“Yeah,” Jeremy said. “And I’ll get to do lots of nerdy math kid stuff.”

That’s what Mia always called it when Jeremy went off to ninth-grade math class or mathletes. “Have a blast with your nerdy math kid stuff,” she’d tease him. “Go . . . equate things!”

“You’ll be equating all over the place,” Annabelle agreed, keeping her voice jokey, even though she still hated the idea of him being gone for so much of the summer.

He took a big bite of his burger and wiped his mouth with his paper napkin, but a tiny bit of ketchup stuck to the corner.

If Mia were here, she would tease him about the ketchup and then Annabelle would be the one to tell him where exactly it was so he could get it off. But without Mia here to tease him, Annabelle wasn’t quite sure how to tell him it was there.

She waited until he was looking and dabbed at the corner of her own mouth, but he didn’t get the hint.

“Looks like Bertha stopped heading north, huh?” she said.

She’d checked the night before, and the shark was back off the coast of Long Island for now.

Jeremy wrinkled his nose, which was a little pink from the morning sun. “Yeah.”

“That’s probably better, right?” Annabelle said. “Because if she comes back, everyone will get all freaked out again and that’ll be bad for your dad’s business. And this way the Bluff Point seals are safe.”

“Her jaws probably still aren’t developed enough to eat a seal,” Jeremy said. “And even if she did, that’s how sharks survive. It’s no worse than you eating that turkey sandwich or me eating a burger.”

Annabelle flinched. It wasn’t mean, the way Jeremy had said it, but it still felt a little bit like he was a teacher correcting her for getting something wrong.

“You have ketchup on your mouth,” she told him, and his cheeks flushed as pink as his nose before he wiped it off.

He readjusted his burger so the meat wasn’t about to slide out and took another bite.

“Are you hoping Bertha comes back?” she asked.

Jeremy finished chewing and put his burger down. “Well, my dad has that shark cage thing now, so a diver can go inside to see a shark underwater but stay safe.”

Annabelle had heard Mrs. Green complaining to Mom about it. Mr. Green was completely fearless, which meant he had no problem working way up high on the roofs of the tallest houses for his construction job or taking scuba divers to see blue sharks off the coast. Mrs. Green had told Mom she felt all of his fear for him, and it was turning her hair gray.

“But he doesn’t take people to see white sharks, right? Only blue ones?”

Blue sharks were big and powerful, too, but nothing close to a great white.

“Right, but some people would probably want to see a white,” Jeremy said. “I was thinking he could advertise at the shark museum in Cape Cod. Maybe he could even take scientists, like the ones who tagged her before.”