Chapter 9 Alice
Alice
“You’re gonna love this!”
She’s actually going to hate this. But I’m convincing myself she’ll live long enough to eventually appreciate the experience.
My resolve to help Emily live without fear has only grown over the weekend, as I worked the whale-watching cruises and caught glimpses of her on the shore, staring out at the water like it could swallow her whole.
The guilt eating me alive demands recompense, and apparently my compensation for an early death is whales.
Also, whatever she called me in Spanish has my whole body vibrating like a tuning fork.
I push the boat faster, relishing in the hum of the engine and the way it rattles my whole frame through the steering wheel.
Emily’s sitting in the seat beside me in the small cockpit, her face a shade of green I’ve never seen on a human being before.
I can’t help the laugh that bursts out of me when she turns to me and smiles like she’s being forced at gunpoint.
I check my coordinates on our GPS again, looking for the unique little dip in the continental shelf that we visit so often on our whale watching excursions.
The deep, cold water means there’s tons of zooplankton that travel up the water column from their frigid homes to feed on the phytoplankton near the surface.
Where there are zooplankton there are the krill and other crustaceans who feed on them.
And where there are krill, there are whales.
We’re in the middle of peak humpback migration season, with pods making the long journey down from Alaska to Hawaii to spend the winter in warm waters, giving birth to two-ton babies.
These little pockets of cold water are the best places to find them fueling up for their nearly five thousand kilometer expedition.
When we get close, I slow the boat down, to Emily’s relief.
I pull the binoculars slung around my neck up to peer through and scan the horizon.
Usually I’m nervous about finding them—we certainly don’t on every whale watching cruise, much to our paying patrons’ dismay—but I’ve got a good feeling about today.
The ocean is on my side, I’m certain about it.
“Are you finding me new places to look for nettles? Because my research plan—”
“Will you be quiet?” I cut her off, the rubber of the binoculars pressed firmly around eyes. “No more nettles today.”
“No nettles? Alice, I’m on a research grant, I have to—”
This time I cut her off with a slap to the arm. She must be as surprised by the action as I am, because it effectively shuts her up. I shake my hand, willing away the feeling of her sun-warmed skin before latching on to the binoculars again.
They only really hold their breath for about ten to twenty minutes while they’re feeding. So it shouldn’t be long. Any moment now I should see…
“There,” I breathe, slipping the cord from around my neck and handing the binoculars to Emily. “Watch right there.”
She follows my direction, one hand still in a death grip on the front railing, peering through the binoculars while I creep the boat toward them.
We’re not too far, and I don’t want to drive them away with the sound of the engine, so I let the boat coast when we get close enough, the ocean itself drawing us toward the whales.
“Holy shit,” Emily whispers, and a sense of pride and possibly smugness floods my chest. My instinct is to shut it down, to downplay. But fuck that, I brought her here to witness these incredible creatures.
“I know, right?” I say, gently pushing the binoculars away from her eyes. “We’re close enough now.”
I swear her cheeks heat a little as she lets them fall.
In a predictable, wonderful cycle, the humpback whales in front of us feed.
Their rostrums slip gently above the water, gliding along until their blowholes are exposed.
The puff of their breath is so loud this close, the mist dissipating quickly into the sunlight.
As they arch to dive back into the sea, their white-spotted spines lift and curl, giving them the momentum to push their enormous bodies further into the ocean’s depths to find their meal.
At the last moment, right before they sink beneath the waves, their flukes sometimes lift above the surface.
“They’re waving.”
I was so caught up in watching my favorite animals on the face of the planet, I almost forgot Emily was right beside me.
When I turn to her, her face reflects what I heard in her voice—pure, unadulterated joy.
Her eyes are saucer-wide, her lips parted like she knows there are no words to describe what she’s seeing.
She’s not even holding the railing anymore, her hands hovering in front of her like she’s trying to reach out and touch them.
“They use the momentum from lifting their flukes to propel themselves deep into the water,” I explain, my voice barely above a whisper as the smallest of the pod—about four or five years old—starts his cycle at the surface.
“I’m gonna pretend they’re waving,” she replies, unable to peel her eyes away from the sight in front of her. I bury the smile pulling at the corners of my mouth. Emily is already strong, smart, and beautiful, I cannot also find her charming.
We watch for a few more minutes as the rest of the pod, four in total, dives beneath the surface. I know there will likely be a gap where they travel deep in the water, so I dig my sunglasses from the drawstring bag at my feet.
“Here,” I say, handing her a spare pair that I nabbed from the lost and found at the end of last season. “The polarization helps you see them underwater.”
Together we watch the surface, the silence comfortable yet tense as we try to anticipate where the whales will pop up next. Emily sees them first this time.
“Over there?” she asks, like she’s unsure. Like she’s deferring to me and my expertise. I kick the boat back on and slowly make our way in the direction of the blows.
“Good spot,” I say, tapping my elbow to her arm. Her smile is genuine when she looks at me, keeping her arm pressed to mine in an agonizing moment of contact. I’m both thankful for and pissed as hell when one of the whales lunges, pulling our attention.
Their mouths jut from the surface, opening like claws and swallowing mouthfuls of water before sinking back below, like a bobbing buoy. The birds have started to join us, clusters of them diving for the same meal as their underwater dinner partners.
“Do they swallow all of that?” Emily asks, her stomach now pressed to the helm as she leans toward the scene in front of us.
“Humpbacks are baleen whales, which means they have long filaments instead of teeth,” I explain, like I do on the tours nearly every day. “They’ll grab a mouthful of krill and small fish, and then expel the water through the filament, trapping their meal inside.”
“Fascinating,” Emily says, seeming genuinely impressed. And who wouldn’t be? These are some of the largest animals on the planet, consuming tons upon tons of some of the smallest animals on the planet.
I’ve been trying to track the members of the pod, but they’re not the group that has been hanging out here the last few weeks, so the markings are unfamiliar.
But I have noticed that only three of the whales seem to be popping up for air right now.
Which I hope means something spectacular is about to happen.
“Keep your eyes up, look wide,” I instruct, and Emily straightens out, taking everything I say seriously. I press my lips together, trying not to laugh. My chest is so full I feel like it could burst at any moment. I may not be able to show her much, but at least she’s not afraid right now.
Maybe it’s pattern recognition, or I’ve been doing this so long that the ocean recognizes me, knows I respect and love her. Because instinctually, I grab Emily’s hand and point toward a spot about twenty yards to our starboard, around three o’clock.
Right at that point, the smallest humpback launches himself from the ocean.
Emily audibly gasps as he arches from the surface, turning his body sideways and crash landing back into the water with an outsized splash. The waves rock the boat harder, and Emily reaches out with her free hand to grip the railing again. Which makes me realize I’m still holding her other hand.
She looks down at me, her smile so open and wide I swear I’ve never seen anything as beautiful. She laces her fingers with mine like she doesn’t even notice she’s doing it, her body shaking with silent laughter.
“What was that?” she asks incredulously, her tone so much higher than usual, coated in disbelief of what she saw with her own eyes.
“A breach,” I respond, my voice a little caught in my throat. “There’s lots of reasons we think they do that, but I like to believe that they’re playing with us. And each other.”
She’s not looking at the whales anymore. She’s watching my lips as they form my reply, and then her gaze sinks down to where our hands are interlocked before finding my eyes again.
“Thank you for taking me on an adventure, Pecas,” she mutters, her body suddenly so much closer to mine.
That buzzing feeling is back, so much different than the adrenaline of seeing the whales.
It’s like I’ve been electrocuted, and the current runs through her fingertips.
I wonder what they would feel like all over my body, shocking me alive over and over again.
I get a taste of my daydreams. She lets go of the railing and drags her hand across my hip, pulling me gently even closer to her, using the motion of the waves to her advantage.
I can feel her touch like a live wire through my clothes, and my vision becomes hazy with something that feels suspiciously like lust.