A Possibility of Whales

by Karen Rivers

  She picked up the pen and spun it between her fingers. Then she put it back down.

  “Why did you leave?” she asked, out loud.

  She knew she could Google this answer, that someone somewhere would have asked Melina Martinez this question, that she had probably answered it a million times. Maybe her answer even made sense. It probably did. If it didn’t, people would hate her, and she wasn’t hated, she was famous.

  Not for the first time, Nat felt strange to be herself, to be someone who could Google answers to huge personal questions and get answers, right there on the Internet for anyone who wanted to read them to find.

  She decided not to ask the question. Her dad said sometimes the better way to get to know people was to give them information about yourself. They would find the questions in your story. She began writing again:

  I got my period today. It is the day after my thirteenth birthday. Yesterday, I saw a baby whale being born. The mother whale was right there. She did not swim away.

  Nat started to cry. This was harder than she’d thought it would be. Why would a whale stay when a human could leave? A whale would never leave.

  She thought about the baby harbor seal.

  Some people are whales, she wrote. Some people are seals.

  She knew Melina Martinez wouldn’t know what that meant, that she’d be confused. But maybe that was fair. It was her turn to be confused. It was her turn to feel something. Nat had been feeling all of the feelings for thirteen years.

  Dad is a whale, she wrote. Dad is the most majestic of all the whales.

  Nat remembered the Bird telling her once about a whale who was the last of his species. He was called the 52-hertz whale because he sang a song in 52 hertz, which was not the same frequency that was used by any other known whale. She sometimes wondered if her dad was a bit like that 52-hertz whale. He had her, Nat, but that was different, because she was his daughter. As far as she knew, he had not had a girlfriend since her mother, Melina Martinez. And Melina Martinez was the wrong kind of whale.

  She wasn’t a whale at all.

  Nat left the part out where she could have written that Melina Martinez was clearly a seal. That was implied.

  “Dum-dum,” Nat said out loud. That was mean, but she didn’t care. Mostly she just felt sad that maybe her dad was the only whale of his kind, singing away at 52 hertz.

  She signed her name at the bottom of the page.

  She left out the Baleine.

  Natalia Rose Gallagher, she wrote, in her best writing ever.

  Then she folded the letter into the shape of a bird. She made it fly across the desk. It landed awkwardly on the floor. She picked it up.

  She put the bird into an envelope. She didn’t know what address to write on it. Her dad would know. She’d ask him later.

  Maybe not here in Mexico. Maybe at home.

  Maybe never.

  Maybe it didn’t even matter.

  Through the window, Nat could see Harry and her dad making their way across the beach to the water. Harry was weaving around a bit under the weight of a surfboard. Nat smiled.

  Cute, she thought.

  Complicated, she thought.

  Nat got up and slipped on the flip-flops. Her heart-faced sneakers were gone forever. That was sad. But it was like so much sad stuff and happy stuff and big stuff and infuriating stuff and great stuff had all happened at once, and all those feelings negated the other ones and left her feeling maybe even the tiniest bit blank.

  The flip-flops were ridiculously loose but they slapped the bottom of her feet in a good way. She flip-flopped down the stairs and out the door. Mr. and Mrs. Brasch were sitting on the patio, each reading their own book. Mrs. Brasch looked up. “Are you wearing sunscreen?” she said. “The sun is extra hot today!”

  “Yes,” lied Nat.

  She flip-flopped past the Brasches and past the palm tree and down the slope. The beach was deserted.

  The sand was burning her feet.

  “Hanyauku,” she mouthed.

  She still loved that word and the shape it made on her tongue.

  Nat walked all the way to the water’s edge—the tide was way way way out—and she waved to Harry and her dad. The waves lapped softly over her feet, cooling them instantly, and then rolled back out to sea. In one curling wave, she saw a jellyfish with long red tentacles. A crab scuttled over her toes. Her dad shouted something that she didn’t hear. She could see his grin though. He fist-bumped the air.

  The sun was ferocious on her skin.

  Her hair was a black-cat hot again. “What?” she yelled.

  Her dad was really gesturing now.

  Nat looked out to sea.

  There, in the distance, was the huge splash of a whale breaching.

  “Whale!” she shouted. “Hello! Hi! Wow! Thank you!”

  She felt the prickling on the back of her neck.

  Not again, she thought.

  She kept her eye on the whale. It looked like a humpback whale. Maybe it was the same humpback whale, come to say goodbye.

  The mother.

  Maybe the baby was there, too. Of course it was. Whale mothers didn’t leave.

  It must be just too small to see from here.

  “Goodbye!” she called to it. “Goodbye, whale.” Then, to herself, “Goodbye, Mom.” She wasn’t sure what she meant. It was goodbye to the Bird. It was goodbye to the French, whale-loving makeup artist who didn’t even exist.

  “Goodbye,” she said. She traced her silver flip-flop through the sand in a half circle. She blinked so that her eyes didn’t start leaking again.

  Her dad and Harry disappeared into a wave.

  Nat felt the prickle on her neck again, but this time it went all the way down her spine. She could feel her own heartbeat.

  “Tante,” she said out loud. Tante was a Chinese word for when you were super anxious and you could hear your own pulse. She definitely had that. Right then. At that exact second.

  She wished Harry would come back to shore.

  She wished her dad would come back to shore.

  Click-click-click, Nat heard.

  She turned around in slow motion. She felt like she was dreaming, and it was a bad dream and she couldn’t wake herself up from it. She sat down, even though it meant that she was sitting on wet sand. The foamy waves surged around her, soaking her, and then tried to pull her out to sea. She felt her body being lifted a tiny bit and then placed back down by the water.

  The person holding the camera was walking toward her.

  “Hey Nat,” he said. “It’s me.”

  The sun was behind the person, so at first she didn’t recognize the Lion.

  Then she did.

  She thought about all the things she could say.

  The Lion was wearing flip-flops, too. He shifted from foot to foot. “The sand is so freakin’ hot,” he said.

  “Hanyauku,” Nat said.

  “Yeah, bless you,” he said. In the distance, a dog barked.

  The barking got closer. And closer.

  Tufty! said Nat, telepathically. Bite him.

  Tufty growled low in his throat. Then he launched himself at the Lion’s leg.

  “Get your stupid dog off me!”

  Nat shook her head.

  The Lion ran into the water. “I hate dogs.”

  “They don’t seem to like you much either,” Nat muttered.

  “I can’t hear you,” said the Lion.

  “I said, ‘MY DAD IS GOING TO KILL YOU,’” she said.

  “I hear you were on a boat that sank yesterday,” the Lion said. He was knee-deep in the water. Every wave that landed looked like it was going to knock him sideways. Him and his expensive camera.

  Karma, Nat thought.

  “I thought that Hugh was a friend of mine. I do
n’t know what he was thinking. Everyone knows you guys are mine.”

  Nat made a sound that wasn’t a sound. She rolled her eyes.

  “Aw, come on, kid,” he said. “Your dad used to be nice to me. He was always hugging me and stuff. We’re on the same side. We’re all making money, right? How about we do a trade. I have something you want. And you have something I want. So can we trade?”

  “You don’t have anything I want,” said Nat.

  Tufty pressed his body into Nat’s legs. She picked the dog up and buried her nose in the fur on his head, which was wet.

  “That dog looks like he has fleas,” said the Lion. He lifted his camera and aimed.

  “Don’t!” said Nat.

  “Sorry, kid.” He clicked the shutter. “Just one. So are we on?”

  “No,” she said. “You don’t have anything I want, and what happened is private.”

  He laughed. “Not much,” he said. “Your dad doesn’t get that right, you know. The right to be private. No way. He’s famous. Price you pay and all that. Besides, it’s already up on the site. But if I get your side of it, then we’ll have a story. Human interest. Your dad let you go out without life jackets? Child Protective Services might be interested in that. You can make it better for him.”

  “My dad is a good dad. You can write that down.”

  “He’s got a temper. Did you see what he did to my camera? You ever feel scared? Remember at the maze last year?”

  “He’s a great dad.”

  “Ever wonder why your mom left?” he said. “Ever think about that?”

  “Stop talking to me. Please stop, you . . . you . . . you . . . little Lion man.”

  “Melina Martinez,” he said, drawing her name out slowly. “She’s a strange one. But I got her info for you. Her address. You could just go there. Show up at her house. Get to know her. You two can compare notes about XAN THE MAN.” He thrust a piece of paper into her hand. Tufty growled and snapped at his fingers.

  There was a word in Nat’s collection from Papua New Guinea. They spoke a language called Kivila. The word was mokita.

  Mokita is a secret that everyone knows but have implicitly agreed not to talk about.

  “Mokita,” she said.

  “What?” said the Lion.

  Nat scrunched the paper into the smallest ball she could. She threw it at the Lion, who caught it reflexively.

  “I don’t want this,” he said. “It’s our deal.”

  “We don’t have a deal,” said Nat.

  “Hey!” Nat heard from a million miles away. “HEY!”

  Nat looked up and saw her dad running out of the surf. A surfboard was attached to his ankle and was bouncing after him. Harry was following behind. He was hugging his own board and stumbling in the waves a little. Her dad made it look so easy. Harry, not so much. He tripped and fell down, then bobbed back up again. The Lion lifted his camera and fired off a few shots. Nat could already imagine what they would look like: her dad angrily running at the Lion.

  The Lion was running now, too.

  The Lion was running away.

  Tufty was chasing after him, barking.

  Nat’s dad lifted her in a huge hug. “You’re all wet!” she said. “Put me down!”

  “You’re all wet, too,” he said. “Now.” He spun her around and around. She could see the sea, the sky, the house, the dog, Harry, everything.

  “I’m going to throw up!” she said. “Put me down.”

  “Say it!”

  “Fine!” she said. “I love you!”

  “Yeah, you do,” he said, and he put her down.

  “Yep yep,” she said.

  “What did he say to you? You think you know a person. Man, I thought he’d leave us alone, finally. I thought he got it.”

  Nat shrugged. “Everyone isn’t ever all one thing,” she reminded him. “But I kind of think he’s all bad.”

  Harry and XAN GALLAGHER headed back toward the water. “One more wave!” Harry called back to her.

  “Sure,” Nat said. She squinted up at the house. It looked like the Brasches were still sitting there, reading. Like they lived in their own protected bubble where they didn’t have to think about things outside of the bubble. The bubble protected them from complications.

  Nat didn’t want to be someone who was in a bubble. She didn’t like complications, but she wanted to understand them. Once you understood them, they weren’t complications anymore. They were just life.

  The sun was sinking lower in the sky, and the waves were dying down.

  It sure is beautiful, Nat thought. Like being inside a postcard.

  Nat held up her hands and took a pretend photo. “Insta-perfect,” she said.

  “I love you,” she mouthed at Harry and her dad, both.

  She felt lucky that her dad was her dad, and Harry was maybe not her BFF, but she loved him anyway. You could love someone and not have them love you back in exactly the same way, and that was OK, too.

  Nat stood on one leg, like a flamingo. Then she stood on her other leg. Her feet were used to the sand now, or maybe it was just cooling off. She did the only yoga stretch she knew, which was the Rising Sun pose. The sun was setting, not rising, but she was pretty sure it wouldn’t mind.

  Nat’s muscles stretched and relaxed. The sky pinked up and turned orange and red, a fiery canvas. It looked not quite real.

  She watched her dad and Harry on the wave, then she sat down, still watching, and sifting sand between her fingers. Her fingers brushed against a shell. It was tiny, but she held it up to her ear anyway. The Bird told her once that when you listen to a shell, it’s not the ocean that you hear, but your own blood, circulating through your body.

  She thought about something Harry said to her the day before, which she didn’t get then, but suddenly she did now, all at once. She had said something about his dad, and how it must be really hard when he was a total jerk. And Harry had looked at her and raised one eyebrow—kind of like how her dad did it, come to think of it—and he’d shrugged and said, “You aren’t your parents, you know. You’re just yourself. You’re a separate thing.” He paused. “Besides, he’s not so bad. I think he’s getting better.”

  Nat hoped that was true.

  She listened hard to the shell.

  She listened so hard, she had to close her eyes. She could hear better when she wasn’t looking at the ocean, squinting for fins rising up between the waves.

  Nat listened and listened.

  Then, finally, over the sound of the wind and surf, she heard a small echo, the tiny ocean of her own beating heart. She looked up. Harry was up on a wave, crouched down like a pro, like someone who was in exactly the right place at the right time. She was pretty sure that her dad was smiling aggressively, with all his extra teeth. He waved at her, and she heard him yell, “HEY, NAT!” She stood so she could see him better, just in time to see him doing two big thumbs-up and then bringing his giant thumbs-up to his nose. She rolled her eyes, and then she giggled.

  “Because it’s the end!” she called, even though she knew he couldn’t hear her; her words, instead, were blown back toward the palatial glass house and up into the windy brown hills beyond.

  Acknowledgments

  As a writer, I spend a fair amount of time online. I used to feel guilty about this, like I was somehow being lazy or avoiding doing my work. And maybe I was, just a little! But the Internet is also a treasure trove of ideas, and as it happens, over time, it slowly started gifting me with more and more untranslatable words. I started a file where I began collecting my favorites. I didn’t know what I was going to do with them, but I knew I would come back to them eventually. And luckily, they were exactly the right collection to share with Natalia Rose as she navigated through seventh grade in Sooke, BC, Canada, with her famous dad in tow.

  I would like to ackno
wledge that both Sooke and French Beach are real places, and very beautiful places, too. (I strongly recommend that you visit them if you can. And maybe, if you’re extraordinarily lucky, the orcas will come to shore and pay you a visit. It happens!) However, I did play a little bit with the places in the book. Justin Trudeau Middle School does not exist, for example. Nat and XAN GALLAGHER’s trailer, in my imagination, was on a property that is, in real life, parkland. Let’s call this “artistic license.”

  I’m deeply indebted to Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, simply for existing, having a sense of humor about himself, and being so great, in general. I have a funny story that I can tell you about the Rock and how I didn’t meet him, but I’m still thankful for the positive impact that he’s had on my life and the life of my kids, even if he didn’t know it was happening. The character of XAN GALLAGHER is a mash-up of my kids’ ideal stepdad, the Rock, and maybe a touch of Matthew McConaughey, just in case Dwayne Johnson isn’t available to play the part should the movie version of this book ever come into being.

  When I began, my goal was to write a modern retake of Judy Blume’s book Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. The yellow bathing suit was for Margaret, who got me started on the path of writing this story.

  As always, I didn’t write this book alone. I had a lot of help, from some amazing people. My agent, Jennifer Laughran, who has a great nickname for this one. My editor, Krestyna Lypen, who understands. My publisher, Elise Howard, who keeps believing in me. The artist who created the magical cover, Julie McLaughlin. The copy editor who helped me perfect the details, Martha Cipolla. And everyone else on the Algonquin team who will hold my hand through the next parts, final polish, the publicity, the reviews, the signing, the public speaking, the awkward air bands, the hectic scheduling, and the parts where I suddenly remember that I’m scared of flying. I feel so very lucky to be taken care of so well. In the book, Nat says that love is when you just get someone else, and I’ve never felt that in my work as strongly as I have with this team of incredible, passionate book people. You all are my book family, and I am so fortunate. <3

  I couldn’t do any of it without the support of my family and friends, near and far. My friend Rosy Hernandez Madrigal generously helped me with my Spanish and with all the Mexican aspects of this book. Rob Bittner, who is a super(book)hero, lent me his keen eye and gave me some essential feedback during revisions. That said, any mistakes that I made are mine and not theirs! Thank you, thank you, thank you.