Mom fusses and Granddad frets, but nothing goes back to normal afterwards, not really.

Every now and then Mussels goes around with his fists clenched looking like he wants to punch a shark, and those are the same days when Fin drifts all over the place with a dreamy, hungry smile on his face, bumping into things and making people nervous, and Fluke wanders off into the blue-black deep for hours where nobody can find him, down where the sunlight barely reaches and the pressure inside his ears, he says, makes it hard to concentrate on anything else.

And sometimes from very far away the boy knows can hear the sound of gulls, though he doesn't think any of them are singing for him. Not just yet.