Hailey stood where she was and waved until Claire’s grandparents’ car disappeared. After that, she stood there a while longer. It was still August, but it didn’t feel like summer anymore. All of a sudden the crickets’ call was faster, as if they knew that in only a week school would begin. It was obvious, even to the insects, that it would be quite some time before the weather turned hot again.

That night, Hailey’s mom fixed rainbow sundaes, which had always been Claire and Hailey’s favorite treat. Vanilla ice cream, strawberries, blueberries, hot fudge, and butterscotch. But Hailey couldn’t eat. She went to the kitchen window even though it wasn’t possible to see anything next door. Just an empty house, without any curtains, or any people, or anything at all. Hailey got out her white seashell and she held it to her ear. The whooshing sound within was exactly like Claire’s voice, and Hailey hoped that if she spoke into the shell Claire would hear her, no matter how far away she already was. Safe trip, that’s what she called to her friend. Here’s to the future, she said.

6

ON THE DAY THE BULLDOZERS knocked down the Capri Beach Club, the weather changed at last. The sky was as gray as fish scales and the air was salty and wet. Hailey and her mom stood in the parking lot to watch. Before long, the entranceway was crushed, the patio was leveled, and the fence around the pool was shoved aside. Hundreds of seagulls and terns circled in the sky.

The pool had already been drained, and in no time the bulldozers set to work breaking down the concrete. It was hard to tell which was noisier, the sound of the machines at work or the rumble of the wild surf.

Hailey had brought her camera along, and she’d planned to take a photograph to send to Claire so that she could see what had happened to the Capri, but it didn’t even seem like the same place anymore.

“I think it’s better if she just remembers it the way it was,” Hailey told her mother.

True enough, some things were best kept as a memory, but some things changed for the better. Claire, for instance, had taken up swimming, which only made sense since she now lived right on the beach. As it turned out, she was good at it. She took to the water if not like a mermaid, then at least like a fish.

Of course, if she hadn’t started swimming, she would have never run into Raymond, who was on his college team and often practiced in the blue bay that Claire could see from her window. The first time she spotted him, Claire thought Raymond was a seal, that’s how far out in the water he was, but then he waved to her and swam over.