Dreamland Social Club(49)
“I can’t stop thinking about you.” He ran a hand through his hair, a mess of unwashed black strands. “About you and your mom, I mean. Those games. I swear I dreamed about the Elephant Hotel last night.”
The next bell rang and he said, “Tomorrow afternoon.” He was backing away. “The Wonder stuff.”
She had to consciously act calm when she nodded and said, “Yes. Definitely.”
“Hot date?” someone said, and Jane turned to find Legs towering over her.
“No,” she said.
“Well, I should hope not,” he said, and then he added, “So Friday. I’ll pick you up around seven?”
“I could just meet you there,” Jane said.
“A gentleman such as myself could never allow it.” He headed off down the hall, and the bulletin board he’d been standing in front of revealed a new poster. It said dreamland social club
TODAY, ROOM 222
Put yourself in the picture.
The flush came before the stall door swung open, but Jane saw it only in the mirror’s reflection. She didn’t see anyone coming out of the stall and got spooked, so she whirled around, looked down, and saw Minnie Polinksy. She was wiping her cheeks and her eyes were bloodshot. She’d been crying.
She looked up at Jane, took her hands away from her face with one more swipe of tears, and sighed loudly. She went down to the far end of the sink counter and pulled a small stool out from underneath. She climbed up, turned on the water, looked at herself in the mirror, and breathed hard, then looked over at Jane’s reflection.
Jane didn’t have anything to say to her and Minnie didn’t seem to want to say anything either, but Jane’s feet wouldn’t move. She thought maybe she should tell Minnie that it wasn’t really a date. She hated that it seemed like she was in some way contributing to the breaking of Minnie’s tiny heart when Jane’s own heart wasn’t really into it. Jane would have stomped on anybody’s heart for Leo; not even Venus shooting daggers at her would make one bit of difference. But not for Legs.
Minnie turned off her water and reached for a paper towel. She said, “He wants to be normal, you know.”
Jane just waited.
“It’s the only reason he wants to be with you and not me.” Paper towels looked like bath towels in Minnie’s small hands. “He thinks being with you will make him more normal.”
Jane’s feet still hadn’t heeded her command to move when Minnie stepped back off the stool and walked out. Looking in the mirror just then, Jane suddenly felt newly determined to go rollerskating with Legs. Not to help him be normal—how could anyone possibly help anyone be that? least of all her?—but to prove that Legs had the right to go out with whomever he wanted . . . and so did she.
This time when Jane walked past Room 222, she definitely saw Leo inside. So he was a member of the Dreamland Social Club. He had put himself in the picture.
This time, she had half a mind to just open the door and walk in and sit down and see if anyone cared. Minnie was there, though, which was reason enough to stay out. In fact, there were now more reasons to stay away than to go in. Many, many more.
Still, she needed to ask Babette for a homework assignment she’d missed when she’d been with Principal Jackson and the Claveracks. So she walked back up to the door and knocked. The voices inside went silent, and Jane just waited. Babette opened the door and said, “Well, hello, Jane.”
Debbie stood up from a desk at the front of the room and H.T., who’d been sitting atop that desk with his back to the door, spun himself around, a wide white smile on his face. Leo looked up from where he was sitting next to Venus, their heads bent together over some sort of book or album. Minnie just stared and Legs did the same, though with a softer look in his eyes than his ex’s.
“Well, hello, Babette,” Jane mimicked. “Can I get our homework assignment from Pre-Calc?”
Babette looked back over her shoulder into the room; Jane watched a few of the others make and then drop eye contact with Babette, who turned back to Jane and said, “Can I swing by your house in like an hour?”
“Sure,” Jane said, and then Babette all but closed the door in her face.
CHAPTER seven
AT HOME, MUSIC MADE OF STRINGS and swells emanated from the heating vents in the kitchen. Jane went out into the yard, opened the metal doors to the basement, and called out, “Dad?”
“Yup!”
Once downstairs, Jane saw an old record spinning on the Victrola.
“This Victrola’s in great shape.” Her father turned down the volume. “And you’ll never believe this thing.” He pointed to a weird-looking cylinder and horn on the table. “Hang on.”
He lifted the needle on the Victrola and went back to the cylindrical contraption and started to crank a handle on it. A woman’s high-pitched, garbled voice came from the horn, singing, “I’ll be your little honey, I will promise that, Said Nellie as she rolled her dreamy eyes,It’s a shame to take the money,/Said the bird on Nellie’s hat . . .”
“Crazy, right?” he said.
Jane thought, Yup, officially.
“So how did the meeting go?” she asked, but her father was now singing along, cranking with intensity: “Then to Nellie Willie whispered as they fondly kissed,/I’ll bet that you were never kissed like that.”