Dreamland Social Club(60)

“I didn’t know. I swear.” She thought she might be having a heart attack, wished someone would turn the music down. She thought maybe she could say something to fix things, to make things right, but then Leo shook his head and said, “I guess I’ll see you around, Jane,” and all she could think to say was, “What about the Bath key?”

Leo looked, for a moment, more sad than mad but said, “I guess you’re on your own,” and turned to skate away, then turned back. “You know, I know you’re not your dad. It’s not even about that, what he’s doing. It’s that you didn’t tell me.”

The bass line, finally, died.





Legs suggested a walk out onto Steeplechase Pier after skating, and Jane said yes just to get away from everyone else, to get some air.

They stopped short of the end of the pier and sat on a bench that ran along the pier’s left side. There was a green garbage can across the way from them, chained to the pier with a rusty chain link. Jane imagined it was to stop people from throwing it off the edge, then tried to imagine the kind of person who would do such a thing and think it was fun.

Something about the can—and it wasn’t a can, really, because you could see right through it—seemed odd, and then it hit her. It was empty; they were all empty, all six trash cans on the pier. Having seen her share of overflowing cans for weeks, she took it as a sign of things to come, of the coming quiet of winter.

Legs said, “I’m really glad we did this,” and Jane wanted to cry.

So when he leaned in to kiss her, she turned away and said, “I had fun. But I really have to head home.”

“Oh.” Legs seemed surprised. “I thought we’d get something to eat.”

“I can’t,” she said, feeling a bit like Cinderella, all tragic and mysterious. “But I’m really glad we’re friends.”

“Friends.” Legs looked shaky and Jane felt that way, too.

“Yes.” She looked away.

He exhaled loudly and said, “A lot of that going around.”

“What does that mean?” she said.

“Oh, nothing.” He waved a hand. But Jane figured it out. He’d told Minnie he wanted to be friends. Leo had told Venus that, too.

“Come on,” Legs said. “I’ll walk you.”

“Actually, I might just sit here a minute. But thanks.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

She watched Legs walk back toward the rink, where a few police cars had arrived, their lights blinking blue and red in the night. The music had stopped and a sad female voice came through a microphone. “I’m sorry, folks. No permit. Party’s over.”

She turned to face the water and, a few minutes later, Marcus was there beside her. “Everything okay? That giant told me you were out here.”

Not even looking at him, she said, “The cat’s out of the bag.”

“Which particular cat?”

“The Tsunami. The fact that Dad is selling it to Loki.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” he said, and Jane said, “It is to me.”

Marcus leaned his elbows on the pier’s rail. “I’ve been remembering, too, you know. Some games.”

“Yeah?” Jane looked at him now.

“Remember the game about the flood? I think she called it Flood City?”

Jane could suddenly see herself curled up in an armchair, pretending it was a boat. Trying to pull her brother and mother aboard. There had been a Johnstown Flood attraction at Dreamland at some point. Over two thousand people had died when the dam failed in that Pennsylvania town.

“And remember the fire game?” Marcus said. “When she’d tell us the building was burning and to grab what we could and meet her by the front door or on the balcony, depending on where we were living.”

Jane nodded. The games hadn’t seemed so at the time, but they were scary. Weren’t they? And why had she remembered the fun games, but not these?

“Sometimes I wonder.” He lifted his elbows, put his hands in his jeans pockets. “I wonder if maybe she was preparing us or something. For the bad stuff.”

“Well, it didn’t work,” Jane said. “I wasn’t prepared.”

“Maybe you were and you just don’t know it yet.”

He turned to leave and said, “You coming?”

“I’ll catch up.”

She looked down into the dark, churning water, lit only by the slight glow of the boardwalk lamps and the glow of nearby buildings. If the moon hadn’t been out, she probably wouldn’t have seen much at all, and she wouldn’t even have minded. She knew the ocean was there—steady, faithful—and that was all that mattered.

Once she saw that Marcus was long gone, she looked out into a black void of sea and air and said, “Who are you?”

When her voice, so small in that big space, got carried away and it was obvious no one was around to hear or care, she called out, louder this time, “Why did you have to leave?”

It felt wonderful, cathartic, because maybe someone—someone out there or up there—would listen and send her some clues. To where the journal was—if it even still existed. To what the Dreamland Social Club was all about. To what “Bath” meant.