I ran into my Dad’s arms before he was fully out of the car, and immediately started crying.

“You look good, Cami—like a beautiful tough grown up girl,” he said, tugging on my ponytail before giving me a big hug. His brown eyes peered into my own silver ones, and it felt good, like I was being truly seen. My tears spilled as he squeezed me, tight. I didn’t even mind that I couldn’t breathe.

“I know this hasn’t been easy on you,” he said. “But, I have a surprise. A good one, I think.

I tried to smile when he gave me a sympathetic look and wiped away a tear.

“Mica’s coming home tonight,” he said calmly.

My eyes sprang open, tears drying immediately as my brain shifted, jumping in a million directions all at once.

“It’s just for the night,” he said, filling me in, even though I hadn’t asked the question. “But since he’s not in any immediate danger, I really, really want us all to sleep under the same roof.”

I nodded, overwhelmed. If I’d needed a sign from the universe that Kaleb’s plan was worth a shot, then this, for sure, was it.

Getting Mica into the water from home would be a thousand times easier than getting him into the water from the hospital. For the first time in a while, it seemed I was getting a lucky break; although Kaleb coming home had been a lucky break, too.

After my conversation with my dad, I got in the water to go find my dolphin.

Despite my exhaustion, I was desperate to go for a swim. I had so much to figure out before Mica came home tonight. Being with her, energized me, like I was in the zone of the best race without getting physically exhausted. It felt like a whole different part of my brain took over, while the part I used on land got a much-needed break.

I found her a little off-shore, taking a nap. She was so still, she barely moved. For a minute, I stayed quiet, taking the time to watch her.

My mom said she used to watch us sleeping when Mica and I were babies; I could never understand why. She said that it was the only time we were still enough for her to really see us. There was magic in the stillness. As my dolphin slept, I understood, finally, what my mother meant.

My dolphin was so beautiful—stunning and shining in the sun, surrounded by a faintly glowing pinkish light. Incredibly, she slept with one eye open, bobbing over and under the surface. When she finally woke up, I realized exactly what was happening.

There was no gradual awareness, no natural snooze alarm. Instead, it was simply like she had half the lights off in a room, and a quick switch turned them all back on again. I prayed that once I got Mica in the water, Mica’s brain would do that, too.

As we swam, she showed me pictures. Because Kaleb had opened me up to the possibility, I paid attention and understood them all. Once she realized I was getting it, she started flooding my brain with impressions, feelings, and memories.

She shared with me the true history of the dolphin twins. It wasn’t just about her and her brother, or me and mine, or my “clique” of five sets of twins.  Through out the history on Pinhold, dolphins and people had shared a real connection; that went beyond legends.

They swam together and communicated freely as part of daily life. Her memories of my people and her pod were linked together. All of our rites and rituals—the weekly drum circle, the Surf Carnival—were truly part of her world.

She showed me the dark times, when they had to travel far away after the oil spill, when it took them so long to find their way home and then they had to leave again, because of all the fishing boats. Some of these memories, were not hers. They were images that had been passed down through multiple generations and on to her—including the ones about the times leading up to her birth.

Like Gramps telling me how bad it had been before the fertility trials began, she knew of her pod’s circumstances, too. It was her mother who led their pod back to the waters and came straight to the Doc, letting him do whatever it took to get her pregnancy to carry through. From the notes I had seen, it was obvious that the tissues and blood samples he’d used in the DNA splicing, came from a dolphin. Now, I knew that was her mother’s DNA. My dolphin and I were not just friends; we were part of the same gene pool.

When I showed her what I was thinking, she showed me that that was nothing new. Everyone who’d talked to the dolphins and swam like them, shared DNA with them. Because our ancestors had, for the most part, stayed on-Island, we kept these traits, and they strengthened over the years.

When the babies stopped coming, and everyone started hopping to the Mainland, coupling up with blood that was new, the Elders panicked. Each generation had fewer and fewer people who had a dolphin twin, because so many of the dolphins had also left. They were worried that, without drastic intervention, they would lose it completely. That’s when they gave Doc carte blanche to do whatever he needed to do. Clearly, it had worked, as the dominance of the physical traits in my generation proved.

She showed me a combination of all the things I’d considered this summer. I saw how they were all interconnected, and all true. The military sonar did damage to the ear drum, causing our brains to short out.

In that case, the dolphin side of our brains took over. Mica, Shay, Darwen, and hopefully, Blake, were simply sleeping the dolphin way. The problem was that the human side of their brains didn’t know how to wake them up. If we could get them in the water with the dolphins, the dolphins could do it for them. We swam over to the bay docks where the dolphin tours left from, and found Gramps fixing one of the canoes. l hoped he could help me understand all of this.

Gramps was impressed with the amount of information I had learned from my dolphin. He had a dolphin twin, too, but his communication was much more limited because, they hadn’t found each other until Gramps was much older and he hadn’t been able to understand his dolphin as well as I could understand mine.

“What you have learned this summer is more than most ever do. For many, they need years in The Guard to learn all of what you know now, and some never do. I’ve never learned any memories from him,” he said.

“Do you think it’s because he doesn’t know the stories? My dolphin seemed to say that they all share the memories.”

“Maybe he can’t communicate them, or maybe I just didn’t understand everything as well as you do. You have a gift, child,” he said with a small smile. “Which, I always knew.”

“Did you know about the DNA thing?” I asked.

“No, but even if we had somehow found out, it wouldn’t have been anything I could understand. I barely get it now. I am impressed that you do. I can tell you that your awareness was exactly what we prayed for. So many Mainland marriages made us fear that the things that were most important to us were being watered down. We worried we could lose them for good.”

“You all, were miracle babies, in every way. We simply felt gratitude and didn’t look too hard at the how’s and why’s. Now, it seems, we are paying for that mistake. I wish there was more I could do.”

“Say you’ll help me,” I pleaded, throwing myself in his arms. “None of this matters, if we can’t wake Mica up. I know—with every bone in my body—that the only way to do that, is to get him in the water.”

Gramps nodded and promised to meet me at the house, in an hour.

The conversation we had with my father didn’t go quite so well. Having Mica come home, briefly, was one thing. Putting him in the water was totally another.

“That would just be irresponsible,” he said, sending a pointed “Dad look” my way. “Almost as reckless as what you did with Blake the other night.”

My dad raised his right eyebrow into a sharp corner, something he only did when he was incredibly suspicious. He stared at me until I was practically sweating, nervously trying to figure out what he knew, and how much of the truth I wanted to share.

“It was an accident with Blake.”

“Yes, I know. What I do not understand is why you were out swimming with wetsuits, and weights, and hooks in the first place.”

“We were helping Helix,” I said, shrinking a little as the eyebrow continued inching up. He was definitely not buying the story, and I couldn’t depend on him to support the rogue mission in quite the same way my grandfather seemed to.

I wasn’t going to give up, though—not after all that I had learned. Just because my parents couldn’t see the truth, didn’t mean that I couldn’t. In fact, it was precisely because I could see it, that I knew getting Mica in the ocean was the only answer.

I’d watched Mica sleep all night. Out of the glare of the hospital lights, away from the blips and bleeps and interruptions, his sleep seemed peaceful; much like my dolphin’s. I couldn’t hear his thoughts, but I knew more than ever that he was alive, and that what I was about to do was truly going to help him.

My nerves were already off the charts when I heard a loud pop outside the second-story window. Luckily, my fear of the unknown lasted only seconds. I could see Kaleb in my mind before I even looked out the window.

I went downstairs to let him in, and my heart jumped again at the sight. I was unused to seeing him. Even though he had never truly been out of my thoughts, the pictures of him that I had in my brain barely connected with the guy who stood before me now.

Sure, I’d seen him since he’d left, but those images didn’t stick in my head like the ones of him from before he moved away. Even then, he was the darker half of a pair, but that darkness was mostly internal, visible on the outside only if you knew where and how to look. Crazy, two-colored eyes had always flashed black lightning, as opposed to Blake’s gray glow. Covering the larger portion of Blake’s right eye and Kaleb’s left was a large island of aqua blue that shared the pupil with the silver.

Now, Kaleb’s outside was obviously darker, what with the hair, and the piercings, and all, but his eyes looked peaceful.

“Why do you look so smug?” I asked, whispering and shushing him as we went up the stairs.

“I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, and I’m sneaking into your house in the middle of the night,” he said, smiling.

I interrupted him, forcing my whisper so he would really hear me.

“I’m glad this is amusing to you, but I’m with Blake now.”

“He thinks you’ve broken up with him, so I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” he said, flashing my brain with images of all kinds of intimate moments with Blake that involved loving and fighting.

“Ugh, Kaleb, stay out of my head! Blake’s, too,” I said, while hypocritically using our new mental link to remind him to skip the creaky seventh step.

I’d convinced my parents to sleep in their own room—instead of in Mica’s—to try and enjoy their first night back together. But, even without jet lag, my dad was a notoriously light sleeper. We couldn’t take any unnecessary risks.

“I can’t help it,” he shrugged. “When I’m further away, or he’s busy, I can block it out. But right now, it’s sort of unavoidable. I guess because he’s out cold.”

“Wait a second,” I said, pulling him into the bathroom between Mica’s room and mine. If I understood him properly, this was extremely important.

“Are you saying you are still hearing him, now!?”

“Yeah. So what?” He rolled his eyes, so that they reflected the moonlight outside the window and flashed crazier than ever. For a moment, I wondered if he was putting me on—messing with me.

“Even I wouldn’t do that,” he said, sad from the thoughts passing through my head. “Not right now.”

“So, really—you can hear Blake right now?” I asked, one more time.

“Yes. It’s not news, Cami. It’s just particularly annoying right now, because he’s got all this bullshit about you and The Guard on some sort of feedback loop. Can we just do the Mica thing now? I thought we were on some sort of timeline.” I nodded and opened the door to Mica’s room, stopping to turn around right at the threshold.

“It’s just that I can’t hear Mica right now, and Alysha’s link with Shay is down, too.”

“Lucky, freaking, you! Can we do this?”

I nodded and walked with him over to the top of Mica’s platform bed, indicating that he should take his feet. Kaleb hearing Blake right now had to be good news for Blake. The fact that his brain was working differently from Mica’s and Shay’s was also meaningful in the grand scheme of things, but not something I could delve into further tonight.

We only had a couple hours until dawn, and if this didn’t work, I needed time to get Mica dried off and back into bed before my parents woke up.

“Don’t think like that,” Kaleb said, frustrated at the tear that rolled down my face. “It’s not what’s going to help.”

Taking Mica down to the water was harder than I’d imagined. When we got to the dock, I jumped right in. Kaleb lowered Mica into my arms, and got in himself.

In that moment, the silver fins of a pod of dolphins appeared, breaking up the darkness between the sea and the sky. From the chatter, it sounded like there were more than fifty of them—so many that the loud sounds would be enough to draw attention to the water. We simply couldn’t get caught. Even though the dolphins were always here, there weren’t usually so many of them, especially not in the middle of the night.

“Shh,” I whispered, putting my finger to my lips when my dolphin swam my way. She turned to her side, watching me with that all-seeing right eye, so I did it again.

She imitated me, making the same sound through her blowhole, getting water all over Kaleb, Mica, and me.

I felt nervous, terrified, and completely on edge, so when Kaleb’s dolphin doused me, I lost it completely. Giggles burst from my mouth. At first, it felt fully inappropriate, like busting up at school.

But then, my dolphin nuzzled Mica gently, and I realized the giggles were her gift. Even at the most serious of times, my dolphin managed to inject the moment with play. Had it been anyone else, I would have been totally pissed off.

But by this point in the summer, I had learned some lessons from her. One of the most important things she’d taught me, was that joy and fun were important all the time—no matter how awful things seemed. The joy she brought me, would bring success to this mission. Suddenly, I knew that everything was going to turn out all right.

I’d spent so many days resisting the love and joy I’d found with Blake, sure that what happened to Mica was some sort of punishment or universal revenge. In fact, the opposite was true. What Blake and I had together made me stronger and opened me up to all the other crazy things I had discovered this summer. He’d been right, when he wanted me to go surfing in the ocean and I’d insisted on staying inside to surf the Internet. It was joy and play that brought answers—in the dolphins’ world and in our own.

Kaleb was useless at helping me get Mica out to where all the dolphins swam in wait. He was clearly athletic, and had no problem doing the swim, despite his initial misgivings about the water. But, he had zero ability to support another person in the water. It fit, that he could take care of himself this way, but not anyone else. This was just one more reminder of how different he was from Blake.

Dragging along my lifeless brother, wrong and right were no longer obvious. Technically, what Kaleb and I were doing was wrong—even dangerous. It was against my parents’ wishes and all rational thought, to put a comatose victim who’d nearly drowned, back in the ocean.

It seemed crazy to trust the dolphins with his life. But somehow, because I had faith it would work, this was so very right.

Two more dolphins left the pod, to meet us halfway. They swam right over to Mica, and pushed Kaleb and me away. One of them was Blake’s dolphin, but the other one was someone new. He was my dolphin’s twin. I suddenly knew that he was bonded to Mica, just as my dolphin was bonded to me.

A picture of Blake, draped across our dolphins after he hurt his arm, flashed behind my eyes. I struggled to keep my arms and legs moving through the water, even as my mind was officially blown. Concentrating—though not too hard because, that wasn’t their way—I relaxed for the first time since we hit the water and released Mica to our dolphin friends.

Since he wasn’t injured the way Blake had been, I spread him out in between the two dolphins, who came up from underneath. They were close together, not touching. Mica’s arms rested right above their fins and I felt confident he would stay put when they raised their heads, and began to swim.

Blake’s dolphin seemed to recognize Kaleb, at least according to Kaleb’s thoughts, but they didn’t seem to have the same bond. Because of that, I realized that Kaleb had no ability to keep up with the dolphins for the swim. He’d never done it before, and this wasn’t the time to begin.

“Listen,” I started, “I need you to go back to the dock and wait for us.”

“Cami,” Kaleb said, “I can’t leave you alone.”

“I can’t do this with you here. Please skip the misguided chivalry, and let me do what we came out here to do.”

Kaleb left, and we took off. Mica stayed put on his finned chariot and, in seconds, we were in the middle of the pod. Mica’s dolphin delivered him into my arms. Then, all together, they swam around us. They swam faster and faster until they churned the water into a huge whirlpool encircling Mica and me.

Blake’s dolphin moved to the front of the circle, swimming with the others, leading the charge. Mine and Mica’s dolphins stayed in the middle, close to us. The ocean was moving so fast. Instead of feeling like it was dangerous and could bring me down, I felt lifted, buoyed, and safe. We were wrapped in a sacred swirl created by something perfect in nature. It was exactly what we needed for this to work.

I felt it and heard it, at the same time. All the dolphins chirped and pulsed out the signal to wake Mica. There was a blip in my head. For a second, I thought it had worked. Dragging him under the surface, I pushed and pulled, desperate to submerge my twin long enough to amplify the message through the water so it could get to him.

Then, light streamed into my brain and Mica squirmed in my arms. He dragged us both back to the surface, gasping for air as he burst above the water.