Song for a Whale

Iris receives Andi’s reply. Andi says that they’ll play her song for Blue 55 in the sanctuary in Alaska and see how he responds. She adds that Iris can watch the expedition live on the webcast unless she happens to be in Appleton, Alaska. Iris is excited, and it doesn’t seem right to her that she should be staring at Blue 55 through a computer screen while the rest of the staff get to meet him. She wants to be there. She emails Andi to say that she wants to join the expedition and that she’ll ask her parents for permission to go.

At dinner, Iris tries to convey the expedition’s importance to her parents. Her mother must interpret her fast, excited signs for her father. While her parents seem impressed, they don’t understand how important it is for Iris to visit this misunderstood whale and insist that she should watch the investigation through the webcast. Iris is devastated that she can’t communicate the situation’s gravity. She tries to get her father to empathize with the whale: “What if your whole life was like this? What if you were that whale, in an ocean with no one to talk to?” (107). She feels that she’s like Blue 55, “shouting into the void of the ocean, at a frequency too high for anyone to reach” (108).

This chapter is from Blue 55’s perspective. The pod that he has joined is leaving him because the youngest calf, who hasn’t yet found his song, is circling around the whale and trying to communicate with him. The other whales worry that Blue 55 will be a bad influence on the calf and put his safety in jeopardy. The pod, including the calf, leaves Blue 55 behind.

Although the other whales are silent with the approach of storms, Blue 55 sings the loudest on these occasions because the storm noise drowns out his song and he can pretend that he’s like the other whales. Still, he hopes that “the churning and the pounding and the rolling water that carried his sounds away would rearrange them into a new composition another would hear” (110).

Iris is at first determined to find a way to go to Alaska, despite her family’s protest. However, when she gets an email from Andi, she finds the tone discouraging. Andi tries to warn Iris off from coming to Alaska, saying that Blue 55 might not show up and that tagging a whale can be dangerous if its tail slaps them. She tells Iris that she’ll have just as good a view from the webcast. Iris is sad and determines to forget about Blue 55.

Her father comes into the room with some speakers and plays an old YouTube video that features the humpback whale songs of his childhood. He signs that he listened to them every day. Her father explains that the whales’ songs were important in detracting people from hunting them. He too wanted to see the whales when he was younger. Iris sees this as an opportunity to bond with her father. However, when he expresses regret that she can’t hear the songs, she has difficulty explaining that “I could hear the whales, just not in the same way he did” (117). She is now even more determined to forget about Blue 55.

She decides to focus on fixing radios. She gets the most impossible case from Mr. Gunnar’s shop and changes her report for Ms. Conn from whales to radio communication. Still, Iris finds that despite her best efforts, whales have replaced radios in her affections. While researching her report, Iris finds examples of when radio communication helped in emergencies. She learns that “people who were desperate to communicate always found a way” (120). She decides that she’ll find a way to reach Blue 55.

Iris determines that she must find a way to go to the sanctuary. She plans to fly to Alaska on a school day and hopes that her family won’t notice that she’s missing until after she has landed. While getting the flight is relatively simple, she must figure out how to cross the remaining 150 miles when she gets there. To finance the ticket, she decides to sell her precious Philco radio to Mr. Gunnar. While the transaction hurts her, “letting go of the radios would let me reach for something I loved even more” (123).

When Iris goes to the bank to withdraw her money, the clerk turns her away, saying that she can’t withdraw money without parental consent. Iris is devastated and wonders how she can access the money for the trip.

Deciding that she needs to find someone who understands her, Iris pays her grandmother a visit. She spills her woes to Grandma but can’t find the sign to “express the ache of getting so close to the whale and then missing him” (129). On the previous evening, in a conversation with her mother, her mother corrects her when she uses the sign for “miss” to express her feelings toward Blue 55 (131). In sign language, the signs for miss and disappointed are alike, as “the meanings weren’t so far apart. Someone you want to be with is far away, or something you wish for isn’t going to come true” (131). Still, Grandma understands Iris and reveals that she and Grandpa had planned a cruise to Alaska for their 50th wedding anniversary. She tells Iris that they should go to Alaska together. Iris is excited, feeling that she won’t have to miss seeing Blue 55.

Grandma tells Iris that she’ll finance the trip and books them onto a cruise ship that will take them straight to Appleton, Alaska, where the sanctuary is. Grandma will lie to Mom that they’re going to Surfside Beach.

Iris visits Wendell and tells him the truth about her expedition while they look at Jupiter’s moons. She imagines that were she to attend Wendell’s school, she’d learn to sign as fluently as the other kids. However, she judges that her mother will never condone the idea after she learns of the Alaska trip. Wendell asks Iris what she’ll do after she finds the whale. Iris replies that she’s unsure but that “the song will let him know he’s not alone, and I want to be there for that” (138). Wendell reveals that if he could find the fifth giant gas planet that Jupiter knocked out of orbit, he’d go on an expedition to visit it. They hug, and Iris promises to let Wendell know when she finds the whale.

Iris brings her Alaska clothes to Grandma’s house in increments. She does her best to fashion warm clothing out of her warm-weather Houston clothes. She’s relieved to have a break from her family and thinks that they’ll be relieved to have a break from sign language. Tristan is standing outside with his friend, Adam, and Adam’s broken-down truck. Iris insists that the battery wires are a problem and that they should pour Coke on them and it will be instantly fixed. When the boys indicate that they don’t believe her, Iris goes for a breakfast taco alone. She’s excited about her trip and feels so grown up that she orders her first coffee. As she’s leaving, she spots Adam and Tristan, and she almost thinks about turning around so that Adam can confess that she’s right.

Grandma drives them to the airport to catch a flight to San Francisco. She tells Iris that she told her mother that “we’re going farther than Surfside and will be gone a few days longer” (148). Iris notices that Grandma is signing faster and looks more like her old self. In San Francisco, they catch a cruise liner. Iris explores the enormous ship while Grandma rests. The members of the cruise staff all come from different parts of the world and have their nationality taped next to their name.

Although most of the passengers seem older than Grandma, Iris spots a girl about her age and thinks of approaching her the next day. At dinner, Iris orders crème brûlée, a dessert she has never eaten, and decides that it’s her new favorite food. They see a pod of dolphins, and Iris considers it a good omen for their trip. When Iris asks her Grandma about her favorite cruise, Grandma replies that it was the one to Jamaica when she and Grandpa signed karaoke. Grandma thinks that Iris takes after her grandfather in being a good communicator, but Iris thinks that she’s mistaken. Iris wants to attend an Alaskan wildlife presentation by Sura Kilabuk, the ship’s naturalist, to learn more about Blue 55.

This chapter is from Blue 55’s perspective. He’s entirely alone in an ocean filled with the noises of other creatures. Still, he holds onto hope, calling in case something in the ocean is like himself.

The next day, Iris goes to the wildlife lecture. She finds the girl her age there and introduces herself by writing a note with her name and explaining that she’s Deaf. Bennie, the daughter of the ship’s naturalist, is from Northern Canada and wants to be a shark biologist when she grows up.

When the presentation starts, Sura is careful to face Iris—so that Iris can read her lips—and holds the microphone low. She learns from the presentation about bubble-net feeding: The whales blow a net of bubbles to keep the fish in place so that they can feed on them. After the presentation, Iris asks Sura how the whales figured out bubble-net feeding. Sura replies that scientists are still unsure about this phenomenon and that the fun thing about science is “the wondering” rather than having the answers at hand. She invites Iris to a whale-sighting event the next morning at dawn. When Iris asks Sura about Blue 55, Sura reveals that she’s already tracking him. Iris stands on the deck and looks in the direction of the whale.

Iris wakes up at six o’ clock to join Bennie and Sura for the whale-sighting event. She tells Bennie about her reasons for being on the cruise and that she’s going to Appleton to try to coincide with Blue 55’s migration there. She tells Bennie about her song, and Bennie asks to hear it later.

They go to a giant room in the middle of the deck for the whale sighting. They spot humpback whales, and Iris realizes that they’re the size of buses. She decides that she’ll try to describe this to her father.

Sura explains that each kind of whale has a distinctive spout shape and that she can identify them by their spray. The humpback’s spout looks like an upside-down teardrop. Blue 55 is once again distinctive, as he has a fin on his back like a fin whale and the tail of a blue whale.

This chapter is from Blue 55’s perspective. He’s depressed about being lonely and decides that he prefers the depths of the ocean to its illuminated surface because in the deep he doesn’t encounter the pods of whales who reject him. He keeps his breath still and stops singing.

Iris feels uneasy with worry, both that she won’t get to meet Blue 55 and that her parents will be upset and angry with her for her expedition. Still, she finds the ship stimulating and is developing a friendship with Bennie, who’s learning a few signs. Bennie offers to log her in as a guest so that she can use the internet cafe. She looks up Blue 55 and finds that he has stopped singing. She can’t blame him for remaining quiet when no one ever answers him. When she plays the song that will answer Blue 55 for Bennie, Bennie’s impressed. They experiment with their voices, humming into the phone to see which hertz will reach Blue 55’s 55 Hz but can’t make the sound. Iris feels that this “must be what it was like for Blue 55. He knew what sound he needed to make but just couldn’t do it” (186). They must use a voice modulator to reach the required hertz number.

Iris then answers emails from Wendell and her mother. Her mother blames Grandma more than Iris. Iris, however, says that it was her spontaneous idea to go away.

Back in the cabin, Grandma returns and shows Iris an origami whale that she made in origami class. They disembark at Juneau, where they see and touch the glaciers as Grandpa had wanted to do. Iris feels that her grandmother has fully returned to life.

Although the next stop, Skagway, is an attractive town, Iris can’t stop thinking about Blue 55 or about how much she misses her family. She hopes her song will rouse Blue 55, who still isn’t singing, and she buys a postcard for her family, telling them how much she’s thinking of them and how it was imperative for her to find the whale.

Later that night, she can’t find Grandma and finally hunts her down at the karaoke gathering, where she’s signing to the songs and drawing a huge crowd. Iris contemplates how she’s happy that the plan to do the Alaska trip solo failed, as she got to accompany Grandma.