I ask Sandy to stay after Doctor Beck goes.

I say, “Tell me about Shay. Why don’t I see Shay anymore? We eat at different times. She does not come to the classroom. I miss her. How can we live in the same house and not see the other? Sometimes I hear her. I hear her sound. But I don’t ever see her.”

Sandy says, “Doctor Beck does not work with Shay anymore. She gave Shay to Doctor Troy.”

I say, “How can she give Shay to anyone? Only Shay can give herself.”

Sandy says, “You are right. Shay seems to understand that too. She is going deeper and deeper inside herself, Mila. She is locking herself away. We can hardly reach her anymore.”

Shay is trapped the way I am trapped in this net of humans.

But I cannot go the way of Shay. There is too much to see and hear and feel and taste on the outside to live only on the inside.

Tomorrow we go to the tower with the television people so they can take more pictures of me. I know now. The television is not another world. It is only moving pictures. People are curious. They are curious to see many things. They are curious to see a dolphin girl. I understand curious. Dolphins are curious. When a boat comes, making its loud sound in the sea, dolphins come. The dolphin cousins want to see the humans, want to play, to swim with the boats.

Sandy says, “The more people know of you, the less fear they will have.”

But what do people know of me? Only pictures on the television. Only words. I am a thing to look at, to play with. Not a thing to touch and care for.