In general, she preferred being underwater. There, she could see what was going on. The dolphins accepted her without comment, examining her with curiosity. They were muscular and sleek birds swooping and twisting through the brilliant water. She marveled at the fact that they existed on the same planet as the dingy bathroom she and her roommates had shared in Tampa.

The dolphins’ sounds echoed in her bones. The sounds were not like a bird’s song, the same pre-programmed snippet of a tune repeated endlessly. Nor did they sound like a dog’s bark or whine, raw emotion made audible. The dolphins’ vocalizations instead varied constantly, changing pitch, volume and style, like a toddler burbling to itself.

The clacking of a typewriter.

They directed their sounds at whatever they were interested in, a rock, the sand floor, some seaweed, beaming vocals at the object as though wondering why it didn’t reply.

A bat squeaking.

The volume varied from a background hum to a blast that vibrated through her bones.

Pulses of a jet engine, trying to start.

She began to suspect there were many more noises than these, noises she couldn’t hear, since at times the trills went up and up until she couldn’t hear anything, but still the dolphins were angled toward one another, attentive. From humans she knew well what a conversation looked like that she couldn’t hear.

With each day, they got more used to her, approaching closer, staring. They studied her as much as she studied them.

When they surfaced, there was a fast hydraulic exhale, quick as a machine’s breath. Unless a dolphin was busy playing or fighting or examining some object, it would rise to the surface to breathe every few seconds. The four of them exhaling this way created an irregular beat, a steam engine of life.

They were not always calm. Sometimes they raced and shoved each other, sideswiping and ramming, screaming and popping and wagging their open mouths. Their speed and strength were such that she couldn’t tell how much of this was good-natured playing and how much was true aggression. Perhaps being creatures used to having a whole sea to roam in, this small lagoon increased tensions, prisoners jousting for space in the exercise yard.

If the roughhousing got too intense, she waded out of the water. She was a puny slow-moving land creature who could get in the way, hurt unintentionally.

* * *

The fourth day when she pulled herself out, Tibbet was there. She tugged off her mask and mopped water from her face.

Turning to him, she realized he was speaking.—Sorry, say again?

Why do you get in the water?—He gestured with his chin to the lagoon. In his cheek was the lump of a Tums he was sucking on. She wasn’t sure why he sucked on the Tums rather than chewed them. Perhaps he thought they would last longer. The Tums constricted his lips. At least he did not also smoke.

She made an educated guess.—Get in the water?