Welcome to Dog Beach (4 page)

“I don't know, Mic,” I say. “But I'm glad I have you as my cheerleader.”

“Speaking of cheerleaders,” she says, kicking a rock along the path, “did you hear that Seagate is getting a basketball team this year? Avery Sanders told me, of course. Her boyfriend can't wait to try out.”

“I didn't hear that.” To be honest, I never think about the school here. I don't like to think about kids being here when I'm not. Maybe that's really selfish of me. But Seagate feels like a summer-only place sometimes.

“Yeah, for seventh and eighth graders.”

“But who would they play? They'd have to take the bridge or the ferry for any matches.” There's only one school on Seagate. It goes from kindergarten to eighth grade, and after that the kids have to go off the island for high school. It's only about a twenty-minute ferry ride or a quick drive over the bridge. It's not a big deal, but it's very different from what I'm used to. Back home in New York, I can walk to my school, and when I'm in high school, I'll probably take the subway. You're always connected when you've got a subway.

“Yeah, they play the other schools in Ferry Port and Seaside, I guess.”

Micayla doesn't say much after that, and when we get to my house, my parents are sitting on the back porch reading the newspaper and drinking pink lemonade. They're both here for all of July, and then when August comes they take turns going back and forth to the city. When Grandma was here, they would go to the city more often, but even though I'm allowed to be alone a lot of the time, I can't stay alone overnight.

“Hi, girls,” my mom says in her cheerful Seagate voice. I call it her Seagate voice because I rarely hear it in New York City. Back in New York, she's stressed and frazzled. She complains about people who honk too much, people who push on the subway, her boss, and how much everything costs. But on Seagate, that fades away. It's all painting and reading the newspaper and walks on the beach.

“Hi,” I say. “Micayla's mom invited me to go for fish sandwiches with them tonight. Can I go?”

“No interest in my famous salmon casserole?” my dad asks. “Micayla?”

He always asks this, even though he knows the answer. I think that's why he asks, because he likes to see how we'll respond. Micayla always tries to be super polite and give a reasonable answer for why she can't eat it. He's been asking this same question for years, but she's still polite. That says something about her, I think.

“Well, I would, but my parents have been talking about fish sandwiches for days, and now I'm really craving one,” she says. “But thanks anyway.”

Super polite. Always. That's my best friend Micayla.

“Okay, okay. I'll try not to cry,” my dad says. “Good thing Abby likes it.”

My mom rolls her eyes. “Oh, I love it.”

My dad's salmon casserole is one of the only things he can make, and it's his favorite. He tries really hard and adds new touches to it all the time, like green peppers and bread
crumbs. But it's really just a mishmash of canned salmon, mayonnaise, spiral pasta, and random stuff he finds around the house. It kind of gives me a stomachache when I think about it. But my dad really wants us to like it, so we try to pretend that we do.

“So, Mr. and Mrs. Boltuck, how's the summer going?” Micayla starts, sitting next to my mom on the wicker love seat.

“Micayla, please.” My mom smiles. “Call us Abby and Reed.”

“Okay. Do-over.” Micayla laughs. “Abby and Reed, how's the summer going?”

We sit around chatting, waiting for Bennett to show up, and then we'll walk over to Frederick's Fish together.

Micayla's telling us this story about how her dad's computer crashed and he lost the whole draft of the biography he's working on when I hear the creak of the screen door. I turn around and see Bennett running through the house. He bursts out onto the back deck. “Am I late? I'm so sorry. Little Jakey Steinman lured me in for a game of Ping-Pong. You know those six-year-olds. You can't say no. And he plays a mean game.”

“Hi, Bennett,” my dad says. “Have a seat.”

Bennett sits way back in the chair, and it almost falls over. He makes this weird face, and Micayla and I crack up.

“You guys seem like you're up to no good,” my dad says.

“Huh?” I ask.

“We were just at Dog Beach,” Bennett says. “It's kind of like Remy's therapy. We think it will help her feel better about Danish.”

My dad nods, then grins like he's going to say something funny—but I know from experience it won't be funny. At all. “Got it. For a second, I thought you and Remy were eloping!”

“Dad!” I yell. And even though he's made this joke a million times, it feels different this summer. I want to sink into the indentation in the middle of my lounge chair and bury myself in the sand. I can't look at my dad and I can't look at Bennett. All I can see is the wicker ottoman in the corner, the one that Danish liked to use for sunbathing. And then my sadness wipes away my embarrassment.

I'm not sure which feeling is worse.

People have been making jokes about Bennett and me getting married since we were tiny babies. His birthday is the day after mine. Apparently we were both terrible newborns, and we both spent our first summers on Seagate. His mom met my mom at a Seagate new mothers group, and they became best friends immediately.

They say we were the worst babies on the whole island, and they were so glad they found each other so that they could commiserate.

There are pictures of us as babies in sun tents on the beach, sleeping in our strollers side by side as our dads played Ping-Pong. Summer after summer, as we got older, the pictures evolved. They morphed into us trying to eat
soft-serve in cones, the ice cream melting all over our faces, and of us burying each other in the sand or wearing different homemade costumes at the annual Seagate Halloween Parade.

We never really paid much attention to these jokes when Avery Sanders said them, or my dad or Bennett's dad or anyone else. But it feels different now. I just wish people would stop saying it.

My dad puts his feet up on the ottoman and looks at his watch. “Well, if you three are going for fish sandwiches, you'd better skedaddle.”

He's right. It's a little after five and Frederick's Fish always gets lines for dinner. Micayla's brother and sister are here this week, so we'll be a big group.

Micayla, Bennett, and I walk over to Frederick's Fish, dragging our feet a little, not talking much.

“You seem better today,” Micayla says, as we walk past SGI Sweets, Seagate's famous candy store. “I mean, not your usual Seagate happy, but better than you've been.”

“I guess.” When I hear myself say it, I can tell I'm acting like a downer. I should be more appreciative to Micayla for being so supportive. “Let's go into SGI,” I tell her. “I want to buy you some of those gummy apples.”

She doesn't argue with me. I knew she wouldn't. They're her absolute favorite candy, and they're impossible to find anywhere but Seagate. We buy a big bag and share them as we walk.

At the fish place, Micayla's family is already waiting in line. Her mom is sitting on one of the benches, and her dad, brother, and sister are standing a few feet away. They're smiling, but as we get closer, it seems that they're talking about something important—they're leaning in and speaking quietly. Micayla's mom is not a part of the conversation, and she seems to be daydreaming a little bit. We have to tap her a few times before she realizes that we're there.

“Are Zane and Ivy staying the whole week?” Micayla asks her mom.

When her mom replies, “I'm not sure yet,” I start to get the feeling that something weird is going on. Micayla's mom is a super planner and she always knows what's going on—today, three weeks away, even a year from now.

I start to wonder why Bennett and I were invited to this family dinner. Even though we always do everything together, we usually have some separate family time. It's expected that there will be some nights when we're each with our own family; no one gets mad about it.

But as the meal goes on, no one says anything to explain the weird feeling in the air. I wonder if Bennett notices it too. Ivy and Zane make jokes about the new Seagate basketball team, and Micayla's dad talks about the biography he's working on about Franklin D. Roosevelt. Micayla's mom asks us questions about the other kids on Seagate and if the new salted caramel flavor at Sundae Best is as good as everyone says it is.

I keep sensing that something unusual is going on, but I have no idea what it is.

Good thing the fish sandwiches at Frederick's are as delicious as always, because when the food comes, eating it up is all I can think about.

A few mornings later, I wake up to a text from
Bennett saying that he and Micayla are going to get egg-and-cheese sandwiches at Breakfast by the Boardwalk and that I should meet them there.

They get up much earlier than I do, so they usually don't text me until at least nine in the morning. When I look at the seashell clock above my doorway, I see that it's already close to ten. The text message came in at exactly nine, and I doubt they're still there. I sleep later on the mornings I'm not babysitting Hudson and hanging out with Marilyn Monroe.

When I text him back, he says that they already finished eating and that they're over at Mr. Brookfield's house and that I should come over.

I haven't seen the C Twins since the other day at Ping-Pong, and I'd nearly forgotten about them.

My parents are down by the community pool when I tell them I'm heading out. They look up from their books and tell me to have fun.

I'm wearing my yellow halter one-piece under my rainbow cover-up, and I realize it's the first time I've walked alone on Seagate since we got here. Normally I'm with Bennett or Micayla or both. And in the past, I never walked alone. I always had Danish with me.

I ring the doorbell to Mr. Brookfield's. I hardly ever ring doorbells on Seagate, but I don't know Mr. Brookfield well enough to just barge right in. He greets me at the door with a “howdy” and tells me how much taller I've gotten since last summer. I never know what to say to this, so I just smile.

“The gang's in the back,” he tells me.

I'm on my way there when I hear the screaming. It startles me so much that I jump back a few feet and knock over one of Mr. Brookfield's porcelain director's chairs. He has them all over the house—miniature ones, wooden ones, metal ones, even a few large enough to sit on. Bennett told us that he was a movie fanatic, and when we'd visit before, we were always super careful not to break any of them.

I hear the screaming again, and I try to figure out who it is. Bennett never screams like that. It's definitely not Micayla. Claire is super girly and dainty—at least that's how she seemed the other day. Calvin? I can't figure out why he'd be screaming so loud.

It's not like any old scream, like during a fight or when
someone's scared, or even when they drop a mug accidentally. It's a high-powered scream, almost like in a cartoon, but realistic, like it's coming from a regular person.

On Seagate, nothing all that scary happens, so no one really screams. There aren't any mice or rats—at least, I haven't seen any, thank God. There's no armed robbery or mugging. There's the occasional ocean rescue, when a little kid goes out too far, but they're always rescued right away. The lifeguards on Seagate are the best in the world. That's what my mom says.

I look around, wondering why Mr. Brookfield hasn't come running out. When I finally spot him, he's just sitting in his sunroom reading a magazine. I guess he's not worried that someone is screaming really loudly in his backyard, so I try not to worry about it either and head back.

Bennett, Micayla, and the C Twins sit crouched around a little tape player. My grandma used to have one of them, but we got rid of it after she died. We didn't even own any cassette tapes, so there was no reason to own a player.

“Rem, come listen to this,” Bennett yells to me. “You're never going to believe it.”

I walk down the few steps from the deck to the backyard but stop when I hear Rae and Rudy Spitz bickering. They've been married for more than sixty years, but we never see them talking nicely to each other, only fighting. We figure that's just how they communicate.

“I told you thirty times to water those flowers!” Rae yells.

“All right, all right. Enough.”

“Don't
enough
me, Rudy!”

“Rae! You're making me crazy!”

“Those Spitzes!” Calvin says under his breath, cracking up. “We've heard my grandfather say that a million times already, and we've only been here a few days.”

“I don't know how he's lived next door to them all these years,” Claire says, looking unimpressed and sort of bored with the conversation. “Oh. Hi, Remy.”