“I’ve got to go to the bathroom,” she said to Legs, and she broke off toward the edge of the rink. Right then, something tugged on her leg and Jane looked down. Babette said, “Is something going on between your brother and Rita?”
Jane looked over at her brother—too fast, too guiltily—and Babette said, “I feel sick,” and skated away. Jane skated over to Rita and said, “She knows.”
“Crap.” Rita looked at Marcus, who just shrugged.
Jane skated back to the edge of the rink and made her way to the girls’ bathroom, where she found Babette by the sink, wiping tears from her eyes. Black mascara lines dragged down her cheeks.
Rita came in behind Jane, and Babette said, “How could you?”
“I didn’t do anything wrong.” Rita smacked her gum.
Babette said, “Spare me. You’re a backstabbing slut.”
Color drained from Rita’s face. “If that’s what you think, then screw you.”
She skated out of the room, leaving Jane with Babette.
Babette glared. “You should’ve told me.”
Jane said, “I don’t
know
anything.”
“I saw a hot-pink hair band in the bathroom at your house.”
Jane took a second to find the lie: “It’s mine.”
Babette skated toward the door. “I think your nose just got bigger.”
Leo was coming out of the boys’ restroom when Jane came out of the girls’. They rolled together down the hall toward the rink, where they stopped by the rails. He looked down at his hands on the rail in front of him, shook his head, then looked up. “So when were you going to tell me?” He only looked at her for a second before he looked away.
She looked over to try to read the expression on his face as a sort of landslide of nausea started to create a crater in her gut. A new song started then, and its bass line was way too loud.
“When there was something definite to tell.” Jane’s heart started thumping too fast, to the bass line.
When he turned back he had to shout above the music: “When was that going to be? When your father turned up at the Anchor with a wrecking ball?”
“Please don’t be like that.” She was watching H.T. circle the rink; he looked like he was dancing on skates. “I only just found out it was going to have any effect on the Anchor at all, and then you weren’t even in school for me to talk to.”
“What are you even doing here?” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“This is a benefit for Coney Islanders for Coney. And clearly, you are not one of those.”
“I didn’t know. I swear.” She thought she might be having a heart attack, wished someone would
turn the music down
. She thought maybe she could say something to fix things, to make things right, but then Leo shook his head and said, “I guess I’ll see you around, Jane,” and all she could think to say was, “What about the Bath key?”
Leo looked, for a moment, more sad than mad but said, “I guess you’re on your own,” and turned to skate away, then turned back. “You know, I know you’re not your dad. It’s not even about that, what he’s doing. It’s that you didn’t tell me.”
The bass line, finally, died.
Legs suggested a walk out onto Steeplechase Pier after skating, and Jane said yes just to get away from everyone else, to get some air.
They stopped short of the end of the pier and sat on a bench that ran along the pier’s left side. There was a green garbage can across the way from them, chained to the pier with a rusty chain link. Jane imagined it was to stop people from throwing it off the edge, then tried to imagine the kind of person who would do such a thing and think it was fun.
Something about the can—and it wasn’t a can, really, because you could see right through it—seemed odd, and then it hit her. It was empty; they were all empty, all six trash cans on the pier. Having seen her share of overflowing cans for weeks, she took it as a sign of things to come, of the coming quiet of winter.
Legs said, “I’m really glad we did this,” and Jane wanted to cry.
So when he leaned in to kiss her, she turned away and said, “I had fun. But I really have to head home.”
“Oh.” Legs seemed surprised. “I thought we’d get something to eat.”
“I can’t,” she said, feeling a bit like Cinderella, all tragic and mysterious. “But I’m really glad we’re friends.”
“Friends.” Legs looked shaky and Jane felt that way, too.
“Yes.” She looked away.
He exhaled loudly and said, “A lot of that going around.”
“What does
that
mean?” she said.
“Oh, nothing.” He waved a hand. But Jane figured it out. He’d told Minnie he wanted to be friends. Leo had told Venus that, too.
“Come on,” Legs said. “I’ll walk you.”
“Actually, I might just sit here a minute. But thanks.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
She watched Legs walk back toward the rink, where a few police cars had arrived, their lights blinking blue and red in the night. The music had stopped and a sad female voice came through a microphone. “I’m sorry, folks. No permit. Party’s over.”
She turned to face the water and, a few minutes later, Marcus was there beside her. “Everything okay? That giant told me you were out here.”
Not even looking at him, she said, “The cat’s out of the bag.”
“Which particular cat?”
“The Tsunami. The fact that Dad is selling it to Loki.”
“It’s not that big a deal,” he said, and Jane said, “It is to me.”
Marcus leaned his elbows on the pier’s rail. “I’ve been remembering, too, you know. Some games.”
“Yeah?” Jane looked at him now.
“Remember the game about the flood? I think she called it Flood City?”
Jane could suddenly see herself curled up in an armchair, pretending it was a boat. Trying to pull her brother and mother aboard. There had been a Johnstown Flood attraction at Dreamland at some point. Over two thousand people had died when the dam failed in that Pennsylvania town.
“And remember the fire game?” Marcus said. “When she’d tell us the building was burning and to grab what we could and meet her by the front door or on the balcony, depending on where we were living.”
Jane nodded. The games hadn’t seemed so at the time, but they were scary. Weren’t they? And why had she remembered the fun games, but not these?
“Sometimes I wonder.” He lifted his elbows, put his hands in his jeans pockets. “I wonder if maybe she was preparing us or something. For the bad stuff.”
“Well, it didn’t work,” Jane said. “I wasn’t prepared.”
“Maybe you were and you just don’t know it yet.”
He turned to leave and said, “You coming?”
“I’ll catch up.”
She looked down into the dark, churning water, lit only by the slight glow of the boardwalk lamps and the glow of nearby buildings. If the moon hadn’t been out, she probably wouldn’t have seen much at all, and she wouldn’t even have minded. She knew the ocean was there—steady, faithful—and that was all that mattered.
Once she saw that Marcus was long gone, she looked out into a black void of sea and air and said, “Who
are
you?”
When her voice, so small in that big space, got carried away and it was obvious no one was around to hear or care, she called out, louder this time, “Why did you have to leave?”
It felt wonderful, cathartic, because maybe someone—someone out there or up there—would listen and send her some clues. To where the journal was—if it even still existed. To what the Dreamland Social Club was all about. To what “Bath” meant.
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.
T
he 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?”
I take it from him and sip hot chocolate. Because Legs has actually become my friend. And even though I’m sure he still wants us to be more than that, he never says anything about it and neither do I. He doesn’t care that my father designed a coaster for Loki, thinks maybe a big slick coaster would be really cool for Coney. Even if I’m not sure anymore, it’s nice to not be judged.
Down the beach a ways, I spot Rita—squeezed into a black string bikini and wearing a hot-pink bathing cap. I marvel that it can contain all that hair. I can tell that one of the women she is with is her mother and figure the other is her grandmother. They all three take hands and then walk straight out into the surf, exclaiming things in Spanish that I don’t understand. Watching them, I feel a pang of envy, like a jellyfish has somehow pulsed its way into my heart and stung me there. Rita and Babette have a truce of sorts, too. Rita pretends nothing is going on with Marcus and Babette pretends she believes that. Or maybe she really does.
H.T. has arrived, too, and he says, “You’ll notice that most of those idiots are like y’all.” He’s bouncing on his legs, trying to keep warm. “White.”
He’s right.
“Why is that?” I ask, because I sense an opening where openings rarely exist.
He pulls his hat down to better cover his ears and breathes icy fog into his hands. “You tell me.”
“Seriously,” I say. “Why aren’t you out there?”
“’Cause it’s COLD!” he says, and we all laugh.
Legs says, “This is ridiculous. I can’t take it.” He turns to go. “You coming?”
I take one last look at the ocean, with the winter sun glaring off it in a shocking white burst, making me squint.
Tomorrow, things will go back to sleepy and only the pigeons and seagulls will miss the crowds. Winter will settle over Coney again like an invisible igloo. The streets will be cleaner, the nights quieter, and there will be no girls with pigtails and oversize sunglasses, no smart-alecky T-shirts, no families from Westchester, wherever that is. I will go back to poking around the attic for keys and journals and contemplating the Bath key and hiding my heart away in a shipwreck or submarine. I will go back to puzzling over the increasingly cryptic Dreamland Social Club fliers—“You really don’t know, do you?”; “Are you daft?”—and wait to see what they do next.
I will hum the Dreamland song and hear Leo’s sad, sad saw song in my head and hope that the tsunami of spring will never come.