We’re not driving to Harding, I said. He knew this and didn’t press it. The military base in Harding was almost a two-hour round trip. Driving around the neighbourhood together was risky enough, though at least I could always concoct some half-viable excuse that I was dropping him off at home, he having missed his bus, and it being on my way, or some such thing. I’m not quite sure how I rationalized it to myself at the time; particularly as our drives grew gradually longer each passing week, as we expanded the radius of our search. Ultimately, it wasn’t about reason. I knew there was no defence of it on professional grounds. But on grounds of emotional welfare and mental health, it was essential. We refused to be victims. We refused to believe we were hallucinating. We were too resourceful, and too proactive to sit back and suffer. If you are being tormented, tortured, you don’t sit around talking about it forever. You take action.

As we drove towards San Mateo Road, I pulled my sun visor down against the evening light, and Kyle plugged his phone into the car’s sound system. It began to play a plaintive, downtempo R&B song I recognized from the radio. It underscored our drive through the neighbourhood like a soundtrack; though what kind of film this was, and what kind of characters we were, didn’t feel immediately clear to me. I couldn’t help but feel, sometimes, like the antagonist of my own story. Covertly undermining all the goodwill and stability I had worked tirelessly, for decades, to accrue. As we coasted down sleepy residential streets, I began turning the word predator over in my mind. Perhaps because there was a seventeen-year-old boy in my car. Perhaps because we were both on a hunt, our senses tuned. Or perhaps because we had both been preyed upon by this noise; torn apart and devoured by it. I was taking a slightly roundabout route through the neighbourhood to avoid passing near the school, or any more heavily trafficked areas like the mall or the arena. The sunset filled the car with warm orange light.

Have you heard the story about the loneliest whale in the world? Kyle asked. I shook my head, smiling. Well it’s not a story, he continued, I mean it’s a true story, it’s not made up. He’s been dubbed the fifty-two-hertz whale. He glanced over at me, but I kept my eyes on the road. He told me about how there was a single lone whale, of unknown species, who had been recorded producing a totally unique fifty-two-hertz call. The call had the sonic signature of a whale, but it didn’t resemble any known species, being much higher-pitched, shorter, and more frequent.

Blue whales and fin whales, for instance, Kyle said, using his hands to shape a small whale in front of him, they vocalize around twenty hertz.