Dreamland Social Club(13)
Marcus was reading in bed by the light of an antique lamp on his night table. He put the book aside as Jane sat at the foot of the bed.
“Do you remember that game we used to play when we were little,” she asked. “Trip to the Moon?”
He thought for a second and put on a deep voice. “This is your captain. We are passing through a storm. We are quite safe.”
“Exactly!” Jane felt relieved that she hadn’t made it up. “It’s based on a ride at Luna Park. That’s an actual quote.”
“Weird,” Marcus said, and Jane added, “And the Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea game, where Mom would put on her parka and pretend she was an Eskimo taking us to the North Pole to see polar bears?”
Her mother had made an igloo out of white sheets and tickled their faces with seaweed made of green yarn when the submarine surfaced.
Her brother nodded.
“That, too.” Jane’s nose itched from the memory. She was pretty sure there’d been a whale made out of a pillow on the way to the North Pole, and some sea turtles made of upturned green bowls. Had there been seahorses, too?
No. She didn’t think so.
“What are you doing, Jane?” Marcus said, his voice full of a strange kind of disappointment.
“Nothing,” she said. “Why?”
He switched off the light and turned on his side.
CHAPTER five
JANE SHRIEKED AND SWATTED at the headless rubber chicken that had flown across the hall and smacked her on the head, then watched it fall to her feet, a soft sickly looking thing with fake blood drips on its severed neck. A bunch of geeks stood a few paces down the hall, laughing it up.
Suddenly, Babette’s bendy friend picked up the chicken and hurled it at the geeks. “Grow up, *s,” she said, and they had to duck as the poultry pounded the lockers behind them with a deep thwack. She didn’t stick around long enough for Jane to thank her, so Jane just hurriedly collected her books. Babette was standing right there when she closed her locker door and turned around. Jane said, “I thought you said they wouldn’t give me the time of day.”
Babette’s tiny eyes went wide. “You really don’t know?”
Jane had no idea what she could possibly not know. She shook her head. Whatever it was, it wasn’t good. The geeks were still laughing it up by their own lockers.
“Stoop down or something,” Babette said. “I can’t talk to you when you’re all the way up there.”
Jane lowered to Babette’s eye level, into a squat.
Babette looked around as if to make sure no one was listening. “Okay, so a long time ago, like in the twenties or thirties or some other time B.C., Grandpa Claverack built a carousel, and it was sort of famous and it was in Steeplechase Park for years.”
Jane hadn’t been expecting a history lesson. For a second she was relieved, except then she remembered that this story was going to have something to do with her.
Babette could really talk: “After Steeplechase closed, they moved the carousel but some of the horses had to be taken off, since the new building was smaller. Preemie somehow got his hands on one of the horses and for years, the Claveracks had been asking Preemie if they could buy it off him. Since their grandfather made it and all. But Preemie wouldn’t do it. And he used to taunt old man Claverack on the boardwalk, telling him to giddyup and neighing at him.”
Now Jane thought she might be sick. “You’re making this up.”
“Afraid not. And apparently his grandsons”—she nodded toward the geeks—“know how to hold a grudge. Preemie used to neigh at Harvey—he’s the one who confronted you. And Cliff, too, he’s the one to the left.” Turning back to Jane, she said, “I would have told you this yesterday if you’d told me who you were.”
Jane stood up and they walked in silence then, heading toward their first class. Jane pictured Harvey—the way his pores tore right through the ink on his skin—and then his brother, sort of a Harvey-lite, but still scary.
She could just give them the horse.
It would be that easy.
“People were taking bets on whether you two would even show up today,” Babette said.
Jane looked at her blankly for lack of anything else to do. Crying, while tempting, was not an option.
“I lost ten bucks, but I’m actually happy I was wrong.” Babette stopped short to let the legless kid roll by on his skateboard. “Because believe it or not, things had started to get sort of boring around here.”
They entered the classroom then and Babette said, “And another thing.” She waved her hand to indicate Jane should bend down again, and so Jane did. “You’re brother’s cute and I happen to be in the market for a boyfriend.”
Jane looked for Marcus between classes that morning but couldn’t find him anywhere. Luckily, she survived several hours without further incident and made it to lunch. Juniors and seniors were allowed to leave the school and eat on the boardwalk, and Jane thought a bit of air might do her some good. When she saw Tattoo Boy sitting alone on one of the benches right near school, she almost turned right back around, but she didn’t. He was drinking from a bottle of water, and something about the fact that it was just water reassured her, calmed her.