Welcome to Dog Beach (2 page)

Sometimes we don't even bother with towels or chairs—we just sit down on the sand. We dig our feet in as far as they
will go and we eat our ice cream. Our plan is to meet up with Bennett when he's done playing Ping-Pong with his dad, and then we'll decide what to do for the rest of the day.

“I hope this will cheer you up,” Micayla says, burrowing through her ice cream cup for a chunk of chocolate. “I've never seen you sad on Seagate before.”

She's right about that. But she's also never really seen me anywhere else, except for the time her dad brought her to New York City for a last-minute meeting. Her mom had flown to St. Lucia to visit Micayla's grandma, and Micayla couldn't stay home alone. So Micayla came to New York and we spent the day together. I don't think I was sad that day, so she's never really seen me sad anywhere, not just on Seagate. But I know what she means.

“I'm happy to be here. I just keep picturing Danish running on the beach … And his dog bed is still upstairs. I wish my parents would just throw it out, but I think they're too sad to do it. And the Pooch Parade during Seagate Halloween will be so horrible without him.”

“I know,” she says, not looking at me. “Well, maybe we can figure out something else to do during the Pooch Parade.”

It's probably weird that it's not even July yet and I'm already thinking about Seagate Halloween, which takes place over Labor Day weekend. But it's one of the biggest traditions of the summer—everyone participates. Seagate Halloween is exactly the same every year, and that's the way I like it.

Bennett dresses up as Harvey from Sundae Best. He wears his shorts really high and a Seagate baseball cap. Micayla dresses up as a mermaid, like the statue you see when you first get off the ferry. I dress up as a beach pail. My mom makes me a new costume every year out of painted cardboard, and it comes out awesome every time. And the best part was that Danish would dress up as the shovel! We'd get the biggest sand shovel we could find and strap it to his back, and I'd carry him, so we looked like a perfect pair—beach pail and sand shovel. So happy together.

We've been on Seagate Island for a week, and I've been partially sad the whole time. Happy to be here, but sad without Danish. I don't want to be sad here. It's my most favorite place in the universe. But I can't seem to help it.

Danish was my grandma's dog, so for many years I only ever saw him on Seagate. Our house here was Grandma's house. When she died three years ago, we got Danish and the house, although it always seemed like they were partially ours to begin with.

During the summer, Danish slept in my bed. He spent all day with Micayla, Bennett, and me. Everyone thought he was my dog. And the house—well, the house felt like ours too. The yellow room with the canopy bed was mine. No one else slept there. Mom and Dad had the room around the corner with the blue-and-ivory-striped wallpaper. And Grandma's room was at the end of the hallway. She had her own bathroom, but she'd let us use it.

All year she'd be busy on Seagate, volunteering at the elementary school to help the kids with math, setting up the concert schedule for the summer, taking Danish to Dog Beach even when it was a little bit cold outside. Even though I knew all that, I always imagined her waiting patiently for us to come back for the summer. We'd come for weekends sometimes, but that didn't really count. Summer was summer.

Summer was when we were all together. Grandma would make her famous corn chowder. Mom would set up her easel on the back deck and paint landscapes of the ocean, and Dad would try to play Ping-Pong with everyone on the island at least once.

After Grandma died, we were all really sad. We couldn't imagine being on Seagate without her. But when we came back that next summer, being there was more comforting than we expected it to be. Everyone wanted to tell us stories about Grandma. Dad did some work on the house to spruce it up a little bit, and Mom organized a special concert in Grandma's memory. Now the annual concert series is known as the Sally Bell Seagate Concert Calendar.

Danish died this past December. It was sudden, and I don't really like to even think about it. All winter and spring, I kept hoping that being back on Seagate would be comforting, the way it was after Grandma died. But so far, it's not. So far, I just miss him. It was always Micayla, Bennett, and me—with Danish running along with us.

A key member of our crew is missing.

“I have to tell you something,” Micayla and I say at the exact same time, and then we both burst into laughter.

“You first,” I say. She probably has more exciting news than my babysitting job.

“Avery Sanders has a boyfriend,” Micayla tells me.

“Yeah?” I ask. “She didn't mention it to me when I saw her at Pastrami on Rye the other night.”

“Just saw her at Sundae Best. She was going on and on about it. She said this new kid moved to Seagate in the middle of the year. And he's, like, a real-life boyfriend.”

I look at Micayla, surprised. “I wonder why she didn't tell me before.”

Avery Sanders is a friend of ours, but not a best friend. She moved to Seagate four years ago, and she lives here year-round. She's the type of friend that we never really call to make plans, but if we run into each other, we'll hang out.

She's nice, but she's one of those girls who seemed like a teenager when we were, like, nine, and she'd always say that Bennett was my boyfriend, even when I didn't really know what a boyfriend was.

The past few times I talked to her, she told me that she was bored with Seagate and that it has really changed since she moved here.

I always listened to what she said, even though none of it made sense. How could Seagate be boring? And how could it change? Seagate will always be perfect, and summer after summer, it always stays the same. That's the beauty of it.

“I think her grandparents live here year-round now too,” Micayla tells me. “That's what my mom said.”

Actually, that's another group of lucky people on Seagate—the year-rounders. I always wonder if that makes them luckier than the luckiest or somewhere in between. On the one hand, they never have to leave Seagate. But on the other hand, they have to see almost everyone else leave. And they don't get that amazing anticipation—the excited, heart-bursting feeling of coming back.

“What did you have to tell me?” Micayla asks.

I explain the whole pickle situation with Amber Seasons.

“That's cool,” Micayla says. “It's, like, your first real job.”

“You think?”

“Yeah, for sure.” She digs deep in her cup for the last little bit of ice cream. “And it's only a few hours. You won't miss anything.”

“I guess.”

Micayla gives me her please-cheer-up smile again and taps my leg. “Come on. Let's go meet Bennett at Ping-Pong. Bennett always makes you laugh after five minutes.”

She's right about that.

“Who's he playing?” I ask Micayla as we get closer
to the stadium. It's not really a stadium, but since Ping-Pong is such a huge deal on Seagate Island, that's what we call it. It's really just a big overhang in the middle of the island with fifteen Ping-Pong tables underneath it. This way people can play rain or shine.

“He said he was meeting his dad here. You know they take their Sunday games really seriously.”

Bennett's dad only comes to Seagate on the weekends. He's a big lawyer in Boston. He flies in every Friday and flies back every Sunday on these teeny-tiny planes. Bennett and his dad always have a heated Ping-Pong match right before he leaves on Sunday afternoon. Bennett usually wins.

“Remy! Mic!” Bennett shouts to us. “Where have you guys been?”

We walk closer to his table and see that he's playing against a kid with spiky hair and a shirt with a picture of a video game controller on it.

“Yo, Calvin.” Bennett turns to the spiky-haired kid. He's really not the type of person to use the word
yo
, so hearing him say it is strange. “This is Remy.” Bennett points to me. “And this is Micayla.” He points to her.

“Hey,” Calvin says, looking down at his untied sneakers like he doesn't really care to talk to us. We say “hey” back, and then Bennett and Calvin return to their game.

There's a girl sitting on one of the wooden benches along the side of the stadium. “Calvin, come on,” she says. “Grandpa said we needed to be back by three.”

“Claire.” He keeps playing and doesn't look at her. “Shut up.”

“Calvin!” The girl yells this time. “Fine. Whatever. I'm leaving you here. I hope you get lost.”

I guess she doesn't realize that it's pretty much impossible to be lost on Seagate.

She huffs, annoyed, as she stands up and walks away. She doesn't introduce herself to us, and she doesn't say good-bye to Bennett. She's wearing white cutoffs, and they're really, really short, so she adjusts them as she walks away.

“My sister is such a bore,” Calvin says.

“Most girls are,” Bennett replies.

What did he just say? I look at Micayla to see if she heard it, but she's more involved in their game than I realized. Bennett
Newhouse, one of my best friends since birth, just said that most girls are bores. At least he said “most” and not “all,” but
still
.

Finally Calvin leaves and Bennett walks over to Micayla and me. “Surfing?” he asks. As much as I want to go surf, I'm still kind of shaken up. If he thinks most girls are bores, does he think I'm a bore? Or does he not think of me as a girl?

“There will be time for surfing after we discuss what just happened,” I tell Bennett. Micayla cracks up. She says that I speak in a really formal way because both of my parents are on-air journalists. She tells me I should talk more like a kid. I think I talk like a kid most of the time, but my more formal speech comes out when I'm angry. Like I am right now. “Why did you say that girls are bores?”

“Uh-oh, Investigator Remy is here again!” Bennett laughs and raises a hand to slap Micayla five, but she denies him. “Rem, relax. I just met the kid. I was trying to make him feel comfortable.”

I give him a casual eye roll. That's a lame excuse if I ever heard one. “Well, who is he anyway? A weekender?”

Bennett shuffles some stray sand around with the toe of his flip-flop. “No. He's my next-door neighbor.”

“What?” Micayla exclaims. “What happened to Mr. Brookfield?”

“That's his grandson! The one he was always telling us about.” Bennett widens his eyes at us, and I can't tell if he wants us to be excited or not. “Remember?”

“Kind of.” I shrug. I do remember, but I don't want to admit it; I'm still mad at Bennett. Mr. Brookfield always went on and on about his grandchildren and how we'd love them if we only knew them. But they always went to camp in the summer and had no interest in Seagate.

That was okay with me. I already had friends, and while people say you can never have too many, I was happy with the way things had always been.

“That girl was his twin, then,” I say, putting it all together. “Didn't Mr. Brookfield always say he had twin grandchildren?”

“Yup. Calvin and Claire.”

Calvin and Claire—sounds like a matched pair. I decide that I'll think of them as the C Twins.

“Please tell me they're just here for the week,” Micayla says, and I'm glad she does, because that means I don't have to. “July Fourth week and then they're going home?”

“Nope. They'll be here all summer.” Bennett raises his eyebrows, like he's not sure why this is such a big deal. “So? Surfing?”

“Why are they here?” I ask.

Micayla chimes in, “Yeah. I thought they loooved camp.”

It's not that we don't believe camp can be great. I go to school with a girl named Rachel Kleiger who claims camp is the best place on earth. She feels about camp the way I feel about Seagate. But we just never understood how these twins could choose a camp over Seagate. Seagate is perfect.
And anyone who has an option to be here should be here.

“I don't know, guys,” Bennett says. “I just met them today.” He backs up a little bit. “You're both acting weird. I'm going to surf.”

Micayla and I hang back a minute and tell Bennett that we'll meet him at the beach. After he leaves, I say, “
We're
acting weird?
He's
acting weird.” I look at Micayla and wait for her to say something. “Right?”

She shrugs. I wish she'd agree with me more. “I'm still thinking about that kid Calvin's hair. It was unusual, right?”

“I forgot what it looked like already,” I lie. I don't know why I lie, but I do.

“Brown and spiky?” I can't believe Micayla just believed me.

“Oh yeah. That's not really so unusual.”

On the way back to the beach we pick up our surfboards and change into our bathing suits. They're still wet from our morning swim, but we don't mind. They're just going to get wet again anyway. On Seagate, it's okay to walk around in a damp bathing suit. No one judges you. There's no pressure to show off. I feel kind of guilty that I'm so judgy about Calvin and his sister. Maybe they're not that bad.