Chapter 29 The Friend #2
She waited, looking down into the depths, hoping for a visitor or two.
The water was remarkably clear and dusted with plankton and the occasional jellyfish.
In the distance a whale slapped its tail on the water, making loud smacking sounds that Minnow was surprised she could hear.
It was too much to be out here and not in the water, so before she knew it, she was grabbing the bowline and her mask and fins and slipping beneath the surface.
Cool but not cold. Silky. She did a one-eighty to check her surroundings and then tied off to the buoy.
There was something about floating in the open sea that calmed her. A tiny speck of life in a vast underworld. She dove down
a few times, seeing how far she could follow the line. Woody estimated it was probably a few hundred feet to the bottom, maybe
more, so she was barely making a dent. On her third dive down, she thought she heard something. She hung in place for a few
moments, listening. The sound of water swirling and an overwhelming feeling that she was not alone. She slowly spiraled up
for air, took several deep breaths, then dove down again.
The boat offered only a small measure of safety, but her gut told her she was in no danger. Whatever was coming was coming
leisurely. When the shape appeared far below her, she relaxed. It was a baby whale. The animal was so far below, it was merely
a shadow before disappearing into the blue. Minnow hung on to the edge of the boat, watching and waiting and hoping for more.
A few minutes later, it came back into her vision, probably thirty feet below her.
Not a baby whale.
A Sister.
It had to be.
The world went quiet, save for the insistent thrum of her heart.
There was something familiar in the movements of this shark.
This graceful and ragged-toothed beauty.
This behemoth. As white sharks often did, the animal swam loops beneath her, coolly observing.
Minnow observed back as the shark slowly rose higher and higher.
As if orchestrated by a higher power, sunlight pierced the water around them, illuminating a network of gashes and scars across its flank.
Closer and closer it swam, languidly, as though it had all day to suss her out. No tag was visible. This one had eluded all
the curious scientists out there. Then Minnow’s eyes darted to the fin, where she saw four deep slices. Impossible, and yet
there they were, exactly as she’d remembered them.
Luna.
Her shark.
Now at least eight feet wide and taller than she was, the Sister of all Sisters.
Minnow forgot about breathing until her lungs let her know it was time. She surfaced again, never once taking her eye off
this smoothly circling shark. The one who started it all.
“My friend,” she said, going back under and speaking into her snorkel what would have been gibberish to anyone around.
On the next go-around, Luna came right for her. Minnow didn’t flinch. She knew enough about white shark body language to tell
that this interaction was not an attack. Had Luna wanted to attack her, she would be dead already. They passed within feet
of each other and that dark and intelligent eye locked on with hers. She was close enough to touch, and Minnow held out her
hand, wanting so badly to feel her, but she pulled back. Touching animals in the wild was frowned upon in her circles, and
she didn’t want to do anything to ruin the moment.
A moment she would relive again and again for the rest of her life. It felt like meeting a long-lost relative or finding a
brother you never knew you had. Not only was Luna a Sister, but she felt like Minnow’s sister. Flesh and blood. Fin and tail.
This time when the shark swam away, she angled down and dropped into the depths. Minnow waited for what felt like hours, hoping
for another round, but Luna was gone.
“Go away from here and don’t come back. It’s not safe,” she said, wishing her words would carry through the water and translate
into shark.
Two smaller sharks showed up a few minutes later. They moved in fast and furious, just as Minnow was climbing into the boat. She sat on the cooler in a daze, watching their fins zigzag around her. Galapagos sharks. Pups compared to Luna.
As much as she hated to think about it, the chances of another twenty-foot white shark in the area were almost nil. Which
meant that Luna was responsible for the bites.
It’s Luna they want in the hunt.
All other sharks would be collateral damage.
There was a reason chumming was illegal within three miles of shore. It attracted large predators. Groomed them, even. Whoever
these fuckers were, they had blood on their hands.
Minnow closed her eyes and balled her fists, lying back on the cooler and trying to calm the surge of adrenaline flooding
into her body. Here she was, witness to sharks appearing at the sound of an engine, and yet there was no cage, no boat, no
one red-handed. The hunt would still go on in the morning.
“Get out of here, all of you!” she called out. “Swim away and stay away from all boats, do you hear me?”
Only water sounds and a Hawaiian Airlines jet approaching from Kawaihae. Planes were usually farther out to sea, but this
one was hugging the coastline. Must have been the shift in wind direction.
“Do you hear me?” she screamed. “You have to listen. You have to go. Now!”
Her voice cracked. Still wet from her swim, a chill ran through her. Something about the cold brought her back to Catalina.
Instead of stopping where it had last time, the memory continued to unfold.
She is standing in the icy water. She turns and sees her father sprinting toward her, pointing. The kayak must have been washed out with the tide. He stops
next to her for a second and she can smell his wet suit rubber as he zips up.
He points and she follows his line of sight to see the yellow kayak floating toward open water in a strong current. Her father dives in and swims as fast as he can toward it.
Minnow watches with no apprehension. As far as she’s concerned, her father is of the sea.
When he is almost there, she notices a disturbance in the water. Bruce seems to lift up and slam down again, then disappears
entirely. A moment later, he pops up and lets out a terrible and unhuman sound. She covers her ears. This time a tall fin
splashes around him and the water clouds red.
“Papa!” she yells.
No answer.
“Papaaaaaaa!”
Now she’s howling on the shore, pacing back and forth, wanting to go out there to help him but terrified. She begins to swim
out anyway, but her arms and legs aren’t working properly. They’ve turned to lead, and she has to turn back. It’s then she
sees her mother running toward her at an all-out sprint. Minnow turns to look for her father, weeping and unable to breathe.
“What happened?” Layla yells, wild-eyed.
Words will not come, so Minnow just stands there shivering. Her mom begins screaming and at some point Minnow tries to swim
out again, but her mother drags her back. Takes her to the house and calls 911.
Her mother bends down so they’re eye to eye, both hands digging into her shoulders. “You have to tell me. What were you doing
out there?”
All hollowed out, Minnow still has no voice.
“Why would you take the kayak?”
Minnow musters, “I didn’t.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not.”
Layla shakes her hard and Minnow squeezes her eyes shut and retreats into that underwater cavern in her mind. The place she
goes when her parents fight or when others tease her or she just wants to be alone with her imagination. The place she buries
her hurts and wishes and secrets.
A bird screech somewhere above drew her out of the daydream. Above, a handful of ‘iwa birds circled, swooping and diving and hunting for fish. Dark feathered crosses in the sky. Same as the sharks, maybe they
came for the chopped-up fish parts or whatever else the chummers were throwing into the ocean. Great frigate birds couldn’t
swim or submerge themselves, so they were known as the scavengers of the sea.
Hō?ailona.
Even with the thick cloud cover, she could feel herself burning, so she put on Woody’s straw hat and wrapped a towel around
herself. Then she sunk down and wept. All this time, every single moment of her life, she’d been shouldering the burden of
her father’s death and her mother’s fury. Her pain and sorrow and eventual crumbling into oblivion.
All your fault.
You should have listened to me.
Why, Minnow, why?
But no. It was all a bitter misunderstanding. Minnow had been rolling around in the shore break, not out paddling around in
the kayak as her mother had believed. Bruce must have been yelling for Minnow to get it, but she couldn’t hear what he was
saying against the roar of the waves, so when he came down to the beach, the kayak had already been swept out. It was not
Minnow he was going out to rescue; it was his trusty kayak. He would have been swimming frantically to reach it before it
was lost for good. The shark hit him on the way out. One bite.
But one bite was often all it took.
A light ruffle of a breeze began to blow in from the south, rocking the boat from side to side, but she barely noticed. It
felt like her skin had just been ripped off, exposing every nerve to the elements of nature and time.
“I’m sorry, Papa. I wish I had heard you,” she said aloud.
One weight had lifted, ever so slightly, but another had flattened her. The sharks had always been there, circling, and she
needed a way to keep them alive. Whatever the cost.