London likes wild animals, and she likes the ones from the ocean best, even though she has never even seen the ocean, thanks to her stupid parents who never take her anywhere. But she has read every book about the ocean she can take out from the library, from guides to marine animals to novels about fishermen. She also has a pirated collection of underwater documentaries and a DVD of The Little Mermaid that Hamish bought her because he was trying to bond with her or something, and that her mom makes her keep even though it has nothing to do with the real ocean. London is also a member of the aquarium at Mall of America in Minneapolis, even though her mom hasn’t taken her there for two years. But when they do go, while the twins and Ross ride the stupid rides and her mother shops for bras at Victoria’s Secret, London sits outside the shark tank and watches the sharks for hours, trying to block out the screaming kids and the moms with strollers and the dads with cameras and just be one with the sharks. Then when they leave, the twins pinch their noses and complain that she smells like fish and Hamish sings “Under the Sea” to her in that dumb Sebastian the crab accent and London sulks for the rest of the trip because obviously no one in her family takes her seriously at all.

London often suspects she was born into the wrong family, like God or whatever had her lined up for another family – parents who were marine biologists maybe, or oceanographers, who would have taught her how to scuba dive and taken vacations to exotic locations where they would shoot video of coral reefs and schools of dolphins. Then Nicki got randomly knocked up and screwed up London’s true destiny. Like some kind of cosmic joke, here she is, an ocean girl living on the biggest lake in North America, a body of water that looks like an ocean and sometimes sounds like an ocean but is totally not an ocean. People are always so excited about dumb old Lake Superior, but there is nothing really interesting down there except maybe bass or pickerel. London knows this because she has checked, going out on the lake with Papa on his coffee cruises or snorkelling methodically along the shore searching for something, anything, to make it worth living next to. But there’s nothing, just sticks and rocks and leeches and everyone splashing around like idiots, floating on blow-up tubes or spraying each other with water guns.

The only person in Thunder Bay who even sort of understands London is her grandmother, and now she is in a stupid coma, and so London has no one.

—

PONYO: I don’t think I can come.

SHARKBOY: Fuck. Are you sure? Have you asked everyone?

PONYO: Yes!