Dedicated to the above because her comments always make me feel like I have something to smile about. :)

            Five

          The next morning my mother wakes me up at an unhealthy hour and pries the sheets from my bare legs. The sun has just creeped over the horizon, not yet reaching the shadows with its light.

            “Bama, you have a busy day today,” she says as she opens my glass sliding doors. A gust of chilly air blows into my room, rustling papers on my floor.

            I scrunch my face up and flip onto my stomach to bury my face in my pillow. I hold onto it like it’s my lifeline, saving me from waking up.

            “Why do you hate me?” I groan into the fabric.

            “Bam.”

            “Why?” I drag out the word like the melodramatic teenager that I’ve never been.

            “Your father is taking you out on the boat today. He says there’s supposed to be a group of whales gathering for mating season. You’ll be able to take such beautiful pictures of them!” When I don’t respond, I hear footsteps across the wooden floor and then nothing. A moment later, there’s a weight on my back. Cat starts purring.

            “Not you too,” I mutter, rolling over onto my back. Cat falls onto my mattress but lands on his feet. For a second he looks at me and I can swear that he’s glaring.

            I shower as quickly as possible and throw on a pair of jean shorts and a baggy sweater. As Mom starts calling me from downstairs, telling me to hurry up, I half-dry my wavy hair with a towel and throw it up in a bun.

            In my dad’s rusting SUV, we speed down the road, the only car out at sunrise. We only see one early morning jogger, as the rest of Mermaid Bay is asleep.

            “I think you’ll take some great pictures today, Bam,” Dad says as we pull on the freeway. “Are you excited?”

            “I guess so,” I mumble sleepily, leaning my head against the glass.

            “You’ll wake up more when we get there. I’m hoping it won’t be too windy on the boat, but we’ll have to wait and see.”

            When we arrive at the boardwalk, Dad parks in a spot that has Henry Reed written on a piece of driftwood cemented into the ground. He gets out and goes into the trunk, pulling out a large duffel bag of his own and a beach bag that has my camera and other things I might need inside.

            As we walk towards a large boat, I see two other people on it, working. One man, who looks about my father’s age doesn’t see us yet, but the other is at the dock, untying a thick rope from one of the wooden posts.

            When he sees us, he straightens up and grins. Dad stops in front of him and they do that strange kind of man-half hug.

            “I was wondering when you would get here,” the guy says, who I now know is much younger than I thought. “We were about to leave without you!”

            Dad laughs and gestures to me with his thumb. “I had a carry on today. She’s hoping to take pictures of the whales.” I don’t know when I ever said that but suddenly the boy is looking at me, smiling. “Bam,” Dad continues, gesturing for me to come over. When I’m standing beside my father, he points at the guy. “This is Max. He’s a little older than you, but he probably still knows some cool places to hang out for people your age.”

            Max smiles. “Hey.”

            I nod and adjust my bag on my shoulder before the three of us board the boat. Once we’re on, the other man smiles and waves at my father.

            “Henry!” he calls.

            Dad turns to me. “That’s Emile, he’s our captain.”

            Once we leave the dock, I move to the front of the ship and take pictures off the bow. It isn’t until I hear footsteps behind me that I turn around to realize that I can no longer see land. I’ve never been one to get seasick before, but something about not being able to see anything but ocean scares me.

            “I can take a picture of you, if you want,” Max says. His hands are shoved in his white and navy board shorts and his white t-shirt flaps underneath his arms, trying to break loose in the wind. “We have some time until things get interesting.”

            I open my mouth to say no but then end up handing him my camera anyways. Despite not wanting to be in Mermaid for the summer, I want to capture this moment.

            “Stand back at the bow, facing me.” I do what I’m told and Max smiles from behind the camera. I stretch my arms out across both sides of the walls and stare straight at the camera. I don’t smile and Max doesn’t comment on that fact. “Perfect.”

            He takes the picture and I look away. For a moment I stare at the waves, watching the whitecaps appear and collapse. I feel my hair try to come loose from my bun and fix it before taking my camera back.

            “Thanks.”

            Max smiles. “No problem.”

            I end up lying on a lounge chair beside my father in the sun once the wind dies down. For a while I assume he’s asleep, but every so often I see him peek out from under his glasses to look out at the ocean, no doubt looking for whales.

            When I’ve just started to relax and stop worrying about not being able to see land, Dad starts talking and I start to feel sea sick for the first time ever.

            “You’re worrying your mother, Bam.” He turns, meets my eyes, and I’m speechless. “She’s upset because she’s scared for you. She doesn’t think you’re happy. But somewhere, deep down, Bam, I know you’re okay. That’s why I don’t worry. You’ll never get over what happened, no matter what your mother says, but I know you’ll learn to live with it. But you just need to give yourself that push. You need to try.”

            Without thinking, I stand up, turn away from my father and stare out at the sea. Then, only a moment goes by before I rush to the side of the ship and lean over to be sick.

            “There they are!” somebody shouts.

            I don’t know if it’s Emile, Max, or even my father, but one of them sounds over-the-top excited and I can’t help but jump to my feet to look, even if I’m still feeling nauseous after throwing up hours ago.

            “This is what we’ve been waiting for!” Dad shouts, rushing past me. He bumps into me and pauses to steady me. “Sorry!” He rushes off again into the boat as I make my way to the side to look.

            At first I don’t see anything except for the large waves splashing every way, as per usual. I feel sad and desperate as I scan the horizon for the whales, not knowing that I would be this excited to see them when they were there. I think everyone’s excited shouting has gotten to me.

            “Over there.” I feel a hand on my shoulder and look up at Max, who smiles down at me. His brown, shaggy hair falls in his eyes but the wind quickly blows it out of the way. He reaches past me to point and I follow his finger.

            To the left of my view I don’t see anything. But after a few moments, a large tail flaps up out of the water and dives back in, creating a loud splash. More and more appear, and occasionally a small head.

            “I have to capture this,” I whisper to myself. I rush to my beach bag and pull out my camera. After securing the strap around my neck I run back to the side and flick it on. After zooming in as far as I can and fooling around with the white balance and aperture, I take as many photos as I can. I’ve never been one to waste as much film as I am now, but I can’t be sure if I shot the whales or the moments when they were all under the surface.

            “I heard you weren’t feeling well,” Max says. I forgot he was beside me. “Seasickness?”

            I take another picture and decide not to tell him the real reason. “Something like that.”

            Dad comes over to us and asks Max to help him. The two of them hold onto a thick chain that’s attached to some kind of waterproof electronic box. Together, they lift it over the edge of the boat and lower it into the water. Next Max hooks the chain on the railing and lets whatever the box is sink deep into the water.

            Dad turns around to look at Emile through the glass of the inside of the boat. “Can we get any closer?” he calls. Emile nods.

            As we move closer, I turn to my dad. “What are you doing?” I’ve never before taken much of an interest in his job, but now I’m particularly curious.

            “It’s a whale vocalization box,” Dad says. He smiles at Max. “Since you’re my apprentice, why don’t you explain what we’re doing to Bam?”

            I look at Max wide-eyed. I had no idea that Max was an apprentice, not to mention that my dad had an apprentice up until this point. I feel like I’m waking up from a coma and all these things happened while I was asleep.

            “We’re recording the whale’s communication during mating season, trying to determine the female and male whale calls when attracting a mate. Then, after we’ve figured that part out, we’ll measure how long it typically takes them to find a mate. We’ll track them every day throughout mating season and then retag them to track them for another year. And after that, we’ll follow them around to see if they give birth and eventually tag their babies too.”

            I stare at Max blankly. I have no idea what any of what he just said means, so I ask the only question I can think of that shows I was paying attention. “Why?”

            “They’re endangered, Bam,” Dad says. “Human pollution and illegal whale hunting have made them sparse.”

            I don’t know what to say because not only do I feel out of the loop with my father’s job, but now the mood on the boat has considerably dropped. Turning back towards the whales, we’re much closer now so I take a few more pictures.

            “Come here, Bam.” Dad takes my arm and leads me along the side of the boat as Emile gets closer to the whales. “I’ve wanted you to do this for a while.” He opens a door in the side of the boat that I hadn’t seen was there. Through it, we stand on a small rectangle of the ship that isn’t guarded by railings. I’m scared to fall. “We have to go down the ladder. I’ll go first and then help you down, okay? Why don’t you sit?”

            I sink into a cross-legged position on the boards as Dad carefully climbs down the ladder. Wind whips hair out of my bun and into my face, but I’m too scared of moving so I let it hit my cheeks.    

            “Come down now, Bam! Careful,” Dad calls up.

            I check my camera strap to make sure it’s secure and inch my way towards the metal ladder. Once I’m turned around, I place both feet and hands on the ladder and Dad helps me down, holding onto me the entire time.

            When I’m standing on the boat again, I turn around and thank my dad for telling me to put a waterproof case over my camera. We’re level with the ocean now and since we’re moving along with the whales, the water sprays us, creating damp spots on our clothes.

            “Look.” Dad points down at the water beside us and my breath catches in my throat.

            Dozens of whales are swimming beside the boat, exactly level with us. They weave in and out of the water, swimming so close to us that I’m shocked. Dad has to grab my camera from me to take a picture of my staring for me to come out of it and grab it back to him. I snap a few pictures before dad hands me a lifejacket.

            “Put this on, just to be safe.” After I put my arms through the orange life preserver, Dad does the same. “I want you to sit down for this next part, okay?” I do as I’m told and stare up at him, confused. “Grab the small railing with your right hand.”

            “Railing?”

            “Behind you.”

            I turn around and see a metal bar. I grab it and find it slippery, but I still feel safer with something to hold on to. Dad instructs me to move closer to the edge of the boat and I do, in spite of how much it scares me.

            “Reach out as far as you can and put your hand in the water.”

            I comply and my hand touches the cool water. For a few moments nothing happens except for the ocean waves splashing my arm and completely soaking it. But then the most amazing thing happens – something rises up and touches my hand.

            A squeal I’ve never heard before leaves my lips as the back of the grey whale touches my hand mid-weave and goes back underwater. A few minutes later the same thing happens, then again and again. The feeling of the smooth, slimy whale never gets old.

            Dad takes a bunch of pictures of me, probably the first ever of me smiling since Cade, touching the whales. I can’t believe this is happening and I never want to leave, but eventually Dad has to pry me away from the whales, but not before I take a few sea-level pictures of them.

            Even though I didn’t do much, the boat ride back to land feels tiring and I find myself excited to collapse in the SUV. Dad and I say goodbye to Max outside on the boardwalk and then I meet Emile just to say goodbye. By the time I’m sitting in the passenger seat, my eyes are already closed and I’m ready to pass out.

            “Max was very happy to meet you,” Dad says, though I barely hear him. “I’ve told him so much about you. He said he wouldn’t mind taking you out sometime to show you around, as friends, of course.”

            I mumble something along the lines of an okay before turning away in my seat. I can feel Dad staring at me, probably smiling, as I start to drift into sleep. I sleep the whole ride home and when Dad wakes me up, he says he was considering carrying me into the house.

            “How was it?” Mom is inside at the door, waiting for me to get home to hover. I mumble again, but this time I don’t get any words out. As I climb up the staircase to my room, I hear Dad come inside.

            “She’s had a busy day, she’s pretty tired. I’m sure she’ll tell you all about it in the morning. She took some great pictures-“ I don’t hear the rest as I reach my room. I don’t have a door, considering it’s a lighthouse and the staircase ends in the middle of the floor, but sound outside the spiral doesn’t carry to me.

            I don’t bother changing my clothes as I sit down on my bed with my eyes closed. I gently put my camera down on my bedside tape and wrestle to take my hair out of its messy bun. When I’m through, I lie back on the bed, not bothering to put the covers over top of me. I stare up at the ceiling for the first few minutes, fighting the will to give myself up to sleep. Even though I had what one might call a good day, it still was missing something important, and that note underlined everything that happened today.

            Not only do I miss him, but everything misses Cade.