Bear Heart's Captive

Chapter 1: Last Day

The rail of the motor-catamaran was chilly under my palm as I took a break from work to watch the pelicans dive into the ocean. The tourists laughed and gasped, snapping pictures to capture the adventure for their scrapbooks. I wondered how many of them would bring home an image of me, never knowing that I was saying goodbye somewhere in the background of their happy memory.

It was my last day.

I tried to carry on as usual—make up something clever to say over the intercom as we putted over the waves off San Francisco's coast to the Farallon Islands—but I couldn't ignore the sinking feeling in my gut.

"Charli!" My boss, Erin, barked my name in a commanding tone. She was at the helm, as usual, trying her best to avoid the mass of passengers for fear of awkward social encounters.

People weren't really her "thing." One of her only pastimes outside of running the tours was rescuing cats from the harbor and giving them weird, old-fashioned names. She was the soon-to-be old cat lady and, for some reason, she liked me. In a sad, odd kind of way, I was her only friend. Our camaraderie was in darkly mocking the tourists we ran out to sea on the weekends and in the effortless synchronization in which we ran the ship. It was also in our acceptance of silence. We didn't always need to speak.

"What's up?" I asked once I got to her side. Erin's dark, silky bangs made her blue eyes pop with brilliance when she turned to face me for a brief second.

"That lady with the fanny pack is about to lose it. Get her a barf bag. And kindly pay attention, will you? We got an orca pod out there and none of these landlubbers have noticed them yet."

"Landlubbers? Arrr, next thing you're going to tell me is that you have scurvy."

"Shut up. Your face has scurvy," she replied, mumbling as she pressed full lips against a plastic lid to sip her coffee.

I grabbed the binoculars and laughed. "I'm pretty sure that doesn't make any sense."

"Well, who here has a high school diploma? Me. I do. So go do my bidding, or you won't get your last check."

That was as sentimental as Erin was going to get over me leaving, even if I knew she was sad too. After all, I had been working for her since I was fourteen, teaching moron tourists how to fasten the belts on their lifejackets and catching puke from time to time. Pretty soon I'd be gone, and I was going to miss everything.

I dove into the storage compartments and grabbed a baggie for the lady before directing the crowd's attention to the pod of orcas puffing clouds of water into the air. It was a treat to see this kind of whale, hunting where the sea lions bred. If anything was going to lift my spirits, it was the whales. Even if I had been on this boat every weekend for the past three years, I still felt I was catching a glimpse of something magical when their shiny bodies broke through the surface. Today was no different.

"Hey guys," I muttered under my breath to the whales, pretending they somehow remembered the scent of my skin and were excited to see me too.

As we got closer, one of the young males came to inspect the boat, and sprayed the sightseers with his geyser. He soaked half the crew, making everyone laugh despite the chill of the salted waves. Getting sprayed by a whale is definitely a story to take home.

I got on the intercom and spouted off random whale facts I had ingrained in my mind since the beginning of my seafaring career. People always seemed skeptical about my youth at first, but by the end of the tour, they spoke to me like any other adult because I could answer all of their questions and then some. Most people can respect savvy sailor skills.

We docked in the city of Sausalito and many of the passengers looked relieved to end the tour. Some, on the other hand, were already scrolling through their cameras to check out the pictures they'd taken.