"Who's he playing?" I ask Micayla as we get closer to the stadium. It's not really a stadium, but since Ping-Pong is such a huge deal on Seagate Island, that's what we call it. It's really just a big overhang in the middle of the island with fifteen Ping-Pong tables underneath it. This way people can play rain or shine.
"He said he was meeting his dad here. You know they take their Sunday games really seriously."
Bennett's dad only comes to Seagate on the weekends. He's a big lawyer in Boston. He flies in every Friday and flies back every Sunday on these teeny-tiny planes. Bennett and his dad always have a heated Ping-Pong match right before he leaves on Sunday afternoon. Bennett usually wins.
"Remy! Mic!" Bennett shouts to us. "Where have you guys been?"
We walk closer to his table and see that he's playing against a kid with spiky hair and a shirt with a picture of a video game controller on it.
"Yo, Calvin." Bennett turns to the spiky-haired kid. He's really not the type of person to use the word yo, so hearing him say it is strange. "This is Remy." Bennett points to me. "And this is Micayla." He points to her.
"Hey," Calvin says, looking down at his untied sneakers like he doesn't really care to talk to us. We say "hey" back, and then Bennett and Calvin return to their game.
There's a girl sitting on one of the wooden benches along the side of the stadium. "Calvin, come on," she says. "Grandpa said we needed to be back by three."
"Claire." He keeps playing and doesn't look at her. "Shut up."
"Calvin!" The girl yells this time. "Fine. Whatever. I'm leaving you here. I hope you get lost."
I guess she doesn't realize that it's pretty much impossible to be lost on Seagate.
She huffs, annoyed, as she stands up and walks away. She doesn't introduce herself to us, and she doesn't say good-bye to Bennett. She's wearing white cutoffs, and they're really, really short, so she adjusts them as she walks away.
"My sister is such a bore," Calvin says.
"Most girls are," Bennett replies.
What did he just say? I look at Micayla to see if she heard it, but she's more involved in their game than I realized. Bennett Newhouse, one of my best friends since birth, just said that most girls are bores. At least he said "most" and not "all," but still.
Finally Calvin leaves and Bennett walks over to Micayla and me. "Surfing?" he asks. As much as I want to go surf, I'm still kind of shaken up. If he thinks most girls are bores, does he think I'm a bore? Or does he not think of me as a girl?
"There will be time for surfing after we discuss what just happened," I tell Bennett. Micayla cracks up. She says that I speak in a really formal way because both of my parents are on-air journalists. She tells me I should talk more like a kid. I think I talk like a kid most of the time, but my more formal speech comes out when I'm angry. Like I am right now. "Why did you say that girls are bores?"
"Uh-oh, Investigator Remy is here again!" Bennett laughs and raises a hand to slap Micayla five, but she denies him. "Rem, relax. I just met the kid. I was trying to make him feel comfortable."
I give him a casual eye roll. That's a lame excuse if I ever heard one. "Well, who is he anyway? A weekender?"
Bennett shuffles some stray sand around with the toe of his flip-flop. "No. He's my next-door neighbor."
"What?" Micayla exclaims. "What happened to Mr. Brookfield?"
"That's his grandson! The one he was always telling us about." Bennett widens his eyes at us, and I can't tell if he wants us to be excited or not. "Remember?"
"Kind of." I shrug. I do remember, but I don't want to admit it; I'm still mad at Bennett. Mr. Brookfield always went on and on about his grandchildren and how we'd love them if we only knew them. But they always went to camp in the summer and had no interest in Seagate.
That was okay with me. I already had friends, and while people say you can never have too many, I was happy with the way things had always been.
"That girl was his twin, then," I say, putting it all together. "Didn't Mr. Brookfield always say he had twin grandchildren?"
"Yup. Calvin and Claire."
Calvin and Claire-sounds like a matched pair. I decide that I'll think of them as the C Twins.
"Please tell me they're just here for the week," Micayla says, and I'm glad she does, because that means I don't have to. "July Fourth week and then they're going home?"
"Nope. They'll be here all summer." Bennett raises his eyebrows, like he's not sure why this is such a big deal. "So? Surfing?"
"Why are they here?" I ask.
Micayla chimes in, "Yeah. I thought they loooved camp."
It's not that we don't believe camp can be great. I go to school with a girl named Rachel Kleiger who claims camp is the best place on earth. She feels about camp the way I feel about Seagate. But we just never understood how these twins could choose a camp over Seagate. Seagate is perfect. And anyone who has an option to be here should be here.
"I don't know, guys," Bennett says. "I just met them today." He backs up a little bit. "You're both acting weird. I'm going to surf."
Micayla and I hang back a minute and tell Bennett that we'll meet him at the beach. After he leaves, I say, "We're acting weird? He's acting weird." I look at Micayla and wait for her to say something. "Right?"
She shrugs. I wish she'd agree with me more. "I'm still thinking about that kid Calvin's hair. It was unusual, right?"
"I forgot what it looked like already," I lie. I don't know why I lie, but I do.
"Brown and spiky?" I can't believe Micayla just believed me.
"Oh yeah. That's not really so unusual."
On the way back to the beach we pick up our surfboards and change into our bathing suits. They're still wet from our morning swim, but we don't mind. They're just going to get wet again anyway. On Seagate, it's okay to walk around in a damp bathing suit. No one judges you. There's no pressure to show off. I feel kind of guilty that I'm so judgy about Calvin and his sister. Maybe they're not that bad.
Maybe it's just that I'm still feeling off. Things are different. Without Danish, I can't seem to get into the summer groove. Add to that Bennett's weird comment, and Micayla being so focused on their game and Calvin's hair. Everything seems a little strange.
I decide to put it all out of my head and try to stop thinking for just a minute. Micayla and I run into the sea holding hands like we always do. We like to swim for a few minutes before we attempt to surf. It's kind of like how the Olympic divers go into that hot tub before they dive, or runners stretch before a race.
We need to warm up.
Maybe that's kind of how it is with summer too. You have to get back into the swing of things. I decide that this past week has been my warm-up week, my few minutes in the ocean before surfing.
Everyone needs time to adjust. Even on Seagate. Even me.