He grins. “Of course not. You were hot.Arehot.”
I roll my eyes, but we’re smiling at each other.
“It was pretty confusing, having a best friend as beautiful as you are,” he says.
Am I shallow if this is my new favorite compliment? Another time, I’m going to ask George to tell me about all the moments he’s felt confused, and I’ll do the same. A promise for a promise.
The Zodiac picks up the pace, leaping over the water as it heads out past Vargas Island, past three sea lions perched on a rocky shore. A group of seals swims right up to the edge of the boat and performs for us, diving and dancing, showing off. We see tufted puffins, bald eagles, and dozens of sea otters floating on their backs around a small rocky island. We coo about how adorable they are, and then our guide tells us stories about how vicious these creatures are, and we all look at the otters in horror. Even though the scenery is spectacular, my eyes continue to find their way back to George’s.
I reach for his hand and braid our fingers together. He looks down at me and pulls my knuckles to his lips, laying a kiss there.The Pacific unfolds in front of us, the mountains rise behind, and it feels like I’m home. I rest my head on George’s shoulder and stare out at the ocean.
And then we see the whale.
• • •
A puff ofmist shoots out of the sea in the distance. The captain, Joe, points it out.
“There have been sightings of three gray whales feeding here today,” he says. “Let’s see if we can get eyes on all of them.”
I hold my breath as we get closer, and our guide turns off the engine again. Everyone is silent. The only sound is the slosh of water against the sides of the boat, until another spray erupts closer to us. It’s shockingly loud. We all lean forward, narrowing our eyes and focusing on the surface. Two more exhalations follow and then a massive dark creature emerges, first its barnacle-covered back and then a flash of its giant mottled tail. I stare, utterly transfixed.
“Another at five o’clock,” Joe says.
A second gray whale appears, and mist belches from its blowhole. I shake my head in awe as its tail waves and then slides back into the ocean. The third whale surfaces on the other side of the boat. We’re surrounded by a family of gray whales. They are monstrous, terrifying, and undeniably majestic. I’m trying to commit every detail to memory so I can tell my mom.
“In this part of the North Pacific,” Joe says, “grays were once near extinction, but conservation efforts have helped the population recover and stabilize. Now about twenty thousand visit these waters every year to feed on krill and plankton.”
Twenty thousand whales. The number is extraordinary. Mom stopped telling me about her beloved right whales when she came home, but every once in a while, a headline catches my eye. I know the North Atlantic right whale population is little more than three hundred.
They’ve never recovered from the commercial whaling that decimated the population in the 1700s and 1800s. That’s how they got their name—they were the right whales to hunt because their bodies floated after they’d been killed.
Researchers now meticulously record right whale sightings, entanglements, and offspring in a data bank. Whales are recognized by their markings as well as the scars and injuries they have sustained from being entangled in lobster trap fishing lines and being hit by boats—two of the most common causes of right whale deaths. Each whale is given a catalog number, and some get names, like Snow Cone, Monarch, and Cashew, that are reflective of the shape of their scars.
There’s only one whale named Francesca. Catalog number 1950. When I was little, my mom would tell me when Francesca was sighted during her Atlantic migration. Sometimes she had a calf swimming alongside her. One of the challenges for the species’ survival is that very few females are reproductively active. Francesca is one of the seventy or so who are still having babies. A prize whale.
I wonder where my namesake whale is now and whether she’s reached her summertime feeding grounds. She could be on Cape Cod or maybe in the Bay of Fundy.
The whales surface one at a time every five minutes with tremendous eruptions of ocean spray—great prehistoric gasps.Their choreography is graceful despite their size. It’s the most humbling experience of my life—what I imagine it would feel like to sit before a god.
I hear my mom’s voice, whispering my favorite bedtime story as she sat on the edge of my bed.
It was the funniest thing to share her name with a whale, but Francesca didn’t mind. Because Francesca was a very special girl, and Francesca was a very special whale. Every morning, the girl would rush from her bed and look out her window onto the bay, and her whale would greet her by leaping from the water and landing with a tremendous splash.
I don’t notice I’m crying until George wipes a tear from my chin.
“They’re beautiful,” I whisper, my eyes still set on the water.
He wraps an arm around me and presses his mouth to my temple. The kiss is so tender, given so easily, that more tears follow.
And then one of the whales breaches, its head and body rising out of the water and crashing back down with an enormous splash. A sob escapes my lips. I wish my mom was here.
“Hey.” The girl sitting behind us passes me a tissue.
I take it with a thank-you and dab my eyes.
“See,” she says. “You didn’t hate them after all. I think you were just afraid.”
Chapter Forty-three
