Dreamland Social Club(47)

“That’s sort of wild to think about.” Leo tossed his grass blade. “We could’ve met when we were six.”

For a moment she imagined what that trip would have been like, what Coney would have been like all those years ago, what it would’ve been like to see this all as a kid, with her mom walking her down the boardwalk, holding her hand and playing tour guide, and not as who she was now, older, more alone, adrift. What it would’ve been like to meet some weird boy her age, with a weird accent, and what it would’ve been like to pretend to be interested in whatever he was interested in then, like comic books or guitars.

They sat quietly a while longer and finally she said, “Did you ever hear that story about the elephant that swam to Staten Island?”

“Sure!” Leo shook his head. “Poor bastard.”

Jane knew it as a happy story, one of escape. “But he made it!”

“He did. But, I mean, it’s Staten Island!”

Jane looked at him blankly.

“Never mind.” He shook his head. “But anyway, they charged the elephant with vagrancy and put him in jail.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. Then people from Luna went to get him and brought him back.”

“Oh.” Jane hadn’t remembered reading that part. It made the story entirely different.

“I’m not really sure my mom would want us to be back here,” she said finally, the thought having occurred to her right then for the first time. “I mean, she made such a point of leaving.”

Leo shrugged. “I’m not sure it matters.”

After another moment, he sat up and said, “All right. Time to climb.”

“No,” Jane said, looking at the thick base of the Jump.

“Yes,” he said, and then he waited for her to come to his side. He put two fingers into his mouth and let out a piercing whistle.

“What are you doing?” Jane said, confused and a little panicked, and then she saw the lights coming their way. Two security guards. “Why did you do that?” she snapped, but Leo wasn’t moving, wasn’t running.

“It’s cool,” he said. “I know these guys.”

“You sure about this, Leo?” one of the men said as they stopped in front of Leo and Jane and turned off their flashlights.

“I’m sure.”

One of the guards went to the structure surrounding the base of the Jump and found a key on his waistband keychain and opened a door. He pushed it open—nothing but darkness in there—and stepped back, looked at his watch, and said, “I’m giving you fifteen minutes. Not a second more.”

“Appreciate it,” Leo said, shaking his hand and accepting the flashlight being offered. He nodded at Jane to follow him inside.

The ladder in the center of the room led them up to a hatch that opened with a good hard shove from Leo. Jane stood on the ground, waiting for him to abandon the ladder. It took a minute—he looked around a bit—but then he lifted his legs out, scurried around, then stuck his head back down and shined the flashlight in her face. “Come on up,” he said.

“You didn’t have to pay them, did you?” she asked.

“Nah,” Leo said. “They both have unpaid bar tabs.”

“Well, thanks,” she said.

She climbed, the metal dusty and cold on her hands, and then took Leo’s hand at the top and stepped up onto the roof of the base.

“You ready?” he said, and Jane nodded. She wasn’t sure what the point of any of this was, the re-creating, but she felt good—different—doing it, being out on nights like this. Jane was not the kind of girl who would scale the Parachute Jump with a boy at two in the morning. Or at least she hadn’t been until now.

So they climbed, on the inner side of the tower, and Jane tried to imagine that she wasn’t climbing but instead was sitting in some kind of harness, being hauled to the top by cables. When she finally caught up with Leo, she said, “I think this is high enough.”

He said, “Okay,” and hung his elbows on a rung and Jane did the same, to give her hands a break, and they just perched there for a minute with the wind blowing and the ocean right there crashing and churning, and Leo said, “Your mother was one crazy chick.”

“Her mother used to pretend she was half-bird, and her father called himself Preemie,” Jane said.

Leo said, “Good point.”

“The Anchor actually looks kind of nice from here,” she said. It was true.

“Well, take a mental picture, since it’ll probably be gone come spring.”

“I don’t understand,” she said. “I mean, if they build new rides and stuff, won’t that mean more people? People who would drink at the Anchor?”

“Loki owns the Anchor.”

“I thought your dad owned—”

“My dad owns the bar. The business. But Loki owns the property.”

Oh.

“And they keep jacking up my dad’s rent. It’s ridiculous. Probably illegal.”

Oh, no.

Jane said, “But if more people spent money there, and it made more money, then the rent wouldn’t be a big deal, right?”

“You’re missing the point.” Leo shook his head. “They’ll knock the building down before they let the Anchor stay there. They’re even making anonymous calls to the health department about violations that totally don’t exist. Because that right there”—he nodded at the bar—“is where they want to put a big indoor water park or roller coaster or some bullshit, so they might not even renew my dad’s lease.”