Cassidy and the Whale (Part 2)
THEN I SEE IT. Actually, at first, I am not sure what I am seeing. I only know that this thing is big and blue, and that it is slowly rising out of the water, as if a giant mountain were breaking through a sheet of glass. My heart starts beating faster than a drum roll, and my mouth becomes drier than a lizard’s belly on a hot desert afternoon.
I had seen the pictures in my science books, and I had also seen the videos in Mr. Ballwickle’s science class. But I had never before seen a whale in person, up close. It looked less like a creature of the sea, and more like an angry blue mountain racing straight toward me. The top of the whale’s head was covered with barnacles, and as it raced toward me, it seemed to split the ocean in half, with water falling to the right and to the left. Finally, the top of the whale’s head moved upward like one of those draw bridges that have to move up in order to let boats pass by below.
The inside of the whale’s mouth was blacker than a winter’s midnight. That empty blackness came closer and closer to me, and before I knew it, an absolute silence older than time itself had swallowed me whole.
And there I was, sloshing around inside the belly of the whale. To my surprise, the water inside the whale’s belly was warm, probably because it had been sitting there for so long. Every time the whale moved to the left and to the right, I would slosh and tumble from side to side, as if I were rolling around in the trunk of a car that was running from the police in a high-speed chase. It was entirely dark inside the belly of the whale, except for a small ray of light, coming from the top of the whale, at its blowhole. The gap from the blowhole provided me with just enough light to see what I was doing. Well, I can’t stay in here forever, I have to get back to the beach.
So, how does a seven-year-old girl trapped inside the belly of a whale escape? Well, I did not have any fantastic ideas at first. I got up onto my feet, and walked slowly to the back of the whale’s throat. I was surprised to see that the whale has a tiny little punching bag at the back of his throat, just like people do. I know about the little punching bag, because when I get sick and have a sore throat, my mom has me open my mouth wide and look into the mirror. Then she shows me that my little punching bag is red and sore.
Standing at the back of the throat of the whale, I bent my knees and knelt down as far as I could go. Then I quickly straightened my legs and jumped up, up, up as high as I could go. When I felt the slimy little punching bag with my hands, I grabbed onto it and yanked, yanked, yanked, as hard as I could. And there I was, dangling from the back of the giant whale’s throat, clinging to his slimy, disgusting punching bag. I don’t think the whale even noticed I was there, because he did not budge.
As you could imagine, this just made me angrier. I let go of the punching bag and dropped down. When my feet hit the slimy tongue of the whale, I slipped backward and fell onto my butt with a THUMP! Now I was covered in whale slime and everything was starting to feel rather hopeless.
I hopped onto my feet and walked back to the punching bag. I remembered a movie I saw with my dad a long time ago, where a man was training for his big fight, and he was wearing boxing gloves. He had a tiny black punching bag that he would use to exercise, and he would hit the punching bag over and over and over again. That’s how I got my next idea. I made my hands into tight fists by crinkling my fingers into the palm of my hand and wrapping my thumb around my knuckles. This made my fists harder than baseballs.
Stay tuned for PART 3…
J.S. Lender’s new book They Are Here Now (Short Tales) is available in paperback on Amazon. A new short story anthology for middle grade readers will be released in late 2020.
