Willa and the Whale Read online

  That was the ocean and me.

  It sings my soul song. #Connected

  I breathe with it. And I think with it. And my heart matches the rhythm.

  Okay. Maybe that’s a little much, but that’s what it feels like. And it was the best thing about living here.

  Masha and her kids didn’t feel it. I mean, since I’d been home, they hadn’t gone to the ocean once. That’s weeks. Which is hard to do when you live on an island. It was probably just a huge swimming pool to them.

  My phone buzzed. With that one sound, I lost all the calm the ocean brought. Was that Marc? What had he texted back?

  Not much of an answer, but I think a hundred minnows swam through me, sending little bits of happiness all over. He said okay. Maybe I had worried too much about this. Maybe he wanted to pick it up where we left off too.

  Another text from Marc:

  A favor? So this was a trade? Some of the minnows swam away. That didn’t sound as much like best friends. He would only hang out with me if I did something for him. It was more like business partners and I was basically going to pay for his time.

  But friends ask for favors too, right? Maybe I was reading too much into this.

  What would he ask for? Maybe borrow some money? No. His dad owned the Mendoza Marina. They fixed and docked almost everybody’s boats on the island and some from the other islands, and some from all over the world: small fishing boats to million-dollar yachts. Plus, I think his mom did investment stuff from home. It wasn’t like they were millionaires, but they did really well.

  Maybe Marc needed me to ask my dad to give him a ride somewhere? But that wouldn’t make sense. Both Marc’s parents could drive, plus we could ride our bikes most places on the island.

  Maybe he wanted me to find out if some girl liked him? That was the most probable. In fact, that would be something I could do better than Luke or Nash. Then again, I wasn’t really friends with any girls, especially since I’d just been back on the island for a few weeks, and back at school for only a week and a half.

  Or maybe he just wanted me to lend him our Xbox. His little brother had spilled lemonade on his and fried it. At least that’s what Marc had posted on Instagram.

  I texted.

  Then I tried to think of something clever. I needed my friend back and he liked clever.

  Lol. That was good. And it felt great to text back and forth a little. We had done that a few times when I lived in Japan. I took a bunch of pictures of Miyamoto’s childhood home and the Nintendo headquarters when we visited Kyoto and sent them to Marc. He liked that. But the time difference always made that tricky and most of our conversations fizzled after just a couple texts.

  I waited for Marc to tell me the favor.

  And I waited more. What was that about? Did he want me to guess?

  He finally texted.

  Okay. This was good, right?

  Willa Twitchell, Journal #2, three years ago

  Today we went to the aquarium for school. It’s funny that they put us on a bus to go see ocean animals when we live right on the ocean.

  But I loved the walrus tank. They only had two walruses and one was sleeping most of the time. The other one was playing with visitors at the glass. He would put his flipper where your hand was. He would get out of the water and then dive in, smashing his squishy face into the glass. He seemed to be having so much fun and I just wanted to get to know him better. You know, find out what his walrus mind was thinking.

  #AndIWasKindOfJealousOfHisAwesomeTusks

  Marc had texted that he would be there in ten minutes, but I doubted it. He was usually really good at being on time, but he couldn’t bike that fast from his place. Not possible. More like fifteen if he was really fast. So that should give me a little more time to talk to Meg while I waited.

  That was, if I could actually talk to Meg again.

  I looked down the shore to my left and right. No one in sight.

  I don’t know why I looked; no one came here. It was too steep to come down. Everyone else picked easier access beaches with sand. #Weaklings

  Well, there was Jean Lambert, the old lady who lived closest to this beach on the north end. Her property backed this beach and she was still limber enough to shimmy down the steep trail. She always wore a crazy bucket hat—basically just a hat with a floppy rim that went all the way around it. Jean had lots of different colors of bucket hats, but they were always the same style. She used to talk with me and Mom for a long time. She asked lots of questions. The curious type.

  I hope when I get old, I still ask a lot of questions.

  “Meg,” I called out.

  No answer. I stepped closer to the water before trying again. Humpbacks can hear for thousands of miles, but maybe I had to be closer to the ocean for my voice to carry. Or maybe I had to put my face actually in the water. No—it worked last time when I was just close. Maybe she couldn’t recognize my voice. We had been far from the west shore when I met her after all, a totally different place. And it had been a whole day.

  I tried one more time, calling out her name.

  Silence again.

  I thought about using her call. What was it? A few squeaks, then a Wookie noise, then . . . wait. I didn’t want to ask a male humpback out to dinner again. With my luck I’d mess up and ask him to marry me. #IReallyDontWantToMarryAWhale

  “Wiiiillllllllaaaa,” I finally heard back. She sang my name like it was an anthem or something. Like she was introducing me at a concert in some huge auditorium. “My favorite little human.”

  It made me feel like a rock star.

  Maybe everyone should have a whale to talk to. They can make a person feel pretty special.

  “I’m so glad you can hear me,” I said.

  “Oh, I hear you loud and clear,” she sang-said.

  “Where are you?” I asked, looking out over the waves, hoping she would jump out and give me another back flop.

  “I’m just out looking for some more plankton,” Meg said. “I love plankton. But a little mackerel would be even better.” She sang the word mackerel more than the others. “But I don’t think I’m too far from you. Probably about four or five hundred blue whales or so.”

  “Four hundred blue whales?” I asked, immediately imagining a giant group of the largest animals in the world. “Wait. You are using them to measure distance, right?”

  “Of course,” she said. “How do you measure distance? We use the largest animal there is to tell you how far away we are.” I guess that made sense. “I could measure in dolphins if you’d like, but the numbers get pretty big.”

  “No thanks,” I said, doing the calculations in my head. Blue whales were the largest animals on earth and could get to be one hundred feet long. That’s longer than a basketball court. Can you imagine something swimming by that was the size of a basketball court? Incredible. 400 blue whales in a row, nose to tail, had to be several miles. I didn’t want to figure that out right now. I’m a marine biologist, not a mathematician.

  “I can only talk for a few minutes,” I said. “My friend is coming, and I don’t know if he’d understand that I was talking to a whale. Especially a whale 400 blue whales away.” I could only imagine his reaction. He would probably do that crazy crooked smile that looks forced. Hopefully he wouldn’t make the grumpy musselcracker face.

  “Oh, I love friends,” Meg said. “And I get it. I don’t think my pod would understand that I’m talking to a human.”

  That made me laugh a little. It was crazy that we could talk to each other. Crazy and wonderful.

  “So tell me about your friend,” Meg said.

  “Um,” I started, wondering where to begin, “his name is Marc. He used to be my best friend, but I moved away and then back and now—”

  “Like a migration?” Meg interrupted.

  I thought about it for a momen
t. “Yeah, I guess so,” I said and splashed the water caught between the pebbles on the beach with the bottom of my shoes. “I left with my mom and lived in Japan for a while, but . . .” I got to the part of the story about my mom and stopped. The words clumped up inside my throat. I couldn’t talk about her dying right now. I had just met Meg the other day and we only had a few minutes before Marc came. Plus, I was trying not to think about it. About her. I didn’t want Marc to show up and find me all red-eyed and puffy from crying. “But . . . then I came back,” I said.

  “Are you okay?” Meg asked. “You sounded like something caught in your throat. Like, once a friend of mine got a mouthful of fish near the surface, and caught a pelican in there too. Yuck.”

  I didn’t think missing my mom had anything to do with an unwanted pelican in a whale’s throat, but I liked that she worried enough to ask. “I’m fine.”

  “Good,” Meg said. “It’s so great to see a friend after a long migration. Are you excited?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but also really nervous. I think he might have changed a lot.”

  “Oh, I know that feeling,” Meg said. “A lot can change after a migration.”

  “Definitely,” I said. “I’m not even sure he still thinks we’re friends.”

  Meg didn’t even hesitate. “Don’t worry,” she said. “He’ll definitely still want to be your friend. I barely know you and am super excited to be your friend.” There it was again. She made me feel so good. Everyone should have a whale to talk to. “But,” Meg continued, “you said it was a ‘he-friend,’ like a male human?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Oooooooooooh,” she held out the musical sound so long it almost sounded like a call. “So do you lipsmack him?”

  “Lipsmack?” I shook my head. “What are you talking about?”

  “That strange thing you humans do,” Meg explained. “I often see you on boats. You put your fins around each other and lipsmack, right on the mouth.”

  Kissing? I was being asked about kissing from a whale?

  “No,” I said emphatically. And that was true. “It’s called kissing. And I don’t kiss Marc. I haven’t even thought about it.”

  “Okay,” Meg said. “I was just curious. Plus, if you did, that bull humpback you asked for a dinner date yesterday would probably be jealous.” Her laugh rumbled a little through the ­water.

  “Let’s change the subject,” I said. My cheeks were getting hot, like a hypothermal vent on the ocean floor. I really didn’t want to talk about kissing.

  “Oh, I’ve got one,” Meg said. “You were going to tell me something on the boat before you had to meet your dad. Some­thing about you needing to remember something . . .”

  I had been remembering the best. Remembering my mom.

  I didn’t want to talk about her. But I also really did want to talk about her. It was strange—like talking about her would be a long treacherous swim, but I knew at the end there could be a cool, beautiful coral reef. But the treacherous swim was terrifying.

  My hands shook a little and my pulse raced, but I managed to start, “I’ve had a really hard time lately . . .”

  Footsteps ran up behind me. “Hey, Willa.” The voice was higher than most twelve-year-old boys.

  Marc. He was here. Terrible timing, though. And early. It was close to ten minutes, just like he said. How did he get here so fast?

  “Well,” Meg said, “go on.” I don’t think she heard Marc. Maybe he wasn’t close enough to the water yet.

  I didn’t go on. I couldn’t just keep talking to Meg, who Marc couldn’t even see. Plus, she was a whale. I’d seem like an absolute crazy person, a marine biologist gone insane. Then again, if I hadn’t actually talked with a whale myself, I don’t know if I’d believe it. Maybe I really was an absolute crazy person. Nothing like coming back to a school after three years and giving people that impression.

  “Who were you talking to?” Marc asked, flipping his head to get his long dark bangs out of his eyes. He didn’t seem weirded out or anything. Apparently, he couldn’t hear Meg, like she couldn’t hear him. Or at least he didn’t understand her.

  I smiled, trying to look innocent. I had no idea what to say. It wasn’t like I was going to tell him the truth.

  During my silence, Meg called out again, “Willa? Are you there?”

  I looked sideways at Marc. “Did you hear that?”

  Marc tilted his head. “The ocean?”

  So he didn’t hear it, not even whale noises. I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or sad. “Yeah, the ocean. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

  He looked confused but nodded.

  “Is Marc there?” Meg asked. “You’re not lip smacking, are you?”

  Really?

  Maybe everyone doesn’t need their own whale.

  Willa Twitchell, Journal #5, Today

  Some of my favorite places in the world are the tide pools. Especially my tide pools. Before I was old enough to snorkel or even walk, my mom took me there. I don’t remember it, but I’ve seen pictures of her pointing things out to chubby-baby me.

  I love the rock formations that the waves cover during high tide, but don’t quite reach during the low. They let a bunch of critters and plants into holes in the rocks at high tide and then leave them stranded there in the low. That means at the right time, those pools get filled with ocean life trapped until the tide rises again. It’s like a little temporary ocean zoo. My little zoo.

  “I’m just excited to see the tide pools,” I finally said, trying to cover up the fact that I was talking to a whale several miles away about not kissing Marc. So embarrassing.

  But it wasn’t a total lie. I was really excited. This was the first low tide I had made it down to the beach. And a minus tide meant that we would find extra stuff. And Marc was here.

  He grinned and shook his head. “You’re so weird.”

  “Yeah,” I admitted, willing my face not to look like red algae, “but I’m the fun kind of weird, right?” I really hoped I was. I mean, I knew I was unique. I was probably the only girl at our middle school who geeked out about tide pooling. But I didn’t want Marc to hang out with me just as some sort of charity work for an old friend.

  Marc shrugged, like he wasn’t sure what kind of weird I was. My insides dropped like a boulder into the ocean.

  But then Marc playfully pushed me on the shoulder. He was just kidding. That made it better. At least I think it did. I hoped he meant that of course I was the fun kind of weird and this was like old times, like we were in third or fourth grade again. I hoped it didn’t mean that he was just teasing me because I really was the weird kind of weird.

  We started walking toward the rocks and puddles of the tide pools. “So, did you hear a whale call a few seconds ago?” I asked. I knew he said he didn’t hear anything, but I wanted to be sure.

  He shook his head.

  Maybe this was some sort of special ability I had or had trained my ears to hear. But I didn’t ask any more; I didn’t want to sound crazy.

  When we got to the tide pools, we had to step carefully. There were two reasons for that: One, many tiny plants and animals cling to the rocks. If you walk softly and carefully you can keep from crushing them. And two, these tide pool rocks are vicious sharp. They can cut up your feet and leave them looking like you tangled with an angry blue crab, so we always wear shoes when tide pooling. Flip-flops aren’t enough.

  “Hey, check it out,” I said, squatting down over a puddle in the rocks and pointing. Scuttling around a mossy leaf was a tiny pink crab. “A baby Dungeness.” I dug my phone out of my pocket and took a few pictures.

  “Cool.” Marc slowly crouched beside me. He used to be a lot faster. I didn’t know if he was slow because he was only pretending to be interested, or if he was tired, or maybe just playing it cool. Then he talked to the crab. “One day you will grow big
and strong.”

  I almost couldn’t believe it. I talked to whales and Marc talked to crabs; it’s like we were connecting again.

  “And,” Marc added, still talking to the crab, “when you are big enough, you will become my dinner.”

  Well, that wasn’t the same type of thing at all.

  I slapped Marc on the arm. “That’s mean,” I said.

  “What?” Marc said. “I was just giving her a goal, a dream to aspire to.”

  I rolled my eyes and opened my backpack. Marc had grown and changed since I was gone. And the joke was still kind of his style, but different. I took out a big ziplock bag. Inside was my ocean journal. Well, it was my fifth one. My mom kept journals. She logged everything she saw, put the date, the time, the location, even the weather. And then after, she sometimes wrote down what was happening in her life. She said that a good scientist had to be a good observer, even about themselves. She said we could learn from watching creatures and from noticing things about our own lives. So I’d been doing the same thing for a long time. I flipped to an open page and wrote down about seeing the Dungeness. I would print out at least one of the pictures I had taken later and glue it in. Or I’d sketch one in.

  Maybe I’d write about meeting up with Marc, too. I hoped it would be a good entry.

  “Still doing the journal thing?” he asked.

  I looked up and waved the book around. “I think the answer is pretty obvious.” I was trying to act confident, but it came off a little smart-mouthed. I guess my jokes had changed as well.

  His eyes returned to the Dungeness. “Do you think she gets scared in there, waiting for the tide to rise up again? I mean, she made a pretty terrible choice and now she probably feels totally stuck.”