Willa and the Whale

by Chad Morris

  “It’s our name,” Coach Jackson said, obviously surprised by the question. “That’s what the club team is called.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Tornadoes don’t swim. I guess they can go over water, but those are called waterspouts. Tornadoes are usually over land.”

  “But they are fast,” Lizzy said.

  “And scary,” a boy I didn’t know added.

  “But,” I said, emphasizing the word so that they would pay attention, “there are so many things that actually swim really fast. We could be the Swordfish, the Flying Fish, the Marlins, or the Orcas.”

  “True.” Coach Jackson smiled, tapping her pen on her clipboard. “We can discuss the name later. For right now, line up in your lanes and let’s see you swim the length of the pool.”

  Somehow I doubted that we would talk about it later.

  “Do we have to dive in?” Marc asked, rubbing his hands together.

  “Go in however you like,” Coach Jackson said. “We’ll work on our starts later.”

  Did Marc not know how to dive? As I thought about it, I hadn’t ever seen Marc dive before. He always ran and jumped. Often, he let out a high-pitched scream and flung his arms and legs in every direction until he crashed into the water. But he never dove.

  Coach Jackson blew her whistle. “Swimmers, take your mark.”

  My heart was thrumming faster than a dolphin’s tail fin. What if I stunk? What if I was slower than a mola mola? I could just imagine Lizzy laughing at me.

  I guess I was about to find out. We all lined up on these little angled stands at the edge of the pool.

  I put my toes just over the edge. I think that’s how swimmers do it. I hoped that I could beat Lizzy. Or at least not look totally terrible. But that would be so fantastically amazing if I could beat her. I’d put a special journal entry in just for that.

  My heart pounded in my chest so fast, I just hoped my arms and legs could do the same.

  “Go!” Coach Jackson blew her whistle.

  I leaned forward, then pushed off hard with my legs. My body made a spear, my arms extended over my head. After gliding over the pool for who knows how far, I pierced into the water like a harpoon, shooting forward. I probably looked amazing, like poster-worthy. But as I hit the water, I realized I didn’t know what stroke I was going to do. Coach hadn’t asked for anything specific. Freestyle? Breaststroke? Those were the only two my parents had taught me.

  I wished I could swim like a dolphin. Their bodies are round like tubes and their powerful tails swish up and down. Their flukes propel them forward. Or I could swim like a marlin, their large tails pushing from side to side, shooting them through the water. I settled for the front crawl, my arms stretching out in front of me, crashing in over my head as my legs kicked hard. They weren’t fins, but they would have to do.

  The water was pretty much my life. It was what I loved. My home. I loved being around it. In it. I loved feeling myself move through it. I didn’t know exactly how fast I was going, but I was clipping along.

  As I turned my head for air, I tried to glimpse where I was compared to the others. I hoped Marc was doing awesome. And I wanted to see Lizzy far behind me. But I didn’t see them. It was all a watery mess. Was I way behind? Or in front? So much of me wanted to stop and look around, but that would definitely slow me down. I just pressed forward.

  I pushed myself to go faster, moving harder with each stroke. Kicking more. I pictured being a mackerel with a leopard seal on my tail. I had to sprint through the pool.

  A few more strokes.

  A few more.

  Finally, I touched the end of the wall and came up for air. Still panting, I brushed the water off my face and looked around. Someone was behind me and touched the wall. Then someone else. It was like my whole body sighed in relief. I wasn’t last.

  “Good job, Willa,” Marc said. I wiped my face with my hand again and saw him smiling. His big charming smile. Definitely not a grumpy musselcracker. He was loving this. And he didn’t have water falling down his face like I did. He had totally beaten me. That was okay. In fact, I was proud of him. I’d have let him win if I knew what I was doing.

  “Yeah,” Lizzy said in the lane next to Marc. She also didn’t have water on her face and had probably been there for a while. She had beaten me too. I was so disappointed I didn’t know if I wanted to scream or dart into the cover of an empty wormhole like a goby. “Good job, Willa,” Lizzy said with a big smile. But I was sure she didn’t mean it. I hadn’t beaten her. I didn’t even know if I got anywhere close.

  Another person hit the wall.

  I quickly looked at those I beat. Three. Two girls and a boy. And I think they were all in elementary school. I was basically the slowest of all the middle-schoolers. I was a seahorse, the slowest swimmer in the ocean. A tiny-finned, barely moving seahorse.

  “Great job, you guys,” Coach Jackson said, clapping a couple more times.

  “How did you do?” I asked Marc.

  “I got second,” he said, his grin just as big as before. It was partly super annoying because I had done so bad. But partly just plain great. He’d said he needed this. Maybe he was right. “Thanks for coming,” he said. A soft wave of happiness washed over me.

  “Did you beat Lizzy?” I asked, hopefully quiet enough that she couldn’t hear.

  He looked over his shoulder then nodded.

  This wave of happiness was even bigger.

  “She got third,” he said.

  That wasn’t good. And I had no idea I was going to be this bad.

  “Let’s keep warming up,” Coach Jackson said.

  That was just a warm-up? I had given it all I had and was ready to grab my towel.

  “Go ahead and swim back,” Coach said.

  Swim back. I could do that. And I was determined to do better. Maybe I just got off to a bad start with the first race.

  I gave it everything I could—and only beat the elementary school kids again. In fact, I realized that one of the blond boys who had beaten me was still in elementary. I couldn’t even beat all of the younger kids.

  Coach Jackson showed us how to do the freestyle stroke. I thought I had it down, but she corrected me a couple of times. And when we swam another lap, I barely beat the three I beat before. One of them almost tied with me.

  #FeelingSlowerThanASeahorse

  “Alright,” Coach Jackson said. “Great job today. You swam hard, showed a lot of talent, and a lot of effort. Thank you.” She glanced down at her clipboard. Had she written notes about what she was going to say? “We’ve seen what you can do. If you get a call tonight or tomorrow, you’ve made the team. If you don’t get a call, thanks so much for trying out. Keep swimming and try again next season. Just because you don’t make the team this time doesn’t mean you’re not going to be a great swimmer.” Okay, so it was that kind of a speech. Basically, she was saying that we were all amazing, but if we got a call today or tomorrow, then we were more amazing than the others.

  Marc’s big smile hadn’t changed. It was like his Xbox was back, but better than before. But when he looked at me, his grin wavered just for a second. He was probably thinking what I was thinking. He was in. But was I? And I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I mean, I wanted Marc back as a friend. I wanted to hang out with him, and although coming to swim practice a couple times a week wasn’t my first choice, it was something. I wouldn’t be in my room all shelled up. And I’d be doing what I thought my mom wanted.

  But if I didn’t make the team, then Marc would be busy and I’d be alone.

  I tried to smile back.

  Willa Twitchell, Journal #5, today

  Whales migrate. The gray whale swims thousands of miles from Mexico to the Arctic every migration. It’s like me going from Tupkuk Island to Tokyo and back again. But they swim it. Of course, they have to watch out for the or
cas, their scheming, conniving, maniacal enemy. To stay safe, the gray whales hug the coast most of the way, but at Monterey Bay they have to cross open waters and there is a huge gorge beneath. It opens up for miles beneath them. And that’s the best place for a killer whale ambush. The gray whale can’t even see it coming.

  School is like crossing a big unprotected gorge. And today I was ambushed. Stupid Lizzy Wallace.

  I glanced over at Jarom, my debate partner, at the computer next to me. “Are you even studying?”

  “Of course,” Jarom said. “Check it out.” He tilted his screen to show some cannon he was blasting at a space monster.

  He was going to get us both in trouble. “C’mon,” I said. “Focus.”

  “I am,” he said. “This isn’t easy.” He clicked a few more times. “I also checked my Battle-Ax Brawl score and I’m crushing it. Seriously, Derrin doesn’t stand a chance.”

  Earlier in class, Mr. Norton had asked Lizzy if she was going to be ready next time for the debate. She said, “Definitely,” and nodded big. I hated the way she said it. It was like she thought she already had the debate won. She probably thought she did. And I really wanted to beat her.

  I still couldn’t get what she did to me earlier in the class out of my head. She came into class all happy and said hi to me, and she seemed really nice. But then she said it was nice to see me yesterday at swim practice. And she said it with a face that said she knew she was such a better swimmer. And then, as if that wasn’t enough, she mentioned that she got a call that she made the team. Of course, she then asked if I did. It was a total set up. Like orcas appearing out of the gorge. She knew she was a better swimmer than me; she was rubbing my face in it. I felt completely attacked.

  I couldn’t think of the right way to react. There wasn’t anything to do to fight back. Like a gray whale in the same situation, I just tried to roll with it and survive. So I told the truth; I shook my head and said that I hadn’t gotten a call. Then she acted surprised . . . like this wasn’t all part of her plan. She even apologized, but I doubt she really meant it.

  That just made me want to win this debate more.

  But after asking Lizzy if she was ready for the debate, Mr. Norton asked me. I liked that. It was like he recognized me as the other unofficial team captain. It was really going to be a showdown between me and Lizzy. I tried to sound just as confident, and I think I nailed it. I hope I did.

  Now Jarom and I had work to do. “I meant focus on our debate,” I said, shaking my finger over his game.

  “I already did that,” Jarom said. “We have the easier side. All the research is basically just helping us win.”

  He was right. From what I’d seen, there was study after study feeding us everything we needed to take down the Lizzy-Kaycen team.

  Our debate question was about whether screen time was good for children. And we had the side arguing that it wasn’t good. Easy, right? Adults harass us about it all the time. All we had to do was parrot back all of the things that they say to us:

  It’s a poor use of time.

  Zombifies our brains.

  Leads to lack of focus.

  Leads to obesity.

  We can become addicted.

  It’s bad for social skills.

  It can encourage violent behavior.

  We’ve all heard them. All that Jarom and I had to do was find all the studies to back them up. “Show me what you’ve got,” I said, coming up behind him and looking at his screen where multicolored aliens were shooting oversized cannons at each other.

  “Just a minute.” Jarom made the whole screen flip to another point of view. The motion made me a little sick. “I’ve got to finish this level to save my progress.”

  “So,” I said. “Because you’re addicted to video games, you can’t help me research why playing video games is bad.”

  “Ouch,” Jarom said sharply, not because he was upset with me, but because he just got shot. “C’mon,” he said, his avatar frantically running away from the big red lanky alien that was chasing him with a giant blue blaster gun. “What were you saying?” he asked.

  “Never mind.”

  “We all play video games,” Jarom said, trying to pretend like he had been listening to me. “Not liking video games is like not liking the Seahawks.”

  The kids in my class were obsessed with that football team. I didn’t play video games or watch the Seahawks. “Did you know,” I asked, “that there isn’t really even a bird called the seahawk? Some people guess they could be named after the osprey or skua, but there isn’t really a seahawk.” He didn’t answer so I kept on. “It doesn’t make sense. Plus, if there was, it couldn’t play sports.”

  “What?” Jarom said, saving his level. When he finished, he spun in his chair to face me. “They could catch a ball in their talons.” Then he made some cawing sound, like he was a seahawk, I guess.

  Everyone looked over.

  I shook my head. “Let’s just get back to the debate.”

  “There isn’t anything else to do,” Jarom said. “Took me thirty seconds to find this article and it lists all of the reasons for us.” He pulled up an article from The Social Blast that listed ten reasons kids should lower their screen time.

  “That’s all you have?” I asked. At first his confident attitude calmed me a little, but now it just ticked me off. “I know this debate seems simple, but we both know Lizzy will have researched everything. And there has to be a reason why this is even a debate. There has to be another side. It’s not like she’s just going to say, ‘Screen time is so much fun, so we should do as much as we want.’ If we haven’t really researched it, then Lizzy is going to tear us apart.”

  “Tear us apart?” he asked. “You almost made debate sound interesting for a second.” The pads of his fingers softly tapped his keyboard while we talked. Not enough to actually type anything. But just the right amount to drive me batty.

  “Thanks,” I said, surprised he’d complimented me.

  “I said ‘almost,’” Jarom clarified, stretching.

  I blew a strand of hair out of my eyes and pointed at his screen. “Please, find me five more articles like that one. Write down the things they say to support our position.”

  “Wow, Bossypants,” Jarom said, “take your boiling pot off the stove.” I wasn’t really sure what that meant. But he turned and started working, so mission accomplished.

  I did the same. I read and I logged notes. I jotted down ideas. I was on research fire. But after so long, my mind drifted to Marc, who was working on the computer on the other side of me. I kept glancing at him. He was frowning and rubbing his forehead.

  I thought I knew why. And we’d have to talk about it sooner or later. I looked down at my fingers on the keyboard and started. “So,” I said, “you got the call, right? You’re on the team?”

  “Yeah,” he said, his frown becoming deeper. “I heard you tell Lizzy that you haven’t. I’m really sorry.”

  There. We said it. And at least he was sad that I didn’t make it. Of course, that didn’t mean I wasn’t fighting to keep my face from going crimson. “You don’t have to feel bad,” I said, trying hard to look happy and not jealous or self-conscious, or wishing desperately that I could disappear. “You earned it.”

  That was a pretty good answer under the circumstances.

  I also felt a little betrayed. People are always saying how great it is to try new things, to put yourself out there. And then something like this happens and you aren’t any good and you wish you never tried. But I faked it okay.

  “But I don’t want to do swim team by myself,” he said. Was he serious, or just being nice? He sounded serious. “Maybe you’ll still get the call. Coach said she’d make the calls over two days. Tonight is still a possibility.”

  I guess technically it could happen, but why would she call some last night and wait on t
he others until today? That didn’t really make sense. That ship had already sailed. That flotilla of turtles had already migrated. “Maybe,” I said.

  “Hey, Willa,” Jarom whisper-shouted next to me. “Focus!”

  I looked at him, then his computer, then back at him. “Really?” I pointed to an armadillo right as it popped its gun and confetti burst across the screen. I guess he’d just started a new game. Marc could design a better game than that.

  “No time for chitty-chat,” Jarom said. “We’ve got a debate to win.”

  I turned back to Marc. “Just text me later,” he said. “If you get the call or not, I want to know.” And even though I knew it was only going to end in a pity text, it was okay. At least he cared.

  Willa Twitchell, Journal #5, today

  I talked to Meg again today. I know. I know. You’re probably sick of hearing about that, but it’s so incredible every time. I’m still not sure how it even works. I did some more research to try and figure it out and this is what I learned: For humpbacks, most of the complicated songs are sung by the males. A group of them will all sing the same song that can be heard for twenty miles from each singer. The song changes and they all change with it. It blows my mind. What would it be like to be so connected to others? To be singing the same song? Meg and I aren’t male humpbacks and we don’t even know any of the same songs. (Though it might be fun to teach her “Baby Shark.”) But we are connected. And I hope it never ends. I think I need it.

  #TotallyKiddingAboutBabyShark #ThatSongWouldPolluteTheOcean #AndNowItsInMyHead

  “So, what do you do with a scurnal?” Meg asked. Talking with Meg was easier this time. It was like finding the wifi sweet spot in your house. I knew how close I should stand to the water and I got better at hearing her.

  “It’s a journal,” I corrected. After dinner I had snuck out back to the beach and was sitting on the rocks, dangling my feet in the water, trying not to think about the fact that no one had called about swim team. “And you write in them. Well, you wouldn’t, but I do.” I couldn’t picture a whale jotting down her thoughts with a pen between her fins. I wondered if Meg even knew what writing was. “Writing, it’s—” I started to explain.