Our posters are up all over the island, and business is booming.
Well, it's almost booming. We haven't actually spent time with any of the new dogs. Or even our former clients. We're just organizing the schedules for pickups and drop-offs and what hours they'll be at doggie day care. Because there's one problem: there's no place to take them. The usual sunny weather we have at Seagate has changed. Now it rains and rains and rains. I haven't even been in my pool since the day Bennett tipped over my raft, and Claire is miserable about her nonexistent tan.
"What am I going to do?" Claire asks.
Micayla, Claire, and I are at Mr. Brookfield's house, and we're watching one of his DVDs. He has the best collection of old scary movies and is the voice of a famous scream that was used in most of them. We fast-forward until we get to his scream parts.
"It'll stop raining," I assure her. "It never rains all summer long. It's unheard of."
"This is the palest I've ever been," Claire says. "Seriously. This summer is off to a bad start."
I keep telling her over and over again that it's going to be fine, but I know I'm just trying to convince myself. I can't control the weather. I can't control her tan. And more important, I don't know where we can take the dogs if they can't go to Dog Beach.
Lately, Claire's moods seem as erratic as the weather. One minute she's whining about her tan, but the next minute she looks as if she's going to cry. I can't blame her for being worried about her parents. It seems like one day out of the blue, they just stopped wanting to be married. Her dad said he wanted to move out. And that was that.
"I just don't get it," she says. "We were a family once. We really were." She looks at us, almost as if she expects us to have some kind of answer.
"You're still a family," I insist. "Really."
But as I say it, I wonder if it's true. Everything I say lately feels like a lie. Or not the whole truth.
Micayla stays quiet. She rubs Claire's back, and my stomach clenches with worry. Claire hates it when people get sentimental, and I'm afraid she'll lash out at Micayla when she's just trying to be kind.
But Claire doesn't say anything. She doesn't lash out. She just looks down at her feet and wipes away her tears with a shirtsleeve.
My stomach twists like a wrung-out washcloth. The combination of the rain and Claire's sadness is too much. I push the worried feelings away. The sun will come out, and Claire's parents will stay together. Everything will work out.
We finish the movie, and Mr. Brookfield makes us grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup for lunch. I'm enjoying our girls-only lunch, but it doesn't last very long. Soon Calvin and Bennett burst through the front door, dripping wet and covered in mud.
"Hi, ladies," Bennett says. "Mudsliding got a little crazy today."
For the most part, Seagate Island is pretty flat. But there's one hill on the other side of the island near the lighthouse, and it's pretty much only used for one thing: mudsliding.
"What happened?" I ask between bites of grilled cheese.
He sighs. "Well, it turns out the hill is a little rockier than usual. Calvin cut his face, so Mrs. Pursuit invited us into her house to get cleaned up. Then we got stuck there for a while sampling her new cookie recipes and looking through the photos she's trying to organize for the Centennial."
"That doesn't sound so bad," Micayla says.
"Yeah, the photos must be awesome," I jump in.
Bennett continues. "Well, yeah, that was okay, I guess, except for Calvin's cut face. Oh, and on the way home we ran into Lester and the Decsinis! They're back, and not just for a week this time, but the whole summer!"
"I'm going to change." Calvin barely looks at us. He doesn't say anything else and runs right upstairs. Maybe he's really hurt.
Bennett takes off his muddy shoes and rolls up his pants, then takes a seat on the floor next to me.
"So, how's Lester?" I ask, and I offer him a piece of my sandwich.
He grabs the sandwich as if he's starving. "He's still his adorable cocker spaniel self. But his owner-mom said he's gotten a little mischievous."
Bennett takes off his sweatshirt, and a little sliver of his stomach shows for a few seconds. I look away.
"Mischievous? That's interesting. Lester's smart," I say. "He always knew where we kept the extra treats."
Calvin joins the conversation as he comes down the stairs. I didn't even realize he was listening. "I love that dog," he says. He's holding an ice pack to his forehead, half of one eye covered with a bandage. "I think he was my favorite of all the dogs last summer."
Calvin sits down on the floor next to Bennett, and my first instinct is to go over and hug him. But that seems crazy. Me hugging Calvin. I don't know where this impulse is coming from. I look at him with his cut face, sitting there looking so sad. I wonder how he feels about the whole situation with his parents. He hasn't said much.
Later that day, Bennett and I walk home together. Micayla's mom picked her up at Mr. Brookfield's because they're going out for a family dinner at Frederick's Fish. Claire stayed quiet the rest of the afternoon, and I felt bad about it. She seems so sad.
I kept trying to think of things to say to her. Comforting things. Helpful things. But nothing came to me. I couldn't even say the sun was shining or tell her how great her tan was going to be.
"Are you okay?" Bennett asks as we're walking.
We've been quiet the whole time, which is unusual for us. My mind just keeps flopping back and forth between Claire's situation and being alone with Bennett—and the urge I had before to give Calvin a hug.
It's impossible to focus on making conversation when you have that much on your mind.
"Yeah. I'm fine." I look down at my Pumas. "Why?"
"You just seem quiet. I don't know. Like something's wrong."
"Nah. I'm fine." I don't feel like talking now. That's all I really know. But I don't feel like dealing with the silence, either. So I try to think of something to talk about. "Hey, maybe I will take you up on that swim-coach thing," I say. "If it ever stops raining, I mean."
I don't know why I say it. I'm not even sure I want to try out for the swim team. And I know I don't want to wear a bathing suit around Bennett every day. But sometimes when I can't think of what to say, I say the craziest thing possible.
Maybe Bennett could help me help Claire.
That sounds funny. Help me help someone else. But maybe that's what I need to do. Ask Bennett. He's helpful; he always has good advice. He's always so calm and relaxed. I need someone strong to lean on if I'm going to be able to help Claire.
"Really?" Bennett seems surprised, too.
"Yeah, I mean, you're on your school's swim team, and I want to get better, and, I don't know …" My voice trails off.
"Sure. Sounds great."
We get to my house and say good-bye, and Bennett tells me his mom is making fish kebabs for dinner if I want to come over.
"I'm gonna eat with my parents," I tell him. "Thanks anyway."
"Okay. See you tomorrow, Rem."
Over the course of the year, Bennett and I did this thing where we'd e-mail each other what we ate for dinner. It started because my dad made this really gross dinner he called Scramble. It was chopped meat mixed with sweet ginger sauce and green beans.
Totally disgusting.
So one night I e-mailed Bennett a picture of it. I didn't think he'd believe that it really existed.
After that, he started e-mailing me pictures of his dinner.
We called it the "Dinner Diaries."
And in a way, it helped me feel close to him. Close to his life outside Seagate. Even when the photos weren't of anything exciting—boiled hot dogs or spaghetti with butter.
But then one day I wanted to stop doing it. It felt weird knowing about his home life in Boston.
I liked Seagate Bennett. I liked that, in a way, he only existed in the summer. In this special place. And the more I talked to Bennett during the year, the more nervous I got. I worried that there was this whole other part of him that I didn't know and wouldn't like in the same way. I worried about being more than friends and what that meant. I worried about what it would be like to kiss him.
If our friendship was year-round, if we talked all the time, that meant it was something deeper. And that seemed scary.
Maybe spending time with him for the swim lessons would help me understand how I felt.
I needed to find out.
