Fourteen-year-old James is worried that the young humpback whale he tracks online has separated from its pod, so he emails Darren, the twentysomething would-be filmmaker who once volunteered in James's special education program. Of course, Darren is useless on the subject of whales, but he's got nothing but time, given that the only girl he could ever love dumped him.

Predictably, this thread of emails leads to a lot of bizarre stuff, including a yeti suit, drug smuggling, a graveyard, damaged echolocation, choke holds, emergency dentistry...and maybe ends with something like understanding. See, the thing that binds people together most is their fear that nothing binds them together at all.