Dog Beach Unleashed

by Lisa Greenwald

  “Which reminds me,” Paul continues. “I wanted to ask you if you ever take dogs overnight.”

  The three of us look at one another.

  “How on earth would they do that, Paul?” Andi yelps. “They’re kids, not a kennel!”

  He shrugs. “Just thought I’d ask. No need to bite my head off!”

  She kisses him on the forehead. “Sorry.”

  “Well, no one has ever asked us that,” I reply. I don’t know exactly how we’d do it. But I hate to say no. I guess we could always beg our parents to let us keep the dogs in our houses.

  “Well, keep it in mind,” Paul says. “Andi’s mom could use some extra help with Rascal.”

  Micayla’s been pretty much silent this whole time, looking at her feet and fiddling with the strings on her hoodie. And then I realize she probably feels weird sitting on her teacher’s porch, watching him hold hands with his girlfriend.

  “Can you watch both dogs every morning until about two or three in the afternoon?” Andi says. “If you want to pick them up, that would be great, but we like to go for a morning stroll, so we can always drop them at Dog Beach, too.”

  I write that all down and then look up. “Picking them up works.” I turn to face Micayla and Claire. “You guys cool with that?”

  They nod.

  “Okay, so we should be up and running by early next week, I think,” I tell them. “We just need to iron out the schedule with our other clients, and then we’ll be ready to go. Anything new we should know about?”

  Andi and Paul look at each other and laugh a little bit. “Nothing, really,” Andi says. “The dogs are happy as clams, and they love being together.”

  “Just like us,” Paul says.

  “Sounds great,” I reply, and I stand up.

  “Really great,” Claire adds, as if it’s something she feels she’s supposed to say but not necessarily something she feels.

  Micayla looks down at her feet again. “See you guys soon,” she says. “We’re excited about taking care of Atticus and Rascal again.”

  Claire needs to go home, so Micayla and I decide to walk to Mornings to get a snack. I’m happy to have some alone time with her. I hope she’s not still feeling left out.

  “That was weird, wasn’t it?” I ask her. “Was it crazy to be at your teacher’s place?”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t wait to leave. And Mr. Jennings was just being so strange. Wasn’t he? What kind of plans do you think he was talking about?”

  “Maybe getting married?” I shrug. “Who knows?” I pull up the hood on my windbreaker as the breeze kicks up and it starts to rain.

  Finally we’re at Mornings, and thankfully grumpy Beverly isn’t there.

  We take a table by the window and share a chocolate croissant, an apple cinnamon muffin, and two hot chocolates. It’s cold and gray and rainy. Not a good way to start the summer.

  I look outside, and everything seems ominous. Maybe Mr. Aprone was right and a dangerous storm is going to swamp Seagate Island this summer.

  “What are we gonna do with the dogs if it rains like this all the time?” I ask Micayla. Maybe she knows something about a ferocious hurricane season and isn’t telling me.

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” Micayla answers. “I don’t know. We were so lucky last summer. Only a little drizzle here and there. No real rainy days.”

  “Think Mr. Brookfield would let us bring all the dogs to his basement?” I ask. “There’s not much down there. Just boxes of random stuff.”

  “I don’t think that would be great for the dogs,” Micayla says. “It’s not really that big. They wouldn’t be able to run around.”

  I guess she’s right.

  “Bennett is a giant now, isn’t he?” Micayla asks me, totally changing the subject.

  “A giant?” I cover my mouth and giggle. I’m picturing Bennett as the Jolly Green Giant, and I can’t stop laughing.

  “He’s taller than he was last summer!” she says defensively.

  “He is taller,” I admit.

  We sit and talk and finish our treats, and Micayla fills me in about what happens on Seagate after everyone leaves.

  “So you know those grills down by the stadium that anyone can use?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “Last October, everyone left on the island came out with stuff to grill, and we had this giant barbecue.” She takes a sip of her hot chocolate. “It was crazy. The parents were totally living it up. They had music playing, and they were all dancing. It was really kind of weird to see the parents acting so silly, but it was kind of fun, too. They were like teenagers! Anyway, I think that’s when Daisy got into a fight with Mrs. Pursuit, and I’m pretty sure they haven’t spoken since.”

  “What was the fight over?” I ask.

  “I don’t know. Something about the placement of garbage cans on Seagate. It got really heated.” Micayla takes the last bite of muffin, and we clear our plates. “It’s really sad. They’ve been best friends since they were our age.”

  “Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that Claire slept over,” I say. “It wasn’t a big deal, but I should’ve told you. I’m sorry if you felt left out.”

  She nods and finishes her last sip of hot chocolate. “Feeling left out might be the worst feeling in the world.”

  “I know.” I put my arm over Micayla’s shoulders. “Promise me we’ll never fight over something as dumb as garbage can placement?” I ask, and we start laughing.

  “Of course not.” Micayla puts her arm around my waist. “I promise.”

  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 pu
sh 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 goodbye, 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.

  After a few more rainy days, the weather took a turn for the better. We told all our clients to meet us at Dog Beach at ten in the morning so we could officially start the summer of doggie day care.

  “You’re going to be reunited with your friends,” I tell Marilyn Monroe on the walk over. Truthfully, I think she’s been a little bored. We all have. Rainy Seagate isn’t as fun as sunny Seagate.

  Her tail wags as soon as I tell her; she starts to walk a little faster.

  Calvin and Claire are already at Dog Beach when Marilyn Monroe and I get there.

  Claire’s eyes are red. And Calvin greets us in an extra happy tone, as if he’s trying to convince us of something.

  I keep thinking about Claire’s sad statement: We were a family once. It’s so simple and yet so complicated at the same time. I don’t know what their future will be.

  “Claire, I’m here if you want to talk,” I whisper. I should have said it to both of them, but Calvin has never really opened up to me about anything before, so it seems like a strange thing to say to him, too. I still feel odd about my urge to hug him the other day.

  “Actually, can we?” She perks up a bit. “Let’s walk over to the water together.”

  Marilyn Monroe traipses along with us even though I take her off her leash. I’m convinced she understands what’s going on. She’s kind of like Danish in that way—my old dog who passed away two years ago. Danish always seemed to show concern when someone was sad, along with the many other human characteristics she had.

  “What’s going on?” I ask Claire.

  “Well, it just stinks. The whole thing stinks. At first my mom told me she and my dad were going to try to work things out. But now it seems li
ke they’re not.”

  My shoulders tense up. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, my dad just got his own apartment in Manhattan.” She pauses, sniffling. “That’s how I know.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. We found out today. My mom was talking to my grandfather at the kitchen table this morning, and I overheard them. It’s only a two-bedroom. Calvin and I will have to share a room when we’re there, or one of us will have to sleep on the couch.” She rubs her eye with a sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I wonder how long she was going to wait to tell me. So now I’m not talking to her.”

  It seems as if Claire wants to say more, so I stay quiet and wait for her to continue.

  “I didn’t even want to come to Dog Beach today, but there wasn’t anything for me to do at my grandfather’s house, and I didn’t want to let you down. I don’t really want to do anything, but I also don’t want to be alone. I can’t even explain it. My brain is like a bowl of oatmeal.”

  We get to the very edge of the sand, and the water washes over our feet. “Well, I know this won’t really help things, but I’m glad you’re here.”

  I reach out to give her a hug, and she puts her head on my shoulder. “It’s just so unfair. I mean, they always fought and stuff, but I didn’t think it would come to this. I thought we’d always stick together.”

  “Well, is there a chance it’s just a separation?” I ask. “It may not be permanent.”

  “It’s permanent.” She rubs her eyes some more. “I keep thinking it’s a nightmare, and I’ll wake up and it will be okay. Back to the way it used to be.”

  I nod.

  “I want to pretend it’s not happening. Am I making any sense?”

  “You are,” I say. “You really are.”

  She looks grateful for the reassurance. “I’m not the kind of person who gives up. So I figured there would always be a way to work it out,” she says.

  “You’re not the kind of person who gives up,” I tell her. “You’re really not. But I guess you don’t have control over this.”

  I think that’s the hardest thing in life: not having control over something. Lately, everything seems to be changing, and there’s nothing I can do about it.