all right, Baby, no problem.
    “Everything will be all right.”
    “Charlie!”
    “If any statue could talk it would probably be him. Why don’t you ask him something?”
    “Why are your earlobes like that?”
    “Witch Baby, that might not be the best question.”
    “Well it’s hard to think.”
    “I used to wear big earrings when I valued material wealth.”
    “What am I supposed to do about Angel Juan?”
    “Let go.”
    All of a sudden I know just how his hands would be if they were there. One would be held up with the thumb and third finger touching and the pinky in the air. One palm would be open.
    Next Charlie and I go to Greece. In the airy echoing room of dessert-colored marbles we stand in frontof a pale boy, so beautiful on his pedestal but so white. The marble muscles mold marble flesh. There are even marble tendons, ridges of marble veins, so real they look like if you pressed on them they’d flatten out for a second. I wonder how the real boy who posed for the statue felt. If he felt like the statue took his soul away, like all that mattered was his pretty body.
    The statue seems to be looking at me like…
    Yes, it’s happening again:
    “Your friend needs to go make music by himself.”
    “You mean he needs to not just be my