Winter's Tide by Lisa Williams Kline

whale!”
    â€œReally?” I said.
    â€œYes! There was a whale in the shallow surf, and we got some surfers to help us, and we pushed it back into deeper water, and it swam away.”
    â€œYou went in the ocean in the winter? You touched a whale?” My heart tripped.
    â€œYeah! It was so amazing!”
    â€œShe ran in before I could stop her,” Lynn said. “It was terrifying.”
    Now, as Lynn ladled soup for everyone and set it on the counter, Diana described how Jelly had barked, how she had run down the beach to get the surfers, and how another couple had stopped to help.
    â€œWhat did it feel like to touch a whale?” I asked. “Did it have big teeth?”
    â€œLike an inner tube,” Diana said. “And yes, it had big teeth. Not as big as a shark’s though. It flipped its tail and knocked one guy down. But it wasn’t that big, maybe about twelve feet long.”
    â€œThat’s huge!”
    â€œAnd it had a nick in its top fin, like another fish had taken a little bite out of it. I think I’m going to name it Nick.”
    â€œNick the whale,” Daddy said. “Sounds like a typical Diana adventure! You’re very lucky that tail didn’t get you.”
    â€œMom,” said Diana, “I want to take Stephanie out on the beach and show her where Nick was.”
    â€œYour hair is still wet,” Lynn said. “Not to mention your coat and shoes and jeans.” She pointed at the dryer, which was still making a rhythmic booming sound as Diana’s running shoes tumbled around. “Let’s all have some soup right now.”
    Diana had clearly forgotten that I was mad at her.
    After we finished our soup, Diana and I loaded thedishwasher while Daddy and Lynn talked in the living room about what the doctor had said about Grammy’s surgery.
    I just wanted to be alone. Back in our bedroom, I got out the colored pencils I’d brought, thinking that I’d try drawing one of the shells that Grammy kept in a basket on her back porch. Shivering out on the screened back porch, I sifted through the shells, listening to the soothing sound as they clinked together. I found a pinkish-white conch shell with a pattern of sharp spines along the edge of the opening. Grammy had bought it for me at a shell store when I fell in love with it. That had been that summer I’d stayed with her while Mama and Daddy were deciding to separate.
    I brought that shell and a few others back into the bedroom and arranged them on the end table for a still life.
    Diana came in, dropping her wet towel on the floor and flopping onto the bed. She grabbed her hairdryer and turned it on, the sound of the dryer blasting my concentration.
    I tried to block it out, focusing on the curve of the shell and the way the pale winter sunlight shone on its bumpy surface. It was like Diana was following me around. I thought about what Daddy had said and drew a deep breath, trying not to be mad. The thingthat made me maddest was that she didn’t even seem to notice I was avoiding her.
    It didn’t take long for her to dry her flyaway hair.
    I thought she’d leave then, but instead she lay on her side, propping her cheek on her palm. “Nick the whale reminded me about that preppie guy named Nick who you met at the ranch two summers ago,” she said. “Do you ever text him?”
    â€œNot for a long time,” I said, still sketching. “Not since I saw him at that soccer game where we played his school.”
    â€œThen it made me think of Russell,” she said. “I wonder how he’s doing.”
    I put down my pencil with a sigh and pushed my hair behind my ear. “You could write him, using the address at the ranch. Or write Maggie.” Maggie had been the head wrangler at the ranch. She’d had a special relationship with Diana, and she’d helped me lose a little of my fear of horses.
    â€œI did write him. He never wrote