I take my time introducing the fish to their new home. I float their plastic bags in the aquarium water, until the water temperature in the tank and the temperature in the bags are the same. Then I open the angelfish bag and let the fish swim out, which they do slowly, as if in a daze. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them. I think that’s just the way angelfish are. The clown loaches are next, then the six tetras, which practically burst out of the bag and frantically race to the four corners of the tank. Finally I release the sucker-mouth catfish, which sinks to the bottom and begins his careful exploration of the gravel.

“Good night, fish,” I whisper as I turn out their light. “Stay healthy.”

Sunday morning I check on the aquarium. Victor is standing watch, and the fish are moving, looking good. I turn on the light, sprinkle some food on the water’s surface, and watch the fish rush to get their share of breakfast. The book says that an excellent appetite is a sign of health. I think I’ve got things off to a good start this time.

The aquarium hums softly as the pump pulls water through the filter and bubbles it out the tube. I think of Thomas Doherty humming. Is he actually happy when he hums, or just in a zone? Maxie hums, too. I guess you could say he hums when he’s happy, but I really think the humming is more like breathing. He does it when he’s doing something else, like coloring or playing with his little toy cars. He doesn’t do it when he’s upset. Why am I thinking about Maxie and Thomas together?

Well, why not? And who knows, maybe if I started humming and screaming “whee-yuh!” every so often I wouldn’t be so difficult. Maybe when Thomas has a humming aquarium of his own, he won’t click so much.

Monday morning, early, I hear Dad in the kitchen when I’m in the computer room. I’ve fed the fish and noticed that their color and activity haven’t decreased since they’ve moved in. That’s a good sign. I think my last family of fish was already sluggish and starting to look pale by Monday morning. Now I’m listening to the aquarium filter hum while I’m playing Unnatural Force on the computer. Although I usually think this game is boring, early in the morning when I’m too sleepy to think and strategize (the way I have to for DeepSea Danger Hunt), fighting invading Zygurts from Beyond is just the thing to get my juices going. But I remember to turn the sound down this time.

I’ve done a better job than usual defending the solar system against the Cyrants, and before I know it, I’m on the third level, defending the Earth. I’ve sent up Stealth Satellites, which are feeding me tons of information about the Zygurt battle stations. Whenever I have enough information to pinpoint a battle station’s location, I launch a missile and tzow! it’s blown away. If I win this level, I’ll finally get to the fourth and fifth levels, where I actually travel to the Beyond to fight the Cyrants, Tritorgs, and Zygurts in their home territory. I’ve never seen the Beyond.

“Good morning, Gabe,” Dad calls from the kitchen.

“Morning” is all I manage. I’m concentrating, miles away from the sleepy condition I was in just ten minutes ago.

“Want to take a break and have something to eat with me?” he asks. “I’ve made cinnamon toast.”

I love cinnamon toast. Dad makes it the right way, too. First he mixes together sugar and cinnamon, then he butters the bread, then he sprinkles on the cinnamon sugar mixture, and finally he broils the bread in the oven. It takes a few minutes, but it’s worth the wait.

I pause the game and join my dad at the kitchen table. He’s reading the sports section of the paper. I take two slices of cinnamon toast from the broiler pan. I eat a bite of one, realize I’m thirsty, and get up to pour a glass of milk. I stumble over my shoelace as I’m walking back to the table and almost spill it. “Jeez!” I exclaim. My chair scrapes the floor as I sit down again. I cut one of the pieces of toast in half, and the knife clatters on the table. I’m a big klutz this morning for some reason.

Dad never looks up once. This is how it is with him. He likes company for breakfast, but that’s really all he wants— company. Not conversation. He talks all day at work, he says. At breakfast I think he only wants another body at the table.

It’s fine with me. I like to look at the weather page in our local newspaper. I check out high and low ocean tides, even though the beach is three hours away. Chewing and gulping and rustling are our morning sounds. I don’t understand people—like Maxie and Mom—who carry on entire conversations at the breakfast table. How can there be so much to say when the day is just beginning?

A big paper rustle stirs the air as Dad folds the sports section back to its original condition. “Well, it’s that time again,” he says, meaning it’s time for him to go to work. He likes to be at the office early. I wait for the sound of his chair pushing back from the table, but it doesn’t happen. Something in the paper must have caught his eye.

I look over at Dad and am surprised to see him looking not at the newspaper but at me.

“What?” I say. “What is it?”

He shakes his head as if he’s decided not to say something he was going to say. But then he leans forward to say it. “Try to get the week off to a good start, Gabe,” he says. “I mean, at school. If one of those kids who ruffles your feathers says something annoying, just walk away. Rise above it. Can you do that?”

Here we are having a perfectly nice breakfast, and Dad has to bring this stuff up. There it is again—rise above it . . . float above it—as if I’m supposed to imitate some kind of dead fish. Ruffle your feathers. What am I, a bird? Or some kind of weird bird-boy-fish combination with feathers to ruffle and legs to walk away on and fins to float above things with.

“Sure, Dad,” I say. “I’ll walk, fly, and float away. Whatever. Derek and Zach and the rest of them can say anything they want, and I’ll just zone out. I’ll be just like Jake.”

“You know that’s not what—” Dad begins. But he interrupts himself. “Being like Jake would not be a terrible thing,” he says instead. “But you’re a different person. I just want you to be you. “Listen,” Dad changes the subject. “The Bermuda program at work has been extended through the end of June. If a few new accounts come through for me—a few big, new customers—we just may win that vacation. How would you like that?” Dad’s been trying to qualify for a free vacation that his company is offering if he sells a ton of office machines and stuff.

“I’d like it,” I say. “You know I’m dying to learn how to snorkel. Maybe I can learn how to float above things in Bermuda.”

Dad gives me a look, a pat on the top of my head, and then he’s gone.

Back in the computer room, I rejoin the world of Unnatural Force and resume the battle against the invading Zygurts. Now that I’m fully awake, the game is starting to bore me. Send up a Stealth Satellite; shoot down a Zygurt battle station. Look out for the Zygurt drones launched from their battle stations; try to intercept them with missiles. It’s all so simple. I could play this game with my eyes shut.

So that’s what I do. I squeeze my eyes closed and play by feel and sound and instinct, randomly sending up satellites and missiles. I hear the sound of a Zygurt battle station exploding. Yeah, I can play this game with my eyes shut. I click the joystick buttons in random patterns and hear a few more battle stations incinerate. I turn my face away from the screen so I can open my eyes and look at the aquarium—still not looking at the game.

The tetras are swimming nervously toward the water’s surface, the clown loaches are bouncing around the center, and the angelfish are in a slow orbit around Victor. The catfish, as usual, is poking around in the gravel. I see myself floating above a reef in Bermuda, fish all around me, sometimes brushing up against me. I dive down to get a better look at an anemone or sea star. Then I swim out to a shipwreck and dive under to check out the great, gray, rusting hulk, home to colonies of barnacles. Any treasure that was ever here has been recovered by divers before me. What about the passengers on the ship? Did they drown in a storm? Or did they swim away safely to shore? How did they get wrecked anyway, so close to the island? They probably thought they were perfectly safe when—BAM!—the ship’s hull caught on a huge rock or reef, invisible from the surface. But when you see it from underwater, you wonder how anybody could miss it.

“Hey, Gabe, whatcha doing?” It’s Maxie. “I think you’re about to get really, really blown up.”

“Whee-yuh! Whee-yuh!”

“Stop it, Maxie!” I yell.

“It’s not me,” he says.

I turn back to the computer screen. While I was off diving in Bermuda, the Zygurts built a bunch of battle stations and my Stealth Satellites got bumped out of orbit, and now the Zygurts are bombarding London and Tokyo with exploding drones. And we know what that sounds like.

“Whee-yuh! Whee-yuh!”

“This stupid game!” I exclaim.

“Let me take over, Gabe! Please! Let me fight the drones!” Maxie reaches for the joystick.

I sit and watch. Maxie quickly sends up some new Stealth Satellites and launches a barrage of missiles, some of which actually destroy a few Zygurt battle stations. But I gave the Zygurts an awfully good head start. Now the drones are speeding toward Buenos Aires, Moscow, and Beijing.

“Whee-yuh! Whee-yuh!”

“Oh, be quiet!” Maxie yells. “You stupid Whee-yuhs!” And then he reaches up to the sound dial and turns the volume off. No more Whee-yuhs.

Maxie holds off Earth’s total annihilation for a good five minutes. But when I went off on my imaginary dive, I basically delivered Earth to the invaders from Beyond. Maxie can only delay humanity’s sad fate for so long.

The earth disappears in a final firestorm. Maxie hands the joystick back to me. “Well, we tried,” he says.

“Maxie, breakfast,” Mom calls from the kitchen, and then he’s gone.

I switch to DeepSea. I have a few minutes left before we leave for school, so I click until I get to the saved game where Victor and I are searching for the wreck of the Victoriana. We swim safely into uncharted waters. That’s one of the things you want to do in the game, because then when you get back to the laboratory, the computer maps out the new territory for you and that helps the next time you’re looking for the shipwreck. But if you die in uncharted waters, you don’t get to claim it as explored new territory, and it doesn’t get mapped back at the laboratory.

We dodge some poisonous stingrays, pet a harmless manta ray, and avoid a strong current that carries away the rays, a shark we hadn’t seen, and a school of mackerel. My attention is captured by some spiny lionfish swimming above us. You don’t see them very often, and they are totally cool, even though they’re poisonous. I saw them in real life once at the National Aquarium in Baltimore. I swim over for a closer look at their mane-like spikes and puffed-up bodies. I circle around and swim along with them, pointing my underwater camera in the hope of framing a good picture. You get extra points for bringing photographs back to the lab.

Just when I see that I’ve got a nice picture—disaster strikes. I’m attacked from below. I mean, I’m really clobbered. It’s a gray shark, and I don’t have a chance. I never even saw it.

But Victor had stayed down deeper when I went up to look at the lionfish. He must have seen the shark down there. Normally he would say, in his tinny computer voice, “Shark alert! Remember, Gabe, stay very still.” Why did my diving buddy let me down?

It’s time to go to school. I exit out of the game, then click on the shut-down command that appears on the screen. I wait for the chime that rings when the computer is turning off. “Dee-doo-dee,” it always sounds. I wait, but the computer is quiet, and then it is off.

Now I remember. Maxie had turned the sound off so we didn’t have to listen to the “whee-yuh!” noises of the Zygurt drones. Victor probably had warned me. But I couldn’t hear him.