CHAPTER four
THERE WERE NORMAL KIDS, of course. Hundreds
upon hundreds of them. And Jane had met a lot of them. Sarahs and
Jacintas and Kiras and Londas. A few Matts. A couple of Emmetts.
She couldn’t seem to keep any of them straight, though; couldn’t
seem to remember or connect. None of them seemed to know who she
was—or who Preemie was—and none of them seemed to care. At first,
she’d thought that would be nice. And she’d made some efforts to
try to befriend some of them by the lockers and between classes.
But she kept feeling drawn to Babette. To H.T. To the others. Even
the ones who made her sort of uncomfortable, like Venus.
So when she walked into the girls’ bathroom that
morning and saw a slew of freaks reflected in the mirrors, she had
to work hard to make sense of the scene. Gone was the backdrop of
normalcy. Everyone in the mirror was skewed. Then she saw the sign
above the funhouse mirrors—somehow layered over the normal ones—and
it read ARE YOU NORMAL?
Smaller letters below the question read DEEP
THOUGHTS FROM THE DREAMLAND SOCIAL CLUB.
Girls with long blond hair had been turned into
boyish ghouls. Girls with cropped dreads had hair down to their
knees or knees where their eyes should be. Jane could be either a
dwarf or a giant, depending on where, in front of the mirror, she
stood. There was laughing and gasping and a few people saying,
“Ugh. Could you imagine?” And that’s when Jane ducked out, decided
she didn’t have to go so badly after all.
In homeroom that same morning it became clear that
word of Marcus’s black eye had spread quickly, but not quite as
quickly as word of Harvey Claverack’s black eye. Even Jane
was caught off guard by the damage her brother had managed to
inflict upon the geek, who was easily twice his size. Marcus’s eye
region had retreated to its normal size but turned a deep shade of
lavender. Harvey’s was a dark eggplant.
Ouch.
When she was sick of fielding questions about it
for which she had no answers—and sick of pride and fear doing
battle in her heart—she escaped into the basement halls and knocked
on the door to the Siren offices.
“Oh, hi!” Legs said. “I was actually just coming to
find you.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “You’re doing a story
about my brother’s black eye.”
“No.” He smiled. “Though it’s not the worst idea in
the world. I wanted to show you something. You never came back to
look through the archives, and I felt sort of bad that I brushed
you off.” He handed her a large black-and-white photo. “I think
that might be your mother?”
Jane took the photo and studied it. In it, her
mother wore an Empire-waisted dress in a bright red with black
leggings underneath and black boots—like combat boots—on her feet.
Three others—one a man with his arm around her mother’s
shoulder—stood side by side. “It is,” she said. “What about the
other people? Are there names?”
“No,” Legs said. “Sorry.”
And right then she recognized Beth in the photo.
Younger, but definitely Beth.
Legs said, “You can keep it,” and Jane said,
“Thanks.”
He was probably not the kind of guy who had ever
canceled on Minnie. Jane was dreading having to look Leo in the eye
and not show her hurt.
“Just don’t tell anybody, okay?” Legs said.
“Technically it’s school property.”
“Of course,” Jane said.
The first-period bell rang and they both headed
toward the door. Jane stopped to put the photo into her bag and
saw, in a light pencil marking on the back, the letters
D.S.C.
“So would you, like, maybe want to go rollerskating
on Friday?” Legs opened the door for her. “There’s a benefit
thing.”
When she didn’t answer right away but kept,
instead, looking at those letters, so barely there it was a wonder
she’d even spotted them, Legs stammered a bit and said, “A bunch of
people from school will be there.”
Sliding the photograph into a folder, Jane looked
up. It was sweet of him to want to be friends, to include her in a
group outing like that.
But rollerskating?
“Rollerskating isn’t really my thing,” she said,
but then she felt such a rush of gratitude for him, for the photo,
for his reaching out this way, she said, “But yeah, sure. Sounds
fun.”
Venus seemed to want something from Jane in
biology lab that morning. A confession of some kind? An apology?
But since Jane was going to give her neither, she ignored Venus’s
expectant looks and studied the instructions on the handout. They
were doing a lab called “Invertebrate Diversity” and were going to
be moving around the room to different stations, comparing general
characteristics of a bunch of animals without backbones.
It turned out that Leo hadn’t shown up for school,
and Jane wondered what that meant about his backbone, or lack
thereof. Fortunately, she found that it was much easier to bluff in
front of Venus without him around to remind her of what she was
trying to hide. And what, exactly, was she hiding? Her feelings for
Leo? The night at the Thunderbolt? Their plans to meet again
tonight? The fact that she had seen them, maybe, kissing?
It’s just that Venus . . . he’d said on the
phone.
It’s just that Venus what?
“So I was hanging out with Leo last night,” Venus
said, and it felt like a kick in the gut. They’d just finished
studying an earthworm—taking notes on whether it was symmetrical
and had legs or eyes and how it moved—and had gone over to the
snail station. Venus’s tattoos seemed to be in full bloom that
day—she even smelled like roses—and Jane wondered whether the bugs
were drawn to her. “He said your moms were friends.”
Jane nodded and studied the markings on the snail’s
shell, looking for patterns or anything of interest at all.
“It doesn’t mean anything, you know.” Venus wasn’t
taking many notes; just the bare minimum. “I just mean, it’s not
like that means you two are gonna be bestest friends or
anything.”
“Right.” Jane struggled hard not to add, Go play
in traffic, and said instead, “I know.” She was sure now that
their specimen had started to inch toward Venus.
Venus picked up the snail then, and Jane said, “I’m
not sure you’re supposed to—”
“Read the handout,” Venus snapped, and Jane found
the line that said “You are encouraged to handle the earthworms,
crickets, and snails, but please be careful and don’t handle them
too roughly.”
“He’s out sick today.” Venus coughed a fake cough.
“I hope I didn’t catch it.”
Jane sat and stared at her lab sheet, not able to
decipher her own notes and wondering: Did getting tattoos hurt more
or less than conversations like this? Was there any way to measure
physical pain against emotional pain? Did snails and earthworms and
crickets know the difference? She wished for a note she could
circulate—one about maybe treating her carefully, about not
handling her too roughly. She’d give the first copy to Venus
and the second one to Leo.
Babette barreled over at lunchtime and said, “Legs
and Minnie broke up.”
She was breathless: “I just saw her crying in the
bathroom.”
Practically bursting: “He wants to see other
people.”
“Other people?” Rita said with a swallow.
“Like who?”
Jane studied the seam of her book bag; the speckled
pattern on the cafeteria floor, like a bird’s egg; the white skin
showing through the openings of her Mary Jane–style shoes. Finally,
when she could ignore the question no longer, she said, “I think he
may have asked me out.”
“I knew it!” Babette made a pouty sort of face.
“That’s so sweet. What did you say?”
Jane lost interest in her lunch entirely. “I said
yes, but I didn’t realize it was a date.”
“So what if it’s a date,” Babette said. “That’s
awesome.”
“I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” Jane said, and
Babette said, “Jane. Come on.”
“Come on, what?”
“You know.” Babette wasn’t actually tugging
on Jane’s arm but it felt like she was, with that look in her
eyes.
“No.” Jane was fuming, because she did know.
“I don’t.”
Babette looked across the room to where Venus and
one of Leo’s friends were playing that game where you try to slap
the other person’s hands before they slap yours; a flat
thwack cut through the din of the room as Venus nailed the
guy hard.
“Fine,” Babette said when she looked back at Jane.
“It’s your life. Waste it if you want.”
“Are you guys going?” Jane said finally.
“Rollerskating?”
“Yes, we’re going. But you can’t tell him you
didn’t know it was a date. You have to pretend.”
“I can’t.”
“Oh, so you’re going to tell him?” Babette put tiny
hands on her hips. “You’re going to say, ‘Sorry I said yes, but I
thought it was a group thing, and the thought of going on an actual
date with you is so repulsive to me that I have to retract my
yes.”
“I never said I was repulsed!” Jane protested. “I’m
not!”
“Still.” Rita winced. “She has a point.”
Jane was almost at the boardwalk with Babette at
day’s end when Mr. Simmons appeared and stopped her. “I’m still
waiting for your postcard, Ms. Dryden.” He rubbed his goatee. “I
check my mail so often I’m starting to feel like an army
wife.”
“I’ll catch up,” Jane said to Babette, who had
started to walk over toward the bench on the boardwalk where Rita
and Marcus were sitting.
“I know,” Jane said to her teacher. She would have
made a postcard about the night at the old Thunderbolt site, her
night with Leo, if he hadn’t ruined it all the next day by
canceling on her to be with Venus.
Mr. Simmons said, “You’re losing points each day I
don’t have it.”
“I know,” Jane said again, and she was about to
skulk away when she had a thought. “Mr. Simmons?”
He turned.
“What do you know about carousel horses?”
“Meaning . . . ?”
“Meaning, I don’t know, how much money would a
Claverack carousel horse be worth?”
“From what I know—anything from maybe ten grand to
sixty grand? But here’s the thing”—he paused and seemed to be
choosing his words—“like any collectible of any real value, it’s
priceless to the right owner.”
“But who is the right owner?” The answer to
that question would solve everything.
Mr. Simmons shrugged and said, “The person who
finds it priceless.” He started to back away. “The postcard, Jane.
Don’t forget.”
She turned and moved on to meet Marcus, Rita, and
Babette but saw that Babette hadn’t made it to the bench yet. She
was frozen in place, watching from a distance, while Marcus and
Rita sat side by side, laughing in the sun. They were watching H.T.
and his friends dancing on the boardwalk to loud hip-hop music
coming from a boom box. H.T. was doing some kind of fancy, spinning
handstand. Marcus and Rita were sitting very, very close.
“Babette!” Jane called out—more loudly than was
necessary during a gap in the music—and Rita looked up and elbowed
Marcus, who quickly put space between them.
Babette turned to Jane, who caught up with her, and
together they joined Marcus and Rita.
They all watched H.T.’s crew dance for a while
more, and then Jane pulled out the photo of Birdie and the legless
man, which was tucked into the front cover of one of her texts.
What Mr. Simmons had said made her realize why she’d taken it from
the house, why she’d been carrying it around. When H.T. stopped
dancing, she walked over and said, “Hey.”
“Hey.” He looked at her expectantly.
“I was looking through some of my grandmother’s old
stuff and I found this picture.” She looked at the picture again
now and felt like this was probably a huge mistake. But there was
no turning back. “It’s her and a guy who also, well . . .” She
suddenly couldn’t find words.
H.T. snatched the photo out of her hand and looked
at it, then said, “Oh, man, no way. Johnny Eck, the Half Boy. This
guy’s, like, my idol.”
“Really?”
“Totally.”
“Jane,” Babette said, with a whine. “Come on. Let’s
go.”
“You can have it,” Jane said to H.T. “I mean, if
you want it.”
“For real?”
“Jane!” Babette said again.
“Yeah,” Jane said to H.T.
“Awesome,” he said. “Thanks.” Then he turned to
Babette and said, “And why are you in such a hurry, Little
B?”
Jane thought it was cute he had a nickname for
her.
Jane had done all her homework and made another
search of the attic and her own room for her mother’s journal—what
a nagging thing that was, to know it existed and might still—but
there were still hours to fill before she was meeting Leo. If he
was even going to show up.
She’d found a VHS copy of an old movie called
Freaks in the attic and decided to watch and see if maybe
Birdie was in it. Heading downstairs with it she heard
voices—plural—coming from her brother’s room. He had a girl with
him. Jane didn’t even want to think about who it was and what would
happen when Babette found out.
She fixed herself a snack in the kitchen and
started the movie, which seemed like it had been made for shock
value, with a thin plot about a circus sideshow. There were two
pinheads and a torso boy and those same Siamese twins who had been
in Is It Human? and, yes, there was a bird woman, but it
wasn’t Birdie. And what kind of crazy world was it when two women
could get famous pretending to be part bird?
She almost turned it off a few times, it was so
bad, but it was also strangely compelling, and then it was almost
over and there was a banquet because a normal woman was marrying
one of the freaks—some kind of miniature man—and they were at a
table with big goblets and the freaks were stomping on the table,
chanting, “Gooble gobble. Gooble gobble. We accept her. We
accept her. One of us, one of us.”
Pounding and pounding and stomping and stomping and
then saying it again, over and over, in a strange sort of
initiation ritual.
Gooble gobble. Gooble gobble.
It was creepy as all get-out and then, thankfully,
it was over.
When her brother came downstairs with Rita trailing
behind him, Jane was almost happy to see them.
Rita said to Jane, “Walk me to the door?”
Jane got up, followed Rita down the hall.
“Hey, do me a favor,” Rita said, her hand already
on the knob. “Don’t tell Babette I was here.”
Jane was studying her closely, looking at the way
her hair—no longer pulled back in the ponytail she’d worn all
day—seemed so unruly.
Rita said. “You know how she is.”
“Yes,” Jane said. “I do.”
Marcus was whistling while looking for something to
eat in the kitchen when Jane returned. She said, “I hope you know
what you’re doing,” and he said, “Don’t lose any sleep over it,
sis.”
“You know,” she snapped. “You’re sort of becoming a
jerk.”
“Why? Because I don’t like Babette? Get real.” He
took a Coke out of the fridge, snapped it open, and went
upstairs.
Jane sat down at the kitchen table, where a note
from her father that she hadn’t noticed earlier read Loki
meeting in city late afternoon. Order takeout. A twenty-dollar
bill peeked out from behind it. But Jane wasn’t hungry, and anyway
dinnertime had passed. She went to her bag and got out the photo
Legs had given her, then looked at the clock on the wall.
It was late for a lot of people.
But not for people who ran clubs.
Walking down the boardwalk by the light of a
crescent moon, Jane could almost feel its pull in the air around
her. Something about the way she was moving in the world now made
her feel like there were invisible tendons and connections
everywhere. The gravitational pull of Coney, of Leo, of her
mother’s past, was right there in front of her, where she could
touch it.
As she walked up the carpeted staircase to the
Coral Room, she heard music—a deep, sultry, slow beat. Pushing
through a set of doors at the top of the stairs, she slid into the
room as inconspicuously as she could. At the far end of the room,
in weird contrast to the seascape, a woman pranced around onstage
wearing a polka-dot bra and some matching boy-shorts. She was
dancing to old-timey piano music, making strange, pouting faces.
During a drum break, she bent forward and blew a big kiss, jiggling
her breasts.
Jane slid into one of only two empty booths along
the wall opposite the bar and hoped that no one noticed her until
she figured out exactly what she was going to say if anyone other
than Beth asked her what she was doing there.
But it was hard to think straight. A little card
pyramid on the table announced that it was Burlesque Night, and
Jane couldn’t take her eyes off the woman onstage, her pale skin,
her red lipstick, her increasingly scanty outfit. She’d just moved
her bra straps off her shoulders while looking tantalizingly over
her shoulder at the crowd. Then she turned and revealed breasts
bare except for gold tassels hanging from her nipples, which she
somehow managed to spin around. Looking back at the aquarium and
finding some of those gold fish, Jane thought that yes, it was the
same kind of shimmer, the same shade of gold.
She watched a white blowfish make slow progress
across the bottom front edge of the tank. And when she looked up
there was a new girl onstage. She was wearing a black bikini and
dancing with two huge black wings made of feathers. The music was a
classical song that Jane recognized from the deep boom of
horns—“The Ride of the Valkyries.”
BUM-BUM-BUM. Bum-be-bum. Bum-be-bum.
Flap. Flap. Jiggle. Jiggle.
BUM-BUM-BUM. Bum-be-bum. Bum-be-bum.
That’s when Beth saw her and came over.
“Hey there,” she said, sliding into the booth.
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Jane said, wondering why it felt like a
lie. Everything was okay, wasn’t it? “I wanted to show you
this.”
She pulled the photo out of her bag and put it on
the table in front of Beth. “It was in the archives at
school.”
“Wow,” Beth said carefully, and then she held the
photo closer to the small light sconce on the wall of the booth.
Then, finally, she shook her head and put the photo down. “We were
so young.”
Jane picked it up and turned it over. “It says
D.S.C. on the back. Do you know what that means?” It didn’t matter
that she already knew it had to be the Dreamland Social Club. She
wanted to be told.
Beth’s eyes got sad. “Oh, honey,” she said, shaking
her head again. She pushed the photo over so that it sat in front
of Jane. “Here’s what I will tell you.” She pointed to the
face of one of the boys in the photo and said, “That’s one of your
mother’s ex-boyfriends.”
“Really?” Jane studied the boy’s face. “What was
his name?”
“You’re not going to like it.” Beth tapped his face
with her finger. “That’s Freddy Claverack.”
“You gonna walk right by?” the voice said. “You’re
a regular ole Looky Lou.”
Jane’s head snapped toward the voice, and she saw a
man holding a microphone standing in front of the Shoot the Freak
booth.
“Well, would you look at that?” He nodded at her.
“She’s got ears. Just not the nerve to shoot the Freak.”
He had dark peach fuzz for hair and wore mirrored
sunglasses that covered half his face. His neck pooled under his
chin like a deflated inner tube, and his belly pushed out on a Mets
T-shirt that barely met the top edge of his denim shorts. Turning
away from Jane he said, to no one in particular, “Shoot the Freak
in the freakin’ head.”
Jane looked up and down the boardwalk—saw no sign
of anyone she knew, though it was a warm night so pretty bustling
with people—and then she stepped up to the guy and studied the
Shoot the Freak booth.
The target was standing among the field’s scrap
metal and trash, just standing there and waiting. The entire scene
was splattered with paint, and paint guns rested on a ledge in
front of Jane. She said, “How much?”
Peach Fuzz pointed to the sign that Jane really
should have seen, hanging right behind him. Ten bucks for ten
rounds sounded like a lot, and Jane thought maybe she’d just move
on but suddenly she really wanted to shoot the Freak.
“I don’t have all night,” he said.
“Fine.” She reached for her wallet and handed him
the money.
Peach Fuzz loaded up a gun with paint pellets, then
handed it to Jane. She stabilized her hands by propping her elbows
up on the barrier between the boardwalk and the Freak’s junk-metal
obstacle course and found her target. He was moving slowly, swaying
on his feet and holding a plastic shield. Jane aimed low and fired.
Orange paint exploded on the Freak’s leg.
He started to show a little more life as she fired
again, and hit him again—imagining now that he was a Claverack.
Harvey. Cliff. Freddy. It didn’t matter. Right then something about
the Freak’s body movements—he took a few determined steps
forward—made Jane think he was getting mad. But if he didn’t want
to get hit, he needed to move around more, show some hustle.
She popped him again, this time with a splatter of
blue and this time imagining he was Leo, who’d canceled on her. Leo
who was on course to break her heart.
Peach Fuzz was trying to attract a crowd. “Check,
check, check it out. We’ve got a sharpshooter here.” The last word
sounded like heeya.
She let the rest of her rounds pop faster once
she’d gotten the hang of the gun, and she hit the Freak each time.
When the gun was emptied—and that last time, it was her mother, her
mysterious, elusive, dead, fun mother whose image had flashed
through her mind—she put it down and felt a rush of excitement at
how well she’d done.
“Not bad,” he said, and Jane said, “Thanks.”
He gathered up some saliva in his mouth with a
whipping sound and then spat on the boardwalk and shrugged.
High on catharsis, Jane blurted, “You should give
out prizes or something.”
“Yeah.” He was counting a wad of bills. “I’ll look
into that.”