Dreamland Social Club(92)

“Oh, you’re going,” Babette said.

“Hell yeah, you’re going,” Rita said.

But Jane tried to picture herself swimming in the ocean; there was more than one problem. “I don’t own a bathing suit.”

Her friends started laughing then, and at first Jane felt like her cheeks were going to crumble and give way to tears, but then it struck her as funny, too.

Hilarious, even.

Babette said, “You can borrow one of mine,” and they all started laughing even harder, and Jane said, “Do you have anything in black?” and they laughed even harder. Then finally, when they stopped, Rita said, “I guess we’ll go shopping.”





I’m in a department store with my mother and she’s looking at big, shiny things. Dishwashers and clothes washers and stoves and refrigerators. I’m looking at my twisted reflection in the stainless-steel doors and looking warped and pushed and pulled and horrific. “Mommy,” I say, “I look funny.” She crouches down next to me and says, “There are worse things in life than looking funny,” and then she goes back to looking at the machines.

Bored, I wander to the end of the aisle, where white lights reflect on the long white path that leads to the mall. I want to run down it the way a plane wants to cruise down a runway and take off, so I start to run but then I see the wall of televisions, all tuned to the same station, all showing some black-and-white movie of a Ferris wheel and millions and millions of people on a beach somewhere far away. I stand and watch and forget about my mother and everything as the lights of the amusement park on the televisions twinkle and glow. A man’s voice is narrating the film, saying, “It became known as ‘the playground of the world.’”

“Luna!” my mother is screaming.

“Luna!”

But I don’t turn until she’s by my side, hugging me, holding me, crying. There is a woman standing next to her, a perfect stranger best I can tell, and she says to me that I must never, ever, leave my mother’s side, that I must hold her hand and never let go. The woman wanders off, and my mother pulls me up into her lap and sits in a leather armchair in front of one of the TVs. The Ferris wheel spins and spins and spins....





Jane bumped into her brother sneaking out of the house at midnight that Friday. She had her new swimsuit on under shorts and a T-shirt. It felt good to be wearing new things, and Jane thought she’d have to go shopping with Babette and Rita again sooner than later.

“You’re going?” Jane said. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” Marcus said back. “Since when did you decide you’re so much cooler than me anyway?”

“Give me a break, Marcus.”

They elbowed each other as they pushed through the front door and onto the porch. The sagging window there seemed somehow to have tightened up, and Jane imagined it was because she’d gotten rid of Preemie’s dead weight. The house felt lighter, newer, like it wouldn’t be the worst place to spend another year. Or two. Jane had kept the stuff that held meaning for her—the Is It Human? poster and framed photos and some of the old books and costumes, even the two-headed squirrel. But that was all.

They headed for the boardwalk and turned left when they got there. Jane saw shadows on the beach, the silhouette of a pole of some kind, and a figure atop it.

Tattoo Boy.

He was stringing up a lightbulb that ran to the Anchor via the world’s longest extension cord. The bar had opened up again after the city’s purchase of the land went through, and while there were no guarantees, there was hope.

A moment later a small circle of white light cast a glow over a small portion of the surf and the beach. Bunches of people were suddenly in the water, shrieking and splashing. It looked like everyone from school had turned up.

A host of golden daffodils.

Jane picked up her pace, afraid of missing out, afraid that it would be over—shut down by the cops—before she even got wet.

“Hey,” Babette said when Jane found her on the group’s outskirts. She had a towel around her shoulders but was bone-dry.

Jane looked out at the electric bathers and start to strip.

“You’re really going in?” Babette seemed giddy.

Jane nodded. She was a girl on a mission, a mission to claim some little part of the excitement of the park that was her namesake, of that bygone era.

The water was black, like fuel, and Jane tried hard not to think about everything that lived beneath its surface—electric eels and stingrays and big pulsing jellyfish—as she picked up one of the ropes tethered to the light tower and strode into the surf. It was cold, bracing, and the sand curled around her toes but she pressed on, until she was the farthest person out. The water was still only waist-high, but with each swell she wondered whether she was an idiot, whether she should scream for help right then, before she really needed it. Before it was too late.

Looking out over the water, she saw just a few lights—Staten Island—and she overheard someone behind her say, “Do you know how Staten Island got its name?”

Someone else said, “No,” and the other voice returned with “The Dutchman who saw it from his ship pointed and said, ‘Is stat an island?’”

Jane felt pretty sure that she wouldn’t ever have to swim away from Coney in fear for her life but wondered, still, how long she would be able to hold her breath. She imagined that her mother, a mermaid, had been able to do it for a really long time. But what counted as a really long time?