Later that evening, I decide to sit on the back porch and try to clear my thoughts. Our backyard has a perfect view of the ocean. I could sit out here for hours and hours doing nothing but staring at the sea. But I usually don’t do that, because I’m always so busy.

I bring a book in case I need a break from sea gazing, but I don’t get very far. I read a few words and then my mind wanders, and I can’t seem to get it to pay attention to the book again. I don’t know where things went wrong with Micayla. Maybe I should have responded differently, but I don’t know what I should have said. Maybe if Bennett were home, he’d be able to help me make sense of things. I wonder if he knows already, and if he’s been keeping it from me too.

Just as I’m about to ask my mom what’s for dinner, I get a text from Claire:

Just my mom and me tonight. Going to F’s Fish. Want 2 come?

On the one hand, it’s surprising (and a little exciting) that Claire invited me to do something with her. I always thought she hated me. And maybe it will be good to get out and get my mind off things. On the other hand, it’s Claire, and I’m never sure how she’s going to act. She can invite me to dinner and be all nice about it and then act totally mean when I get there. But her mom’s coming. And most people aren’t mean in front of their moms.

I go inside and ask my parents if I can go, and then I remember that my dad had to go back to the city for a few days. That’ll leave my mom home all alone for dinner, and I get lonely just thinking about it.

Well, if Claire’s going with her mom, I can always ask if I can bring my mom along too. That’s not weird, I don’t think. Or maybe it is. But on Seagate, weird things are considered acceptable, sometimes even quirky and fun.

Can my mom come too? I text back.

A few seconds later, I get TOTES back from Claire and feel better already. Sometimes when you’re feeling really down, a little invitation to do something makes everything feel better.

Claire kind of scares me. But right now going out to dinner with her and our moms feels like a scoop of ice cream on the hottest day of the summer.

“So you and Claire are friends now?” my mom asks me as we’re walking over to Frederick’s Fish.

“I guess.” I’ve been kicking a pebble down the path since we left our house, and I can tell it’s driving my mom crazy. But I’ve gotten it so far, I can’t stop now.

“You seem awfully quiet, Rem.” She says it like a question, and I know she wants me to tell her what’s on my mind. It’s kind of strange how people use the word awfully to just mean very or extremely. That never really made sense to me.

I just shrug and don’t really say anything. I’m upset about my conversation with Micayla, but I don’t know how to tell my mom about it. Partly because I don’t know if I’m right or Micayla’s right. Maybe I was thinking about myself too much. But it wasn’t like I did it to be mean. She didn’t tell me what was going on.

We’ll be at Frederick’s Fish soon, and I’m sure Claire will talk about her jeans the whole time and save me from having to say much of anything at all. That’s a good thing about someone like Claire—she’ll talk and talk and talk, and you can just stay quiet if you want to.

I think I like being the quiet one. It’s easier to listen to someone else than to talk about myself.

We get to Frederick’s Fish, and Claire and her mom are sitting on the bench out front.

“Hello, I’m Iris, Claire’s mom. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Abby,” my mom replies.

They talk for a few minutes about Seagate life and remark on how odd it is that they don’t remember each other as young girls spending summers on Seagate. I don’t understand that at all. I know I’ll remember everyone on Seagate when I’m my mom’s age. I’ll remember Mason Redmond and Avery Sanders and even people I’m not really friends with.

“Do you miss your brother?” I ask Claire, because I can’t think of anything else to say.

“Not at all.” She takes a lip gloss out of her cross-body bag and smears some on her lips. “He’s gross. I wish I had a girl twin. Or a plain old sister.”

“At least you have a sibling.” I pick up the pebble that I kicked all the way here and put it in my pocket. It’s so childish and superstitious, but something about that pebble feels lucky to me.

“You’re not suffering that much, Remy.” She rolls her eyes. That’s the Claire I’m used to, but it doesn’t seem to bother me as much today. She’s being honest.

After a few minutes of awkward silence, Claire asks, “Where’s Micayla tonight anyway? I was going to invite her too, but my mom said I could only invite one friend.”

“Touring the school here.” I force myself to say it without any commentary. I’ll let Claire form her own opinion. Truth is, I wonder if Claire already knows about Micayla becoming a year-rounder. Maybe I was the last to find out. That might make me feel even worse than I do now.

“School?” Claire scoffs. “In July?”

I nod.

“That is just depressing.”

“I agree! Thank you!” I’m immediately guilty for how excited I am about gossiping about Micayla. This isn’t right. I know I’m doing the wrong thing, and yet I’m doing it anyway.

Luckily, the hostess at Frederick’s Fish tells us that our table is ready, and she walks us to the back deck of the restaurant.

“Outside okay?”

“Of course!” my mom says. “The best view on Seagate!”

The hostess smiles and leaves us our menus. I’m not sure I agree about the view—there’s the view from high up on the stage that’s pretty awesome, and of course the one from the tippity-top of the lighthouse. But there are so many good views, it’s hard to pick the best one.

“Where’s Micayla tonight?” my mom asks me after we order our appetizers and our meals. So I explain the whole thing all over again.

“I see,” my mom replies. She doesn’t seem that surprised. Maybe she already knows. She probably does. She’s pretty close with Micayla’s mom.

Another person who knew before me.

“We’re not attached at the hip, you know.”

“Yeah you are,” Claire says.

The waitress brings over a plate of fried zucchini sticks and a vegetable platter.

After she dips a zucchini stick into Frederick’s secret sauce, Claire’s mom says, “I was a year-rounder once.” Which makes it sound like Claire already does know, or at least her mom already knows. Or maybe she’s just bringing it up to make conversation.

“You were?” I ask.

Claire doesn’t say anything, so I guess she already knows this story.

“For a year. My mom thought we needed a break from city life. My dad was depressed about the whole movie career bust, even though it had happened years and years before. We just sort of stepped out of regular society for a little while.” She dips another zucchini stick. “And it was great. It was a chance to really spend time together and slow down our pace.”

I nod. I wonder if she’d want to do that now, if she’d want to move here with Calvin and Claire for a year.

“It’s not so bad, is all I’m saying.” She smiles.

“Mom. Please don’t tell me this is your way of breaking the news to me. I have Phoebe and Jenna at home. I can’t just leave my best friends behind.”

I wonder what “Home Claire” is like. I imagine her all popular, always invited to everything, the kind of girl other girls secretly hate but desperately want to be friends with at the same time.

Here on Seagate, it almost seems like she might like me. But at home, she probably wouldn’t talk to me at all.

“Well, I don’t know if Grandpa would be pleased with all of us just descending on his home for an entire year,” Claire’s mom says. “But it’s something to think about. I hate that there’s so much pressure on you in Westchester.”

“I hate that too,” my mom admits. “It’s so tough, but I have come to accept that there is no perfect place to live.”

The moms go on and on about this—suburbs versus the city, living on Seagate year-round, all of that. Claire and I stare at each other for a few seconds before she starts to tell me this story about her friends Jenna and Phoebe and how they got in trouble for skipping band last year.

“So what was the punishment?” I ask.

“We had to go five minutes late to lunch,” Claire says. “I was totally freaked out that we wouldn’t get our usual table, but we did. And there wasn’t even a long line for food by the time we got there. So it ended up being not that bad.”

“That’s good,” I say. My stomach grumbles so loudly that Claire and I both start cracking up.

“What are you like at home?” Claire asks. “Are you, like, friends with everybody? Just a small group? Or what?”

I dip a zucchini stick, partly because I’m hungry and partly because I want the time to think of the right answer. She wants to know if I’m popular.

“I don’t know what I am. I guess I’m somewhere in the middle.”

Thankfully, Claire doesn’t press it further. I want to tell her I liked it better when we never used to think about these things. We were just ourselves, and that was good enough. But maybe she knows that. Maybe she didn’t used to think about these things either.

Our fish sandwiches come, and we dig into the deliciousness that is Frederick’s Fish. Nothing else really matters when you’re eating a Frederick’s Fish Sandwich. It’s pretty much perfection in a sandwich.

After dinner, we all walk home together, and we find Mr. Brookfield sitting on the front porch. “Hope you ladies enjoyed dinner,” he says. “We played three games of canasta, and my team won every time.”

We all congratulate him and his teammate Mr. Mayer, from around the corner.

“And I heard from the boys,” Mr. Brookfield tells us. “They’re having a blast.”

I’m glad that Bennett’s having fun, but I also hate it. I hate that he’s having a blast without me, without Seagate. What if he comes home and he’s better friends with Calvin than he’ll ever be with me again?

I never used to think about these things. Like popularity, they never used to matter. But they matter now, and as much as I tell myself that they don’t and that things are exactly the same, I know it’s not true.