Whenever they left the Capri, they’d see Raymond’s motorbike parked in the shadows of the breezeway. But there wasn’t another vehicle in sight. Who would want to spend their precious summer days at a beach club that had become a disaster area? Beyond a wire fence, several bulldozers were already at work tearing down the playground where the swings had long ago rusted into place. Still, it hadn’t been that many summers since Hailey and Claire had ridden those swings into the sky, up through the heat waves and the white clouds, convinced they had all the time in the world.

Now, in the last days of the Capri, time seemed to be their enemy. Sometimes, when they looked into the mirror in the changing room of the cabana, where bathing suits and towels were stored, they didn’t even look like themselves anymore. Their legs were too long, their arms too rangy, their hair cut too short to be pulled into ponytails or braids.

Each day when Claire’s grandfather asked “What’s new, Susie Q’s?” the girls always responded, “Nothing” in voices so glum, anyone would think they had no hope whatsoever for what the future might bring. By next summer, the Capri would be a bird sanctuary, and although the girls were happy for the birds, they didn’t understand why this one piece of their lives couldn’t go on as before.

Once the bulldozers started in on the wooden cabanas, once they destroyed the pool and the patio and the snack bar, wasn’t it possible that Claire would no longer remember summers spent at the Capri with her parents? Would Hailey still recall how her father took her swimming in the farthest waves when her mom and dad were still married? When the Capri was gone, maybe they would forget each other as well. They’d grow up and be just like all those other people who didn’t know what it meant to have your best friend living right next door, grown-ups who had no idea of what it was like to have someone understand you so well they could tell what you were thinking even before you spoke aloud.