Bennett and Calvin take off to meet the Sandcastle Contest organizers, leaving me alone with Claire.

“I got kicked out of tennis camp,” Claire tells me, digging her toes into the sand.

“Why? How?”

“If you let me talk, I’ll tell you,” she snaps.

I stay quiet.

“I got kicked out because I didn’t want to play,” she says, groaning. “I mean, seriously. My parents were paying for me to be there, so why did the counselors care if I played or not?”

I try not to look too confused. “Um? I guess because if you’re not playing tennis, what are you really doing there?”

“Yeah, Remy. Thanks.” Claire huffs and walks away, leaving me standing alone with Oscar. He seems tired and ready to go home, but I want to wait for Micayla and Bennett to get back before I head out.

Oscar goes back to playing and I sit down on a bench for a few minutes, feeling unsettled. I realize how good it felt when Calvin and Claire weren’t here, but now they’re back and Claire is being rude and surly and Bennett is busy with Calvin. I’m not sure where Micayla is, but I get this lonely feeling where I just want to go home and crawl under my covers.

I wish Danish were here. Oscar’s nice and all, but he’s not my dog.

So far, day one of the three of us watching Oscar is turning into me watching him. By myself.

“Remy, right?” I look up and see Mr. Brookfield, Claire and Calvin’s grandpa, standing over me.

I nod.

“You running a doggie day care or something?” he asks. For a second I’m confused, and then I look down at my feet and see Oscar and two other dogs just sitting around me. I’m not even sure how or when the other two dogs got there.

“No, just watching one dog.” I smile. But then I think about my time with Marilyn Monroe, and I wonder if Mr. Brookfield is on to something. Maybe I am on my path to running a doggie day care. “You guys don’t have a dog, right?”

I don’t ever remember seeing a dog running around inside or outside Mr. Brookfield’s house, so I’m not sure what he’s doing at Dog Beach.

“No, I just like coming to sit here,” he says. “I like the benches. If you get up and stand on that one over there”—he points to the green bench a few feet away from us—“you can see the whole island. Try it sometime.”

I want to try it right now, but I’m nervous that someone will see me doing it and tell Dawn that I’m not acting like a professional dog watcher.

“So you come here, just to sit, even though you don’t have a dog?” I ask Mr. Brookfield.

“I do,” he says. “The main section of beach doesn’t have benches. And I don’t want to carry a chair. Plus, I like to watch the pooches.”

“There are chairs on the south end,” I tell him. “When the Seagate Inn remodeled, they donated all their old lounges so that anyone who wanted a lounge chair could have one.”

He nods. “That’s true. But I’m good here.”

I thought I was the only one who liked going to Dog Beach even without a dog.

I want to ask him something, but I don’t know if I should. In all the years I have known Mr. Brookfield, I’ve never really talked to him before. I wonder if he was at Dog Beach all the times I was here with Danish and I never even noticed.

It’s strange how you can see something all the time and not even realize it’s there. It’s like how when Mom rearranges the furniture and I promise myself that I’ll remember how it used to look. But then after only a few days, I forget. Even though I saw it the old way for so long, I still can’t remember.

In the distance, I see Bennett with a stack of posters that he’ll have to hang up, reminding everyone about the Sandcastle Contest, and then I see Micayla talking to someone. It takes me a few seconds to figure out who it is, but when I squint my eyes, it’s clear that it’s Mason Redmond.

She’s actually talking to her crush!

I’m excited and sad at the same time. They’ve probably forgotten about Oscar.

“So tell me more about that whole scream thing,” I say finally, trying to think of something other than myself.

“I’m so glad you asked. What exactly would you like to know?” Mr. Brookfield asks. He stretches his legs out in front of him, and I notice he’s wearing bright white sneakers and tall tube socks. It occurs to me that older people don’t like to wear sandals as much as young people do. I wonder if there will come a time when I won’t want to wear flip-flops every day. It’s too sad to think about.

“How come nobody knows it’s your scream that’s in all those movies?” If Claire were here, she’d probably tell me to be quiet and that nobody really cares about it. But I do care. It’s so mysterious.

I’m suddenly grateful that it’s just Oscar, Mr. Brookfield, and me right now.

“I had a very small role in a movie, and I was grateful to get it,” Mr. Brookfield tells me. “I’d been on a million auditions. In this one, I was cast as the person who was going to get attacked by an alligator. We shot the scene, and then the director told me they’d want to get the screaming sound just right, so we’d record it later. We did record it later, but the scene got cut considerably, so you could really only see the back of my head. And then eventually, even my head got cut. But the scream. Oh, that scream! They kept it. And for years and years, and still today, people are using that scream!”

Mr. Brookfield goes on, telling me details about some of the movies it’s in, and it’s clear he really does love to talk about this. I wish I’d known before, because I like hearing these kinds of stories. It took Claire to bring all this out of him.

The more Mr. Brookfield talks, the more I realize that he seems so much happier when he’s talking about his work and when he’s talking about the past and his wife and life on Seagate. He never seems that happy otherwise, just talking about day-to-day life.

“Remy!” Bennett runs over to me, all out of breath, and Calvin follows behind him. “They asked us to put up all these signs for the Sandcastle Contest right away. Are you okay bringing Oscar back by yourself?”

It’s nice that he asked, but I wish he’d just come with me.

“Dude, she’s fine,” Calvin says. “It’s Seagate.”

Bennett looks at me again, and when I don’t say anything right away, he says, “Yeah, you’re right. We’ll be around, Rem. See you soon.”

They walk away with the signs flapping in their hands. Oscar is resting on the sand, and I think I’ve probably kept him out too long.

“Nice boy, that Bennett,” Mr. Brookfield says. “He was always a nice boy.”

“Yeah,” I grumble. “I guess.”

I take Oscar back home, where Dawn seems to be in better shape. Only one of the triplets is up, but he’s not crying. The other two are sleeping in their swings.

“He looks exhausted! That’s great!” Dawn gives me a hug. “Remy, I really want to thank you so much for taking care of Oscar.”

“You’re welcome.” I laugh a little bit because I don’t know what else to do. “Same time tomorrow morning?”

“Unless I need you before.” She looks back at Oscar. “I’ll text you?”

“Yeah, that would be great. See you later.”

I walk back over to the beach, hoping that Calvin and Claire got bored with helping and decided to go back to Mr. Brookfield’s to watch TV.

“Where did you go?” Micayla asks as soon as she sees me. She’s sitting at the Sandcastle Contest registration table. “I texted you, like, seven times.”

Uh-oh. I never even looked at my phone. I was so preoccupied with thinking about Bennett and talking to Mr. Brookfield, I kind of forgot about Micayla. It’s such a terrible thing to do, I feel guilty immediately.

“I didn’t look at my phone. I don’t know why. I’m so sorry!” I squish up my face in embarrassment and give Micayla a hug. “I had to take Oscar home. He was really tired.”

“Yeah, I figured.” She gives me a look that says I’m confused and You’re crazy at the same time.

“Let’s go help set up,” I tell her. “I love looking at all the little tools some people use to build sandcastles.”

“Me too,” she says. “But I have to talk to you.”