Maya turned. She could feel Hannah’s eyes behind her sunglasses, searching her face.
Hannah gave her a small smile, looked out on the water, let go of the rails. “I know I shouldn’t be talking about it. That we don’t talk about it. It’s just... I’ve been waiting for them to go away. I think I secretly hoped that if I just came here, if I...stepped out of my comfort zone, they would stop. But I get now that they’re not going to. I just have to know what they are, live over them, in defiance of them. Be brave, I guess.”
The boat lifted over a wave and Hannah squealed and reached out desperately to clutch the rails again, which made them both laugh.
Maya wondered if she herself had ever been brave. She always thought she was, but then, life never felt as hard for her. She glanced back at the dock but it had slipped out of sight, only open sea in every direction. She imagined Andy standing exactly where she’d left him, waiting for her return. It wouldn’t work anyway, she thought. Long distance relationships never do.
Renee found them at the bow. “Blue’s begging everyone who walks by to throw her overboard,” she said.
“That’ll teach her not to binge drink,” Maya said.
“I think that’s only half of what’s making her sick,” Renee said.
They all got quiet.
“Well,” Renee said. “See any whales?”
“Not yet,” Maya said. “I want to see a blue whale. Those are the biggest, right?”
“Biggest animal to have ever lived on earth. Their tongues alone can weigh as much as an elephant.”
“Ooh la la,” Maya said.
“Ew,” Hannah said.
“Seconded,” Renee said.
Maya scanned the horizon.
Around them, tourists had their binoculars out as the captain came over the loudspeaker reciting all that they might see as if he’d given the same speech three times a day for thirty years and just wanted to move to Colorado and never see a whale again. The girls’ excitement grew upon hearing the possibility of seeing dolphins leaping in the boat’s wake, leatherback sea turtles dining on jellyfish, packs of seals with their doglike faces, poking their slick gray heads out of the water. And of course, the whales: minkes and humpbacks, pilots and sperm—the last making them laugh like prepubescent girls.
They stood watch, waiting, ready. The anticipation nurtured their excitement as they scanned the waterline. The boat chugged on. Hannah went below to check on Blue, returned twenty minutes later with drinks and a grim report. They ate fruit from the farmers market and drank their colas and Hannah read Dear Miss Know-It-All questions off her phone and recruited answers from Maya and Renee.
“Okay, here’s a good one. Should Anonymous pursue her dream job in LA or stay with dream guy in Chicago?”
“Dream job,” Renee said.
“Dream guy,” Maya said.
Hannah and Renee looked at Maya in surprise.
“Who knew you were such a romantic?” Hannah said.
“I’m not,” Maya said. “I just hate work. Next question.”
“Dana from Oregon wants to know when it’s the right time to have sex with a new guy.”
“As if there’s a wrong time,” Maya said.
“Whenever you actually want to,” Renee said.
“After he’s been tested for STIs,” Hannah said, making a note in her cell phone.
The sun rose higher. The salt started to sting against their sunburns. Soon the beauty of the world they were gazing upon became monotonous. Flat and blue.
“Dear Miss Know-It-All, where the hell are the whales?” Maya said, getting restless.
People began looking at their phones, retreating to the bar below. The kids on board were getting cranky, the energy turning bleak.
“Come on, whale!” Maya whispered to the ocean. Just one. Even a fin. She would be satisfied with a glimpse. She felt the pain of wanting. The urge to shut it down and accept that she would not get to have it.
Time stalled, the sun turning sharp and hard and relentless, stealing color, casting a layer of white over everything. Another hour passed. They ate more food, wandered the deck, blinked out at the unchanging landscape.
Hannah picked at the chipping paint on the rails with her fingernail. “Don’t think we’re going to see any today,” she said.
“Don’t say that,” Maya said.
Renee sighed.
Blue reappeared. “Any—” She retched. “Any whales?”
The three of them shook their heads.
“Of course not,” Blue said. “Story of my life.”
“Oh, stop,” Maya said.
“Nothing to see for miles and miles in any direction,” Blue continued.
Maya shook her head, sighed. But as she looked at her friends, thought of their lives over the last twelve years, thought of her own meandering future, she understood what Blue was saying—the way monotony could seep into adulthood. No one had ever warned her about that.
The captain came over the loudspeaker. “Well, folks,” he said, “I’m sorry to say the whales have eluded us today. We’ll be heading back now.”
“Shoot,” Hannah said. “We didn’t even get to see a freaking dolphin.”
“Let’s sit down,” Maya said. Her face burned and her eyes felt gritty with salt. She headed toward the benches. Tedium and disappointment—she couldn’t think of enemies greater than those. She thought of Andy. If only he lived closer. But even then, an internal resistance, something in the way. She closed her eyes.
Almost as soon as she shut them, a collective gasp from the boat.
“Maya, look,” Hannah shouted.
Maya jumped to her feet, turned just in time.
Euphoric eruption! Life bursting from below into the air. Its fins outstretched like wings. Its grooved white belly arced toward the sun. I live! it seemed to shout at them with its enormity, its acrobatic grace. We live! It paused, midair, suspending time for a moment. Its skin oil-slick and gleaming. Water raining off its barnacle-covered flanks. Then with a thunderous splash, it landed back on the ocean’s top, slapped the surface playful as a child, carbonating the white water. A show just for them, a circus act at sea. The passengers cheered, electric with awe, witness to some impossible majestic beauty, some seemingly fabled creature of an underwater universe. A magical communion between life forms. Oh glorious, mysterious, nonsensical world.
Maya’s heart buoyed in her chest.
“Boom!” she said. “Just when you least expect it. When you think you know how it will all turn out.” She turned to Blue. “Story of everyone’s life.”