After ten minutes or so, they reached their destination, and Birch cut the engine. It didn’t matter that the boat was full of a completely different set of tourists. The same hushed anticipation filled the air. Hope so sharp that Rio could taste it.

But unlike yesterday, there was one thing missing.

Whales.

For half an hour, the boat bobbed up and down silently with not a whale in sight. Not a tail. Not a spyhop. Not a plume. And most definitely no heart-shaped rainbows.

“That’s the thing,” Marina remarked as some of the tourists grew impatient. “The whales don’t work on human time.”

Rio wanted to agree. He really did. But it was difficult not to quell the rising sense of disappointment in his belly. He’d desperately wanted to see more whales. Not just for his mother, but also, he realized, for him too. Meeting Marina and being on board the Spyhopper had given him the most joy he’d had for the longest of times. A chance to live a life he never could have imagined for himself. But how many more boat trips would Marina realistically invite him on while he was in Ocean Bay? Birch had said how busy they were going to be in the next few weeks. What if this trip were Rio’s very last chance to see the whales?

It was then he heard a click. So soft that at first he thought he’d mistaken it. But there! Another click. Rio listened hard. It was the same noise as yesterday. A long, garbled gurgle, then a series of short, sharp clicks, followed by a noise that sounded like a bass drum.

He spun around, scanning the water from all angles. But however hard he looked, there was nothing to see. Yet, he could still hear something. He was sure he could. Where was it coming from?

Over there.

It was coming from beneath the water.

“There’s a whale!” he said hurriedly as Birch got ready to start the engine. “Five o’clock.”

Marina squinted hard at the direction Rio was pointing in. “I can’t see anything.”

“There is one. I can hear it,” he said urgently. “Over there!”

At which point, a ginormous barnacled head burst out of the water at the exact point where Rio had been pointing.

“A spyhop!” someone yelled.

The whale gazed around before sinking majestically back beneath the waves. As the occupants of the boat sprung to life, taking photos and chattering animatedly, Marina looked curiously at Rio, as if he were a puzzle she was trying to work out.

“How did you know the whale was there?”

“I heard it,” he said. “Didn’t you?”

She frowned. “But you can’t hear them!”

“Why not?”

“Because humans can’t hear gray whales,” Marina answered. “Their pitch is too low for our ears. It would be like you hearing a dog whistle. It’s just not possible.”

Rio pictured the moment when he had been in the water and heard the sounds traveling up through his feet. It had definitely come from White Beak. Just as the noise he had heard moments ago had definitely come from that whale. He knew it in the same way he could sense when a storm was coming because of the crackle of electricity in the air. His mom said it was because he had cat’s ears. “But I did hear it. I swear I did!”