Dreamland Social Club(25)

She felt weird flat-out asking Rita if she was born here and if her mother had grown up here and maybe had known Jane’s mother, so she asked, instead, “So what extracurriculars do you guys do?” That was a normal question, wasn’t it?

Babette and Rita exchanged a look so quick that Jane would have missed it if she hadn’t sort of been anticipating it.

“I don’t do much,” Rita said. “I spend most of my spare time at a gym, doing gymnastics and stuff.”

“Cool,” Jane said, feeling terribly uncool.

“I do the occasional piece for the school paper,” Babette said. She set about eating her brown-bag breakfast.

So they weren’t talking about the Dreamland Social Club. They weren’t going to be any help in that regard. The fact of it irked her, and she decided to just dig in. Trying to sound casual, she turned back to Rita and said, “So were you born here?”

Rita nodded.

“And your parents?”

Another nod.

Jane leaned in toward Rita. “Did they go to school here?”

Rita looked up and spoke through a mouthful of bagel. “You got a lot of questions.”

“Well, my mother went here, so if your mom did, too, maybe they knew each other.”

Right then Marcus walked over and sat down and Jane wanted to scream, What do you think you’re doing? It took me more than a week to get a seat here! She said only, “This is Marcus. My brother.”

“I know who you are.” The curls of Rita’s hair seemed to spring to life. “Everyone knows who you are.”

Turning back to Jane she said, “How old’s your mother?”

Marcus said, “She’s dead,” and Jane wanted to smack him.

“Oh,” Rita said, curls deflating some. “Sorry.”

Jane said, “But if she were alive she would’ve been, like, fifty, fifty-one?”

Rita shook her head. “My mom’s not that old.”

Jane didn’t understand. “But there was a woman in the yearbook that looked so much like you.”

“I look a lot like one of my aunts,” Rita said. “She’s older.”

Babette pinched Jane’s arm. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Jane shrugged and Babette sighed, then said, “How?”

“Brain aneurysm,” Marcus said. “Here one minute, gone the next.”

He looked at the second half of Rita’s sandwich, untouched on a piece of waxy white paper. “You going to eat that?”

She pushed it his way and Jane noted the gold rings on her fingers, matching the hoops peeking out from those curls. She couldn’t believe Marcus could be so nonchalant about things sometimes.

“Can you ask her?” Jane pressed. “Your aunt?”

“Yeah,” Rita said. “Sure, I guess.”

Marcus was chewing, but Jane could tell he was also subtly shaking his head.

They were all quiet for a moment and then Babette, apparently taking her tact cue from Marcus, turned to him and said, “So, did you hear about the party on Saturday?”

He nodded while he chewed, not looking up from his half sandwich.

“You should totally go.”

Jane felt embarrassed on Babette’s behalf.

“Hey, I just heard about the headless chicken thing.” He turned to Jane as he brushed his hands together—the sandwich was gone—and got up. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Jane was annoyed that he was playing the part of the good big brother when he never did it without an audience. “It was a lifetime ago. And anyway Rita helped me out.”

Marcus turned to Rita and said, “Thanks for the sandwich,” then got up to throw out his trash. Rita crumbled the waxy white paper into a ball and threw it about ten feet to land in the same can a second later. She stood and pumped her fists in the air, revealing the brown skin of her taut belly. Marcus turned and smiled. Babette looked like she might cry but only for a second, only until Rita turned back to the table, pulled her shirt down. She had some serious breasts in there.

“So really,” Babette said brightly to Jane, “what are you going to wear?”





The next morning a naked baby doll hung from the door of Jane’s locker in a noose. The Claveracks were hovering, as usual, and Jane decided to just leave the doll there. At least for now. Maybe even all day. What did she care? It was just a doll. So she gathered her books, closed her locker, and walked away, leaving the baby hanging.

“You forgot your grandfather,” Harvey said. “He looks like he could use an incubator right about now.”

“That’s just not funny,” she said.

“You know what’s really not funny?” Cliff said. “You keeping our grandfather’s horse when he made it and has the right to do whatever he wants with it.”

“And what, exactly, does he want to do with it?” she snapped.

“Sell it,” Harvey snorted. “What else?” He elbowed his brother. “Ride it around the living room?”

“How much is it worth?” she asked. It wasn’t like her family couldn’t use the money.

“Like we’d tell you,” Harvey said. “You know what, Cliff? That old house of Preemie’s doesn’t look that hard to break into.”