Dreamland Social Club(55)

Jane considered this plan, then nodded. “Deal.”

“And anyway, I have an idea,” Leo said when they were about to leave the park. “Someplace we can go. Tonight. Even if it’s not technically the Wonder key. It’ll be great.”

“Okay,” Jane said. “Where?”

“You’ll find out soon enough.” He turned his back to the boardwalk, where Venus was hanging out with a few of her friends. “Let’s go back this way for a second.” He walked deeper into the park, toward the Polar Express.

“Everything okay?” Jane said.

“Yeah,” Leo said. “Fine.”





They walked home past the Claverack Carousel building, and Jane stopped and watched the horses do their strange frozen gallop. The music was slowing down—the ride, too—and Jane looked at Leo and said, “Do you mind?”

They bought tickets and climbed atop two horses set side by side, then waited for the ride to start again. Jane studied the horse she’d chosen and tried to look for some kind of sign that the one in her living room had been sculpted or painted by the same craftsman. But as she studied the thick paint on its mane and the slightly dulled sheen of the saddle, she could only conclude that the one in the living room was a more spectacular specimen, probably because it hadn’t been ridden in years. Studying the center of the carousel now, the drum that spun it around, she saw paintings of deserts and cacti and Western sunsets and then scenes of cupids and cherubs with arrows poised in tiny angel’s bows. The whole thing needed a facelift, yes, but you could tell that it would be amazing when it was fixed up.

The music started and the horses began to vibrate with power, and then they were moving and their horses were out of sync, Jane’s going up as Leo’s went down. This made conversation sort of tricky, especially with the loud tinkle of some kind of ragtime-piano tune. But Jane didn’t mind. It was enough to just be there, to be next to Leo, though it was true she was hoping to intuit what to do about the horse.

“Check it out,” Leo said. “The brass ring.”

Jane saw it dangling overhead and then it was gone. “What is it?”

“You grab it, you win a prize.”

It was coming back and she stood—feet in stirrups—but couldn’t reach it.

“Close but no cigar,” Leo said.

As Jane sat down she saw her brother whiz by. And then the room was a blur of lightbulbs—a fast-moving kaleidoscope of color—and there he was again, playing some video game by the far wall, and there was the blur of Rita beside him. And then again, and the blur of his arm around her waist.

“Here it comes again,” Leo said, but Jane just said, “You try.”

Leo didn’t grab the brass ring that time, but by the time they’d gotten around to it again, he’d climbed up so that his feet were perched on his horse’s saddle. Jane had been sure he was going to fall, with his one arm hooked around the horse pole, but then his fingers touched the ring and he pulled it and a bell started dinging and he smiled, victorious. Jane said, “Bravo.”

But when the ride finally stopped, the crotchety old operator came over to take the ring and said, “Standing on the horse disqualifies you.”

“But how else are you supposed to reach it?” Leo asked.

The old man shrugged and walked off. Jane and Leo turned to go, but then Jane said, “Hang on a second” and followed the old man. He was taking tickets from a few people who’d climbed aboard and taken seats in a sort of sleigh chair by the ride’s center. “Did you, by any chance, know Preemie Porcelli?”

“Only well enough to know I didn’t want to know him.”

“Do you know why he took the horse?”

“Why does anybody around here do anything?”

They turned to go, but then Jane turned back. “You didn’t happen to know his daughter, did you? Clementine? People called her Tiny?”

“Sorry,” he said. “No.”

But wow, it had felt good to just ask.





Her father was coming out the front door of the house with a big black trash bag—full to the top. “What are you doing?” she asked.

“We’ve got to start getting rid of some junk.” He shrugged. “I had some spare time.”

Jane approached the bag, looked inside, and saw the poster for Is It Human? and the two-headed squirrel. “I told you I would do it,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I know, but I thought I’d help.”

“You think this is helping?” Her fingers tightened into fists around the straps of her backpack. “Throwing out my grandmother’s stuff?”

“Calm down, Jane.”

She let go of her backpack and grabbed the trash bag and started dragging it back into the house. She used two hands to lift it off the ground and carry it up the stairs and into her room. When she came downstairs to make sure there weren’t any other bags about to meet the same fate, her father was sitting at the kitchen table with his Tsunami sketches. He’d worked on some close-up renderings of different parts of the coaster and had typed up some specs about speed and duration of the ride. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he said.

“I know.” She got herself a glass of water from the tap.