Dreamland Social Club(38)

Jane turned the page and saw Leo again, next to what looked like a shack beneath the coaster. “People lived there,” he said.

Uh-oh, I think I hear a train coming. Jane’s hands formed fists, as if bracing for some kind of impact.





My mom is shaking the pot on the stove and saying, “Oh, no. Better hold on or we’ll lose our dinner.”

My brother and I are jumping around and he’s making a rumbling noise. We’re playing that we live under a roller coaster and every few minutes all hell breaks loose.

He stops rumbling and my mom stops shaking the pot, and she wipes her brow and says, “Whew! That was a close one!” She puts an empty pan in the oven and says, “I better get this in before the next coaster comes by.”

“I’ll help,” I say. “I’ll set the table.”

My brother says, “You can’t set the table, you idiot. It’s all going to slide off.”

“Marcus,” my mother says. “Be nice.”

I feel confused and left out and then my mother says, “Uh-oh. I think I hear another one. Everybody hold on!” She runs and grabs me and picks me up and spins me around and the rumbling—my mom and brother making deep rumbling sounds—starts again. . . .





Leo was still talking. “And before that, it was a hotel. They actually built the coaster around the hotel—like put steel support beams through the hotel—to save the building. People don’t do stuff like that anymore.” He shook his head. “They just knock shit down.”

She wanted to tell him right then about the Coney games of her childhood, about her mother. But it felt like maybe it was too soon and too, well, heavy.

Together they looked through pages and pages of photos of the Thunderbolt after it had been turned into a pile of metal and wood and wire. There were lone coaster cars sitting in the middle of the field days later, and then the book ended with another shot of Leo, on the same spot on the boardwalk as in the first shot, but with nothing but sky behind him.

“This is amazing.” Jane handed the album back. “Thanks.”

“It’s weird.” Leo thumbed the pages. “I find myself looking at it a lot. I’m not sure why. Maybe to remind myself of what’s possible. What’s likely, even. I got this tattoo”—he pointed to a T struck through by a bolt of lightning on his calf—“because of the way my father always talked about the Thunderbolt and about Coney in general. I think I wanted something permanent, you know?”

“Was that your first one?”

“Nah, this was my first one.” He pointed to an anchor on his arm.

“Why’d you get that one?”

“Things were weird.” He shook his head. “Bad weird. My parents had just separated.”

“Oh,” Jane said. “I didn’t know.”

“Yeah, they’re like this Coney Island power couple with their two bars. And with my mother doing all her Coney Islanders for Coney stuff. Only they’re not.” He nodded. “I think I wanted to prove to myself I could do something just for me. I wasn’t allowed. I couldn’t afford it. But I did it anyway. I can’t explain, but it was like tricking myself into thinking things would get better, and that I was in control.”

“Did they? Get better?”

“Yeah, actually. They did. In my head anyway. I guess that’s why I haven’t stopped yet.”

Jane looked at his neck, saw his Adam’s apple travel down his throat, and felt like she was struggling for air. He was too cute. Too easy. And way too close. She wanted, more than anything, to touch him. Just his hand, or his arm. Anything. Just to do it. To help her feel real and safe. Because something about the Thunderbolt all overgrown—strangled by nature and abandonment—gave her the creeps. And then she started thinking about the books in the attic, the fires on Coney, the millions of people crammed onto the beach, and the electrocution of Topsy and she felt, possibly for the first time, sort of scared of things.

Of Coney.

Of Leo.

Of herself.

She said, “Why’d you get the seahorse?”

“Oh, that one I just thought was kind of creepy and cool.”

Jane took a moment then said, “I remembered where I knew it from when I got home the other night. It’s in the book of mermaid pictures that my mother gave me when I was little. I dream about it sometimes.”

“Cool.” Leo sat back on his elbows, and his T-shirt—for some rock band Jane didn’t know, best she could tell—stretched tighter across his stomach. “What’s the dream like?”

She spotted a lightning bug hovering over some tall weeds and tried to keep her gaze fuzzy so she could see it again the next time it glowed. “I’m suffocating and I see it and I grab onto it, thinking it’s going to swim up to the surface with me, but then I realize it’s fake and that it’s not going to help me and only I can save myself.”

“Pretty deep,” Leo said with a smile.

“Yeah.” She smiled back and saw the lightning bug again. “Doesn’t take a genius to analyze that one.”

They sat quietly for a while, and Jane felt like a spell had been put on them. She didn’t want to break it, but then Leo did when he dug into his bag and said, “I brought these.”