Welcome to Dog Beach (10 page)

Mr. Brookfield goes on, telling me details about some of the movies it's in, and it's clear he really does love to talk about this. I wish I'd known before, because I like hearing these kinds of stories. It took Claire to bring all this out of him.

The more Mr. Brookfield talks, the more I realize that he seems so much happier when he's talking about his work and when he's talking about the past and his wife and life on Seagate. He never seems that happy otherwise, just talking about day-to-day life.

“Remy!” Bennett runs over to me, all out of breath, and Calvin follows behind him. “They asked us to put up all these signs for the Sandcastle Contest right away. Are you okay bringing Oscar back by yourself?”

It's nice that he asked, but I wish he'd just come with me.

“Dude, she's fine,” Calvin says. “It's Seagate.”

Bennett looks at me again, and when I don't say anything right away, he says, “Yeah, you're right. We'll be around, Rem. See you soon.”

They walk away with the signs flapping in their hands. Oscar is resting on the sand, and I think I've probably kept him out too long.

“Nice boy, that Bennett,” Mr. Brookfield says. “He was always a nice boy.”

“Yeah,” I grumble. “I guess.”

I take Oscar back home, where Dawn seems to be in better shape. Only one of the triplets is up, but he's not crying. The other two are sleeping in their swings.

“He looks exhausted! That's great!” Dawn gives me a hug. “Remy, I really want to thank you so much for taking care of Oscar.”

“You're welcome.” I laugh a little bit because I don't know what else to do. “Same time tomorrow morning?”

“Unless I need you before.” She looks back at Oscar. “I'll text you?”

“Yeah, that would be great. See you later.”

I walk back over to the beach, hoping that Calvin and Claire got bored with helping and decided to go back to Mr. Brookfield's to watch TV.

“Where did you go?” Micayla asks as soon as she sees me. She's sitting at the Sandcastle Contest registration table. “I texted you, like, seven times.”

Uh-oh. I never even looked at my phone. I was so preoccupied with thinking about Bennett and talking to Mr. Brookfield, I kind of forgot about Micayla. It's such a terrible thing to do, I feel guilty immediately.

“I didn't look at my phone. I don't know why. I'm so sorry!” I squish up my face in embarrassment and give Micayla
a hug. “I had to take Oscar home. He was really tired.”

“Yeah, I figured.” She gives me a look that says
I'm confused
and
You're crazy
at the same time.

“Let's go help set up,” I tell her. “I love looking at all the little tools some people use to build sandcastles.”

“Me too,” she says. “But I have to talk to you.”

As we're walking over to get the supplies, I'm dying
for Micayla to start talking, but we keep getting interrupted.

“Girls, all the supplies are on one of the picnic tables,” Mrs. Pursuit tells us. “So far we have ten teams competing, so I'll need you to organize everything into ten bags and make sure every bag has one of each item.”

“On it,” I reply.

Mrs. Pursuit was a gym teacher in Connecticut before she retired. Now she lives on Seagate year-round, and the Sandcastle Contest was her idea. She gets really crazy when the day of the contest rolls around every summer. I'm pretty sure she thinks of it as the Olympics of sandcastle building.

Micayla, Bennett, and I were always a team, until last summer. The volunteers who usually help set up canceled at the last minute, and so Mrs. Pursuit asked us to step in.
We were so flattered, we didn't even mind stepping out of the contest.

We finally make it over to the picnic table and begin putting supplies into the royal blue tote bags, donated by Blueberry Crumble, Seagate's bakery.

I'm putting a sand sifter and a shovel into my fifth bag when I can't take the suspense anymore. “What did you have to talk to me about?” I ask.

“Oh, um, it was nothing,” Micayla says.

“How could it be nothing?” I give her a crooked look. “Nothing is ever nothing, y'know. Between best friends, I mean.”

I continue putting supplies into the bag and wait for her to talk.

She opens her mouth again but hesitates. “Well, I talked to Mason Redmond,” she says.

It seems like there was something else she wanted to say, but maybe I'm expecting too much. Maybe she was just nervous about telling me she talked to Mason Redmond.

Mason Redmond is one of those names that can't be separated. I never just say “Mason” aloud. It's always “Mason Redmond.” I'm not sure why certain names are like that and other names aren't. People just call me Remy. Only teachers and people reading names off a list call me Remy Boltuck.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mrs. Pursuit coming, and so we continue to work as we talk quietly. People come over to us and ask us questions about the contest. A frazzled
mom of three little kids comes over, stressed that they hadn't signed up and worried if it's too late to enter.

Micayla finishes the last bag, and we start setting them up in a neat row. “So, let me tell you this story about Mason Redmond.”

“Only if you admit that you actually like him,” I insist.

“I don't know if I like him like that,” Micayla says. “I'm still thinking about it.”

“Whatever you say,” I grumble.

We organize the bags and tidy up and then go sit on one of the benches by Dog Beach. We still have a few hours before the contest starts, and Bennett hasn't come back from putting up the signs.

“When you were watching Oscar, I just walked over to the volunteer table, and Mrs. Pursuit was panicking, and Mason was trying to calm her down, and he was reminding her that it always ends up being awesome.” Micayla takes a deep breath. “Anyway, he just said, ‘Hey, Micayla,' and I said, ‘Hey, Mason,' and then we talked about how our names were kind of similar, and then he said you are really good with dogs.”

“Me?” I gasp a little bit. Mason Redmond was talking about me? It's not like I really care, because I'm not the one with the crush on him. It's just surprising. I never think that anyone is talking about me.

“Yeah,” Micayla says, in her no-big-deal tone. “Well, you are, Remy.”

“Thanks.” I smile, realizing we're off topic. “But what
about Mason Redmond? Do you like him or not?”

“I don't know,” she says. “Okay, maybe I do. Today, I think I like him.”

I have no idea what she means by
today
. But maybe it goes along with the saying to take things one day at a time. Maybe the person who first said it was dealing with a crush and unsure what to do.

We all go home to change, and I tell Bennett and
Micayla that I'll meet them outside my house at five thirty so we can walk over to the beach together.

When Micayla and Bennett come to pick me up, they're laughing about something. When I ask them what it is, Bennett tells me it's some joke that Calvin heard, and they couldn't stop cracking up about it. I didn't ask what the joke was, because I don't really like Calvin, and I figured I wouldn't like the joke.

We get to the beach and Mrs. Pursuit tells us to stand behind the supply table. She hands us the sea-green
SEAGATE SANDCASTLE CONTEST
2014 shirts. Micayla and I had put on ribbed tank tops, because we knew we'd have to put the contest T-shirts on over them. Bennett did not, so he has to take his shirt off. Obviously this isn't a big deal, since he's a guy
and guys go shirtless all the time at the beach, but I laugh anyway, and his face turns bright red.

I see him shirtless at the beach all the time, but it looks so funny to me when we're not standing on the sand about to jump into the ocean.

There are ten teams participating and lots of space for anyone who wants to sit and watch. People have been waiting all day for this, staying on the beach since early this morning just so they'd get a good seat.

One of the teams is made up of all the band members from Saturday We Tennis, and I have a feeling they're going to win. They won last year and a few years before that too.

A few of the teams are families with little kids, the way that Mom, Dad, Grandma, and I used to participate. We'd even let Danish help. He'd make cool imprints with his paws, and we always said that was the finishing touch. Memories of him are all over Seagate Island, and even when I'm not feeling entirely sad, something reminds me of him and I get filled with a flash of sadness again, like when the waves wash over your feet really quickly and then disappear moments later.

With a few minutes to go before the contest starts, I see Mr. Brookfield coming over to us, with Calvin and Claire tagging along behind.

I'm happy to see Mr. Brookfield but not the other two. Something about them makes me nervous and defensive. They're always criticizing Seagate, and it hurts. When you love a place so much, you can't stand to hear even one negative
word about it. It was already different enough here without Danish by my side, and now these two come out of nowhere, complain about everything, and make the summer feel shaky.

Calvin and Claire don't even stay for the contest. They tell Bennett they're going over to the pool to swim and lie in the sun. But Mr. Brookfield stays.

I watch him in the distance a little bit, sitting on a bench, reading some kind of science fiction novel. He doesn't look happy, but he doesn't look sad either. I think about what it must have been like to finally get that part in the movie, only for it to kind of disappear, and there wasn't much he could do about it.

Mrs. Pursuit runs up to us, a whistle hanging around her neck and her frizzy brown hair in a high ponytail. She looks like an elderly middle school student, if that even makes any sense. “You all ready?” she asks us.

“I have an idea,” I tell her. Micayla looks at me, confused, but I continue anyway. “Mr. Brookfield is totally famous—his voice is the scream in so many movies I'm sure you've seen. What if he does his scream into your megaphone to start the contest?”

I turn around to see if Mr. Brookfield hears what I'm saying, but he's too far away. Then it occurs to me that I probably should have asked him if he even wanted to do this.

“Do screams and sandcastles really go together?” Mrs. Pursuit asks us. “Let's think about it for next year.”

I turn back again to check on Mr. Brookfield, and I notice that he's dozed off on the bench.

Well, Mrs. Pursuit did say we could think about it, so that's something. I'll have to find the right time to suggest it to Mr. Brookfield, and then we'll have a whole year to make it happen next summer. Maybe there are other ways to get his scream involved in Seagate life.

But it's such a peaceful place. No one screams here usually.

The teams have an hour to build their sandcastles, and they can have as many supplies as they want. Micayla and I are in charge of manning the supply table, in case anyone needs extra shovels or pails or cool sculpting devices.

At the last minute, the person who does all the photography for Seagate events had to cancel. Mrs. Pursuit bought disposable cameras at the general store and asked Bennett if he'd be willing to take some pictures. Of course, Bennett was thrilled to do it, and even from up here, I can see him running along the sand trying to get some great action shots of teams building their sandcastles.

So Micayla and I sit at the table, not really talking. I try to think of things to say, but everything seems wrong. I don't know why I'm having to think about things to say to her. This has never happened before.

“Bennett seems different this summer,” I say, finally. It's been on my mind for weeks, but I haven't really had the courage to bring it up.

“Really?” Micayla asks, and I immediately want to take it back. I feel silly for even mentioning it.