Dreamland Social Club(61)

It was cold out; Jane was underdressed. Fall had arrived without her noticing. But before turning to go home again, she gathered up her voice once more with all the power she could find.

“Who am I?” she screamed, and then she listened to the ocean’s roar for an answer.

The beach is the last place I want to be today—the coldest day in years according to giddy weathermen—but Babette insisted. She takes a dip with the Polar Bear Club every year on New Year’s Day, and she wants an audience. She spent about half a second last night trying to convince me to put on a swimsuit and join the fun today; the look on my face must have been pretty clear. It said, Shouldn’t you be listening to sad music and scribbling depressing poems? Shouldn’t a goth have a little less fun?

“Fine, then,” she said. “Be that way.”

“Fine,” I said. “I will.”

“But you’ll come watch?” she asked.

And so here I am.

I can’t feel the tips of my fingers or my nose or my toes, but I stand on the beach and hold Babette’s towel for her as she wades into the water—not very far on account of her stature—and then dips her head under, resurfaces, and tips back into a float. While keeping one watchful eye on Babette as she attempts a backstroke, I watch old men with sagging bellies and Speedos, and women with crinkly thighs in squarecut one-piece suits—even hipsters with shirts that say things like Kenya Dig It? They all shriek and splash, and the whole scene looks almost black-and-white on account of the grayness of the day—like an old photo.

Some things are never really gone.

There are old people, young people, fat people, thin people, sane people, crazy people, every kind there is. I watch a few small girls running into the water—their smiles too white; their swimsuits too new, too bright—and their parents watch them with pride so powerful you can sense it through their fancy sunglasses.

Those are my girls, they’re thinking. Fearless.

One thing I’ve never been.

An old, wet man whose butt cheeks are showing walks past them and says, “Go back to Westchester.”

I don’t know exactly what he means, but then again, I do. They’re rich. They’re Looky Lous. They don’t really belong here.

Babette comes back to shore looking even smaller, like the cold water has actually shrunk her, and I have a fleeting thought about my friend’s vulnerability in the world. I’ve never thought about it before, the fact that grown men could dropkick her. Would she be at the front and center of a photo of the new Dreamland Social Club? Will I ever be invited to sit by her side?

Something lands on my head then—a towel—and Leo screams, “Last one in’s a rotten egg.”

I pull the towel off my head and watch him run into the surf. Seeing him without his shirt on is jarring, and not only because it’s the first time I can see his back. There is a whole seascape there with a shark at the center that has its jaws opened wide and almost appears to be three-dimensional, like if I touched his skin it would bite me. I feel sort of dizzy, watching the bones of his shoulder blades—like bird wings—as he splashes around, and then more dizzy still when he turns around, his chest facing the shore. The skin there, so far at least, is ink-free, and looks so very white. He shouts, “Come on, you slackers!”

Someone in the crowd shouts, “Look at these idiots!” but I wonder, who are the idiots here, exactly? The people in the water or the Looky Lous on the shore?

We have called a truce, Leo and I. There have been no more late-night meet-ups—no more tours of forgotten Coney with my mother’s keys as our map—nor have there been any more fights. Once a week or so we find ourselves leaving school at the same time, though we never actually plan it, and then walking down toward Brighton Beach for a knish at Mrs. Stalz’s, like his mom said she and my mom used to do. If it’s not snowing and I’ve remembered my hat and gloves, we take them back up to the boardwalk, sit on a bench, and eat the steaming-hot potato pockets while seagulls and pigeons appear as if from nowhere to inspect us and our deep-fried treats. There are more birds than I can count, and when we get up to leave, they follow us. Their caws sound like heckles, like they’re berating me for eating the whole knish and not even leaving them a crumb, or maybe berating me for not telling Leo how I really feel. We don’t talk about the fact that Loki’s plans were vetoed by the city just after Thanksgiving, or that my dad’s coaster most likely won’t be built, or that a new plan is being presented in the spring, or that all of this is the reason why we’ve called a truce, why I’ve been given a social reprieve, why school has become manageable.

We chase after birds sometimes, making fun of their lazy ways, how it seems like pigeons would rather run a marathon than actually fly.

“I was just in!” Babette shouts, and Leo looks at me and yells, “What’s your excuse?”

I shrug and hope he never tattoos his chest. My excuse is simply that I am Jane. I understand why the birds would rather run than fly.

I am trying to coax a memory to light—a memory of a bathtub, a dark room, a lightbulb dangling on a wire but hidden so as to only project a tiny bit of light. A memory of bath toys that look silver-and-black and of my mother, splashing the water around me and laughing in the near-dark.

Legs arrives then, holding a thermos. “Want some?”