Dreamland Social Club

by Tara Altebrando

  “Babette,” Jane said.

  Marcus frowned. “Not my type. Now that other little one, I could maybe . . . well, never mind.”

  “Anyway, Babette told me something weird.” She tried to get more comfortable on the couch and puffed up some dust; she sneezed, then rested her head against the sofa back. “That Harvey guy and his brother, Cliff?”

  Now Marcus looked up.

  “Their grandfather had this long-standing battle with Preemie about that horse.”

  She nodded at the horse, and a car alarm sounded on the street: Woo-oooh-ohhh-ohh.

  Marcus’s face scrunched up. “What?”

  Eh-eh-eh-eh.

  “Their grandfather made it. He built the carousel. And he wanted to buy it from Preemie but Preemie wouldn’t sell, and he taunted the Claveracks about it for years.”

  Beep-eeeep-eeep-eeeep.

  Marcus shook his head and paused the movie. “That’s ridiculous.”

  Waheeee, waheeee.

  “Is it?” Jane said. “What do we know?”

  Whoop-whoop. The alarm clicked off.

  Marcus tossed the remote aside, got up, and went into the kitchen, and Jane followed. “It’s chained to the radiator, Marcus. Doesn’t that strike you as a little bit strange?”

  “Jane,” he said sternly as he opened the refrigerator and then closed it, having found nothing worth eating or drinking. “Didn’t Dad say it enough times? We’re just here for one year. So just go make some friends who are into what you’re into, whatever that is, and suck it up and keep your head down and then we’ll be on our merry way.”

  “You’re not even a little interested in the fact that our grandfather had a mortal enemy whose grandkids are in school with us?” Jane followed him over to the cabinets by the sink, which didn’t reveal anything worth his stomach’s attention either.

  He closed the cabinet doors, looked at his watch, then headed back toward the living room and sat down. “I just don’t know if I’d believe everything a goth dwarf told me. And I mean, whatever. They can have it, right? I seriously couldn’t care less.”

  He started the movie again, and Jane settled in to watch. A woman dressed like a bird—big, pear-shaped costume and feathered headdress—walked on-screen. “Is that Grandma?” Jane asked.

  Marcus gave her a look. “That’s Birdie, yes.”

  “What?” she said defensively. “She was our grandmother. Where’d you find it?”

  “Around.”

  Jane tried to focus on Birdie alone—tried to study her countenance and manner for signs of some kind of family relation—but it was hard not to be distracted by the man who was just a torso. She wondered whether this man with no limbs had ever met the girl with no limbs from the Dreamland Social Club. She thought about telling Marcus that their mom was listed in her yearbook as the founder of their school’s Dreamland Social Club, but if he didn’t care about the history of the carousel horse, he’d hardly care about some dopey club.

  The conjoined twin brunettes who kept doing interstitial song and dance numbers, their voices all warbly from the warping of the tape, gave Jane the chills, and when the final scene played out and the new sideshow act, a person with a skull that turned pointy at the top, a “pinhead,” was revealed to be Martian—not human after all—the credits rolled and Jane sighed with relief. Black-and-white movies always made her queasy, and she decided it must be because everyone in them—every actor and actress she’d seen, every name on the final credits, every orphan in the surf—was dead.

  When the film ended and Marcus left the room, Jane approached the horse and ran a hand down its long mane. She thought about climbing on, but it seemed disrespectful to treat it like a toy, even though that’s basically what it was. Instead, she bent to study the lock. Picking it up—and wow, was it heavy—she tugged at the closure but it wouldn’t budge. She’d have to look around for an old key but wasn’t very hopeful.

  Based on what she’d learned of Preemie, he sounded like the kind of guy who would have taken the key to his grave as a sort of final F.U.

  Giddyup, Preemie, she thought. Neigh yourself.

  When she heard her father come home, Jane got up from the uncushy sofa, where she’d fallen asleep, and went into the front hall to greet him. He looked windblown again. More like soul-blown, really. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said. “This pounding of the pavement ain’t fun.”

  “Any leads?” She relieved him of his portfolio, then put it on the hall’s small table.

  “Not a one.” He kicked his shoes off in the hall and padded down to the kitchen and threw a newspaper onto the table. Jane could see some help-wanted ads that had been circled with blue ballpoint but didn’t dare look at what kinds of jobs they were. It was all too depressing.

  “Anyway.” He tousled her hair. “Never you mind. Something’ll turn up.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It always does.”

  She found the ensuing silence in the room so awkward that she decided to fill it with this: “Hey, did Mom ever mention something called the Dreamland Social Club?”

  Her father furrowed his brow for a second, then shook his head. “I don’t think so. Why?”

  “It’s a club she founded when she was in high school.” She was trying to sound nonchalant but she wasn’t entirely sure why. Maybe because this “talking about Mom” thing was still sort of new, skittish.

  “Really?” He raised an eyebrow, and Jane nodded and said, “It still exists.”

  “What is it?” He opened the fridge and took out a beer.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Are you going to join?” He took a swig.

  “It’s not that simple, Dad.” Not when you considered the cryptic posters and the way Legs and Minnie had seemed so secretive about where they were going.

  “Okay.” He squeezed her shoulder as he left the room. “If you say so.”

  CHAPTER seven

  MR. SIMMONS SAT CROSS-LEGGED in the middle of his classroom on a map of Coney Island in class that Thursday. It was comprised of large wooden puzzle pieces labeled THE GUT, MANHATTAN BEACH, WEST BRIGHTON, and a few more Jane couldn’t read, in no small part because Mr. Simmons was sitting on them. He was a bit kooky, Mr. Simmons, but Jane was already fond of him and knew that, if she ended up in another school next year, she’d remember him and Garth the Human Garbage Disposal (whose class she hadn’t even been in!) and possibly none of her other teachers here.

  “All will be explained in time,” he said as students came in and looked confused by the fact that he was sitting on a map and also by the fact that all the desks and chairs had been pushed to the back of the room. Jane waited next to Babette on one edge of the map and studied a bulletin board on the room’s side wall. It was covered with old photos of Luna Park and Dreamland. She stepped up close to a photo of Dreamland’s Creation ride, where an angel carved out of stone stood by the entrance, seemingly holding the weight of the whole building on its wings.

  The bell rang and Mr. Simmons said, “The history of Coney Island is, at its most basic, a series of landgrabs. Meaning that whenever it was possible to take land away from someone else and claim it for themselves, that’s what people did. And have continued to do. Over and over again. So!”

  He stood and stepped over to his desk, gestured to the map, then held a whistle to his mouth. “When I blow, you grab!”

  At the shrill sound, Jane pushed her way forward, dove straight for the piece marked CONEY ISLAND BEACH, and held on tight as people moved and grabbed around her. The bustle died down in a matter of seconds, and a few people shouted out complaints—“I didn’t get anything!” “There’s not enough pieces!”

  Mr. Simmons said, “Not destined to be landowners, then.”

  He started talking about the different puzzle pieces then, but Jane just wanted him to get to hers. She hadn’t been able to figure out where, exactly, the old parks had been, and she wanted very badly to have ended up with the
right piece and for Mr. Simmons to tell her where, exactly, they had been. That way, maybe she’d be able to walk on hallowed ground.

  Finally, he said, “And who had the good fortune-slash-misfortune of getting Coney Island Beach proper?”

  Jane raised her hand, held up her piece.

  “Ah,” he said. “Jane. You hold in your hands one of the most coveted and embattled pieces of property to ever exist in the world.” He strode around the room. “So, what are you going to do with it?”

  Time seemed to halt for a moment as Jane’s mind traveled to the attic, so full of amazing old Coney lore, and took a Trip to the Moon, with Selenites singing, and to those grim apartments they’d had in grim cities while her father worked random jobs, and then she was back in the moment and she said, “I’d want to do two things.”

  Heads seemed to perk up in surprise that the new girl had an answer—in two parts, no less. “I’d rebuild the old amusement parks, just like they were, and—”

  “Dude,” Babette interrupted before Jane could get part two out. “That’s blasphemy.”

  Jane turned to her, feeling like one of Preemie’s water balloons that had just popped. “It is?”

  “Midget City?” Babette’s eyes sparked with agitation. “Ever hear of it?”

  Jane felt foolish but, of course, she hadn’t meant that everything would be re-created. She was pretty sure, for example, that a reenactment of the Boer War would bore people to tears. And shows like Fighting Flames were too gory, too dangerous.

  Babette seemed to shiver. “Every once in a while I have a dream that I’m living in Midget City and I can’t get out. That stuff’s best left in the past.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I want the place to turn into a shopping mall, though.”

  “Sorry,” Jane said, not knowing what a shopping mall had to do with anything. “I wasn’t thinking of rebuilding Midget City—or a mall. I just think a lot of the stuff that’s here now, on the boardwalk, is so run-down. I think some new rides”—she couldn’t stop herself—“maybe a new roller coaster or something, would be good. That’s part two. A big new ride. A proper theme park.”

  Her father could design it!

  Leo’s hand shot up, and Mr. Simmons called on him.

  For days Jane had been hoping for some kind of sign from Leo, some kind of acknowledgment that he’d found the postcard or at least looked for it, but so far none had come. He said, “I think it’s important to remember that the people who have kept those businesses on the boardwalk alive all these years shouldn’t be locked out of new plans. I mean, what happened to the Go Karts just wasn’t right.”

  Jane had almost forgotten about the first day of school, the bottle throwing, the shards of glass splayed in the air like confetti. A second ago she’d thought that people would absolutely want the sort of coaster her father designed, but maybe it was more complicated than that. The sick feeling she’d had that first afternoon came back.

  “Unless they can’t afford the rent,” someone in the back of the class said, and Leo said, “Oh, screw you.”

  Clearly they weren’t talking about puzzle pieces anymore. But Jane wasn’t sure exactly what they were talking about.

  Mr. Simmons returned to the head of the class. “Like I said . . .”

  Everyone waited.

  “Embattled.”

  Mr. Simmons changed gears then and went on to other areas, then circled back to assign homework. “I want you to write one sentence describing the most fun you ever had on Coney Island. Don’t overthink it. Just do it. We’ll talk more about the full assignment next time.” He stopped by Jane’s desk. “And Jane, I know you just got here. You can pick another place if you like.”

  “Hey,” Jane said to Babette after class. “I didn’t mean to offend you.”

  “No big deal,” Babette said. “No pun intended.”

  “Still,” Jane said, thinking of Preemie in his incubator, a neighbor of Midget City himself. “So did your grandparents work in Midget City or something? Did your parents grow up here?”

  Of course Babette would have told her if her parents had grown up with Jane’s mom, wouldn’t she have? Still, the thought of it got her hopes up for a split second.

  “Actually, my parents and grandparents are completely, painfully normal. My father’s a cop and my mother’s a teacher in the elementary school in Brighton Beach. We only moved here like four years ago.”

  “Oh,” Jane said. And then a more surprised, “Oh!” because she had been picturing Babette at home with a small family.

  “It’s just a gene mutation,” Babette explained. “Straight-up dwarfism, unlike perfectly proportioned Minnie Polinsky, who has primordial dwarfism, which is like the rarest of the rare, and also the reason she’s so darn cute like a china doll while I’m just”—she looked down—“like this. Anyway, my parents look happy in old pictures but they don’t seem that way anymore, not since I came along. I try not to blame myself.”

  “You shouldn’t!”

  “I don’t. Not really.” Babette shrugged. “Just put in a good word with your brother for me, will you?” Her T-shirt today featured a drawing of an octopus—a yellow image on a gray base. “It’s really only a matter of time before he drops his aloof act and falls under my spell. I’m small, but I have other charms.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Oh, please.” Babette punched Jane’s thigh. “Like you’re not going to bed at night thinking about getting tattoos that say ‘I Heart Leo.’ ”

  Jane shot her a look.

  “I’m not blind. I see the way you look at him, all dreamy.” Babette batted her eyelashes.

  “I hate needles,” Jane said.

  “Well, this little plan of yours to knock stuff down so you can rebuild Dreamland or some slick new coaster isn’t going to wow him either,” Babette said with new energy that sounded like frustration. “His father owns the Anchor, you know.”

  That dump?

  It would explain why Leo’s father told him stories about the strange bar bets Preemie had made. It would explain why they’d all been outside the bar that night. Was it possible that Leo’s father had known her mother?

  Babette said, snarkily, “And his mother is only the president of Coney Islanders for Coney.”

  Even better. Maybe his mom had known her?

  But before getting carried away with the idea, she asked, “What’s Coney Islanders for Coney?”

  “It’s a local sort of activist group that’s fighting the Loki plan.”

  It was like Babette was speaking a different language. “What’s the Loki plan?”

  “Dear naive Jane.” Babette’s eyes seem to glitter in the hallway’s fluorescent lights, and her hair looked deep purple. “You really have to get a clue, or an act.”

  “An act?”

  “Yeah, you know. An act? An angle? A shtick? Something that sets you apart from the rubes?”

  Which was carny for losers, chumps, paying customers.

  Jane said, “Why can’t I just be me?”

  “You have heard of adolescence, right?” Babette huffed. “Traumatic period of life wherein no one is free to just be themselves. Not without ridicule anyway.”

  Jane looked around at the hordes of normal kids, plowing through the halls, going about their typical high school day. She said, “Plenty of people here—most people here—don’t have an act and no one cares.”

  Babette threw her little hands up in the air. “Fine, hang out with them!”

  “Maybe I will!”

  Babette sighed. “All I’m saying is I can’t hang out with you unless you do something for your image.” She put her hands on her small hips. “I mean, really. Jane. Have you looked in a mirror lately?”

  Jane looked down at her blah outfit and wanted to tell Babette that it wasn’t her fault that her mother must have taken any fashion sense their family had ever had to the grave. That her clothes had actually worked, she thought, in London.

  Babette said, “Just promise me you wo
n’t wear that to the party next weekend.”

  “I’m not going to a party next weekend.”

  “Oh, yes you are.”

  They took back-to-back stools in biology lab—they’d been assigned neighboring lab tables—and Babette said, “You and your brother should both come. It’s in the projects, so it’s mostly gonna be project kids. But the project kids are cool.”

  “I don’t know any of them,” Jane said.

  “But you know me. And I know H.T. And he knows Mike and Ike, who are the drop-dead gorgeous twins you will have already noticed if you’re not a lesbian, and it’s their party.”

  Jane couldn’t say for sure that she’d seen them, but nodded recognition anyway. H.T., at least, she’d actually met.

  “It’ll be good for you,” Babette said. “You’d be making a statement.”

  “What kind of statement?” Jane studied the cow’s eye in the jar on Babette’s table. It seemed to be looking at her skeptically, like maybe it had heard through the cow grapevine about her, about the way that she seemed to prefer the company of cows to people during that year she’d spent living in Ireland.

  “I don’t know,” Babette said. “That just because people are talking trash about your grandfather you’re not going to curl up and die.”

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” Jane asked before she even realized she was going to. Almost like the cow’s eye had said, Just ask her.

  But was she being nice? As soon as she asked, Jane wasn’t so sure.

  “I don’t know. You seem cool.” Babette shrugged with one tiny shoulder. “And you’ve got carny blood, even if it’s obviously very highly diluted.

  “Here’s a tip, though.” She dug into her book bag, pulled out a rumpled newspaper, and handed it to Jane. “You should really read the paper once in a while.”

  Something about biology labs had always made Jane a little nauseated, and this lab at Coney Island High certainly wasn’t going to help matters. It had that smell she hated—of something antiseptic and half dead—and there were jars along the far wall that she dared not look at too closely. The cow’s eye was bad enough. But when Jane’s partner showed up and it turned out to be Venus Anders—a walking, talking tangle of red dreads and rose tattoos, the girl equivalent of Tattoo Boy (who was not, to Jane’s disappointment, in this class)—Jane felt like the cow’s eye might be the least of her problems. At least she only had lab once a week.