Welcome to Dog Beach (5 page)

“Hi,” I say back to be nice. Claire's one of those girls who always seems to be bothered. It could be the weather or the way her sneakers fit or that she's not allowed to have dessert, but it's always something. I've only known her for a few days, but that type of thing is really obvious.

“Rem, come here,” Bennett says again, and I finally make my way to the tape player. “You gotta hear this.”

He presses Play and I hear that scream, the one I heard just a few minutes ago. It sounded so clear and lifelike that I had no idea it was a recording. Bennett then proceeds to play it ten more times. He seems so interested in it that I can't help but be interested in it too.

When Bennett gets enthusiastic about something, I automatically want to know more about it. He just has this way of making even everyday things seem more interesting.

“Okay, whoa,” I say, laughing. “That's a lot of screaming. Explain?”

I don't know how it's possible for a scream to sound so
incredible, but this one does. There's something almost magical about it.

Bennett turns to Calvin and Claire, who are eating a sleeve of Chips Ahoy like they haven't seen food in years. “You guys want to tell the story?” he asks them.

Micayla reaches in for a cookie and shrugs. “I don't really know what's going on either,” she whispers to me.

Calvin sighs and plops down on the grass. He puts his baseball cap across his face like he needs a second to regain his concentration, and then he says, “Our grandfather is that scream.”

I've known Mr. Brookfield forever, and he's always been the nice older man who lives next door to Bennett's family. He was friends with my grandma. He likes to walk around Seagate and pick up any trash, even though that's not a huge job because no one really litters here. He also plays cards down by the Ping-Pong stadium and was a judge for the Sandcastle Contest a few times. But that's really all I know about him.

I've never heard him raise his voice. I have no idea what Calvin means when he says that Mr. Brookfield “is that scream.”

Claire's pulling up grass to make bracelets, but she chimes in, “His scream has been in a million movies.” She rolls her eyes. “But he has no connections. I really wanted to meet someone famous, but he says he can't do anything.”

“Mr. Brookfield is famous?” I look at Bennett when I ask
this because I feel uncomfortable talking to Claire, and Calvin doesn't really make much sense.

“Well, no. I mean, um, he's not, right?” Bennett asks Calvin. “I think he should be, though.”

“He doesn't even really seem to care,” Calvin says, twirling a finger beside his head, the universal sign for cuckoo. I can't believe Calvin and Claire talk about their own grandfather, sweet Mr. Brookfield, this way.

“Wait,” Micayla says, crumpling up the empty sleeve of cookies. “Why isn't he famous if his scream was in a million movies? I'm so confused.”

Claire looks up at the sky, as if searching for some kind of divine help to get her out of this annoying situation. “Basically they just paid him to record the scream once, but it's been in, like, billions of movies, and no one knows it's him. I swear, if you watch movies like
Star Wars
and
Indiana Jones
and even some Disney cartoons, you'll hear it.”

“That's really cool and kind of crazy,” I say, making eye contact with Bennett, hoping he realizes that I think it's cool too. I could tell Bennett was all excited about it, but Claire and Calvin act like it's no big deal.

“You guys don't get it. It would be cool if he was actually, like, famous,” Claire says. “But he's
not
.”

Claire has to be the most negative person on Seagate. She doesn't belong here. She belongs in New York City on the hottest day of the year, on garbage pickup day; that way she'd be able to find a million more negative people.

I keep thinking about the Scream, and as cool as it is, it also kind of freaks me out. How can I have lived near Mr. Brookfield for so long and never known this about him? It makes me feel nervous.

“So why are you on Seagate this summer anyway?” Micayla asks Claire.

“We were forced to come,” Claire says. “Grandpa's getting older and our parents want us to spend time with him.”

“We love the guy, but no offense, it's kind of slow here.” Calvin widens his eyes at us. “And the guy may be getting weirder; he's talking about his scream more, which only makes me think he's going crazy.”

He did
not
just say what I thought he did. Newcomers talking badly about our beloved Seagate? I want to get up and walk away and not talk to these two ever again. If it's slow here, it's because
they're
boring. They obviously don't get the magic of this place, and I don't really care to show it to them.

Besides, is revealing a secret really a sign of someone going crazy? I don't think so. Plus, I don't want that to be true. Even though Bennett thinks it's awesome, part of me hopes Mr. Brookfield will stop talking about this weird scream and go back to being the nice old man who picks up any litter he sees—this changes everything about him.

“Well, if you think it's slow here, you'll just have to hang with us,” Bennett says. “We'll show you how awesome it is.”

I literally feel my mouth dropping open like an exaggerated
cartoon character. I look at Micayla to commiserate, but she seems distracted, ripping the strands of her cutoffs. She doesn't seem to understand what a serious disaster has occurred.

Bennett Newhouse, one of my best friends in the entire world, just invited these two downers to hang with us.

The worst part is, they still don't seem happy. Claire goes on and on about the celebrities she'd like to meet if only her grandfather was famous enough to actually help her meet them, and Calvin just plays with his hat.

It occurs to me that instead of sitting around talking about celebrities we're never going to meet, we could go inside and ask Mr. Brookfield about the Scream and get him to tell us why he kept it a secret all these years. It explains his director's chair collection, for one thing. But I also want to ask him how it happened, and what it was like to be in the movies, and if he ever screams to himself every now and again.

He has this mystery past. Everyone just sees him as nice Mr. Brookfield, but there's actually so much more to him, and hardly anyone even knows about it. Only us.

I start to get the feeling that maybe that's true for everyone. Maybe all grown-ups have mystery pasts, and it takes random old artifacts to discover what they are. Maybe kids have the same thing. Not mystery pasts, but secret feelings. Only a few people know how sad I am about Danish. I just carry it around with me like an oversized backpack, one that's invisible to pretty much everyone.

I think about all of this as the rest of the group goes on and on about what it's like to be famous.

When there's a lull in the conversation, I suggest we go for a swim. It's getting really hot out here. And underwater, I can think all I want about secret lives, and I don't have to listen to the C Twins at all.

Micayla and her mom are going to get their hair
rebraided this morning. I've gone with them a few times, and it's cool, but it takes a really long time.

Bennett's mom is taking him and his little brother, Asher, on a fishing expedition. If Danish were here, we'd go for an early-morning stroll along the beach and then stop at Daisy's for pancakes on the way home. Daisy's is a restaurant for humans and canines. That's what the sign says. Daisy McDougal is a dog lover through and through, and so she set up a little doggie eating area on the porch of her restaurant. There are bowls of water and buckets of treats for the dogs.

It's one of my favorite places on Seagate. I've been avoiding it this summer for obvious reasons.

So instead of pancakes, I decide to smear some cream cheese on a bagel and head over to Marilyn Monroe's. I know
it's Amber's house and I'm really there to watch her son, but after just a few mornings together, it seems that my main purpose is to spend time with Marilyn Monroe. And I'm okay with that.

“Oh, what a morning!” Amber says as soon as she sees me. “My personal trainer canceled my afternoon appointment, and Marilyn Monroe was craving a trip to Daisy's—I could tell. But we never made it out for our morning walk.”

“That sounds … stressful,” I say. Sometimes it's hard for me to really understand what she's worried about.

“But Hudson is down, finally, and Marilyn Monroe was somewhat satisfied with a few extra treats,” she tells me. “Thanks again, Remy.”

“No problem,” I say. “And … um … I could take Marilyn Monroe to Daisy's later, I mean, if you want.”

“You'd do that?” she asks. “She can be a handful. She never quite got the hang of walking on a leash, heeling, and all that.”

“I can handle it,” I say. “I mean, if you want. We can talk about it when you get back. I don't want you to be late.”

“You're the best, Remy.” Amber grabs all her supplies and her iced coffee and heads out for the art class.

“I love Daisy's too,” I tell Mari when we're settled and cozy on the couch. “I understand how you feel.”

She does her little “I agree” yelp, and we settle back into the couch for our usual morning chatting session.

“I went to Dog Beach finally,” I tell her. “I had been avoiding
it, but my friends dragged me there. You haven't met them yet—Micayla and Bennett—but they're pretty awesome.”

She looks up at me with her big brown eyes, her ears up as high as they can go, as if she wants to hear more about them. So I tell her about how my mom met Bennett's mom when we were babies and how Micayla came to Seagate the summer before second grade. She sits close to me, not making a peep, with her lips curved up slightly in what I like to call her listening smile.

“Micayla's getting her hair braided this morning and I'm super jealous.” I show Marilyn Monroe my boring straight hair. “I wonder what color beads she's going to get.”

Marilyn Monroe listens to me, but I can tell she's getting bored. She probably doesn't think much about human hair problems.

“You still want Daisy's,” I say. “I can tell. We'll go later.”

She jumps onto my lap and licks my face and then settles down.

“Oh, and this other thing happened since I saw you last,” I tell her. “So there's this guy, you've probably seen him around, his name is Mr. Brookfield. Anyway, he can do this crazy scream, and it's been in movies.”

I try to imitate the Scream, and it sounds really bad. And then Marilyn Monroe starts barking like crazy, like she's trying to imitate it too. And then I get worried we're going to wake Hudson up.

“Shh,” I say, and she immediately gets what I'm saying and stops barking. “We make a good team, Marilyn Monroe.”

Her lips go from her listening smile to her smiling smile, and I know she agrees.

It takes me a few days to come up with my best new
idea, but I'm glad it didn't take all summer. I'm sitting on the bench outside Sundae Best eating espresso cookie ice cream in a sugar cone, and that's when I realize that you can feel so happy about something (espresso cookie ice cream) and so sad about something (Danish) at the exact same time. But you can also wipe away a sad thing with a happy thing. Temporarily, at least.

So I decide to make a pact with myself that whenever I start to get sad missing Danish, I immediately give myself something happy to think about. It's not hard to find happy things on Seagate, so my pact is pretty easy to keep.

Walking to Micayla's yesterday, I got sad because I saw a teenager walking an apricot poodle pretty much exactly Danish's size. My throat started to get a sunburny feeling,
and I immediately wanted to turn around and go home. But then I passed a pretty white house with a million beach pails lined up on the ledge of the front porch.