Dreamland Social Club(51)

Was he cute or wasn’t he?

Babette started to whistle “By the Beautiful Sea,” then stopped when Marcus peeked his head into the room. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry. Didn’t know you had company.” He closed the door.

Through a tiny pout, Babette said, “Okay, is your brother gay or something? Because I’m throwing all sorts of mad vibes at him and they’re all just getting deflected big-time.”

“No,” Jane said. “Not gay.”

Babette leaned in. “He doesn’t have some crazy long-distance relationship with some hot Brit chick, does he?”

Jane shook her head. “Nothing like that.”

There was no nice way of saying that her brother was into Rubber Rita. Didn’t Babette see it? Wasn’t it obvious by now?

“Well then, you’ve got to help me out.” Babette started scribbling in her notebook. “Tell him how cool I am. And, I don’t know. I mean, can you give me any insider tips? Stuff he likes? Anything.”

“I don’t know, Babette. He’s my brother.”

“Fine, don’t help.” Babette crossed her tiny arms.

“Don’t get mad.” Jane just wanted to smooth things over. “People have to grow on him.”

They were quiet for a minute, then Babette climbed up onto the bed, sighed, and said, “You know, Legs is really, really sweet. Way sweeter than Leo. And available, too. You should give him a chance.”

“Thanks,” Jane said, once more fighting the urge to tell her about the keys to Coney Island and the fact that she and Leo were meeting up for secret outings. But Babette wouldn’t understand—or wouldn’t even believe her. And besides, if Babette could keep the goings-on of the Dreamland Social Club a secret, Jane could have her secrets, too. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Babette looked at her watch. “I should probably go home and watch my parents pretend they like each other.”

Jane said, “You can tell me about it if you want.”

“Snore,” Babette said. “It’s so boring. I keep waiting for them to tell me they’re getting divorced.”

“They might not,” Jane said.

“I actually want them to,” Babette said. “I just don’t know which one I’d hate living with more.”

Babette gathered up all of her notebooks and textbooks and papers and shoved them back into her exploding book bag.

It was only after Jane had escorted her to the front door and gone back upstairs that she realized Babette had left a piece of paper behind.

Across the top, it said Dreamland Social Club Membership Questionnaire, in curvy handwriting that looked a lot like Jane’s mom’s. The print was fuzzy and blurred, like it was possible the original document had just been photocopied and photocopied for some twenty years.

Below that were a series of questions: What’s your earliest memory?

What sound makes you happy?

What was the last dream you had that you remember?

Name one thing you want to do before you die.

Why is a raven like a writing desk?

What’s the best thing about being you?



So the raven question meant her mother had also read of Alice’s adventures. No surprise. But had that last question been one that Jane’s mother had actually asked her at some point, maybe more than once? Is that why she’d so often wondered it of others? Jane had no idea, nor did she have any clue as to how she would answer any of the questions if anyone asked her. But it didn’t matter.

No one would.

She was the lone member of the Jane Dryden Social Club and its motto was “You don’t know who you are.”

And no one else really does either.

Except for Leo. Wasn’t Leo maybe starting to come close?





The Claveracks lived one block away in one of those row houses with bars on the windows on the second floor. In this case she wondered whether the bars were there to protect the outside world from the house’s inhabitants instead of vice versa. She took a deep breath, found the bell, and pushed the button. The ho-hum ding-dong struck her as almost too ordinary for a house inhabited by Claveracks, but maybe she had built them up too much in her mind. Geeks were people, too.

A shockingly old man opened the door, took one look at Jane with an eye that had to be lifted out of a wrinkle pool resting on his cheekbone, and said, “You again?”

He turned and shuffled down the carpeted hall and yelled out, “Freddy! It’s that gal of yours!”

The door was about to close on Jane, so she put a foot on the threshold and then waited. A man around her dad’s age—and this one looked like the guy in the picture—came to the door. He had a large oblong head and a salt-and-pepper ponytail and wore work boots, jeans, and T-shirt that said BADA BING! next to a silhouette of a naked woman. He reopened the door fully and said, “Can I help you?”

“I think you knew my mother,” she said—though it seemed suddenly very hard to believe they’d ever dated—and he took a look at her, rubbed his eyes like he’d just woken up, and said, “Tiny?”

The old man’s voice from another room said, “And what kind of name is that anyway? She’s not that small!”

“I heard you were here,” Freddy said. “In the old house.”