No one raised their hand except Shelly. Kiki smiled at her.

“Since the visiting pod is made up of humpbacks, we will focus on the humpback whale dialect,” Mrs. Karp told the class.

Kiki nodded, still smiling, but in truth she was worried. Really worried.

Dr. Mousteau

DR. MOUSTEAU REMINDED Kiki of the bottlenose dolphins that lived near her home in the far-off waters by Asia. He had the same shiny bald head and long pointed nose. Even his eyes were round and black. Kiki wondered if Dr. Mousteau had twenty-five pairs of teeth in each jaw. When he opened his mouth, she got her answer: He had one big tooth in the center of his top gum. That was it.

“The humpback whale is a wondrous creature,” Dr. Mousteau told the third graders. “The pattern of white markings on the flukes and flippers is different on each and every whale. So no two whales are alike.”

Dr. Mousteau continued, “Adult humpbacks are quite large and weigh ten times more than a great white shark.”

“Those whales need to go on a diet,” Rocky blurted out.

Mrs. Karp frowned, but Dr. Mousteau didn’t seem to mind Rocky’s interruption. He went on, “As you might know, man is the only predator of whales. Thankfully, humans’ captures of whales in recent years have decreased. Still, the humpback population is about one-fifth of what it was hundreds of years ago.”

Dr. Mousteau reached into a bag and took out a thick piece of skin. “I’d like each of you to touch the specimen I’m passing around. This was taken from a whale that died naturally. I brought it for you to study.”

Dr. Mousteau gave the skin to Rocky, who felt and even sniffed it. Rocky tried to give it to Pearl, but she shook her head. “I don’t want to touch any disgusting dead whale. It has awful bumps and nasty barnacles on it.”

“That’s quite normal,” Dr. Mousteau said, taking the specimen and handing it to Shelly. “Every humpback has a long head with knobs such as these. If you didn’t clean yourselves thoroughly, you’d have barnacles too.”

“I had a barnacle one time,” Rocky said, “but my dad made me wash it off.”

Shelly felt the whale skin and tried to give it to Kiki, but Kiki’s eyes were glued to Dr. Mousteau. “Here, Kiki,” Shelly said, but Kiki wouldn’t look.

Shelly shrugged and passed the skin to Echo, who took it with two fingers and quickly gave it to a mergirl named Morgan. Morgan only looked at it for a second before handing it to a merboy named Adam.

Kiki shuddered. She’d almost had to touch the whale skin. She hoped that wouldn’t happen again. She tried to concentrate on Dr. Mousteau’s lessons on water pressure and whale speech, even though she spoke humpback perfectly. Pearl and Echo giggled as they tried to imitate the strange sounds. Rocky sounded more like a sick seal than a whale. Shelly was surprisingly good.