A 52-Hertz Whale by Bill Sommer

we’re not best friends anymore, ’kay?
    Gigi
    From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: October 31, 2012 at 5:25 PM
Subject: RE: You!
    Hey Gigi!
    Business is BOOMing over here. The bananas have been hitting the fan for like two weeks straight.
    So YES, let’s get together this weekend. Date with Tripp Friday but free Saturday. (Things have been a teensy bit weird with us lately. Must discuss.) Lemme know if that works.
    Shame about the yappy latte cutie. But I’m sure he won’t be the last showbiz guy to darken the door of your little beanery.
    C U soon,
    Mel

NOVEMBER 2012
    From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: November 1, 2012 at 10:14 AM
Subject: After skool
    In stdy hall, bord. Gud view tho . . . Sam Pick. Story: I bumped into Sam @ locker & he noticed my new haircut (“lokz nice”) then he
    Srry hurts 2 much 2 finish. Can u hang out after skool w/ me & Becky? Tell u then.
    XO,
    Sara
    From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: November 2, 2012 at 9:07 PM
Subject: Sorry!!
    Hey Sara,
    Sorry! I just got your email. Nonna just got back from Italy and she insisted that I go to the cemetery for Il Giorno dei Morti, a holiday I didn’t even know existed. My sister was at choir practice (lucky) and Mom had another date with Albert (gag). So I was the only one around and it’s hard to avoid Nonna when she lives next door. Even though I’d rather have done anything else, even Bio homework, Nonna offered me no choice and so we lugged her shopping bags to the bus stop outside of our subdivision. No one I know other than Nonna takes the green Pace buses, and now I know why. Everyone on the bus had either gray hair, a walker, or both. Let’s just say I now know the medical histories of every old woman in our ZIP code.
    Anyway, the bus let us off in front of Saint Cecilia’s and then we hiked back toward the cemetery. The last time I was back there was to bury Dad. We didn’t even go to Dad’s grave on the one-year anniversary of his death. Instead, Mom decided we should honor Dad’s memory by doing something he loved. So Mom, Anna Maria, and I spent that afternoon looking at ancient Egyptian artifacts in Dad’s favorite wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Mom even tried to imitate Dad’s Rocky Balboa impression by running up the museum’s front steps. But she ended up tripping and spraining her ankle. After, we drove to Chinatown and ate at the Three Happiness Restaurant near Temple where Dad used to teach. (Have you ever gone? Their sweet and sour pork is sooooo good.) The waiters, out of habit, left the usual four fortune cookies instead of three when they brought the bill.
    So I haven’t been to the cemetery in a while. Nonna seemed to feel at home there today. She just approached Dad’s stone and kissed it. And even though I wanted to believe that Dad was anywhere but there, under that stone in that colorless field, I touched my lips to the marble too.
    After a few prayers, Nonna Rita sprinkled Dad’s grave with a little bottle of holy water. She told me that it’s Italian tradition to clean ancestors’ grave sites on All Souls’ Day (who knew?) and so we got to work because it was starting to get dark. While Nonna weeded, I planted the mums she bought. All of them yellow, Dad’s favorite color. The next part was pretty weird. Nonna Rita spread down a blanket from one of the shopping bags. She pulled out a tin of these hard cookies called “bones of the dead” and poured paper cups full of wine for Dad and her deceased family members in Italy.
    Thank God no one saw us. What did you guys end up doing? Please don’t tell me that you went to Forever 21 and got those matching sweaters without me.
    Love,
    Soph
    From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: November 2, 2012 at 9:35 PM
Subject: RE: Sorry!
    Hey Soph-
    U didn’t