Song for a Whale

Iris wakes up nervous the day she’s scheduled to meet Blue 55. However, Blue 55 has changed course: Instead of going North to Alaska, he’s heading South toward Washington State. Andi has sent an email apologizing for the change, and she announces that the team at Oregon’s Lighthouse Bay sanctuary, which must now tag Blue 55, don’t want to play Iris’s song because they don’t think it’ll be efficient. Iris feels angry and betrayed.

Further phone research about the Lighthouse Bay sanctuary reveals to Iris that it hosts a young whale named Mara, who was found stranded on a beach and, after some rehabilitation, pushed back into the ocean. She returned periodically to Lighthouse Bay and was a Blue whale like Blue 55’s mother. Iris wonders whether the two of them could communicate.

Iris laments being on a ship heading in the wrong direction and missing the chance to see Blue 55. However, her grandmother and Bennie try to devise a plan to get her to the Lighthouse Bay sanctuary.

Iris comes to terms with the possibility that she may miss Blue 55 and that the expedition won’t let her come aboard. She’ll send the recording to as many sanctuaries as she can. She wants to do everything in her power to let the whale know that he’s not alone. The plan is to take a train to Cape Oliver and catch a shuttle to Lighthouse Bay. If they arrive before Blue 55, they’ll miss the rest of the cruise.

That afternoon, Iris joins Bennie to watch a glacier calve—and thereby divide into a large and small piece. She finds the process moving and makes a handshape poem for Grandma to try to describe the sight: “The glacier screams, watching a piece of itself float farther and farther from home” (224).

Blue 55 is making such rapid progress that Iris fears she’ll miss him when they get to Oregon. She misses her family. Her brother, Tristan, emails to tell her that their father hasn’t been sleeping since her departure. Her father’s email relates that the whale songs he played her have been in The Voyager space capsule—and that he wanted to find the whales ever since he heard the music, although he wouldn’t know what to say to them.

At the cruise breakfast buffet, Iris hears the chant of whales. She misses the ones the group sees, but all is okay when she alone spots a mother and calf. Bennie and Iris go to the internet cafe. Bennie accidentally signs that she wants church-flavored gelato instead of chocolate. The girls laugh about the misunderstanding. However, when an email comes through from Mom, stating that she has gone to Iris’s school and has met Nina, who seems nice, Iris is less understanding. She tells Bennie that Nina is “terrible” for the way she tries to use sign language and mixes it all up (234). Bennie encourages her to be more sympathetic to Nina’s efforts, pointing out that they’re “probably no worse than you speaking whale” (234).

Bennie and Iris go swimming in one of the ship’s heated pools. Iris hears music vibrating through the water. She sees a man’s Bluetooth speaker and gets the idea to stop at Icy Harbor to visit a junkyard and equip herself with speakers so that the whale can hear her song vibrating through the water.

Bennie accompanies Grandma and Iris to the Icy Harbor junkyard. There she finds a boom box, a speaker from a cassette player, a plastic thermos, headphones, and leftover caulk for the edges of sinks or bathrooms. Now she must simply put her speaker together.

Bennie and Iris make up the speaker in the cabin. They test it in the pool, as Iris asks Bennie whether she can hear it both in and out of the water. Iris wants to add her voice to the song. Even though she doesn’t usually like speaking in front of people, she doesn’t mind doing it for the whale and records: “Hi, it’s Iris. I’m here” (248).

On the last night of the cruise, Iris looks at the stars. She thinks of Wendell and writes to him that she feels her journey has gone the same way as the gas planet he told her about. She feels like the planet that disappeared from the solar system millions of years ago, as “I was on one path and something knocked me onto a new one” (250).

Iris says goodbye to Bennie and boards the train with Grandma. On board, she resigns herself to the circumstance that she’s playing her part in showing up but ultimately can’t control the outcome. When they get off the train, they run to the shuttle stop to try to make it to the sanctuary on time. When they must wait 20 minutes for the next shuttle, Grandma encourages Iris to run to the next stop and make it on time to see Blue 55.

Iris uses her compass, which she wears on a necklace chain, to navigate her way to the sanctuary. When she arrives, she finds that Andi and another staffer are smiling because they’ve already tagged the whale. Although Iris tries to be happy for Andi and her team, she can’t help but be crushed and experiences the sensation of loss. Still, she refuses to give up hope and determines to play Blue 55’s song for him if he’s within range. She spots a whale and identifies it as Blue 55.

Iris dives into the icy water to get a close look at Blue 55. She’s elated to be there with him, concluding that “I didn’t speak his language, and he didn’t need to be fixed. He was the whale who sang his own song” (264). She waits for him to approach her, and he floats over until his face brushes her fingertips. She makes a spontaneous handshape poem in the moment.

This chapter is from Blue 55’s perspective. He hears “calls like his own” filling the surrounding waters and feels that “finally, someone was listening” (268).

Iris is blissfully content to feel Blue 55’s song vibrating through her body. She’s convinced that it’s the most beautiful sound in the world.

When she emerges frozen from the water, she finds that her family have tracked her down. The reunion is emotional, although Iris anticipates punishment when she returns home. Andi gives her a tour of the sanctuary and tells her that she’ll make a great acoustic biologist, a professional who studies animal sounds. Iris is happy because she likes the idea of learning different whales’ songs. In the meantime, they watch Blue 55 swim though the bay, and Andi contemplates that he and the young blue whale Mara might learn to communicate with one another as Mara grew to sound more like Blue 55’s mother.

When Iris returns to school, her science teacher, Sofia Alamilla, gives her a big hug. However, Iris must work doubly hard to catch up on her report for sour-faced Ms. Conn. As she works, her interpreter, Mr. Charles, asks her what she’s thinking about. Iris is thinking about her grandfather and how he said that she would find her way, although it might take her a while to figure things out. She’s also thinking about how Grandma asked her if she’d talked to her mother about attending Bridgewood school. She signs to Mr. Charles that “Grandpa would want me to do for myself what I did for the whale” (276).

Iris glimpses Grandma signing to Mom about Iris attending Bridgewood. Mom expresses her fear that she’ll be left out if Iris attends a Deaf school, like she was as a child of two parents who were Deaf. Grandma assures her that Iris will always need her mother and that Mom should do whatever it takes for Iris to be happy, like Iris did for the whale.

Later, Mom talks to Iris. Iris indicates that she wants to attend Bridgewood so that she can talk to others who speak her language instead of facing the school day alone. She reassures her mother that she’ll never lose her.

Iris tells Wendell that her mother has permitted her to attend Bridgewood, although her parents are unenthusiastic. She’ll go to Wendell’s house for dinner when she’s released from her grounding sentence. She and Grandma pick wildflowers for the grave of Iris the sei whale, and Grandma announces that she’s going to live on a cruise ship for a year. Iris feels sad about Grandma being away but is content that she’s going where she needs to be.

Iris learns that Blue 55 has visited all the sea pens and that he and Mara sometimes swam together. She also hears from Bennie, who sends her a letter and photos of their time on the cruise together.

Although Iris will be riding to Bridgewood Junior High with Wendell and his mother, her own mother wants to accompany her on her first day there. Although her mother’s apprehensive, Iris tells her that she loves her and that she’ll be fine. She’s convinced that, like Blue 55, she’ll find a new home and friends among people like her.