Willa and the Whale Read online

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  Other interior images by Oko Laa, Stock09, Goran J, ntnt/Shutterstock.com

  © 2020 Chad Morris and Shelly Brown Morris

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, ­Shadow ­Mountain®, at ­[email protected]. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of ­Shadow ­Mountain.

  Visit us at shadowmountain.com

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Morris, Chad, author. | Brown, Shelly, 1979– author.

  Title: Willa and the whale / Chad Morris and Shelly Brown.

  Description: Salt Lake City : Shadow Mountain, [2020] | Audience: Ages 12+. | Audience: Grades 4–6. | Summary: “Twelve-year-old Willa, grieving the loss of her mother, a renowned marine biologist, discovers she can talk to whales”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019038783 | ISBN 9781629727318 (hardback)

  Subjects: CYAC: Whales—Fiction. | Human-animal communication—Fiction. | Mothers and daughters—Fiction. | Grief—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.M827248 Wi 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038783

  Printed in the United States of America

  Lake Book Manufacturing, Melrose Park, IL

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Cover illustration: © Iconic Bestiary/Shutterstock.com

  Book design © Shadow Mountain

  Art direction: Richard Erickson

  Design: Emily Remington

  Other Books

  By Chad Morris & Shelly Brown

  Mustaches for Maddie

  Squint

  By Chad Morris

  Cragbridge Hall, book 1:

  The Inventor’s Secret

  Cragbridge Hall, book 2:

  The Avatar Battle

  Cragbridge Hall, book 3:

  The Impossible Race

  By Shelly Brown

  Ghostsitter

  To all the amazing mothers in the world, including ours.

  You make the world better.

  Contents

  Chapter 1: Trained by the Best

  Chapter 2: In Japan

  Chapter 3: Thanking a Humpback

  Chapter 4: Meg

  Chapter 5: Unnoticed

  Chapter 6: Risky

  Chapter 7: 400 Blue Whales Away

  Chapter 8: Marc

  Chapter 9: Almost

  Chapter 10: Skipping Rocks for It

  Chapter 11: Lizzy

  Chapter 12: Tryouts

  Chapter 13: Focus

  Chapter 14: Backflip for Me

  Chapter 15: Like a Wave Flung Me into a Coral Reef

  Chapter 16: News

  Chapter 17: Carry

  Chapter 18: Debate

  Chapter 19: The Mendoza Marina

  Chapter 20: The Shadow

  Chapter 21: 911

  Chapter 22: Help

  Chapter 23: The Plan

  Chapter 24: A Haze

  Chapter 25: Tell Them

  Chapter 26: Follower

  Chapter 27: Friends, but No Matching Necklaces

  Chapter 28: Like We Used To

  Chapter 29: Cookies

  Chapter 30: What to Do with a Dead Whale?

  Chapter 31: Whalesplosion

  Chapter 32: A Package

  Chapter 33: An Idea

  Chapter 34: Like You

  Chapter 35: City Council

  Chapter 36: Hard to Say

  Chapter 37: On the Blocks

  Chapter 38: Finally Winning

  Chapter 39: Migration

  Chapter 40: Hey, Mom

  Acknowledgments

  Discussion Questions

  About the Authors

  Willa Twitchell, Journal #2, three years ago

  Yesterday at school, Nolan Rossi made fun of my whale drawings and called me an ocean freak. When I said he was a basketball freak, he said at least basketball was important. What? I like basketball, but it isn’t nearly as important as the ocean. The ocean covers 70% of the earth’s surface. Basketball courts don’t even cover 1%. The ocean helps regulate the temperature of the earth. The ocean provides the main source of protein to more than a billion people. And I bet Nolan knows nothing about the amount of important medicines that we have found over the years in the sea. And who knows if we might find a cure for cancer down there. Plus, there are creatures and mysteries in the ocean we haven’t even discovered yet.

  That’s why my mom once said, “The ocean is filled with more wonders than the most brilliant explorer could ever discover or fully appreciate.” And she should know; she’s a brilliant marine biologist.

  But that’s not even the best part. After she said that, she looked at me and said, “Just like you.” She compared me to the ocean, filled with wonders. I loved it.

  Nobody compares the people they love to basketball. That’s just weird. Ocean wins. Take that, Nolan Rossi.

  A whale surfaced, rolled on its back, and slapped the water with one of its huge fins. Gallons and gallons of ocean splashed up when a flipper the length of a car slammed down against it.

  Perfect. It was like the whale knew that I needed to see it today.

  “That was a humpback,” I called out, leaning against the railing and filming on my phone. This was going to be one of the best shots I’d taken in twelve years. Well, I’m not sure I can say that, being twelve, and knowing that I didn’t take wildlife pictures in the first few years; I couldn’t even wipe my own nose. But it was going to be really, really good.

  “Probably,” my dad said, scratching his beard, “I’m not quite sure.” I guess he thought I asked him if it was a humpback. As if I couldn’t recognize one on my own. I’d know those bumps along the fins anywhere. He wasn’t really paying attention. Classic Dad. He wasn’t like me. I came to be here, to surge up and crash down with the waves, to search the endless blue for a sign of something amazing, to experience it. Just like I’d been taught. And I especially needed it today. Dad knew that. That’s why he brought me. We had enough bad in our lives and it was time for something good. Something remarkable. Like a thirty-three-ton whale doing acrobatics out of the water. But Dad kept trying to talk to me about the bad stuff instead of enjoying the nature show. Terrible idea. It was like taking a kid to Disneyland for a long, deep emotional conversation.

  Over my twelve years, I have seen so many sea creatures: dolphins, starfish, seahorses, crabs, whales, marlins, sailfish, rooster fish, octopi, squid, and of course feather stars. And that wasn’t even close to half of it. I’d rather see a lion fish than a rock star, or a mandarin fish than a famous actor. I know, I’m weird. But it’s true.

  “Are you doing okay?” Dad asked. When I was younger, he used to try to really win over all my attention before asking a serious question like that. He’d do a simple magic trick, like pulling a coin out of my ear and making it disappear. Then he’d get all serious. But now I’m too old for that. Plus, who needs magic tricks on a whale watch, anyway?

  I didn’t answer. I pretended his questions got lost in all the chatter on the boat.

  “That was amazing,” someone behind me said.

  “Did you get it?” someone else asked, pr
obably hoping her friend got a picture of the whale. I doubt they got it as well as I did. The trick is to be filming long before you need to. You can delete it later if nothing happens. I wish my shot had been framed better, but it was still cool.

  Everyone on this whale-watching boat was getting what they paid for. This humpback was a total show-off.

  I didn’t put away or even lower the camera on my phone. If a whale surfaced once, it would probably surface again. I knew what I was doing. I pulled my long black hair out of the way and leaned against the railing again. The wind off the Pacific kept blowing it right in front of my phone.

  Dad squeezed his paper cocoa cup too tight and now the lid wouldn’t fit back on. He just didn’t get it. Earlier I’d caught him staring at the floor of the whale-watching boat instead of the ocean.

  But I didn’t care as long as we weren’t having painful conversations. I was here to get some amazing whale documentation and I was doing everything right. Just like I’d been taught. And today it all felt so important. Like the most important thing I’d ever done. Like when a city raises a statue to someone historic. My attitude, my pictures, my love for everything in the ocean was like that kind of statue, but more. I think my heart would crumple if I didn’t do it. I had to do this. And love it. And soak it in.

  I had to.

  I slipped away down the railing and kept scanning the water. Dad didn’t follow me. I guess he was either staring at the boat deck again or giving me some space.

  It only took half a minute for another spot of ocean to turn from blue to black, and then split as a mound rose out of it. Bingo. This was my football championship. My piano recital. My lead role in the play. This was a live whale right in front of me. And this time I was filming, getting the best footage of my life.

  The whale blew water and air out of its huge blowhole. It was like a mini-geyser rocketing out of the ocean. Definitely a humpback. And I bet it was the same one as before.

  The whale’s mouth looked like a large smile from on top. I love that about humpbacks. And bumps that looked like large warts lined her mouth. I knew they weren’t really warts but sometimes, I liked to pretend all humpbacks were just teenagers with acne problems. Really bad acne problems. And somehow, I just knew that this one was a girl whale.

  Judging by her size though, she was full-grown, which was cool because female humpbacks grow to be larger than males. Her fins were huge and long. A humpback’s fins can be as long as one-third of the length of the whole whale. Its Latin name means “large-winged.”

  If I was a humpback, I would be able to hold my breath for forty-five minutes and dive 200 meters deep before having to come up for air. I would be able to see the most amazing things. I would be a part of the ocean. And I could swim away from everything if I needed to, or if I just wanted to.

  But I wouldn’t want to breathe out of the top of my head like a whale. That would just be bizarre.

  The crowd clapped and cheered at the humpback, all of them now gathered on the same side of the ship.

  I was still filming, just like I should be.

  The whale sank back under water.

  I didn’t put my phone away. A show-stopper like this wasn’t done yet. Something was coming. My insides tingled just thinking about it. It was like the humpback knew how important today was. And she was coming through, big time.

  It took a little patience. But I was trained to be patient. Trained by the best.

  As I waited, tears formed in my eyes and starting streaming down my cheeks. Sometimes they just came. Well, to be honest, they had come lots of times over the past month. Every day. At the worst times. But I wouldn’t have them now. I brushed them away. They came again, but I blinked them back. This was the best place in the universe. You don’t cry at the water park or at a firework show. No tears on the roller coaster or at the all-you-can-eat buffet. And I definitely wasn’t going to cry in the middle of one of my best whale watches ever. Just joy. But I had to be patient. I had to do this right.

  And it happened.

  While everyone else was talking about the blowhole geyser from a minute ago, the whale shot out of the water right next to the boat. And this wasn’t just a little rise. At least twenty feet of her reared out of the water, rotating as she rose. She was like the largest ballerina I’d ever seen. How could something so huge be so graceful? They never caught the majesty of it in all the books, or articles, or even the movies. Not even close.

  And then the whale came crashing back down against the ocean, right next to the boat. All 66,000 pounds of her. At least that’s the average size of a full-sized female. The landing wasn’t nearly as graceful. The ballerina became a linebacker tackling the water. Ka-sploosh! So incredible.

  And I filmed it all, waiting to pull my phone in at the last second under the cover of my poncho.

  I always wore a poncho on a whale-watching trip. Again, I was trained by the best. With a poncho, I wouldn’t get drenched by all the water the whale splashed up over the whole deck. We’d be swaying and bobbing up and down for minutes after that one. It was like we’d been cannonballed, but by an extra-long bus. Plus, the poncho would protect me if it rained, which it does a lot on our little island off the coast of Washington State.

  This was all so cool. Like cooler than the hadal zone, the space in the ocean thousands of feet below water that’s basically freezing. Cooler than that.

  Not a time for crying. I blinked some more.

  “Whoa,” someone said, “it soaked us.”

  “Man, I hope it’s not ruined,” someone else said, who probably wasn’t as fast with their phone as I was. The humpback splashed everything.

  “Mine too.”

  My face was dripping wet, my long black hair clinging to my cheeks and neck where the hood didn’t cover. And because this year I’d grown so much, my poncho didn’t fit as well as it used to; my legs from the knees down got splashed. But it’s okay, because now I’m over five feet tall and can see over some people better than I could before.

  I laughed and clapped. Not as loud as I had done it before on other whale watches. I mean, only part of me felt it. But I clapped anyway. I’d seen whales before, but this one was acting like a star at SeaWorld. And she’d splashed us better than if we’d been sitting on the front row.

  The whale did its best. Like it knew today was special. I did my best too.

  I kept clapping and hooting well after everyone else stopped. But the more I clapped, the more the tears came. It was like they were connected. At least I didn’t have to wipe them away. After the humpback drenched us, no one would notice the salty tears mixed in with the ocean water.

  I did get quieter when my voice started to break. But I had to cheer. That’s what us whale watchers, and dolphin gazers, and sea lion observers do. This was our championship win, our trophy. That was what I was trained to do.

  And I was trained by the best.

  She really was the best.

  I wiped my face again. I wished a wish as big as a blue whale that the best could be here with me. Like she used to be.

  Willa Twitchell, Journal #2, three years ago

  Today I saw French angelfish (Pomacanthus paru) at the aquarium in Seattle with my mom. They aren’t in the ocean in Washington, more like Florida or the Bahamas. Yeah, they like it hot. They’re beautiful. I love their colors and stripes. They even get married. Well, in a fish kind of way. They don’t go on fish dates or anything, but they defend their little spot in the ocean together and eat together. So cute. I’ve been thinking about them a lot since my parents said they were getting a divorce. I don’t get it. They definitely used to love each other more than angelfish do. I don’t know what happened.

  #IHateDivorce #ICanHashtagMyJournalIfIWant

  My mom and dad got a divorce three years ago.

  To me, divorce was worse than diving into the water during a shark feeding f
renzy. Why couldn’t my parents just love each other forever like in the movies?

  And if divorce wasn’t enough, Mom took a job at the Misaki Marine Biological Station in Tokyo, almost 5,000 miles of ocean away. She was the world expert in feather stars, or crinoids, as the scientists call them. They’re beautiful creatures that look like small, colorful ferns. And even though they look like plants, they really are animals, with mouths and everything. You should watch a video of one swimming. They are seriously mesmerizing. The largest ones can reach up to three feet tall, but in fossil form they have been found up to 130 feet long. That’s a huge difference. And Misaki paid my mom to study why feather stars don’t grow that big now.

  My parents gave me the choice: live with Mom or with Dad. Who wants to make a terrible choice like that? Like choosing between ice cream or brownies, or whale watching or tide pools, but an octillion times worse. I was sick for days trying to make the decision. Like in-my-bed-with-a-stomachache sick. Especially because they were going to live so far away from each other. It wasn’t like I would be able to visit whoever I wasn’t living with on the weekends. But I had to make the choice.

  I chose Mom and Japan.

  I still get stressed thinking about that decision. I lived in Japan for the last three years, eating all their different foods, seeing their cool sights; like the Tokyo Skytree or DisneySea—it’s like Disneyland but with a nautical theme. (Seriously, one of the best ideas in the world.) And I loved the blue whale statue outside the Museum of Nature and Science. I really want to see a real blue whale. They’re one of the only whales that swim near both Washington and Japan that I still hadn’t seen.

  I didn’t learn as much Japanese as you’d think. I went to an American school and had friends who spoke English. A lot of them were from other parts of the world, like Ayaan from India, and Guy from England. I spent some time hanging around Mom’s work, and when she would go on a research trip I either got to go with her or I was watched by Chihiro, a teacher at my school who was barely out of college. She was nice.

  I really missed my dad while I was an ocean away. I even missed his magic tricks. And I didn’t get to visit him. At all. Scientists don’t get paid a ton and buying a plane ticket back to the US was pricey. Plus, I wasn’t a humpback whale that could migrate thousands of miles. I would have if I could.