Dreamland Social Club(91)

“He said, ‘For real.’ ”

H.T. appeared and took Babette’s hand and led her into the middle of the crowd, and Jane turned to watch Leo. This time it was him—and not his saw—doing the singing.

“Come with the love-light gleaming In your dear eyes of blue. Meet me in Dreamland, sweet, dreamy Dreamland./There let my dreams come true.”





What’s the best thing about being you?

She never had answered that final question for herself or anybody else and now her mind seemed to travel to the tips of all ten of her fingers and all ten of her toes, and up to the top of the Parachute Jump and the Thunderbolt and back. It seemed to climb the Cyclone and scream out in a fiery rage and then dive back down into the bathysphere, passing mermaids and turtles on the way, even saying hello to the bird on Nellie’s hat. It shot up to the North Pole and then on up to the moon, where it was serenaded by Selenites, and back. It was searching out an answer that was right there—just not in any way she could verbalize. And then there was a memory—of a day spent shopping, of a wall of televisions, of the lights and minarets of Luna Park.





Leo had brought buckets and shovels and all sorts of weird plastic gadgets to the beach that night, and together he and Jane started to build a sand castle Coney, even though it was dark. When she found a sun hat among the stuff in his beach bag, she reached out and put it on his head. She said, “What sound makes you happy?”

He was molding sand, but he looked up with a suspicious smirk. “Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering.” She shrugged and returned to her own bucket, and after a moment he said, “The sound of you laughing.”

Jane’s hands were gritty and wet and Birdie’s dress was covered in clumpy sand. She wiped them off as she shot him a look.

“I mean it,” he said, shrugging and looking away like he was shy, though she knew better by now.

“Okay,” she said, feeling a warmth in her heart despite the cold wind off the ocean. “What was the last dream you had that you remember?”

“There were rats in my house. I was trying to escape.”

Jane looked up, skeptical.

“I’m serious!”

“Name one thing you want to do before you die.”

“Have a kid.”

“Wow,” she said.

Jane hadn’t ever actually imagined having a kid, but thought that yes, someday, that would be nice. Like Leo said, she could play those old games with her child, keep that memory alive.

“Too heavy?” Leo asked.

“I was thinking more along the lines of drink a cocktail out of a pineapple.” She asked him, “What’s the best thing about being you?”

“I don’t know.” He stopped and looked around. “I think it might be this. The fact that I grew up here. Makes you not take anything for granted.”

He still hadn’t built anything that looked anything at all like the Shoot the Chutes. It was dark, but the relative lack of light wasn’t the only problem.

“How in the hell did she even do this?” Leo asked as another bucket of sand fell away in a series of small landslides.

“I don’t know.” Jane was having no better luck with a Monkey Theater. “Maybe I don’t even remember it right, you know? Maybe I made it up.”

“Don’t say that,” Leo said. He was kneeling in the sand in his jeans, scooping wildly.

“No, it’s okay if I did,” Jane said. “I mean, I was really young. Who knows?”

“You could ask your brother.”

She thought about that for a second. “Nah,” she said. “It’d ruin it.”

Leo started to build the Shoot the Chutes again.

“Here.” Jane tossed him a smaller bucket. “Try this one.”

They worked quietly for a while, then Jane said, “That song you played on the saw at the party, and tonight . . . She used to sing that to me, the Dreamland song.”

“Yeah?”

“When I was little and didn’t want to go to bed because I wanted to be with her, she’d tell me that she’d meet me in Dreamland, and she’d lull me to sleep. I’m pretty sure she said it right before she died, too. That she’d see me there.”

Leo looked up, pushed some hair out of his eyes with sandy hands. “Are you trying to kill me, Jane?”

Luna, she almost said. The name’s Luna.

He wiped sand off his hands and she did, too, and they lay back on their blanket and Leo said, “I forget sometimes.”

“Forget what?”

“That it’s a beach.” He shook his head and laughed. “Seems like an awful lot of fuss over a beach.”





CHAPTER fourteen


SO, “BABETTE SAID AT LUNCH. “Friday. Electric Bathing.”

It was the last week of school, and Jane was a little sad that she wouldn’t be seeing much of their cafeteria table for a few months. The good news was that she’d be back next year. Talks between the city and Loki were ongoing. Her father was still in the mix, as was his Lunacy ride.

“Are you both going?” Babette asked.

“Definitely,” Rita said.

“I don’t know,” Jane said.