A Possibility of Whales

by Karen Rivers

  “I heard it’s your birthday,” he stage-whispered. “I’ve got something great planned. But first, a private talk. You and me.”

  “A talk?”

  “We’ll be back in time to go see them whales, don’t worry.”

  “I’m not worried,” she lied, but she was.

  Just a little.

  There were a lot of things that “little talks” could be about, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for any of them.

  In fact, she was pretty sure she wasn’t.

  “Get your sneakers on,” he said. “Meet you out back in ten.”

  “Got it,” she said. “Shower, Dad. I mean it. I’ll give you fifteen. You need to do a lot of washing.”

  “Well, there’s a lot of me to wash!” he said, slapping her on the back.

  “DAD,” she said. “OUCH.” But it hadn’t really hurt.

  Nat went back to her room. It was so nice in there, tidy and cool and spacious. So spacious! Their whole trailer could fit in there. Also, there was something about air-conditioning that made the room feel as though it were holding its breath.

  She sighed and sat down on the bed. She picked up her phone. The cool air made the phone feel extra cool, too. She pressed it against her cheek, and then she tried the Bird’s number again. This time, she knew that the Bird wasn’t going to answer, so she wasn’t surprised when she didn’t. Nat felt empty, like the unanswered ring was echoing inside her, even after she shut it off.

  Nat stood up and slipped the phone into her pocket, just in case.

  The Bird must know her number—she must at least have caller ID, Nat figured.

  But the Bird had never ever, not even once, called her.

  Nat took that thought and examined it. She tried not to let that hurt her feelings, but it was hard not to. Then she imagined the Bird exclaiming, “My Baleine!” when she called, and the hurt went away.

  She hoped the Bird was OK.

  Maybe she was on vacation.

  Maybe she was at a beach, watching whales.

  Better yet, maybe she was diving, like she had told Nat she used to do, with her camera in her hand, filming a humpback whale, twisting in the sun’s rays.

  Nat swallowed. She felt like crying, but she didn’t know why she felt like crying.

  Stop it, she told herself.

  Nat went downstairs. Her dad was already there, waiting for her, wearing her backpack, which was so tiny on him, it looked like a toy. He smiled when he saw her. She could swear that when he smiled, she could see every single one of his teeth.

  He really had a massive amount of teeth. Like more teeth than most people, probably. It was probably some kind of medical condition.

  “Do you think you have more than the normal amount of teeth?” she asked him. “Has a dentist ever mentioned anything?”

  “Nope. But I don’t know! Want to count?”

  “No! I was joking! I do not want to count your teeth! Just stop showing them to me. It’s, like, aggressively happy.”

  Her dad laughed. “Yep yep,” he said. “Will do, Natters. Mental note: No smiling. Check.” He grinned again. “Oh, sorry, my bad.”

  “Give me my backpack, at least. You look pretty ridiculous, Dad. Ridiculous and aggressively happy, both.”

  “No way, kiddo,” he said. “It’s heavy. I brought”—he held up his fingers and started counting on them—“one, two, three, four, five bottles of water. In case we get thirsty. We gotta stay hydrated in this heat! And two of the World’s Best Sandwiches, made by yours truly.”

  “And that means I can’t carry the backpack?” she said.

  “It means the backpack is heavy,” he said. “I don’t have all these muscles for nothing. That would be a waste.”

  “Fine,” she said. Then she mumbled, “I can’t help it if you want to look ridic.”

  “Oh, I look ridic? How about now?” He put on her hot pink baseball cap, the one with a sprinkle of purple glitter on the brim. “Do I still look ridic?”

  “Dad! Give me my hat! Yes, you do!” He held it up out of reach. “I’m not jumping for that hat!” she said, jumping. She feinted with her right fist, then jabbed his abs with her left. He folded over and she grabbed the hat, triumphant. “Ha!” she said.

  “Ha yourself,” he said. “I’m still carrying the pack.”

  “I didn’t want to carry it anyway,” Nat told him.

  She liked this part, when it was just her and her dad.

  This felt right.

  This felt normal.

  She hadn’t seen Harry yet that morning. He must have gotten up and moved downstairs sometime in the night, because he was gone when she woke up. Maybe he was sleeping in. He sometimes did that.

  Harry, like Nat, wasn’t a morning person.

  Thinking about Harry made Nat remember the night before, and how her heart had whistled. She wanted to unfeel that feeling.

  And she wanted to feel it again.

  The Talk

  Nat and her dad started walking toward the beach.

  Just like at home, it was at the bottom of a sloping piece of property, but here there were no ancient Douglas firs or salal to wade through. “Look!” Nat’s dad grabbed her shoulder. He pointed. Through the fronds of a palm tree, the sun’s rays were splayed out like an outstretched hand.

  “Komorebi!” she told him. Komorebi was a Japanese word for exactly what they could see: the sunlight streaming through the trees.

  “Kohlrabi,” he said. “Man, I never thought kohlrabi was that beautiful.”

  “DAD, kohlrabi is a vegetable. Komorebi is when the sun does that in the trees. It’s Japanese,” she added.

  “Interesting,” he said, pretending to write it down.

  “Dad! I won’t tell you stuff like this if you’re going to be goofy about it!”

  “I’m just kidding with you, Natter-Bat. You know that.”

  Nat swatted him on the back.

  “Hey! Watch the sandwiches!” He ran on his tiptoes a few feet, then ducked behind the palm tree, just like he did in the blockbuster dinosaur movie T-REX: WRATH OF THE KING.

  “Dad!” she yelled. “Watch out for dinosaurs! You are in no way hidden by that skinny tree!”

  He stuck his arms out on both sides of the trunk and did the wave with them. “I’m invisible!” he yelled.

  Nat giggled and kept walking. All along the slope, small purple flowers were growing. “Wild disarray,” she murmured. She could hear her dad thumping down the hill behind her.

  “BOO!”

  “Dad! What are you doing?”

  “Well, kiddo, I’m glad you asked. What we’re doing is that we’re birthdaying! Plus, exploring. Looking for ways to find ourselves in this new place! This is amazing! Amazing! Right?” He took a deep lungful of air. “Smell that!”

  She sniffed. “It smells like the sea. And whatever these flowers are.”

  “How did you get so wise?” He shook his head in wonder. “MY DAUGHTER IS A GENIUS!” he shouted into the trees. He sniffed deeply. “It also smells like sweat, kiddo. Did you shower today?”

  “Ha ha,” she said.

  “Did you?”

  “Shut up, Dad!”

  “You shut up,” he said. He lowered his voice. “Seriously, Nat-a-Tat,” he said. “I know I’m not good at talking about, you know, girl things, but I got you some deodorant. It’s natural. Now that you’re thirteen. Well, you know. I don’t want you using none of that aluminum stuff. I was going to wrap it up, but I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your friend. It’s just that when you get close to puberty, it’s like your body—”

  “OK! ENOUGH! DAD! Stop! I get it. Fine, I stink. I’ll use the deodorant. Thank you. Now please shut up.”

  He was wrong about what it smelled like out here, anyway.

  To Nat, it
smelled like secrets—oceany and fresh and salty.

  They were on the beach now. The sand was burning, even through her sneakers. Nat could hear her pulse and the sound of her feet thumping down on the gravelly sand. Off to the right, she could see the Brasches on their beach chairs. Mr. Brasch was reading a book under a huge umbrella. Mrs. Brasch looked like she’d dipped her whole body in oil, and she was working on her tan. The last thing that Nat wanted to do was make conversation with the Brasches.

  “Let’s go that way!” She steered her dad in the opposite direction.

  “Sure thing, kiddo,” he said. He seemed a little nervous. Maybe even jumpy. She wondered why. Had he seen a paparazzo? He kept looking over his shoulder, like he was expecting to see someone following them.

  Nat started to run. He ran along with her.

  Basically, the only thing that ever scared her dad were the paps.

  And for good reason.

  Nat stopped running when she ran out of breath and sat down in the sand. It was hot, but she didn’t care.

  “What are you doing?” said her dad. He wasn’t even slightly winded. Well, duh. The man worked out for six hours a day. His lungs were the size of bathtubs probably.

  “This seemed like a good place,” she gasped.

  “Nah, too exposed. Let’s move into the shade, at least.” He pointed toward some palm trees.

  “Fine, have it your way.”

  They trudged silently toward the spot. “Come on, Dad. What is this big talk about? You’re making me nervous,” she said, when she could breathe again.

  “Sandwiches first! Like they say, you should never have a talk on an empty stomach!”

  Nat stopped walking, and her dad crashed right into her from behind. “Who?” she said. “Who says that?”

  “Everyone!” He laughed his gigantic, booming laugh.

  Nat rolled her eyes. “Here?” she said.

  “Sure,” he answered.

  Nat flopped down in the shade and took one of the water bottles that he held out. She unscrewed the lid and gulped three times without stopping. Then she hiccupped.

  “Dad,” she said, when the hiccups stopped.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “I’m really sorry about San Francisco,” she said.

  “It’s OK,” he said. “You couldn’t have known. I do not blame you for it. Not even a little. None of it was your fault, Natters. I hope you know that. But man, that must’ve hurt. Turns out Solly wasn’t such a good friend, selling you out like that. You didn’t deserve that! That’s gotta be a hard thing to deal with when you’re a kid.”

  Nat swallowed. “She is a good friend. I think she did it for her mom. I think they just needed—”

  “You should never have been in that position! I hate that these guys prey on you. It won’t happen again.” Nat could tell he was getting worked up. He was doing that thing with his jaw.

  “Calm down, Dad! I’m sorry, that’s all. I was thinking about it and I wanted to say that.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I guess maybe I’ve got to forgive Solly,” she said. “Remember how you said that staying mad at someone was like holding on to a hot coal and hoping that the other person got burned?”

  “Did I say that? It sounds really wise. Man, I’m good.”

  “Ha ha.”

  “Forgiveness is a big part about feeling OK with yourself. I get that.”

  “So I should forgive her?”

  “Yep yep.”

  Nat took a bite of her sandwich. It was delicious, layers of avocado and tomato and thick bacon. Her dad ate his in about two bites. “You done?”

  “Dad! I’ve taken, like, one bite. I don’t have a huge mouth like you.”

  “Oh.” He got up and stretched his arms and legs. “I’ll be right back.” He bounded down to the place where the water was breaking. Before she knew it, he was in up to his knees and splashing around. He waved at her and then leaned backward, disappearing into a wave.

  “You’re getting your clothes wet!” Nat shouted. Sometimes she wondered who was the parent. She was torn between feeling annoyed with him and wanting to jump in there with him.

  “Wait up!” she yelled. But she still didn’t get up.

  He threw his hands into the air. “The water here is AMAZING!” he shouted.

  “Amazing” made her think of mazes cut perfectly out of topiary hedges, like one that she and her dad had gotten lost in somewhere in England the previous summer. When they finally, laughing, stumbled on the statue in the middle, a photographer leapt out from behind the hedgerow and nearly scared her to death. She’d actually peed her pants, and then she’d cried. The picture of her crying showed up on a magazine under the headline, “XAN THE MAN: SHOUTS ABUSE AT SICK DAUGHTER, PASSERSBY EXPRESS CONCERN.” The photo zoomed in on the wet patch on her jeans. That wet patch photo made her want to die.

  It was kind of amazing that she’d made any friends at all after that, actually, she thought.

  Nat dropped her shoulders a little. The weight of remembering stuff like that was sometimes as heavy as an actual thing on her back. She took a deep breath in and held it. Her dad was walking back toward her, water pouring off his jean shorts. He looked ridiculous. Then he turned and galloped into the waves again like a demented pony. She took another bite of her sandwich and chewed.

  Maybe she’d go in after she was done.

  Maybe she wouldn’t.

  The thing at the maze in England was nothing compared to the Thing That Solly Did.

  The Thing that Nat was going to forgive her for as soon as she got back to the house. She had bought another pile of postcards in town. She would write on one of them, I FORGIVE YOU.

  She wondered if Solly cared, if she was waiting for forgiveness, or if she really thought everything was fine. Or worse, if she’d forgotten about the whole thing.

  The postcard had a picture of a surfing frog on it.

  In French, the word for frog was grenouille.

  There was a lump in her throat that was not sandwich; it was sadness. She swallowed until she felt like she could breathe again.

  She thought about the Thing.

  The Thing that needed forgiving.

  The Thing she was going to now (hopefully) forget.

  Forgive and forget went together. Everyone knew that.

  It had happened behind the Airstream in the director’s backyard.

  Solly and Nat were in the garden. They went there a lot, after school. Sometimes they played. Sometimes they just sat at the old wrought iron table and talked. It was an uncomfortable table. You couldn’t lean on it. It was too lumpy and rusty.

  They were sitting at the table when Solly reached into her backpack and took out the pack of cigarettes. She did it so casually that Nat at first didn’t realize what it even was. Then she did a double take.

  “Whoa,” she said. “What is that?”

  “Duh,” said Solly. “You know.”

  “Cigarettes?” whispered Nat. “Why do you have those?”

  “Why are we whispering?” whispered Solly. “Yes!” she added in her normal voice. “Cigarettes.” She looked at Nat and laughed. “Don’t look so worried! They’re clove. Cloves are plants, right?”

  “Lots of things are plants. That doesn’t mean we should smoke them.”

  “You don’t have to. But I’m going to.”

  Nat hesitated. “But . . . why?” She looked around the garden at all the stuff they usually did. Right behind them was the fort they had built partway up the huge Japanese maple tree, hidden in the leaves. Over by the fountain was the huge chalk drawing that they had started on Tuesday. “I don’t really want to.”

  Solly rolled her eyes. “They’re my mom’s. Would Mom smoke them if they were bad?”

  The girls both stared at the cigarettes.


  “Probably,” said Nat, breaking the silence. “I think she would.”

  “You think you’re so great,” said Solly. “I should just go.” But she didn’t move, she just kept looking at Nat.

  “I have asthma,” Nat lied.

  “Liar.” Solly had recently added dark blue and green highlights to her hair. It glittered like a mermaid’s tail. She lowered her voice. “I think you’re chicken.”

  “So what if I am?”

  “I should have known you wouldn’t. Hailey said—”

  “Hailey said something about me? I’m sure it was dumb. Hailey hates me.”

  “Hailey’s OK,” said Solly. “Look, you’re leaving, right? So I have to have someone to be friends with.”

  “But Hailey? Ugh! You can do way better, Sol.”

  “Sometimes I don’t know why you and me are even friends,” said Solly. “You’re so square.”

  Solly had never talked to her like that before. Square! Did people even say that anymore? It sounded like something Solly’s mom would say. Nat didn’t really understand what was happening.

  “Fine!” Nat said. She grabbed the cigarette box and held it up. It was surprisingly light. “I’ll smoke your stupid cigarette! What is wrong with you?”

  “Nothing.” Solly smiled. “I was kidding.”

  Solly reached across the table and took the box out of Nat’s hand. Nat felt like she was in a bad movie. “Smoking is dumb!” was obviously the moral of this one, but she reached her hand out and took out a cigarette. It felt funny in her fingers, like a featherlight, papery pen. She put it between her lips. It smelled like tea. Not so bad. She inhaled deeply.

  Solly laughed. “It’s not even lit!” she said. “You’re ridic!”

  “You’re ridic!” said Nat. “I was just practicing.”

  Solly rolled her eyes. “I don’t think it’s a hard thing to learn.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a lighter.

  “Where did you get that?” The lighter somehow made the whole thing real. Real and terrible.

  Nat thought about all the things that could happen. She could imagine the whole garden burning to the ground. What then? Or her dad appearing and seeing her smoking. Then his face would get that devastated, sad look and her heart would literally break into a million pieces.