Rio felt proud to be joining something bigger than himself. But it wasn’t just that. Being out in nature and watching the whales gave him something back too. Not just the feelings of calm or the taste of adventure but the sense of wonder that only the ocean could provide.

For the longest of times, Rio had been worried. About his mom primarily. It was hard not to be anxious about her. But also about himself and where someone like him fit into a world that was often huge and frightening.

But on board the Spyhopper, Rio finally had a sense of where he belonged and, more importantly, what he could do to help.

24

Happy Times

The next few days were some of the happiest of Rio’s life. Days he wished he could bottle and put somewhere safe so he could open it in the future and relive all the memories again and again and again.

There were two boat trips a day. Each one full of tourists desperate to catch a glimpse of a whale. But for Rio, it wasn’t just a trip. It was a chance to realize who he had become. He was only a boy, and yet somehow he was communicating with one of the biggest animals on the planet. It was nothing short of mind-blowing. Each time he heard one, it made his skin go all tingly.

Granted, the whale had to be fairly close by, but Birch insisted that thanks to Rio, they had vastly increased the number of sightings they made.

“You’re making a difference, son,” he said to him one afternoon. Rio wasn’t sure when the older man had started calling him son, but now it had stuck. And to be honest, he wasn’t about to protest. His own dad had never said he was proud of him, but Birch told him every single boat trip.

In return, Rio felt himself stand a little taller.

When she wasn’t at school, Marina showed Rio around Ocean Bay. Not just the main boulevards bustling with tourists, but the places only a person who lived there could know about. The garden wall, where someone had painted a huge mural of a turtle. The tallest palm tree in town, where once upon a time Marina had carved her initials with her dad’s penknife. The tiny hole at the far end of the pier, where if you pressed your eye against it, you could see shoals of fish swimming beneath you. And the secret ice-cream parlor, tucked away from the main drag, which sold homemade ice cream in a thousand different flavors.

She chattered nonstop. Which was fine by Rio, as he had always been more of a listener and, unlike him, Marina never seemed to run out of words. She told him how she’d learned to swim before she could even walk, that she felt more comfortable with marine animals than she did with humans and that the first word she’d ever spoken was “whale.” Her life might have been completely different to his own, but it was also straightforward. As was her relationship with her dad. Just being in their company, Rio felt the jagged edges of his own soul start to soften.