Dreamland Social Club (23 page)

Leo sat up. “Well, you know what they say.”

“What do they say?” Jane sat up, really wanting to know.

“You’ll find it as soon as you stop looking for it.”

“What’s that even referring to?” Jane shook her head. “Find
what
?”

Leo laughed. “I don’t know. Love, probably. A million bucks. Whatever you’re looking for.”

Her face got warm, just hearing him say the word
love
. “I really can’t believe this is where Luna Park was.” She looked around at the roof, scattered with old bottles and cans; it was hard to see it as the hallowed ground she’d imagined. “It’s sort of depressing.”

Leo ate another peanut. “I read this essay once about how being on Coney Island is like looking at a double-exposed photograph, how past and present are both always there.”

Jane nodded. “I feel like my life is like that lately.”

His voice was quiet, calm. “I don’t know. But it seems like maybe that’s a good thing, right?”

Jane nodded again, couldn’t find words, heard Leo’s saw song in her head. “How’d you learn to play the saw?”

Leo tilted his head at the question. “I saw this old dude playing a saw on the boardwalk once. I asked him if he’d teach me and he said, ‘The saw finds you; the saw teaches you.’ ”

Jane furrowed her brow.

Leo said, “I thought it sounded crazy, too, but then I saw a saw in the basement at the bar like a day later and I took it home and started experimenting and that was it. I was hooked.”

“I’d like to be hooked on something,” she said, and for a second she thought she might actually say it:

But then Leo said, “You, my dear, are hooked on Coney.” He tapped her sneakers and said, “You’ve got sand in your shoes.”

“Sand in my shoes?”

“It’s an expression.” Leo looked around and nodded approvingly and said, “I think Luna was my favorite.”

Just hearing him say that other L word,
Luna
, made Jane wish she went by that name, had the courage to tell him it was hers.

She said, “Mine too.”

There was a charge in the air then, like the buzz of a phantom carnival ride, and Jane felt pretty sure Leo was going to kiss her. Then he said, “I heard you’re going out with Legs Malstead this weekend,” and the charge dissipated.

Jane said, “It’s not a date,” and Leo said, “He thinks it is.”

“Are you and Venus going?” she dared.

“I’m going,” he said, then quickly added, “Wait. What do you mean
me and Venus
?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You’re together, right?”

“No,” he said, and he shook his head. “She wants us to be, but, well, no.”

Relief was like a crashing wave followed by a series of gentle ripples.

“So when you canceled the other night . . .” Jane sort of wished she could shut up, but her mouth wouldn’t listen. “She said she hung out with you that night.”

“She wanted to talk.” He smiled. “Actually, she wants to do more than talk. That’s the problem. And I don’t know, I just don’t think you should ever have to talk. In quotes. It just shouldn’t be that hard, you know?”

He looked her right in the eyes then and she said, “I think I do.” Then she looked away and just nodded in the dark and wished things were different.

Then Leo said, “Legs is cool” and nodded, too—solemnly, slowly.

“It’s not a date,” Jane said again.

 

That night she sat down with the Dreamland Social Club questionnaire in the dimly lit living room, on Preemie’s dusty old couch. She didn’t overthink it. She just started filling it out with the first answers that came to mind, whether they were right or not.

 

 

What’s your earliest memory?

What sound makes you happy?

What was the last dream you had that you remember?

Driving through the countryside toward a burning Ferris wheel.
Name one thing you want to do before you die.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

What’s the best thing about being you?

 

She paused there and thought about writing again,
There is no answer
.

But she didn’t.

She looked around the room, at that Claverack horse—which looked sort of possessed in the golden glow of the table lamp on the end table—and at the pewter Siamese squirrel and the poster for
Is It Human?
back on the wall, and she wondered whether this was it. Whether all of this was the best thing.
The whole carny thing
, but not just that, being here.

She picked up Birdie’s diary then, and started to read. It started years before Birdie had gotten married, years before she’d met Preemie, and she only wrote in it every few months, if that. Then Jane found an entry that read
“I met someone today. Frank, his name is. He was one of those preemie babies in Dreamland. He saw me riding a carousel horse in Steeplechase and said that when he did he realized it was time to settle down and get married. I asked him how the horse felt about that, whether it had a good dowry, and he laughed and said that he’d build a stable to last a lifetime for that horse if I’d just go on one date with him. What a character. I guess I like characters.”

The next entry wasn’t for another bunch of months.
“We’re getting married,”
read a clearly dashed-off entry.
“I got cast in a picture. More soon . . .”

There was a card shoved into the pages of the journal right there, and Jane picked it up and studied it. It had a picture of a bird on the front, and on the inside, someone had written,
“Birdie, I told you I’d always love you . . . and the horse you rode in on.—Frankie”

So was that it? Was
that
the horse she’d been riding at Steeplechase the day they’d first met? Was Preemie—it was almost laughable to think about—a sentimental softie? And at the outset none of this had really had anything to do with Claverack at all?

H
ER FATHER WAS STANDING in the foyer, wearing a suit, when Jane came down for breakfast. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Loki’s sending a car. They want to talk again today, and they don’t want me to have to deal with picket lines. I don’t even know where the meeting’s going to be.”

“Dad,” Jane said pleadingly, “please, please, please don’t sell them your design.”

“Love,” he said, fixing his tie in the foyer mirror, “I know you have your concerns, but I don’t think you understand. I mean, to build a roller coaster on Coney Island. The most famous amusement park to have ever existed. Do you understand how huge that would be for me? For us? It would be the biggest possible comeback that I could have ever imagined. And I need that badly. A comeback.”

She felt like she was going to cry, and could only nod.

A horn tooted, and her father looked through the small window next to the front door. “That’s my car,” he said, and she just nodded again and managed a small “Good luck.”

 

The funhouse mirrors were long gone, but in school that morning Jane still felt like her eyes were drawn into large droops and like her whole stomach bent and curved to the side. She felt too tall one second, too short the next. Too skinny, too fat. Too stocky, too lanky. Too normal, too weird. Too quiet, too loud. Too sad, too happy. Too everything, too nothing.

What was normal anyway?

Was that all they did as a club? Stunts like that? If so, it seemed sort of silly, but also sort of, well, challenging. How had they pulled it off? And who’d come up with the idea? Had it been Babette? Or Leo? Maybe even her mom? And what would they do next, and when?

Looking in the real mirror and trying to focus in on the actuality—of her face, her body, her edges—brought her back to the reality of her situation. Her father was meeting with Loki again. She would have to tell Leo. There was no way around it. She had to tell him before anyone else did so that she could explain. About how badly her dad needed this. And, by association, how badly she needed it. The Anchor was just a bar. They could move it, open up a block or two away. Everyone could be happy.

Right?

 

“Where’s Leo?” she said when she hadn’t seen him all morning and didn’t see him at lunch.

“Some Loki protest or something,” Babette said. “His mother pulled him out of school to go with him. His dad was going, too. Something about the weenie.”

“Shoot me,” Jane said, and Babette said, “What’s gotten into you?”

“My dad,” Jane said. Because she couldn’t see the point of hiding it anymore. “My dad is the weenie.”

 

In Mr. Simmons’s class it was time to share the sideshow banners/barkers assignment, and Jane thought that meant it was time to suddenly come down with a violent forty-five-minute flu, but when Babette volunteered to go first, she decided to stay put.

Mr. Simmons nodded at Babette—“Okay, you’re up”—and just like that, she stood up on top of her desk and said, “Step right up and witness the ultimate in doom and gloom! You’ll be glad you aren’t her! She’s challenged in both stature and outlook and has dealt with this cruel world’s gaze the only way she knows how, by trying to shrink into shadows of darkness and hide. She is the Goth Dwarf of Coney Island and has only recently come out of hiding. Do you dare to tower over her tiny, ill-proportioned limbs? Can you stop yourself from gasping in horror as you stare?” She looked at Mr. Simmons and said, “I was hoping for a bigger finish, but that’s all I have.”

“I like it,” Mr. Simmons said. “But I hardly think of you as someone who is trying to shrink into the shadows, Babette.” She shrugged agreement and said, “It’s theater, Mr. Simmons.”

“Indeed it is.” He faced the room. “Who’s next?”

No one volunteered, and so Mr. Simmons called on the Stephanie or Kira who’d questioned her potential exploitation. She huffed, then got up and went to the front of the class with a rolled-up piece of paper in her hand. “Step right up,” she said in a perky voice, “and witness one of the rarest specimens on earth. You will look at her and wonder how it is that she could be this way!”

Mr. Simmons was stifling a laugh.

“For she looks
exactly the same
on the left as she does on the right. She is like a mirror image, split down the middle. She is Symmetrical Girl! Come have a look!”

“Thank you, Kira,” Mr. Simmons said. Then, almost under his breath, “You tried.”

And then he called on Jane. She knew he would. So she was ready. She went to the front of the class with a page she’d ripped out of her notebook and cut a certain way and cleared her throat. “Step right up and witness one of the most spectacular examples of genetics gone haywire the world has ever seen! Her grandfather was a preemie, one of the tiniest souls to ever survive to walk the planet, and her grandmother part-bird. Her mother, if you can believe it, was a mermaid! Imagine, if you will, the foul gene pool and what monster it might spawn for its next generation.” She started to unroll her paper, the center of it cut out in a square, and said. “Rest your eyes upon the hideous, dreaded face of ABSOLUTELY NORMAL GIRL.” At that she held up her paper frame and stuck her face through it.

Mr. Simmons laughed, and Jane just looked at him and shrugged.

“A mermaid?” he said, eyebrows raised.

“Long story,” she answered, and went to her seat.

A
DISCO BALL HAD EXPLODED into a billion tiny pieces that floated in the air. Or at least that’s what it looked like. The building that housed Lola Staar’s Dreamland Roller Rink was an old landmark that had been shuttered up every time Jane had passed it before, and she felt happy that it had become protected property before Loki had come to town. It was elaborate and grand—if run-down and generally in disrepair—but Jane loved it for its oldness, for its history. It had once been a famous restaurant. She’d seen pictures of it in its heyday.

Legs hesitated by the line to get in. “Is this okay?”

She said, “Better than okay.”

“Oh, good.”

Legs nodded happily, and Jane made a mental note to be careful about what she said. She was pretty sure she would fall head over heels for the roller rink—makeshift and dingy as it was—and she needed to be sure Legs didn’t think it was he who was making her swoon. More than anything she wanted to get inside so she could find Leo, so they could talk.

She had never seen a giant rollerskate before and was surprised by Legs’s grace, though not surprised he’d had to bring his own special-order skates. The motion of skating came back to her faster than she’d imagined it would, and she felt steady enough making lazy circles with him, but he was a better skater—
faster
—and he soon took off to take a few laps of his own. She slid off the rink and turned to watch the flow. Compared to Legs, all the other skaters looked like little people. Debbie was there, H.T. and some of his crew, Babette, Rita—and Marcus. She dearly hoped her brother didn’t know she was on a date with a giant. Even though she really wasn’t.

She still hadn’t seen Leo.

Legs swung by and waved her back out, and they were just settling into the rhythm of a new song when she saw him reach out to take her hand. Right then someone blew between them superfast—saying, “Watch out, slow-pokes”—and skated off. It was Venus, her dark dreads flying out behind her.

Two seconds later a laughing Leo whizzed between them. “Sorry, lovebirds.”

Jane’s face burned as she watched him chase after Venus with such confidence that she couldn’t believe he was on skates. Then he shouted, “You can run but you can’t hide!” when he lost his prey in the crowd. He turned and skated backwards for a minute, looking right at Jane. “We need to talk,” she almost said, but then she didn’t. Leo didn’t like “talk.”