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."
"Hi," I say back to be nice. Claire's one of those girls who always seems to be bothered. It could be the weather or the way her sneakers fit or that she's not allowed to have dessert, but it's always something. I've only known her for a few days, but that type of thing is really obvious.
"Rem, come here," Bennett says again, and I finally make my way to the tape player. "You gotta hear this."
He presses Play and I hear that scream, the one I heard just a few minutes ago. It sounded so clear and lifelike that I had no idea it was a recording. Bennett then proceeds to play it ten more times. He seems so interested in it that I can't help but be interested in it too.
When Bennett gets enthusiastic about something, I automatically want to know more about it. He just has this way of making even everyday things seem more interesting.
"Okay, whoa," I say, laughing. "That's a lot of screaming. Explain?"
I don't know how it's possible for a scream to sound so incredible, but this one does. There's something almost magical about it.
Bennett turns to Calvin and Claire, who are eating a sleeve of Chips Ahoy like they haven't seen food in years. "You guys want to tell the story?" he asks them.
Micayla reaches in for a cookie and shrugs. "I don't really know what's going on either," she whispers to me.
Calvin sighs and plops down on the grass. He puts his baseball cap across his face like he needs a second to regain his concentration, and then he says, "Our grandfather is that scream."
I've known Mr. Brookfield forever, and he's always been the nice older man who lives next door to Bennett's family. He was friends with my grandma. He likes to walk around Seagate and pick up any trash, even though that's not a huge job because no one really litters here. He also plays cards down by the Ping-Pong stadium and was a judge for the Sandcastle Contest a few times. But that's really all I know about him.
I've never heard him raise his voice. I have no idea what Calvin means when he says that Mr. Brookfield "is that scream."
Claire's pulling up grass to make bracelets, but she chimes in, "His scream has been in a million movies." She rolls her eyes. "But he has no connections. I really wanted to meet someone famous, but he says he can't do anything."
"Mr. Brookfield is famous?" I look at Bennett when I ask this because I feel uncomfortable talking to Claire, and Calvin doesn't really make much sense.
"Well, no. I mean, um, he's not, right?" Bennett asks Calvin. "I think he should be, though."
"He doesn't even really seem to care," Calvin says, twirling a finger beside his head, the universal sign for cuckoo. I can't believe Calvin and Claire talk about their own grandfather, sweet Mr. Brookfield, this way.
"Wait," Micayla says, crumpling up the empty sleeve of cookies. "Why isn't he famous if his scream was in a million movies? I'm so confused."
Claire looks up at the sky, as if searching for some kind of divine help to get her out of this annoying situation. "Basically they just paid him to record the scream once, but it's been in, like, billions of movies, and no one knows it's him. I swear, if you watch movies like Star Wars and Indiana Jones and even some Disney cartoons, you'll hear it."
"That's really cool and kind of crazy," I say, making eye contact with Bennett, hoping he realizes that I think it's cool too. I could tell Bennett was all excited about it, but Claire and Calvin act like it's no big deal.
"You guys don't get it. It would be cool if he was actually, like, famous," Claire says. "But he's not."
Claire has to be the most negative person on Seagate. She doesn't belong here. She belongs in New York City on the hottest day of the year, on garbage pickup day; that way she'd be able to find a million more negative people.
I keep thinking about the Scream, and as cool as it is, it also kind of freaks me out. How can I have lived near Mr. Brookfield for so long and never known this about him? It makes me feel nervous.
"So why are you on Seagate this summer anyway?" Micayla asks Claire.
"We were forced to come," Claire says. "Grandpa's getting older and our parents want us to spend time with him."
"We love the guy, but no offense, it's kind of slow here." Calvin widens his eyes at us. "And the guy may be getting weirder; he's talking about his scream more, which only makes me think he's going crazy."
He did not just say what I thought he did. Newcomers talking badly about our beloved Seagate? I want to get up and walk away and not talk to these two ever again. If it's slow here, it's because they're boring. They obviously don't get the magic of this place, and I don't really care to show it to them.
Besides, is revealing a secret really a sign of someone going crazy? I don't think so. Plus, I don't want that to be true. Even though Bennett thinks it's awesome, part of me hopes Mr. Brookfield will stop talking about this weird scream and go back to being the nice old man who picks up any litter he sees-this changes everything about him.
"Well, if you think it's slow here, you'll just have to hang with us," Bennett says. "We'll show you how awesome it is."
I literally feel my mouth dropping open like an exaggerated cartoon character. I look at Micayla to commiserate, but she seems distracted, ripping the strands of her cutoffs. She doesn't seem to understand what a serious disaster has occurred.
Bennett Newhouse, one of my best friends in the entire world, just invited these two downers to hang with us.
The worst part is, they still don't seem happy. Claire goes on and on about the celebrities she'd like to meet if only her grandfather was famous enough to actually help her meet them, and Calvin just plays with his hat.
It occurs to me that instead of sitting around talking about celebrities we're never going to meet, we could go inside and ask Mr. Brookfield about the Scream and get him to tell us why he kept it a secret all these years. It explains his director's chair collection, for one thing. But I also want to ask him how it happened, and what it was like to be in the movies, and if he ever screams to himself every now and again.
He has this mystery past. Everyone just sees him as nice Mr. Brookfield, but there's actually so much more to him, and hardly anyone even knows about it. Only us.
I start to get the feeling that maybe that's true for everyone. Maybe all grown-ups have mystery pasts, and it takes random old artifacts to discover what they are. Maybe kids have the same thing. Not mystery pasts, but secret feelings. Only a few people know how sad I am about Danish. I just carry it around with me like an oversized backpack, one that's invisible to pretty much everyone.
I think about all of this as the rest of the group goes on and on about what it's like to be famous.
When there's a lull in the conversation, I suggest we go for a swim. It's getting really hot out here. And underwater, I can think all I want about secret lives, and I don't have to listen to the C Twins at all.
