Willa and the Whale

by Chad Morris

  I waited. “Then what?” I finally asked.

  “Then you might not be my friend anymore.”

  “Not be your friend?” I asked. “Why would I not be your friend?”

  He just shook his head.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m your friend—no matter what your problem is. And I need you to be my friend.” I was surprised I was being this honest. “And I understand not wanting to talk about stuff, but when you’re ready, I’ll listen.” I sounded like my dad. “I may even understand a little.” I pushed him playfully on the shoulder, just like we used to do a long time ago.

  “Thanks,” Marc said and pushed me back. It was probably a little strong, but I didn’t mind. “But is there like . . . anything else I can do?” he asked.

  I took a few more steps. “You already bought me one of the best cookies on the island,” I said, and flashed him my blue teeth.

  He smiled. And then I told him all about my mom.

  Willa Twitchell, Journal #4, one year ago

  I’ve heard all sorts of rumors and crazy ideas about the ocean. Like it’s deepest in the middle, or it’s blue because it reflects the sky. Both false. But when I hear a rumor, I have to look it up to see if it’s true or not.

  By my last class, everyone was talking about a huge dead whale that had washed up. I think it probably started yesterday, but the news spread like algae bloom.

  And there was a rumor about Blue. A rumor I hated. A rumor I had to know if it was true.

  When the last bell rang, I jumped on my bike and rode like a sailfish.

  Marc was right behind me.

  But as we pulled up to the turnout off the highway, something was very different. Cars. Lots of them. There were never cars here.

  We leapt down the rocks, looking at the site of our normally empty beach overrun with spectators and gawkers.

  Coming down, I almost bumped right into an older lady who had stopped to catch her breath on the way back up. That was awkward.

  I figured that people would eventually find out about it but it still felt nuts. Nobody was here this morning and now BOOM! Word travels fast on an island.

  I didn’t like it.

  Blue wasn’t a spectacle. He was an amazing creature who had passed away from a sad accident.

  The crowd was taking pictures and pointing. To them it was like they were on a whale watch again. But it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t be anything close.

  He looked worse than he did before, all limp and lying still in the hot sun.

  Inside the caution tape, a group of people took pictures and measurements and held clipboards and talked. They didn’t look very experty, no special uniforms or anything. And the one guy’s long hair, jacket, and boots made him look a lot more ready to break out into a guitar solo than worry about beached whales.

  “Your whale doesn’t smell so good,” Marc said, his nose wrinkling. He was right. Now that the sun had been shining on him for hours, and he had been dead for a day and a half, he had started to stink a little. And it would only get worse.

  “You wouldn’t either if it were you,” I said. Then I sniffed. “Maybe you don’t smell so good now.”

  He playfully punched me in the shoulder. I was proud of myself that I could joke about it, even a little. Yesterday morning I had been a wreck. “Maybe it’s you and not the whale,” I teased.

  Another punch, this time a little less playful.

  I walked right up to the caution tape. “Excuse me,” I said to the closest woman, “can I talk to you for a minute?” No one inside the tape seemed too bothered by the smell. Maybe they were used to it.

  A tan woman with black curly hair turned around. “Umm, I guess.” She motioned to the man she was working with to wait for her. “What’s up?” There was a clip to her voice that made it clear she was busy.

  “Hi, I’m Willa Twitchell.” I put out my hand. “I found this whale and called it in.”

  She put both of her hands up to indicate they weren’t clean enough for a shake. “Okay.” And that’s all she said. No “thank you.” Nothing. She seemed snooty. I didn’t like her.

  “I heard a rumor I need to confirm,” I said. “Or hopefully not.” The idea of the rumor bothered me and I needed to find out how true it was.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t have time to—”

  She was going to cut me off like I was a little kid asking stupid questions. “My mother was a marine biologist—” I blurted out. “—Maylan Twitchell.” The stings started up but then Marc put his hand on my shoulder and calmness poured over the pain.

  The woman was silent for a moment. “I knew your mom. She taught me at Northwest. I’m sorry.” Probably anyone who worked with sea creatures in this area knew my mom.

  “I’m sorry too,” I said, but now she was listening. “What’s going to happen next? To the whale?” Something was going to have to be done about a huge dead whale on the beach. And I didn’t like what I had heard.

  “Well,” the woman said, “it’s complicated. This beach is hard to get to, and far away from town. It doesn’t leave us many choices of what to do with the whale. I think the best thing to do is just to let it decompose on the beach, but some of the residents and the city don’t like that idea. So, we are going to let the city propose how to dispose of the whale.”

  Decompose? Dispose? I hated the idea of both words. But the second one especially. Like Blue was a broken piece of furniture or a gum wrapper or something. But neither of these ideas were the rumor.

  “Could we bury it?” I asked. That seemed like the best option to me.

  “Well, this is tricky,” she said. “Sometimes we can bury the animals, but this cove doesn’t have access for a backhoe to get down here. Even then, I’m not sure this beach is big enough to bury this whale and not have it come back up again as the beach erodes.”

  I had thought of that. “What about burying it somewhere else?” I asked.

  “We’d need huge boats or a giant truck and some cranes to get it off the beach.” I tried to picture what they would look like, giant metal cranes over my cove. “And access that way would be hard too. We don’t have many options.”

  Marc piped in, “I heard they were thinking about cutting it up and towing the pieces out to sea, or even exploding it.” There were the rumors. Nasty, gross rumors.

  “Maybe,” she said, “but I hope it’s not the explosion. We don’t want Oregon in 1976 all over again.”

  “No,” I said, though I didn’t know about Oregon in 1976. I just didn’t want exploding.

  She smiled. “Well, that is what the city meeting is for. They are going to hold it next week. I guess that’s the regular time the council meets and this whale isn’t going anywhere.” She pointed at Blue. “Go and tell them what’s on your mind.” She only confirmed what we’d heard.

  I had to go to that meeting. There had to be a better way. Blue needed to have a respectable send-off. He was special to someone out there in the ocean. Missed. He was special to me. He needed to be treated right, remembered right.

  “I’d bet we’re going to be at the city meeting,” Marc said.

  I nodded. “But what are we going to tell them?”

  I had no idea, but Blue wasn’t going to be exploded. Not on my watch.

  Willa Twitchell, Journal #5, today

  Today I heard a story that I really, really, really, really, really, really, really, hoped wasn’t true.

  It was.

  Marc and I came in through my front door and walked past Nadia and Garth watching cartoons. An empty popcorn bowl lay on the couch between them.

  I didn’t even slow down. We had something to look up. I needed to understand all of our options. Even the bad ones.

  I moved into the study where the family computer sat on a white desk. I was a girl on a mission.

  �
��Okay,” I said, sitting at the desk. I typed in Oregon whale 1976 and it worked. There was clip after clip of the same news broadcast. “Which one do we choose?” I asked.

  No one answered.

  I turned around. Where was Marc? He was walking right behind me a few seconds ago.

  I peeked back into the TV room and Marc was talking to Nadia and Garth. Garth leaned over the armrest. Nadia held the popcorn bowl and stood on the couch so she could talk to Marc face to face. Caleb was there too. I hadn’t noticed him at first because he was playing with baby Hannah in the corner.

  “Come on, Marc,” I said. “What’s the hold up?”

  He raised his hand. “Be right there.” He turned to Nadia. “So we went to investigate and there were professionals there and they said that they are trying to figure out what to do with the whale. And one option is to explode it.”

  “No way,” Caleb said, his eyes big. “Like a whalesplosion?”

  Nadia was pulling popcorn kernels out of the bowl and trying to throw them in Marc’s mouth while he spoke. Nobody was watching television anymore.

  Marc closed his mouth quickly, swallowing a laugh. “Whalesplosion? Maybe,” he said, leaning down towards Garth to avoid Nadia’s kernels. He was really great to deal with all their kookiness. “That’s why we’re here. We’re going to look into it.”

  “Whalesplosion,” Nadia said and made an explosion sound. Soon all of my stepsiblings were doing it.

  “Come on, Marc,” I said, pulling on his arm.

  “Okay, I’ve got to go,” he told my stepsibs and let me drag him toward the study.

  “Bye,” they all said, waving the best they could without stopping their explosions.

  When I finally succeeded in bringing Marc into the next room, I closed the door behind us. No use trying to research with utter chaos popping their heads in.

  “Sorry,” Marc said, “your brother asked you a question and I don’t think you heard it.”

  “Really?” He had asked something? Then again, when I got super focused on something I sometimes didn’t even notice that I needed to eat. The idea of an exploding whale had me super, super focused.

  Soon enough we were both sitting in front of the computer looking at the search results.

  “Whoa,” Marc said. “Someone actually exploded a whale. Click on it.”

  I clicked. The video looked old. Like when-my-Grandpa-Twitchell-wore-bell-bottoms old. Some reporter with thick blond hair started, “It had to be said that the Oregon State Highway Division had a whale of a problem on its hands. It had a stinking whale of a problem.” Very punny. I rolled my eyes, but Marc laughed.

  The reported continued, “What to do with one forty-five-foot, eight-ton whale, dead on arrival on a beach near Florence?” In the background was a heap of a whale. Much smaller than Blue, but still big. The poor thing. I wondered how it died, and whether the news ever wanted to do a story on it when it was alive and amazing.

  “It had been so long since a whale had washed up in Lane County that no one remembered how to get rid of one. In selecting its battle plan, the highway division decided that it couldn’t be buried, for it would soon be uncovered. It couldn’t be cut up and then buried because no one wanted to cut it up, and it couldn’t be burned.”

  Burned. I hadn’t thought of that. Would that be a proper goodbye? Maybe. But how long would a whale with that much blubber burn for? Could you even light it on fire?

  “So dynamite it was,” the reporter said. And then the video showed the dynamite. Case after case of it.

  I shuddered.

  “Tell me this is fake.” I said.

  “I don’t think it is,” Marc said, shaking his head.

  The reporter explained how they were going to do it. The plan was to completely annihilate the dead whale. Most pieces would simply be totally disintegrated, and what was left they hoped that the seagulls, crabs, and other scavengers would pick up off the beach.

  “Whoa,” Marc said. “Okay, that is a pretty crazy way to go.”

  I shook my head. “It’s wrong.”

  According to the newscast, some seventy-five people came to watch the whale explode.

  “I would totally go watch that,” Marc said.

  “Gross,” I said and hit him on the arm.

  “Oh, you’d be there too,” he said. I tried to hit him on the arm again, but he moved.

  The reporter talked more. I still couldn’t believe they were actually going to do it. The camera pulled back for the long shot. The sand, the water, the whale, the dune of grass waving in the wind. It all looked peaceful. And then—

  BOOM!

  They did it.

  For real.

  Sand rocketed in every direction, filling the screen in a split second. An explosion. A legitimate whale explosion on a beach.

  “Whoa,” Marc said again.

  And then . . . it sounded like it was raining. The people around the camera started talking, and then their voices rose to shouts. The raining got harder.

  I gasped.

  Blubber.

  It was raining blubber.

  Pieces of the whale were falling from the sky.

  “Oh, no,” I said.

  “It’s raining . . . whale,” Marc said in disbelief.

  The camera cut back to the reporter. “Our camera stopped rolling after the blast. The humor of the situation suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere.”

  “This is insane,” Marc said.

  One huge piece totally destroyed the top of a car.

  “We’ve got to do better than this,” I said. I would not let anyone explode Blue.

  Willa Twitchell, Journal #5, today

  I got something today that I didn’t expect. Something I’m not sure I’m ready for.

  A package.

  I just stared at it, a white box with papers taped to the top. It was from Japan and addressed to me. From Kanagawa, where I used to live.

  It was like a gift from the past.

  Masha had brought it in to the office and was watching over my shoulder. My dad was there, too. In fact, I think Masha got it earlier and had waited for my dad. Marc had to go home and I was still trying to think of what to do about Blue.

  “Is it your birthday day?” Nadia asked, spinning on the office chair.

  I cut the tape and looked inside, so curious that I didn’t answer Nadia’s question. On top was an envelope with my name on it. I recognized the handwriting right away. Chihiro, the woman who’d cared for me when I couldn’t be with my mom.

  I lifted up the letter and found a few boxes of chocolate Pocky sticks, and a small bag of Konpeitōs, my favorite sugar candy.

  “Can I have some of these?” Nadia asked.

  “I want some too,” Caleb said. Then Garth entered the mix. They’d all come into the office.

  I didn’t want to share. These were for me, pieces from a great time in my life. But I wasn’t sure how I was going to have kids see candy and not try some. I handed a box of Pocky sticks to Masha. “You guys can share these.” All the kids jumped up and down with excitement.

  “You can have one now,” Masha said, “but the rest we save until after dinner. Tell your sister thank you.”

  They all said thank you in near unison. It almost made giving up some Japanese treats worth it.

  But when I pulled out the rest of the candy, there was something underneath, wrapped in paper. A book. I pulled it out and unwrapped it. And I almost stopped breathing.

  A simple, leather-bound book. I touched it softly, like it was an antique. If it was what I thought, to me it was priceless.

  “You got a book for your birthday day?” Nadia asked.

  I think I nodded, but I’m not completely sure. I opened the first page and saw my mom’s handwriting. It
was like she was here.

  It’s time to start another journal, but this one is going to be different than all those before. In this one, my life has changed forever. I have a little girl.

  I shut it. My emotions were so jumbled and so big that I knew if I read more I would probably melt. I just held it for a minute then set it down. I would read it later. When I was ready. And I would read it over and over, just like her others.

  I opened the letter from Chihiro:

  Dear Willa,

  This journal was found in a small drawer in your mother’s office. You should have it.

  I have been thinking about you recently as we have been planning here for Obon. You went to a few Obon festivals here with your mother. Do you remember? It’s the holiday where we honor our ancestors. We dance for them, we feed them, we spend time thanking them? This one is extra special for me because I have been missing your mother a lot.

  Your mother will be close in my heart the whole time.

  I have included a lantern for you. We light the lanterns so that our ancestors can find us. If you’d like, you can light the lantern and then express gratitude for your mother. And she can find you.

  Know that I will be dancing my very best for her here in Japan.

  I miss you very much. I hope you are healthy and happy in America.

  Best wishes,

  Chihiro

  I remembered Obon. There were lanterns set up around a podium and musicians and dancers. So many dancers. I remembered yakatori chicken and chocolate-dipped bananas. Even though it was a festival for the dead, I don’t think I saw one person crying there. They were happy. All of my memories of Obon were happy.

  I checked the bottom of the box and sure enough, there was a paper lantern all folded up.

  I loved Chihiro.

  I sat there looking through my gifts and wondering if I should read the journal.

  Soon, it was only my dad and I left in the room. Now that there weren’t any more presents to open and the kids had candy, they had run off. Masha went with them.