Dreamland Social Club(87)

“I love it,” she said, and he cocked his head, almost as if surprised, and said, “Me, too.”

“So we’re staying?” she asked, and her hands went to fists and her eyes shut tight and he said, “Yes, Luna Jane. We’re staying.”





CHAPTER twelve


JANE HAD NOTED THE DUMPSTER beside the fence surrounding the Cyclone earlier that afternoon, and so she walked right over to it. They climbed up on top of it—and it sure did smell something fierce, like rotting bananas and souring meat and worse—then climbed over the fence from there without even talking. Jane thought for sure she’d rip a hole in her jeans, or her legs, but navigated the chain links unscathed, finally jumping off backwards to land on the ground again. All this sneaking around and breaking in was getting easy.

Leo had a flashlight and led the way under the wooden beams of the coaster toward the shack they’d seen. “Watch out,” he said softly, shining his light on the ground. “Dog doo.”

“How romantic,” Jane said before she could stop herself, and Leo said simply, “Just calling it like I see it” with a smile.

When they reached the shack, Leo shined a light on the lock. “Try it.”

Jane stepped forward and tried the key, and the padlock clicked open. She twisted it and slid it out of the shack handles, then opened the door. She shrieked and ducked—Leo, too—when a bird or bat flew out, and then they stepped into the shack and found it.

It was a big metal ball—like a wrecking ball with a few round windows, a large one on one side, and two smaller ones on the opposite. Jane took the flashlight from Leo and shone it on the far side, where the words NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY appeared atop the word BATHYSPHERE atop the words NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY. “Sponsors?” she said.

“Guess so.”

Leo circled the bathysphere now, like it was a bull and he a matador, then he reached out and touched it and whistled. “I did some research. This was the bathysphere made by William Beebe, this guy who totally broke records for deep-sea exploration and like discovered all these crazy sea creatures that people had never even seen before.”

“Unbelievable,” Jane said. “And no one even knows or cares that it’s sitting right here? I mean, why isn’t it in a museum? Or at the Aquarium?”

“Because this is Coney.” He reached for the hatch, then unreached and said, “The lady should do the honors.”

Jane reached out and pulled the hatch open, then shone the flashlight inside, shrugged, and smiled. She climbed in. “Come on!” She poked her head out. “Before someone sees.”

There was barely enough room for two people in there, so they sat close. Hip to hip. Again.

“Wait.” Leo shifted, then lifted an arm and put it around her to make more room. “Okay,” he said. “That’s better.”

Then he said, “I feel as though I’m leaving a world of untold tomorrows for a world of countless yesterdays.”

It was a line from The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and it made Jane replay the scene in her mind, where the scientist in the bell—the bathysphere—is looking through the small round window for the beast, roving the ocean’s bed. She felt a little bit of sympathy for the monster awakened by the bomb, felt like that microscopic explosion in her mother’s brain all those years ago had awakened a beast inside her, too. She smiled a little and said, “What kind of idiot signs up for that mission?”

“I don’t know.” Leo smiled back. “I might’ve done it.”

Jane remembered the film’s final, fiery scenes. The whole thing seemed horribly sad, and funny, and for a second she wondered whether she should climb the Cyclone and cry out in a rage like the beast had, whether that would feel good. Whether her mother had wanted to step into the beast’s shoes, too. Whether that explained the Dreamland Social Club’s inaugural stunt.

She sat back against Leo then, thinking of the moment she first saw him and had felt that shock of recognition. Maybe it hadn’t really been the seahorse at all. Maybe it had just been him. She remembered the first day they’d talked on the boardwalk, the way she’d imagined climbing into a submarine and telling each other their darkest secrets. A bathysphere would have to do, and then a realization dawned. She pushed Leo aside and said, “It has to be here,” and started looking everywhere, in every nook of the bathysphere’s small chamber.

“What has to be here?” Leo said.

“Her journal.”

“Jane, it’s been years.”

But she was already standing, though bent, and her knees were pressing against Leo’s chest or his shoulder, she didn’t know/didn’t care, because right then, on a ridge by a seam in the metal, her hand found something.

A notebook.

She pulled it out and then they sat back down again.

Leo was quiet for a moment, then just said, “Wow.”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her hand across it, knocking off a layer of dust. She sat staring at its cover, a canvas material on which her mother had drawn her name in bubble letters and a few other small pictures, like a Ferris wheel and, yes, another bathysphere. “I think I’m afraid to look.”

“Why?”

Jane exhaled. “Because what if it tells me stuff about her that I don’t want to know?”