It was only Rio who saw it.

Hiding under the surface of the water about ten feet away from the bow end.

Rio felt his whole body still, the way his mom did before playing the first note on her violin, as if she were tuning herself with the instrument in some magical, unseen way. As if there was an invisible current linking him to the whale and, by keeping himself motionless, he could somehow reach out and connect with it.

All of a sudden, the whale pushed its head out of the ocean, and it was so close and so sudden that Marina dropped her notebook. “Oh my!”

The others in the boat rushed over to the bow, and over his shoulder, Rio heard the click, click of the camera and the gasps of those behind him. But none of that registered, because the whale right in front of his eyes looked remarkably familiar.

“White Beak!”

18

White Beak

In real life, the whale was so big, so vast, so awe-inspiring that Rio bit his tongue—the hot, metallic taste of blood filling his mouth. Her head alone was probably three times the size of Rio, made up of one huge upper and lower jaw. The skin was a dark slate color with patches of lighter gray and white covering her nose.

“It’s her!” Marina yelled triumphantly. “It’s White Beak!”

Rio couldn’t even answer. Instead, he just gazed at the whale with pure unblinking longing. Because surely this wasn’t just a coincidence? It was a sign. A sign as clear as day that he was on the right track to helping his mom and making her better again. Otherwise why would White Beak appear at this exact moment?

The whale’s head was probably out of the water mere seconds, but it was as if time had stopped and in that way Rio managed to drink in every last detail. The crinkly outline around her one visible eye, how the barnacles stuck to her snout in coarse, uneven clumps, the white meshy stuff in her mouth that Marina had said was called baleen.

But then, just as quickly as she had appeared, the whale was gone.

“Did you see?!” Marina was jumping up and down in joy. “Did you see the way she was looking at you?”

Rio nodded although his gaze was still fixed on the water, praying for White Beak to resurface so he could take photos. Just wait until his mom saw this! Just wait till she discovered that Rio had found her whale. He hurriedly stood up and fished in his pocket for his phone.

The others were crowding around his back, standing so close he could smell them. It made retrieving his phone more awkward, but if he shuffled forward a bit . . .

. . . and then he wasn’t quite sure what happened next.

Except that he lost his footing and, since there was nothing to hold on to at the bow, Rio stood for a moment suspended in thin air, with his arms flailing like a windmill.