Dreamland Social Club(58)

CHAPTER ten


HER FATHER WAS STANDING in the foyer, wearing a suit, when Jane came down for breakfast. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“Loki’s sending a car. They want to talk again today, and they don’t want me to have to deal with picket lines. I don’t even know where the meeting’s going to be.”

“Dad,” Jane said pleadingly, “please, please, please don’t sell them your design.”

“Love,” he said, fixing his tie in the foyer mirror, “I know you have your concerns, but I don’t think you understand. I mean, to build a roller coaster on Coney Island. The most famous amusement park to have ever existed. Do you understand how huge that would be for me? For us? It would be the biggest possible comeback that I could have ever imagined. And I need that badly. A comeback.”

She felt like she was going to cry, and could only nod.

A horn tooted, and her father looked through the small window next to the front door. “That’s my car,” he said, and she just nodded again and managed a small “Good luck.”





The funhouse mirrors were long gone, but in school that morning Jane still felt like her eyes were drawn into large droops and like her whole stomach bent and curved to the side. She felt too tall one second, too short the next. Too skinny, too fat. Too stocky, too lanky. Too normal, too weird. Too quiet, too loud. Too sad, too happy. Too everything, too nothing.

What was normal anyway?

Deep thoughts from the Dreamland Social Club.

Was that all they did as a club? Stunts like that? If so, it seemed sort of silly, but also sort of, well, challenging. How had they pulled it off? And who’d come up with the idea? Had it been Babette? Or Leo? Maybe even her mom? And what would they do next, and when?

Looking in the real mirror and trying to focus in on the actuality—of her face, her body, her edges—brought her back to the reality of her situation. Her father was meeting with Loki again. She would have to tell Leo. There was no way around it. She had to tell him before anyone else did so that she could explain. About how badly her dad needed this. And, by association, how badly she needed it. The Anchor was just a bar. They could move it, open up a block or two away. Everyone could be happy.

Right?





“Where’s Leo?” she said when she hadn’t seen him all morning and didn’t see him at lunch.

“Some Loki protest or something,” Babette said. “His mother pulled him out of school to go with him. His dad was going, too. Something about the weenie.”

“Shoot me,” Jane said, and Babette said, “What’s gotten into you?”

“My dad,” Jane said. Because she couldn’t see the point of hiding it anymore. “My dad is the weenie.”





In Mr. Simmons’s class it was time to share the sideshow banners/barkers assignment, and Jane thought that meant it was time to suddenly come down with a violent forty-five-minute flu, but when Babette volunteered to go first, she decided to stay put.

Mr. Simmons nodded at Babette—“Okay, you’re up”—and just like that, she stood up on top of her desk and said, “Step right up and witness the ultimate in doom and gloom! You’ll be glad you aren’t her! She’s challenged in both stature and outlook and has dealt with this cruel world’s gaze the only way she knows how, by trying to shrink into shadows of darkness and hide. She is the Goth Dwarf of Coney Island and has only recently come out of hiding. Do you dare to tower over her tiny, ill-proportioned limbs? Can you stop yourself from gasping in horror as you stare?” She looked at Mr. Simmons and said, “I was hoping for a bigger finish, but that’s all I have.”

“I like it,” Mr. Simmons said. “But I hardly think of you as someone who is trying to shrink into the shadows, Babette.” She shrugged agreement and said, “It’s theater, Mr. Simmons.”

“Indeed it is.” He faced the room. “Who’s next?”

No one volunteered, and so Mr. Simmons called on the Stephanie or Kira who’d questioned her potential exploitation. She huffed, then got up and went to the front of the class with a rolled-up piece of paper in her hand. “Step right up,” she said in a perky voice, “and witness one of the rarest specimens on earth. You will look at her and wonder how it is that she could be this way!”

Mr. Simmons was stifling a laugh.

“For she looks exactly the same on the left as she does on the right. She is like a mirror image, split down the middle. She is Symmetrical Girl! Come have a look!”

“Thank you, Kira,” Mr. Simmons said. Then, almost under his breath, “You tried.”

And then he called on Jane. She knew he would. So she was ready. She went to the front of the class with a page she’d ripped out of her notebook and cut a certain way and cleared her throat. “Step right up and witness one of the most spectacular examples of genetics gone haywire the world has ever seen! Her grandfather was a preemie, one of the tiniest souls to ever survive to walk the planet, and her grandmother part-bird. Her mother, if you can believe it, was a mermaid! Imagine, if you will, the foul gene pool and what monster it might spawn for its next generation.” She started to unroll her paper, the center of it cut out in a square, and said. “Rest your eyes upon the hideous, dreaded face of ABSOLUTELY NORMAL GIRL.” At that she held up her paper frame and stuck her face through it.