The Whale-Watching Catastrophe.

I inhaled deeply, allowing the fresh, salty sea air to slip into my lungs, instantly calming me. The crystalline sea sparkled like a tapestry of diamonds as the sun reflected off it, creating a beautiful view.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Said a voice to my left suddenly. I turned and saw that Ryan had come to stand next to me, his elbows on the rim of the boat as he stared out at the endless blue.

"Yeah," I agreed, "Yeah, it is."

"You see anything yet?" Ryan asked.

"I think I saw a tail poking up from over there," I said, pointing somewhere far in the distance, "but I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure."

"Astor, anything could be helpful, even just a glimpse of a whale!" Called Tony from the wheel. I got up and turned to look at him. "Where did you see it?"

I pointed to the same area that I'd showed Ryan, and almost immediately, with a hard lurch, Tony turned the wheel and started towards it.

"Oy, careful! I'm trying to read over here!" Jack barked from where he was sitting in the corner, waving around his book, pointing to the wet pages. "Don't you understand how fast speedboats are?"

"The real question is, why are you reading when we're slaving away over here trying to spot a whale?" Astor snapped right back. "You have eyes for a reason!"

"Yeah! To read!"

"Help us look for whales right now or I'm-"

"Guys, guys, calm down, will you?" I said, cutting into their argument before it could escalate. "Jack, Tony does have a point. We need all hands on deck to find these whales, meaning we need your eyes too."

With a deep, long sigh, Jack set his book down on the wet deck, grimacing as water seeped into the cover, then stood up. He placed one hand on his hip and the other over his eyes. I gave him a small smile before turning my eyes out to sea again.

"Do you think we'll find a whale?" Ryan asked from where he stood next to me.

"We'd better, or else our 6 hours of searching will have been wasted." I mumbled. It was true; we had been looking for a whale for 6 hours with no luck. Everyone's mood was beginning to turn foul, except for Ryan, who always seemed cheery somehow, and the tension between Jack and Tony had been ever growing since we left the docks.

Last time we'd gone whale watching, we hadn't found a single whale. Out of boredom, I'd given Ryan a playful shove, which caused him to fall overboard. Everyone had laughed except for Ryan, who came up gasping for air, an angry scowl on his face as he regarded his wet clothes with disdain.

I hesitated for a moment before turning to Ryan and saying, "Hey, no hard feelings about me pushing you overboard last time, right? It was only a joke, and I was bored."

"Forget about it." Ryan said, waving a dismissive hand. "It's totally fine. I'm okay now, aren't I?"

I gave him a little smile before letting out a breath.

We have to find a whale. I thought to myself, If we don't, all this time will have been wasted, and Tony definitely will not be pleased with that.

How much longer do we have to keep searching, though? Wondered another part of my brain, the part that had already given up on the whole endeavor.

Probably until Tony starts yelling at us and turns the boat back homewards.

Yeah, that's pro-

"WHALE!" Someone suddenly shouted, and my head instantly shot up, whipping toward the voice. It was Jack, and he was bouncing on the balls of his heels like a kid at a candy store as he pointed over the rim of the boat, somewhere out to sea.

"Whale, whale, whale! Over there!" he said, and we all rushed over to him to see what he had spotted.

I squinted, and for a moment, I didn't see anything.

Then it happened.

The sea before me seemed to split before my eyes, and a huge humpback whale majestically leapt out of the water, one fin pointing like an arrow toward the sky, the other brushing the water as it seemingly flew through the air. My jaw dropped, and so did everyone else's.

As the whale dropped back into the ocean, we stood in silence for a moment before we all broke out laughing, everyone patting Jack on the back.

"We did it! We saw a whale!" Tony said excitedly, throwing his arms into the air.

"It wasn't all in vain after all!" Ryan laughed, patting me hard on the back.

I gave him a wide smile as I looked at the pod of humpbacks swimming before me, their small dorsal fins poking out of the water as their arched back breached the surface, their blowholes spouting, making small rainbows above their heads.

"It's amazing." I breathed as I watched them with awe.

"Would you like to swim with them?" Ryan asked me, putting one hand on my back.

"What?" I asked, whipping my head around to look at him, my brow furrowed.

I didn't have enough time to stop him before I was suddenly over the edge, a flurry of bubbles exploding around my head as I fell face-first into the water.

I heard screaming above me.

Instinctively, I took in a deep breath, only to have water fill my lungs.

My eyes blew wide as moons as I realized I was drowning, and I immediately began choking as I failed to get the water out of my system.

How had this happened?

Who had done it, and why?

It was no accident that I'd fallen overboard.

I clawed at the surface, trying to grab something that I could use to pull myself up, but found nothing.

Blurry shapes moved about me as everyone on the boat screamed and stared at me in the water.

Just when I thought it was over, a hand appeared on my arm, pulling me up. The my head breached the surface, I began choking out all the water in my lungs breathing at the same time. Someone hauled me into the boat, but I was only halfway up before the hand was suddenly off my arm, and I was being pushed back into the water again. I opened my eyes, as I fell back into the sea, staring at the one who had done it.

Ryan stared back at me.

Confusion made my thoughts race as Ryan stuck a hand into the water to push my head down, keeping me from coming up for air.

I screamed underwater, but that was a mistake.

Water came in through my mouth.

I choked.

One more breath...

I was gone.