On Seagate Island, there are three kinds of people: the lucky ones, the luckier ones, and the luckiest ones.
The lucky ones are the people who come for a weekend or maybe even a week. They stay at the Seagate Inn or they find a last-minute rental.
The luckier ones are the people who rent a house for the whole summer, Memorial Day to Labor Day. They usually come back summer after summer and stay in the same house.
And the luckiest ones are the people like me. I don't want to sound conceited-I'm grateful for how lucky I am. Because when it comes to Seagate Island, there's no doubt that I am the luckiest. I've spent every summer of my life on Seagate Island in my grandmother's house.
I was born at the end of May, so I spent my first three months here. And I'll spend every summer here for the rest of my life. It's probably weird for me to think that far ahead, since I'm only eleven. But trust me-I will.
"Remy," I hear my mom calling from inside the house. I give her a few minutes to come outside and find me. It's kind of an unofficial house rule that if one of us is outside, the other one has to come out if they want to talk. No one should have to go inside to talk unless it's raining. On Seagate Island, our time outside by the sea is sacred. We've only been here for a week, and we have the whole summer stretched out in front of us, but we still don't take our outside time for granted.
I hear the quiet creak of the screen door, and then my mom pulls over the other wicker chair to sit next to me.
"Don't be mad, okay?" she asks, but it sounds more like a command than a question.
This can't be good.
"I just ran into Amber Seasons, and she's in a pickle," my mom starts. I wonder why people use the word pickle to mean a problem. In my mind, pickles are one of the most delicious foods. But I also get why people hate them. Bennett hates pickles. In fact, if he orders a hamburger and someone puts a pickle on his plate, he has to send the whole meal back. He feels bad about it, but he does it anyway. That's how much he hates pickles.
But Amber Seasons's being in a pickle isn't surprising. I've known her since I was born, pretty much, and she's always been in a pickle. She's fifteen years older than I am, and no matter what's going on, she always seems frazzled.
"What kind of pickle?" I ask.
"She offered to teach an art class for Seagate Seniors on Monday and Wednesday mornings at ten. But then her babysitter ended up staying in New Jersey for the summer, and now she needs someone to watch her son. She told me that's when he naps, so you'd just be sitting in her house every morning for a few hours."
I can't believe this is happening. This was going to be the first real summer that Micayla, Bennett, and I were allowed to roam free, all day, and do whatever we wanted.
In previous summers we were allowed to go off on our own, but only for a few hours at a time, and we needed to check in and always tell our parents where we were. But this summer was going to be different.
We're eleven now, going into sixth grade. That's middle school for Bennett and Micayla; it'll be the last year of elementary school for me.
And now I have to cut into that completely free time to watch Amber Seasons's son.
On the other hand, babysitting is kind of cool and something real teenagers do. I guess I'm older now and my mom thinks I'm more mature. I'm flattered that she thinks I can handle it.
"Please, Remy," my mom says. She's sitting on the wicker armchair with her head resting on her hands, and she looks pretty desperate. It's not even a favor for her, it's a favor for Amber Seasons, but I bet my mom already said that I'd do it. My mom has this weird thing about helping people solve their problems. She gets all jazzed up and has this intense, burning desire to help them, like she can't stop until she makes whatever situation they're in a little better. Helping other people makes her happier than anything else.
"Fine." I sigh, all defeated, but knowing I would never get out of it. "Maybe Micayla and Bennett can come with me some mornings?"
My mom considers that for a moment. "Well, you can certainly talk to Amber and ask her if it's okay."
She goes inside to finish getting ready for her afternoon swimming session, and I sit back in my chair and think. How bad will it really be? It's only a few hours two mornings a week.
My mom always says how good it makes her feel when she helps other people. So maybe I'll be like that too. I'll help Amber, and then I'll feel better. About everything.
Being sad on Seagate is kind of an oxymoron. The two things don't go together at all. But this year is different. I'm sad on Seagate, and I can't seem to help it.
"I got you two scoops," Micayla tells me when she walks through the house and finds me on the back porch. That's another thing about Seagate-no one locks their doors, and we all just barge into each other's homes. It can be awkward sometimes, like when I saw Bennett's mom getting out of the shower, but she had a towel on, and we just laughed about it. But the rest of the time it feels like the whole island's our home.
The turquoise ice cream cups from Sundae Best, Seagate Island's oldest and best ice cream shop, somehow make the ice cream taste even more delicious. I always get espresso cookie, and Micayla always gets cherry chip. When it comes to ice cream, we are as different as can be. But when it comes to almost everything else, we're pretty much the same.
Well, except that I'm white and she's black. And then there's also the difference of our hair-she wears it in braids year-round, and I have thin, straight, boring, not-quite-blonde and not-quite-brown hair that barely stays in an elastic band. Hers always looks good, even after she's just woken up.
Her parents are both from St. Lucia, in the Caribbean. They moved to the United States when they were kids but didn't meet until college. They have amazing accents, and when we're a little bit older, they're going to take me with them when they go back to visit Micayla's grandma in St. Lucia.
We take our ice cream cups and walk down the wooden stairs of my deck to the beach. Even though I do this at least ten times a day, I feel lucky every single time. On Seagate, the beach is my backyard, and I'm pretty sure there is nothing better than that in the whole world.
Sometimes we don't even bother with towels or chairs-we just sit down on the sand. We dig our feet in as far as they will go and we eat our ice cream. Our plan is to meet up with Bennett when he's done playing Ping-Pong with his dad, and then we'll decide what to do for the rest of the day.
"I hope this will cheer you up," Micayla says, burrowing through her ice cream cup for a chunk of chocolate. "I've never seen you sad on Seagate before."
She's right about that. But she's also never really seen me anywhere else, except for the time her dad brought her to New York City for a last-minute meeting. Her mom had flown to St. Lucia to visit Micayla's grandma, and Micayla couldn't stay home alone. So Micayla came to New York and we spent the day together. I don't think I was sad that day, so she's never really seen me sad anywhere, not just on Seagate. But I know what she means.
"I'm happy to be here. I just keep picturing Danish running on the beach…And his dog bed is still upstairs. I wish my parents would just throw it out, but I think they're too sad to do it. And the Pooch Parade during Seagate Halloween will be so horrible without him."
"I know," she says, not looking at me. "Well, maybe we can figure out something else to do during the Pooch Parade."
It's probably weird that it's not even July yet and I'm already thinking about Seagate Halloween, which takes place over Labor Day weekend. But it's one of the biggest traditions of the summer-everyone participates. Seagate Halloween is exactly the same every year, and that's the way I like it.
Bennett dresses up as Harvey from Sundae Best. He wears his shorts really high and a Seagate baseball cap. Micayla dresses up as a mermaid, like the statue you see when you first get off the ferry. I dress up as a beach pail. My mom makes me a new costume every year out of painted cardboard, and it comes out awesome every time. And the best part was that Danish would dress up as the shovel! We'd get the biggest sand shovel we could find and strap it to his back, and I'd carry him, so we looked like a perfect pair-beach pail and sand shovel. So happy together.
We've been on Seagate Island for a week, and I've been partially sad the whole time. Happy to be here, but sad without Danish. I don't want to be sad here. It's my most favorite place in the universe. But I can't seem to help it.
Danish was my grandma's dog, so for many years I only ever saw him on Seagate. Our house here was Grandma's house. When she died three years ago, we got Danish and the house, although it always seemed like they were partially ours to begin with.
During the summer, Danish slept in my bed. He spent all day with Micayla, Bennett, and me. Everyone thought he was my dog. And the house-well, the house felt like ours too. The yellow room with the canopy bed was mine. No one else slept there. Mom and Dad had the room around the corner with the blue-and-ivory-striped wallpaper. And Grandma's room was at the end of the hallway. She had her own bathroom, but she'd let us use it.
All year she'd be busy on Seagate, volunteering at the elementary school to help the kids with math, setting up the concert schedule for the summer, taking Danish to Dog Beach even when it was a little bit cold outside. Even though I knew all that, I always imagined her waiting patiently for us to come back for the summer. We'd come for weekends sometimes, but that didn't really count. Summer was summer.
Summer was when we were all together. Grandma would make her famous corn chowder. Mom would set up her easel on the back deck and paint landscapes of the ocean, and Dad would try to play Ping-Pong with everyone on the island at least once.
After Grandma died, we were all really sad. We couldn't imagine being on Seagate without her. But when we came back that next summer, being there was more comforting than we expected it to be. Everyone wanted to tell us stories about Grandma. Dad did some work on the house to spruce it up a little bit, and Mom organized a special concert in Grandma's memory. Now the annual concert series is known as the Sally Bell Seagate Concert Calendar.
Danish died this past December. It was sudden, and I don't really like to even think about it. All winter and spring, I kept hoping that being back on Seagate would be comforting, the way it was after Grandma died. But so far, it's not. So far, I just miss him. It was always Micayla, Bennett, and me-with Danish running along with us.
A key member of our crew is missing.
"I have to tell you something," Micayla and I say at the exact same time, and then we both burst into laughter.
"You first," I say. She probably has more exciting news than my babysitting job.
"Avery Sanders has a boyfriend," Micayla tells me.
"Yeah?" I ask. "She didn't mention it to me when I saw her at Pastrami on Rye the other night."
"Just saw her at Sundae Best. She was going on and on about it. She said this new kid moved to Seagate in the middle of the year. And he's, like, a real-life boyfriend."
I look at Micayla, surprised. "I wonder why she didn't tell me before."
Avery Sanders is a friend of ours, but not a best friend. She moved to Seagate four years ago, and she lives here year-round. She's the type of friend that we never really call to make plans, but if we run into each other, we'll hang out.
She's nice, but she's one of those girls who seemed like a teenager when we were, like, nine, and she'd always say that Bennett was my boyfriend, even when I didn't really know what a boyfriend was.
The past few times I talked to her, she told me that she was bored with Seagate and that it has really changed since she moved here.
I always listened to what she said, even though none of it made sense. How could Seagate be boring? And how could it change? Seagate will always be perfect, and summer after summer, it always stays the same. That's the beauty of it.
"I think her grandparents live here year-round now too," Micayla tells me. "That's what my mom said."
Actually, that's another group of lucky people on Seagate-the year-rounders. I always wonder if that makes them luckier than the luckiest or somewhere in between. On the one hand, they never have to leave Seagate. But on the other hand, they have to see almost everyone else leave. And they don't get that amazing anticipation-the excited, heart-bursting feeling of coming back.
"What did you have to tell me?" Micayla asks.
I explain the whole pickle situation with Amber Seasons.
"That's cool," Micayla says. "It's, like, your first real job."
"You think?"
"Yeah, for sure." She digs deep in her cup for the last little bit of ice cream. "And it's only a few hours. You won't miss anything."
"I guess."
Micayla gives me her please-cheer-up smile again and taps my leg. "Come on. Let's go meet Bennett at Ping-Pong. Bennett always makes you laugh after five minutes."
She's right about that.
