The scream contest gets off to a chaotic start. There’s a line around the block of people who want to participate—mostly boys between the ages of eight and fourteen. But Calvin, Claire, Bennett, and Micayla help me collect the names. Next to us, Mr. Brookfield offers coaching, free of charge.
It feels like the whole island is milling about, everyone eating candy, chatting, and savoring the last days of summer on Seagate Island, the best place on earth.
I go up to the microphone one more time. I don’t need everybody to pay attention, but I hope some people do. So all I say is, “Seagate Island, get ready to scream!” I tell all the contest participants to stay quiet while the others scream. I feel like a teacher, or maybe a camp counselor. I think these kids may be harder to control than the dogs!
Mr. Brookfield starts off the contest with his famous scream, and then one by one, the participants go to the microphone and say their name and then scream.
It’s chaotic and crazy and hilarious and amazing all at the same time.
Mrs. Paisley looks like she has a headache, but she’s smiling anyway.
Finally, after the last competitor screams, Mr. Brookfield announces that the judges will vote in the next few hours and the winners will be posted tomorrow.
And we get to be the judges!
Later that night, Mr. Brookfield invites us over for one last pizza party, and it’s hard to believe that this is the last time we’ll do this for a whole year. But tonight’s pizza party is different. It’s not just the six of us. There are seven others here: Oscar, Marilyn Monroe, Atticus, Rascal, Palm, Tabby, and Potato Salad.
The dog owners thought it was funny that their dogs were invited to Mr. Brookfield’s house and they weren’t. Mr. Brookfield’s pretty famous now, so they’re a little jealous. But the dogs are part of our crew. They can’t be left out on our last night.
The dogs sit at our feet and run around the backyard as we eat our pizza. We chat, reminisce about the summer, and talk about what the coming year will be like. Micayla promises that she’ll email us every day to tell us about year-round life on Seagate. Calvin and Claire promise that they’ll be back next summer.
“I can’t believe we waited so long to spend a summer here,” Claire says.
Calvin adds, “Yeah, and we had to be forced to do it.”
“And just think,” I say, “if you had played tennis at tennis camp, you might never have come back, Claire.” I smile at her, and she smiles back and then hits me on the arm.
“You’re never going to let that go, huh?”
“Nope!”
“If only Mason Redmond were here,” Bennett says, in his jokey way, looking at Micayla and rubbing Potato Salad’s belly. “Then the summer would be complete. It’s a shame he had to leave early. Was he taking the SATs or something?”
Micayla rolls her eyes, and at just that moment Marilyn Monroe hops up onto her lap.
“Oh, leave her alone,” Claire says. “Maybe you should be—”
“Should be what?” Bennett asks.
Claire looks at me. I speak to her in blinks, urging her not to embarrass me, not to ruin this most perfect day. She giggles a little. I wait for her to say something else. I mentally plead with her to change the subject.
“Maybe you should be a forward thinker,” she says, shrugging, like it’s no big deal, like it’s what she planned to say all along. “Mason’s not so bad. Leave Micayla alone.”
Phew! Good cover-up. For once she didn’t say the most embarrassing thing she could think of.
“Wow. Claire Reich, suddenly the one who’s looking out for everyone.” Bennett nods like he totally approves. “Anyone who looks out for Micayla is a friend of mine.” He high-fives her, and then slowly and nonchalantly Claire winks at me.
As we finish our pizza, I tell them that I have an announcement to make, and I grab Marilyn Monroe from Micayla. “Marilyn Monroe and I are becoming roommates soon,” I say. “Actually, next week!”
“Huh?” Micayla asks.
So I tell them the whole story about Amber and Marilyn Monroe and the new apartment and everything.
“Will your parents say yes?” Claire asks.
“Yeah, I asked them, and they said yes right away. I couldn’t believe it, but then they said how impressed they were with the dog-sitting business, and how responsible I have been.”
“You didn’t say anything to him, did you?” Claire asks me a few minutes later, when Bennett and Calvin are attempting to play Ping-Pong in the air, without a table.
“What?” I ask, confused, still thinking about what it will be like when Marilyn Monroe is my dog. Really and truly my dog.
“About how you feel,” she whispers, talking through her teeth. “Bennett.”
I shake my head.
“I didn’t feel the need to. Things are so great right now. I know that things change, and pretty often it’s great when they do,” I tell her. “But in this moment, for now, I just want this one thing to stay the same. I’m happy now, and I’m scared to think about things with Bennett and me being that different. Know what I mean?”
Claire nods. “I do.”
“And besides,” I say and put my arm around her, “there’s always next summer.”
We sit around talking for a while longer, and as we’re talking, I look around at my old friends and my new friends, my human friends and my dog friends, and I realize that this summer and especially Seagate Halloween were completely different from all the ones that came before. Different and sometimes scary and hard.
But they were also better. Better than I could have ever imagined.