Page 17 of Waters that Drown Us

And finally, I get a smile.

Chapter 9

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 meansthere’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 theboat 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,Ibrought 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 barelyabove 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.”