Witch Baby is a little, thin book by Francesca Lia Block.
It's about a girl who doesn't know where she belongs
because her mother isn't her mother and only one of her three
fathers is her father (but she doesn't even know
that in the beginning) and the boy she has a crush
on likes her half-sister instead because she's small and blond
and beautiful whereas Witch Baby is small and dark and
has curly toes and snarly hair. So she embarks on a quest
that takes her from Los Angeles to Santa Cruz and Hollywood
to find her identity.
Boy, that Witch Baby is a proto-goth, if I have ever seen one.
Now I don't get to talk to a lot of young adult girls, but
I get the sense that Witch Baby is the concensus favorite
of the Weetzie Bat books among Francesca Lia Block fans.
The introduction:
Once, in a city call Shangri-L.A. or Hell-A or just
Los Angeles,
lived Weetzie Bat, the daughter of Brandy-Lynn and Charlie Bat.
A genie granted Weetzie three wishes, so she wished
for a Duck for her best friend Dirk McDonald,
"My Secret Agent Lover Man for me," and a little house for
them all to live in happily ever after. The wishes came true, mostly.
Dirk met Duck Drake and Weetzie met
My Secret Agent Love Man and they all lived together. When
Weetzie wanted a baby and My Secret Agent Lover Man
didn't, Dirk and Duck helped her, and Cherokee was born.
My Secret was angry and went away. He
stayed with Vixanne Wigg for a while, but he loved Weetzie
so much that he returned. One day Vixanne left a basket on the porch
of the house where Weetzie and My Secret Agent Lover Man
and the baby, Cherokee, and Dirk and Duck all lived. In the basket
was Witch Baby and this is her story.