offers, “some of them have never been here before?”
“Precisely!” Mr. O’Connor jabs at the air like a marathon winner, the chalk still in his hand. “Everybody put your fins together for Lena!” The class claps halfheartedly, some kids rolling their eyes at Mr. O’Connor. I glance over at Lena and she gives me a thumbs-up.
“These are very likely unknown waters to the majority of these whales. So as long as they remain—and how long that will be is anyone’s guess—we have an extraordinary opportunity to learn about them. Kind of like having a new kid move across the bridge.”
He means the Warren Avenue Bridge, the main link that connects the east and west sections of Port Washington. Around here everything depends on which side of the bridge you live on—how much money you have, who your friends are, what you’ll do when you grow up. There’s only one thing we all share—Dyes Inlet.
“Now,” Mr. O’Connor spins around to face the class, “who can tell me what the basic social unit of whales is called?”
“A school!” someone calls out.
Mr. O’Connor smiles but shakes his head.
“A herd?”
It’s Harris, a hard-to-ignore kid from one of the trailer parks on the west side of the bridge. The class laughs. He catches my eye and grins but I look away. Harris has the thickest black hair I’ve ever seen, besides mine. He’s so tall he has to twist his legs every which way to get them to fit in under the desks. And he’s old—almost fourteen.
“Herd is close, but no cigar,” Mr. O’Connor says, flicking an imaginary cigar in front of his mouth.
More animal groups are called out. Then it gets too silly and Mr. O’Connor starts to lose patience. Why isn’t anybody answering? I drum my fingers on my desk. I can’t be the only one who knows this.
“Do any of you actually live here in the Pacific Northwest?” He waits, tapping his chalk on the desk. “Please! Someone?”
Finally I raise my hand. Mr. O’Connor points his invisible cigar at me.
“A pod.”
“A pod. Thank you, Marisa.” He stretches out his hand to me and makes a small bow. “Orca groups are called pods. They’re extremely complex social structures. One pod can comprise the extended family unit of as many as four generations traveling together.” He gestures toward the inlet again. “Our visitors here are part of the Southern Resident killer whales in the San Juan Islands that have three pods: J, K, and L.”
At the mention of L Pod, a jumble of memories flashes through my mind, and the room feels suddenly as hot as a summer day.
“What’s with the letters, Mr. O?” Harris calls out. A few people snicker.
“Actually, it’s a good question,” Mr. O’Connor replies. “It’s a taxonomic system developed by whale researchers up in British Columbia. They started with ‘A’ and worked their way through the alphabet as they studied the pods to the south.”
“Cool!” Harris says. “Kinda like Triple-A baseball.”
“Each whale is given an alphanumeric code. The letter represents the pod affiliation, and the number is each individual identified within that pod. The smallest social unit within a pod is the ‘matrilineal group.’ Can someone please enlighten us as to the meaning of matrilineal?”
I’m only half listening, remembering instead a super hot Fourth of July that Mom and I spent up on San Juan Island … it seems so long ago now. I was probably eight years old and every memory I have from that trip is perfect. Dad was working a month-long carpentry job on the west side of the island and staying on the jobsite, so Mom and I came up for a week to visit.
The house was on an amazing bluff that overlooked the main straits where the Southern Resident orcas travel in the summer months. Every day we’d see the whales passing back and forth—breaching, jumping, and chasing each other in circles. Some days we’d climb down the rocky slope past the old abandoned limekiln to Deadman Bay. From the beach there, the orcas’ huge fins looked even more gigantic. One morning, I was poking around in the sand looking for agates when Mom called to me from farther down the beach.
“M! Come look … I think the pod has a new baby!”
I scrambled over to where she stood on the rocks peering out at the water, Dad’s old black binoculars glued to her eyes. “Where?” I asked, already reaching out to have a look.
“There.” She passed me the binoculars and pointed. “See? Just past the big one … he’s tucked in close to his mother.”
I looked and looked until finally I saw a little black head poke up alongside the shiny black flank of the mother whale. But the little orca was black and orange, not black and white like the others! I thought the sun might be playing tricks on me.
“Why is he that funny color?” I asked. “Is he okay?”
“Yes, he’s fine,” Mom said, snapping some pictures with her camera. “Isn’t that amazing? Nobody knows why the calves start out that color. The orange will fade to white as he grows. Wouldn’t it be funny if human babies were born orange?”
We both laughed, sitting together on the hot rocks, watching the baby orca nuzzle its mother. The next day, Mom and I went down to the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, the island’s main town, to report that we’d sighted a new orca baby.
“Yours is the first sighting of a new calf this season!” the woman in the museum told us. She checked her logs. “It looks like that was L Pod out near Lime Kiln yesterday. The official name will be L91 but would you like to pick a nickname for him?” she asked, smiling.
“Would you, honey?” Mom repeated, putting her arm around my shoulder.
I took a bite of raw carrot and thought about what to name the new baby orca.
“Muncher!” I announced a minute later. Mom laughed and the museum woman carefully wrote out an adoption certificate for Muncher.
“Congratulations,” she said, handing me the sheet of paper. “Now you be sure to take good care of Muncher.”
“I will,” I promised. “Muncher can be my baby brother!”
“Well, we don’t know yet if he’s a boy or girl,” the museum woman said with a laugh.
A lost memory comes rushing back to me now: Mom’s reaction was … odd. She looked surprised and then something else, sort of sad, I guess. I remember asking her what was wrong, but she didn’t answer. Just shook her head and smiled. I’d forgotten that even happened until now.
The sound of paper and shuffling feet snaps me back to the present. I look up and Mr. O’Connor is staring right at me.
“Umm … sorry, what was the question?” I quickly try to catch up.
“Matrilineal group. What does that mean for orcas?”
The whole class sits waiting for me to answer. Mr. O’Connor tilts his head. He knows I know, but I can’t answer this one. I shake
