The Anchorage Day

On the 28th of July, the McCormac women were on yet another bland excursion along the Anchorage coast. Charlie and her sister were the only young people, and Angela hardly counted. She fit in with the liberal grandmas and granola techies so well, it was like she was already retired before she’d even had her first job. That job, Charlie had no doubt, would be in a library for the infirm in Sandusky or something equally trite. Traveling elementary puppet troupe, maybe. Angela and her mother were in the vanguard, while Charlie took the back, more or less sequestered in her own mind. She was tailed only by their upstart tour guide (Chester, she recalled the name with horror) to whom she’d made it clear that she was uninterested in conversation. Somewhere along the way they came to a natural staircase. Fat, lazy Charlie was winded not halfway up. No one noticed much except Chester, who she dismissed ahead of her as she caught her breath. After a few minutes, she realized that the group had moved up and out of sight. She was hardly overtaken by terror—it was just the same one path, forever, after all. She had a notion to turn around and make for the bus early. Just then, cheery calls rang up from an unassuming little trail just to the right of the staircase. It was a shortcut, she decided, from which she could join the worst of the hiking go-getters who had already surmounted the hill. From this trail, she found herself arriving almost immediately at a small lake, which in the distance was revealed to be a depository of the ocean herself. It was, she admitted, rather pretty. The midday sun danced across the surface artfully. Even the standard twigs and refuge seemed to be swimming alongside diamonds in an endless stream of distilled sky. For a frantic moment, she even thought of stripping down and jumping in like she was back home at Myrtle Beach. She wrote it off, but continued to ponder the strange feeling that arose in her, something like sorrow but giddier and somehow bottomless. She could stand for hours in pure elation, never once thinking of herself and the slippage of time. The unreal dream of the day erupted, quite forcibly, as a glistening black object cut out of the water and into the open air. It came closer, closer, until it revealed a dark back, longer than she was tall. It was close, too close, when the orca looked at her and revealed its brilliant maw.

Inside were uncountable rows of short, pointed teeth and a cavernous pink gullet the size of a doorway. Its yawn passed and the orca shut its mouth, stilling. It stared at her with its beady, abysmal eyes. These whales have white patches on either side of their heads. Out of focus, they looked like adorably precocious eyes, cuddly and pleasant. Its true eyes were not so large, running just above the white underbelly. They were remarkably human eyes. Charlie felt a terrible urge to get closer. Instead, she moved back, bracing her body against a tree. But neither did she run, and neither did the orca swim away. They communed in this way for what had to have been forever. At least hours. Its head opened again, and Charlie got a glimpse at its dreadful tongue. Then it turned and disappeared back into the Alaskan wilderness.

Charlie was found a few hours later by a ranger who was serendipitously searching for her on the exact piece of the trail she’d come upon. She was the sole rider on the bus that swept her back to the hotel. The bus driver asked in what was ultimately a feeble attempt at conversation, but she could recall neither her mother’s phone number nor what rooms they were staying in. It didn’t really matter; they were waiting for her in the lobby, of course, moving in tandem like a single sobbing, hugging monster. To the McCormacs’ surprise, Charlie insisted that they not cancel the rest of the trip. In an even grander, alarming gesture, she insisted that she continued along their planned itinerary. Her mother was more than happy to let her stay in the room playing on her phone, especially in light of her apparent psychotic break, but in the end, Charlie won out. The packed schedule did not slow for her. Oddly, she began to find Angela’s nonstop simpering over the scenery almost charming. And inevitably, on every outing, they would get a look at the great blue Alaskan ocean. Then, she would see her whale again, if only for a moment.

Margaret Danenhauer is a sophomore at the University of Southern California. She likes reading, writing, and appending a funny third item to the end of lists. Her writing can be found elsewhere with The Sack of Troy, where she also serves as the Majority Whip. You can follow Margaret on Instagram here.