Chasing at the Surface

by Sharon Mentyka

  Back in my room, I push aside a pile of papers and notebooks lying in front of the chest, and pull open the bottom drawer. It’s packed tight. There was so much stuff that I had to throw out when we moved from East Sixteenth Street that I’m not sure what’s left and what got tossed, but I start looking anyway. I riffle through half-used sheets of wrapping paper, folded-up posters, paintings and watercolors from art classes. I recognize a couple of drawings that I made for Mother’s Day cards. My throat catches a little and I push them aside.

  Finally, I see what I’m looking for. Carefully, I pull it out and lay it on the bed, flattening it as well as I can on the soft surface. The title, running across the full width of the sheet, in black italic caps, stares up at me:

  L POD ADOPTION CERTIFICATE: L91 “MUNCHER”

  I sit back on my knees and breathe deeply.

  Four-year-old Muncher—the little whale Mom and I adopted—was back.

  CHAPTER 6

  Orca Day 4

  Saturday morning traffic is bumper-to-bumper on Tracyton Boulevard, the narrow winding road that hugs the inlet shoreline. Dad drums his fingers on the steering wheel. Slumped in the front seat, I fidget.

  “Just drop me off here,” I say. “I’ll walk the rest of the way.” I know if I wait much longer, I’ll be tempted to tell him to turn around and go home.

  “You sure you’re okay?”

  “I’m fine.” I wish he would stop asking me that, because the lie always feels like it’s pushing him further away.

  “Let me know if I can do anything, okay?”

  I reach behind to grab my backpack from the backseat, open the door, and step out. Should I ask him to do a U-turn and start driving south to California?

  “I’ll call later,” I say, slamming the door before Dad can ask anything else.

  After the stuffiness of the car, the cool air coming off the inlet is a relief. It’s weird seeing my usually sleepy town like this, full of people—strangers. At every side street, more cars are heading down to the water. Maybe before, it would be exciting. Right now, it just makes me feel lonely.

  “Just in time,” Lena says, running to meet me. “I thought maybe you would chicken out.” I shrug, deciding it’s better not to say anything, and follow behind as we head down to the water.

  The Tracyton boat launch is really just a poured slab of concrete, maybe twenty feet wide, added to the end of the road and angled down so that a boat can enter the water. Today, it’s jam-packed with people: some like us who are here to volunteer, but others who just seem curious. I take a steadying breath and survey all the activity.

  “Who’s that with Mr. O?”

  Lena shrugs. “Some whale guy from Friday Harbor.”

  The whale guy is tall, with broad shoulders and wild, rumpled hair. He kind of reminds me of Dad. Next to him, Mr. O’Connor looks even thinner and paler than he usually does under our classroom’s fluorescent lights. Both of them are outfitted for a big expedition, with clipboards, radios, and beepers hooked to their belts. All sorts of stuff lies scattered at their feet—a pile of life jackets, caps, water bottles, cameras. I peer down into an open box. More binoculars.

  “What exactly are we going to be doing?” I ask Lena nervously. “I thought it was just grunt work.”

  Lena shakes her head. “Not sure. I just got here.” She takes my arm and nudges us closer to the front of the group where outdoors guy is opening up a marine chart. Two kids hold it up so we can all see—a map of Dyes Inlet. “Hey, whatever it is, we’ll stick together. C’mon—”

  “This is day four, and the start of a weekend,” the whale guy explains. I can tell from his accent that he’s not from around here. Maybe somewhere in the South? “I’m sure y’all have noticed the whales’ visit has attracted just a few people.” Laughter ripples through the crowd.

  “These guys have a habit of sticking their noses into inlets all over the place.” He traces around the outline of the inlet with his pencil. “Dyes Inlet opens up like a balloon once you’re through the Narrows and past Rocky Point, but it’s still pretty confined. It’s a little too early to be alarmed, but better safe than sorry. These are big animals. They need room. We’re going to want to keep people off the water and encourage them to watch from shore instead. We’re coordinating with the National Marine Fisheries Service to help with that.”

  “Volunteers, we need your help,” Mr. O’Connor looks at us. “To load and unload the rafts, to set up barriers, to walk the shoreline and pass out whale watching guidelines, to man the info table, and generally to answer visitor questions with proficiency and aplomb, as the Orcinus orca experts I know you all are.” He pauses then grins at us. “And for those of you who are seaworthy, we’ll need help on the water too, especially tomorrow when we place the hydrophones that let us ‘listen’ to the whales.”

  I fidget and glance at Lena who’s listening closely. I should do it now. Tell her I can’t stay long.

  “Don’t worry,” the whale guy adds. “We’ll work closely with y’all, give you some training. But I’ve got a sneaky suspicion these big guys are gonna draw some crowds, so we’ll need all the helping hands we can get. Any questions?”

  “Who are you?” Lena calls out. The crowd of volunteers turns toward us, laughing, and my chance to duck out disappears. “Sorry, I was stuck in traffic,” she adds, smiling.

  “Not a problem. I’m Kevin Brooks, from the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor. My primary work with whales is behavioral—I study why they act the way they do. I’m also the ‘fin-guy’!” He sets his hand on his head and wiggles his fingers.

  Everyone is quiet, wondering what in the world he’s doing.

  “I can pretty much recognize any North Pacific orca at a glance, just by their dorsal fins,” he explains, “which I’m pretty proud of, if I do say so myself.”

  “Cool!” a familiar voice calls out. I turn and spot Harris a few heads back, standing with his little brother, Jesse.

  “Lastly, I also direct SoundKeeper,” Kevin continues. “That’s the volunteer program y’all will be helping with. Whale watching is a great opportunity to learn about marine mammals and Sound-Keeper’s mission is to teach folks how to do it right.”

  “What’s with the y’all?” Lena whispers but I shrug, distracted. “C’mon,” she says, “let’s sign up for water duty.” And she’s off like a shot to the front, not waiting for my answer. I watch her go, annoyed with myself again, when I feel something tug on my backpack.

  Jesse. His tiny face stares up at me, smiling.

  “Hell-lo Reeeesa. Reesa. Reesa!” he says in a singsong voice. He stretches his arms out for a hug.

  “Hi. Where’s Harris?” I ask, bending down and wrapping my arms around him.

  He points toward the shoreline edge. “Off!”

  “Did he leave you here alone?” I swivel around to look for Harris. Jesse just keeps smiling.

  Jesse is different. He doesn’t talk the way you’d expect from an eight-year-old. Mom knew his story. She used to talk to Dad about all the kids she worked with, trying to get them the help they needed. I try to remember exactly what she said about Jesse but can’t. Was I even listening? Thinking about it bothers me now.

  “Let’s go find him and say hi, okay?”

  Jesse smiles and nods. I take his hand and we move toward the boat launch. Jesse walks with a crooked sort of limp, the tips of his feet pointed outward. I spot Harris up ahead and quicken my pace, pulling Jesse along.

  Near the dock, Harris is bent over, pawing through the pile of bright orange life jackets on the ground, looking for one that will fit. He’s not having much luck.

  “They musta thought we were all gonna be little kids,” he jokes as Jesse runs up and parks himself on the ground between us. Harris finally settles on one that just about makes it around his chest.

  He grins at me, proud, waving a sheet of paper in my face. “We’re on the same team!”

  “What!?” I take a step back.

 
“Mr. O put me on the boat with you and Lena. He says you’re the best teacher around!”

  “We’re going out on the water … together?”

  “You bet. No way I’m gonna miss this.”

  “Do you know anything about boats?”

  “Nope,” Harris shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. Tons of people are going.” Then he laughs. “You’re going.”

  I watch him work at the life jacket buckles for a few seconds, then move closer so no one can overhear us. “What about Jesse?”

  “What about him?”

  “Who’s going to watch him?”

  “Jesse’s cool. I take him lots of places. He can come with us.”

  Harris is treating this like it’s no big deal, and it bothers me. How can he act as if everything is so—normal? Mom pops into my head again. I know what she would say. She’d tell Harris to go for it, and she’d help him out if he made mistakes.

  But who cares what Mom thinks? She’s not here.

  “They want kids who know what they’re doing,” I blurt out. “What are you going to do if Jesse gets seasick?”

  Harris freezes and stares at me.

  “What’re you trying to say?”

  “Nothing … I … I just …” I stammer, realizing how mean I must sound. “It’s just that you don’t want to wind up being—”

  “Being what?”

  I hesitate, just a second too long.

  “Being a bother?” he says.

  Harris takes a step back. He rips off his life jacket and throws it on the dock, then turns away from me. I feel the blood rush to my face.

  “Forget it,” he growls, pulling Jesse to his feet. “Wouldn’t want to be a bother to anyone, would we, Jes?” Jesse looks back and forth between us with wide black eyes.

  “Harris, no … I just thought maybe you could help somewhere else—”

  “You don’t think I can do it,” he spits out, spinning back to face me.

  “No! It’s not that—”

  “Yeah, it is.” He looks at me hard. “I thought you were different, Marisa. I thought you were like your mom.”

  I freeze, stunned to hear him bring up Mom.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? What does my mother have to do with this?”

  “She got it,” Harris says, not missing a beat. “But you don’t, do you?”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Got what?” I ask, already afraid of what he might answer.

  Harris stares at me, like I should know.

  “How it feels to be trapped. Folks look at you, get all twitchy. They can only see one thing—tomorrow’s loser.” Jesse twirls around Harris, still holding on to his hand. “At first, I thought I was imagining it or going crazy. But she said no, what I was feeling was real. People judge me before they even know me.”

  He gives me a long look. “She got it.” Then he storms off the dock, dragging Jesse behind him. I stand there shaking, his words ringing in my ears.

  All around me, people are getting ready to board the research float. It seems like only a minute has passed since I arrived at the dock and it seems like a day. Is Harris right? Was that what I was really thinking?

  The first time I met Harris, I was probably ten years old, which would have made him about twelve, my age now. Mom had taken me with her to the youth shelter where she volunteered. Mostly she kept her daytime work separate from family. But she’d talk to me and Dad about the kids she worked with at the shelter, helping them with reading and schoolwork, things like that. Once a month she spent the night, supervising any kids who were staying overnight. Kids who got kicked out of their houses or some, like Harris and Jesse, who might need a night away once in a while from a parent on a drinking binge.

  It would always be written on our kitchen calendar—the night Mom would be staying at the shelter. She’d lug her sleeping bag and a book to the car, and the next morning when I woke up she’d be back home. I remember always feeling it was as if she’d never really been gone.

  I can’t remember why I needed to go with Mom that night—maybe Dad was away on a carpentry job—but what I’ll never forget is the feeling of wanting to be someplace else, anyplace but there at that shelter with those kids who were all so … different.

  I walked behind Mom down the steps—the center was in the basement of a church hall. Through the grimy windows I could see a bunch of women and kids spreading out their sleeping bags and milling around. I stopped on the steps and wouldn’t go any further. Mom reached out her hand to me but I wouldn’t take it.

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

  “I don’t want to go in there,” I whined. I stood there and wouldn’t budge.

  “Why? It’ll be all right. I’ll be with you.” She peered in through windows that were at waist level. “Harris is here tonight! Remember I told you about him? He’s a real character … you’ll like him.”

  “I don’t want to,” I repeated, louder, meaner.

  “Can you tell me why?” she asked, still patient.

  I desperately wanted to turn and run away. Why didn’t she understand? From inside the room I heard loud laughter and shivered.

  “I’m afraid,” I finally whispered.

  Mom took a few steps back up the stairs and crouched down so that we were at eye level.

  “Marisa,” she said, “you don’t have to be afraid. The people in there are just ordinary people, like you and me. They just haven’t had the best of luck, maybe they made some bad choices. We all do. Now they just need a little extra help and somebody to believe in them is all.” She paused to let her words sink in. “It’s okay to need help, M. What’s not okay is being too afraid to ask for it, or to reject somebody because of it.”

  I had no choice. She put her arm around me and together we walked down the steps to spend the night. More than two years later, I’m still standing on those steps, except Mom isn’t here to help. Now all the choices are mine.

  Harris and Jesse are already halfway back up the hill, Jesse running fast to keep up. At the top of the street, he turns around for one last look.

  “Bye, Reeesa!” he yells down when he sees me watching, and smiles his big, innocent smile.

  I sink down onto the grass, feeling like I might cry. Whatever energy I started out with this morning is completely gone now.

  I messed up again, didn’t I? First Mom, then Dad. Now Harris.

  I’m not even sure I know what I’m fighting for anymore.

  CHAPTER 7

  Marisa? What’s wrong?” Lena is suddenly at my side.

  “Not now….” Sitting on the cold ground, I try to stop my body from shaking. My eyes sting and my chest feels like it will burst. “Just leave me alone.”

  “No,” Lena whispers. “I’ve told you a million times. I won’t leave you alone.” She looks around. “Where’s Harris?”

  Harris is gone, and he’s right. Mom believed his story. It’s me who doesn’t believe it—his story or hers. Me.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I shake my head, “you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Try me,” I hear Lena say. She pauses. “This is about your mom, isn’t it? Tell me what happened.”

  I shake my head again, but she plops down beside me and waits. This time I know she won’t let me off the hook.

  “She left,” I finally say. I can’t look at her, but at least I’ve answered.

  “Well, duh, I know that. I’m asking why. C’mon … you’ll feel better if you talk about it.”

  “She just left. I don’t know why.”

  “Marisa …” Lena sighs, exasperated. “There has to be more to the story than ‘she just left.’ What did she say?”

  I shrug and look away, across the bright expanse of the inlet stretching out in front of us, suddenly wondering where Muncher is right now.

  “You didn’t ask her?” Lena guesses.

  “It … it all happened so fast. One day she was there and then the next she was gone. I mean, I guess she tried to tell me … she wanted to ta
lk the night before she left. And she sent me some letters.…”

  “And?” Lena stares at me with wide eyes.

  I pause, not understanding.

  “Her letters—what did she say in them?”

  “I don’t know,” I whisper. “I never read them.”

  “Well, hello!” Lena practically shouts. “That might be a good place to start.”

  I ignore her, hugging my knees closer to my chest.

  She lets out a long breath. “Okay … what about your dad? What did he tell you?”

  “He wants me to trust her,” I shrug. “We haven’t really talked much more about it.…” There’s a long pause as Lena takes in all this new information. It’s the first time I’ve really told her anything. Suddenly, she jumps to her feet.

  “I don’t get it! I don’t get you!” she says, raising her voice in frustration. “How can you not talk about where your mom is? My mother grills my dad when he goes camping for a weekend! Do you even know if she’s coming back?”

  “Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it?” I yell back at her, mad now for letting her drag me into talking. “Forget it. I told you you wouldn’t understand.” I glance over at the launch. “Just go already. They’re getting ready to leave.” I jump up and walk away quickly.

  “Marisa!”

  But I’m already gone.

  ––––

  I stumble along the shoreline trying to calm down. It doesn’t work. All I want is for my life to be back the way it was—simple, ordinary, normal. What’s so wrong with that? A wave of tiredness washes over me. The inlet and the beach look raw and dangerous, not inviting at all. I sink down on the sand and stay there for a long time.

  Dozens of boats crowd the water, some chugging on a north-south route, others just drifting. I start counting but lose track after forty-five. Every imaginable kind of vessel is out there—even some canoes and kayaks from Mud Bay. Farther down the inlet, almost to the bridge, I spot the bright orange inflatable research raft.

  “Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” says a voice nearby and I jump.