This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Text and illustrations copyright © 2024 by Dark All Day Inc.

  Illustrations by Mishka Westell

  Cover art © 2024 by Dark All Day Inc. Cover art by Ramona Kaulitzki. Cover design by Karina Granda.

  Cover copyright © 2024 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Interior design by Carla Weise.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Cline, Ernest, author. | Westell, Mishka, illustrator.

  Title: Bridge to bat city / by Ernest Cline ; illustrated by Mishka Westell.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2024. | Audience: Ages 8 and up. | Summary: After her mother’s death, thirteen-year-old Opal moves to her uncle’s farm where she befriends a group of orphaned, music-loving bats, and summons the courage to protect them from a mining company as she attempts to find them a new home.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2023039510 | ISBN 9780316460583 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316460804 (ebook)

  Subjects: CYAC: Bats—Fiction. | Music—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. | Austin (Tex.)—Fiction. | Texas—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.C59536 Br 2024 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023039510

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-46058-3 (hardcover),

  978-0-316-46080-4 (ebook)

  E3-20240408-JV-PC-COR

  Contents

  COVER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  1: THE BIG OLD BEAUTIFUL CAVE

  2: THE GIRL FROM LEVEL LAND

  3: GOING UP TO THE SPIRIT IN THE SKY

  4: RAMBLIN’ WITH UNCLE ROSCOE

  5: FLATS IN THE HILL COUNTRY

  6: OUT OF THIS WORLD

  7: LIVING OUTSIDE OF COMFORT

  8: THE CLOTHESLINE CREW

  9: BULLDOZERS AND DYNAMITE

  10: FOREGONE FORECLOSURE

  11: AUSTIN CITY LIMIT

  12: THE GROOVER’S PARADISE

  13: MUSTA NOTTA GOTTA LOTTA SLEEP LAST NIGHT

  14: THIS MUST BE THE PLACE

  15: PANIC ON THE STREETS OF AUSTIN

  16: MEETING FRIENDS AT THE FRIENDS

  17: MAKING AUSTIN WEIRDER

  18: POWERFUL FORCES AND FURRY LITTLE FACES

  19: MERLIN’S MOJO

  20: THE SHOWDOWN DOWNTOWN

  21: THE BIG OLD BEAUTIFUL BRIDGE

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  For all my fellow Austinites

  (including the winged ones)

  THE BIG OLD BEAUTIFUL CAVE

  Once upon a time down here in Texas, in a part of the Lone Star State known as the Hill Country, hidden at the edge of a rolling green forest, there was this big old beautiful cave.

  And this big old beautiful cave happened to be home to a big old beautiful mess of bats. Over a million of them. These furry little flying critters had called the big old beautiful cave their home for a long, long time—since way back before the land around there was named Texas or Mexico. Since back before there were any people around to give the land any sort of name at all.

  Now, according to our encyclopedia, the scientific way to refer to a caveful of furry little flying critters would’ve been to call them “a colony of Mexican free-tailed bats.” But I thought it was a little heartless to refer to them as a “colony,” when it was plain to see that what they really were was a family. One big old beautiful bat family, made up of thousands and thousands of smaller bat families. All kinds of families, made up of all kinds of bats, all living together in peace and harmony, in their big old beautiful cave way out there in the Hill Country…

  When I first learned about the bats and how they lived, I remember feeling a might envious, because they could do several things I’d always dreamed of being able to do. Like fly. And stay up all night, every night, until the sun came up, and then snore the daytime away.

  Because they slept during the day, to them the evening was like our morning. And every morning at sunset, the bats would all fly out of their big old beautiful cave to hunt for food. They would stay out most of the night, flying for miles in all directions while gobbling up mountains of moths and mosquitoes and flies and such. These bats were all natural-born bug hunters, and each one of them would eat its own weight in the pesky things every night, night after night.

  To them, all those bugs tasted better than barbecue. I know most folks are probably revolted by the idea of eating insects. But most folks think hot dogs are delicious, including yours truly, so it’s probably best we don’t judge. Never yuck anyone else’s yum, as my mama used to say.

  When they weren’t soaring through the night sky, the bats preferred to hang upside down by their feet. That’s why they lived on the ceiling of their big old beautiful cave, in their own little upside-down bat city, nestled into the rock. Living upside down was normal for the bats. From their perspective, they probably figured all of us humans were the ones who were living upside down.

  Now, contrary to what you may have heard, bats are not blind. They can see just fine. But they can hear even better. Every bat is born with a pair of superpowered ears that it can swivel in any direction, and bats use their ears in conjunction with their voices to create a kind of natural sonar array, which they use to help them avoid obstacles, zero in on prey, and escape predators.

  There were always plenty of mean old hawks and dumb old owls flying around out there hunting the bats for food, whenever they were out hunting bugs for food. Luckily, bats are the fastest mammals in the world, so they were usually able to outrun the mean old hawks and owls and other birds of prey. Usually. But not always.

  Hunting and being hunted. It was their way of life.

  Each morning at sunrise, after the bats had finished gorging themselves at the big all-you-can-eat Hill Country bug buffet, they would fly back home to the big old beautiful cave to feed their pups and tuck all of them in for the day. That evening, when the sun went back down, the bats would wake up and repeat the exact same routine all over again. Day after day. Night after night. Season after season. Until the temperature began to drop.

  Bats are warm-blooded mammals, just like you and me, and since there were over a million of them living in the big old beautiful cave, their collective body heat could usually keep the whole place nice and toasty warm. But once winter arrived, it would get too cold outside at night for the bats to hunt, unless they wanted to run the risk of freezing solid in midflight. And the colder it got, the fewer insects there were around for them to eat, and they would quickly start to run out of food. When that happened, the whole colony would pack up and fly south for the winter, migrating just like a lot of birds tend to do. They usually took their winter vacation down in South Texas, or sometimes all the way across the border in Old Mexico, where the weather was much warmer, and where they could still find plenty of bugs to eat all winter long.

  Bats aren’t lucky enough to have jackets and winter coats to put on when it gets chilly out. But they do have a coat of fur on their bodies that helps keep them warm, and they can also wrap their furry little wings around their furry little bodies, which is sort of like having a built-in electric blanket.

  But the bats didn’t have a permanent home down there, so they had to sleep in a different tree every night, or in some old, abandoned barn or other building, when they were lucky enough to find one. I figure they didn’t mind roughing it down south for a few months every year, because they always knew it was only temporary. It was probably like going camping for them. And as soon as winter was over and the nights started to warm back up, the bats would all Boogie Back to Texas,* hightailing it north all the way back to their little home in the Hill Country.

  * “Boogie Back to Texas” is the title of a great dance song by a band called Asleep at the Wheel. In my head, I would always picture the bats all singing that song in unison each spring as they flew north toward the Texas border, bound for home.

  When they all finally made it back to the big old beautiful cave, they would pick up right where they’d left off a
nd go right back to sleeping all day and bug hunting all night.

  The bats followed this same routine, year after year, century after century, for countless generations. Until one summer, when a series of wild and weird events began to unfold that would change their lives—and mine—forever.

  I know there may be a few folks out there who doubt the veracity of this tale, but it did happen. My mama didn’t raise no liars. Yes, I admit—I’ve told a tall tale or two. And I have been known to embellish a bit from time to time. But I was raised to believe that a good story is worthy of a little embellishment, and this here yarn I’m fixing to spin is my absolute favorite by a considerably wide margin. If I conflate a few dates or fudge a few facts, it ain’t intentional. It’s because all this stuff happened thirty or forty years ago, and old memories can fade just like old photographs. They can also get scratched up and worn out if you handle them too much. And if you don’t keep them somewhere safe, you might lose them altogether. That’s why I hope you’ll hold on to this one for me.

  Go ahead and pull up a chair, kick off your boots, and put up your feet. I’ll tell all y’all exactly what occurred, to the best of my recollection.

  The wildness and weirdness all began when a thirteen-year-old girl moved in right next door to the big old beautiful cave, and she and the bats became neighbors.…

  THE GIRL FROM LEVEL LAND

  She was this weird little gal named Opal B Flats, and before she moved next door to the bats, she lived her whole life up in Lubbock, a windblasted outpost of humanity located up there in the middle of that endlessly flat and desolate rectangular region at the top of Texas known as “the Panhandle.”

  The Texas Panhandle is the rectangular part of the state at the top that looks like it could be the handle of a Texas-shaped frying pan.

  Opal figured it was probably just a cruel coincidence that her last name was Flats and she also happened to be born in the flattest place on God’s green earth.

  Folks would joke that it was so flat in Lubbock you could see for fifty miles in every direction—and if you stood on a tuna can, you could see for a hundred. Local legend had it that whenever a tree grew in Lubbock, someone would run right over and cut it down, so as not to spoil the breathtakingly boring view of absolutely nothing in every direction.

  Her mama owned a big old Texas-shaped frying pan whose design had always confounded Opal, because its panhandle wasn’t attached to the Panhandle! It was attached somewhere down around Del Rio. Such a missed opportunity. Anyway, Opal’s mama would still use her Texas-shaped frying pan to make Texas-shaped corn bread. And Texas-shaped pancakes, using a Texas-shaped pancake mold small enough to fit inside the big Texas-shaped frying pan. Her mama would always use a blueberry to mark the spot where Lubbock was located, because that was home.

  Opal never liked to refer to the part of Texas she lived in as “the Panhandle.” She didn’t think the name fit, because it failed to convey the mind-numbingly monotonous nature of the landscape around her. So one day she decided to come up with her own nickname for it: Level Land.

  Sometimes she and her mama went to a farmers’ market in a little town about thirty miles west of Lubbock with the name Levelland—as in “Level Land.” Opal loved the name so much she decided to adopt it as her private nickname for the endlessly flat and even rectangular region she called home. Her mama adopted it, too, and neither one of them ever referred to it as “the Panhandle” again. Whenever Grandpa Filo and Uncle Roscoe drove up from the Hill Country to visit, she and her mama would greet them out in the driveway with shouts of “Welcome back to Level Land, y’all!”

  If Opal had her druthers, the region formerly known as the Panhandle would’ve been officially relabeled Level Land on all the state maps. And the state highway patrol would’ve posted warning signs all around its borders that read:

  TRAVELERS BEWARE!

  y’all are fixin’ to enter the desolation known as level land,

  where everything and everyone is pretty much on the level.

  (no gas or trees for the next however-many miles. proceed at your own risk.)

  Opal lived with her mama, Geraldine, who worked as a seamstress and a tailor. That’s a fancy way of saying that she sewed things for a living. Most of her time was spent altering clothes to make them fit people better. But she occasionally created new pieces of clothing, too, that she designed and made herself, by stitching together elaborate mosaics of leftover fabric that she rescued from the trash bin at work. Every dress or shirt or suit she made was like a wearable work of art. Opal loved wearing outfits that her mother had made for her to school, even if some of the other kids always made cracks about them. She knew they were just jealous they couldn’t get sweet custom threads like hers at Sears or Kmart.

  Opal had never been a fan of store-bought clothes. She usually had a hard time finding anything in the girls’ section that fit, because she was so big for her age. Her phys ed teacher had once described her as “kinda barrel-shaped.” And “Flats is round” was a taunt she’d had hurled her way since kindergarten. But Opal never let those cracks bother her too much, because her mama was barrel-shaped, too, and Opal thought she was far and away the most beautiful woman in the world. She hoped she grew up to look just like her someday.

  Opal’s favorite outfit her mama had ever made her was the turquoise tuxedo she sewed Opal for her thirteenth birthday. It was created out of shiny pieces of fabric that made her look like she was wearing a stained-glass window or maybe a futuristic suit of armor. And her mama had stitched a silver capital O for Opal onto its lapel. Whenever Opal put it on, she never wanted to take it off. But she was also careful not to wear it too much, because she didn’t want to wear it out.

  The main thing you probably need to understand about Geraldine is that she wasn’t just Opal’s mama—she was also her favorite person in the whole wide world. And with good reason. Opal’s mama wasn’t just wicked funny, crazy beautiful, and sharp as a tack. She was also kind beyond measure, and she loved music just as much as Opal did. Which was saying something. Because Opal was a full-blown melomaniac.

  In case you haven’t heard that term before, it’s a combination of the words melody and maniac. According to my dictionary, a melomaniac is “an individual who is inordinately and abnormally affected by musical or other tones.” That described Opal to a T.

  According to her mama, when Opal was a newborn, the only thing that would stop her incessant wailing and crying was the sound of music, so her mama just left the radio on all day long. And from the start, Opal’s favorite musician was a fella named Buddy Holly, who happened to be from Lubbock, just like her. The local radio stations would play Buddy’s songs all the time, on account of him being a local boy, and the sound of his voice always made little Opal’s smile stretch from ear to ear.

  When Opal got a little older, she learned that Buddy Holly used to live right there in her neighborhood, in a little red house over on Thirty-Ninth Street, just a few blocks away from the little blue house she shared with her mama. Opal would make a detour every morning on her way to school to walk by Buddy’s old house, whistling the tune to one of his songs as she strolled past.

  As she grew, Opal began to explore her mama’s sizable record collection (which had a few of her daddy’s old records mixed in there, too) and her musical horizons quickly broadened, and she started to listen to a lot of other kinds of music, too. But she never outgrew her first love. No matter how old she got, she would still find herself listening to Buddy Holly’s music whenever she needed a little calming down or cheering up. “Rave On” or “That’ll Be the Day” or “Not Fade Away” would always do the trick. And if it didn’t, in a pinch she could always put on “Peggy Sue” and dance her cares away.

  Ever since she was little, Opal had also loved to draw and doodle all the time, so when she was five, her mama bought her a hardbound sketchbook for her birthday. It was a big blue book filled with nothing but blank pages, and her mama told her she could put whatever she wanted to in there. At first Opal would just practice drawing her favorite cartoon and comic book characters in it. Then she started drawing little portraits of her favorite musicians in there, too, and she would write little mini biographies filled with interesting facts underneath her drawings of them, along with a list of her favorite songs and albums by each person or group. Then Opal started writing down the lyrics to her favorite songs on its pages, too, and before long she was also using it as a kind of journal, notebook, and scrapbook, as well as a sketchbook. Opal called it her “scratchbook,” and she carried it with her everywhere.