Dreamland Social Club(16)

“Hey.” He held out an oversize hand. “I’m Legs Malstead.”

She went to shake it but her hand barely covered the span of his palm; it was more of a high-five than anything until Legs enclosed her hand in his other hand to hold in there long enough to have a proper shake. Jane was grateful he had a system.

“I’m Jane,” she said. “Dryden.”

“I know.”

“Oh.” She figured she should just cut to the chase. “I was wondering, do you keep archives?”

He bent down on one knee and, irrationally, Jane thought he might propose. Instead he said, “We do.” And then he seemed a little bit irrationally excited when he said, “What are you looking for?”

Jane felt her cheeks tighten at the thought of having to say any of it out loud, so she kept it short and sweet. “My mom went to school here.” Talking about her mother out loud, with a stranger—and a giant, no less—took the wind out of her. She had to concentrate hard in order to speak again. “I wanted to see if she was ever written up in the paper.”

And of course the founding of a new school club seemed potentially newsworthy, but she didn’t feel the need to elaborate. Not until she knew more, anyway. Not until she could breathe again.

Legs nodded quickly and said, “Just give me one minute to finish something up. . . .” He handed her an issue of the paper. “Read while you wait.”

Jane’s eyes landed on a Faculty Q&A in a box on the first page of the paper. It definitely offered up some interesting facts about Coney Island High’s chemistry teacher—like that he worked at the Coney Island Sideshow during the summer, as Garth the Human Garbage Disposal—but the reporter hadn’t asked the questions Jane would have asked. Then again, she probably wouldn’t have chosen a teacher to shine her spotlight on. She wished for a spotlight on H.T. or Leo, even one about Babette. Because she couldn’t just flat-out ask her new classmates things like “What’s the best thing about being a goth dwarf?” and “What’s the worst?” Or “Why do you get tattoos?” Or “Do you envy people with legs?” She’d be tagged a Looky Lou forever. And besides, the core question behind every question she wanted to know the answer to was unanswerable. It was “What’s it like to be you?”

And not me.

She sort of felt like it was the only question ever worth asking anybody. Not where are you from? Or what do your parents do? Or what do you want to be when you grow up? Or any of the usual bunk. Just what is it like? What are you like?

It was a question she couldn’t answer.

You know who you are.

Or you don’t.

“Okay,” Legs said finally, putting some papers in some sort of courier bag. “So. Archives. They’re definitely not complete. Come this way. . . .” He walked toward a door at the far end of the room and opened it. Boxes upon boxes filled tall metal shelves. “But you’re welcome to have a look.”

Right then the genius toddler came through the office door, walked over, and jumped up onto Legs’s knee and kissed him. So, apparently, she wasn’t a toddler.

“Oh, hey,” Legs said, almost falling over. He indicated Jane. “This is Jane Dryden; Jane, this is Minnie Polinsky.”

“His girlfriend,” Minnie said, in a high-pitched voice. She gave Jane a smug look, then turned to Legs and said, “Come on. We’re going to be late.”

“Oh,” Legs said, then he looked at Jane, then back at-Minnie, and said, “Jane here wants to look through the archives. Isn’t that interesting?”

“Yeah,” Minnie said, sort of slowly and suspiciously. “Sure. I guess. But we still have to go to . . . you know.”

Legs sighed. “Jane? Can you do this another time? There’s someplace I have to be and I can’t leave you here alone. We can set a time. I can help.”

“Sure,” Jane said. “No problem.” She nodded. “That’d be great.”

She followed them out into the hall, then said goodbye and started walking away down the hall in the opposite direction. When she heard them open a door and disappear into a classroom, though, Jane doubled back.

Muted laughter came from Room 222, and she stopped near the closed door.

The Dreamland Social Club was meeting.

She walked by the room a few times—back and forth, back and forth, as casually as she could—and caught glimpses through a small window in the door of Legs and Minnie and H.T. and Babette and some others—was Leo there? She couldn’t be sure—but then the bearded girl came into the hall and Jane panicked and rushed down to the main floor and out the front doors into a wall of hot, salty air.





CHAPTER six


THE SPIDER PLANT THAT HUNG by the one window in the painfully dark living room seemed to be straining toward the glass for survival. On the TV in the corner a black-and-white woman pointed at a man with no arms or legs and screamed, “But is it human ?”

“Look,” Marcus said. “It’s a movie about our school.”

“Not funny,” Jane said. “Where were you all day? I looked for you everywhere.”

He shrugged.

She plopped down on one of Preemie’s old couches. The cushions were less cushy than she’d expected and she’d plopped too hard. It hurt. “You’ve got an admirer,” she said. A dwarf had just appeared on-screen.