“They need to bring knives to cut this net away,” Clay said. “And they have to hurry.”

“Probably easier to work by the light of day,” I said gently, trying to lay the groundwork for the inevitable moment when the cops dragged Clay away out of the ocean and back to the safety of the beach.

“We can’t wait for daylight. If the tide goes out, he’ll die. Marine animals of this size can’t handle the weight of gravity outside the water. His bones and organs will collapse.”

“But people save whales all the time.”

“No,” Clay said, breaking through a section of net and grabbing another one. “Not this kind of whale. They never make it. They all die.”

“All of them?”

Clay nodded, still sawing at the net. “But,” Clay said, “this might not be a normal stranding. If it’s just the net—if he’s not sick—he might be okay. If we get him back out there fast enough. But if the tide goes out, there’ll be no way we can get him back in the water until the tide comes back in—hours and hours. By then, he’ll be in organ failure.”

“I’m sure we could figure out some way to get him back in the water.”

“Yeah?” Clay challenged, still sawing like crazy at the net. “He probably weighs a thousand pounds. Name one way to drag him back to the ocean that wouldn’t kill him.”

“Bulldozer?” I offered.

“Now you’re just being insulting.”

Good God, I felt like I was talking to Jacques Cousteau.

“If we don’t free him before the tide goes out, he’s a goner.”

I took a look at the net. Clay still had a long way to go.

“How long have you been here?” I asked.

“A long time,” Clay said.

That’s when I noticed the blisters on his hands. He was wet and shaking—more from exhaustion than hypothermia, I suspected, since the Gulf water is warm this time of year in Texas. Either way, he’d been out here a long time.

“Let me take a turn,” I said, stepping closer and putting my hand out for the knife.

Clay turned to read my face, deciding if he could trust me or not.

He could trust me. I hoped he knew that.

Then he nodded, so solemn, and handed me his knife. “You have to sing to him,” he said, before he moved away. “He’s frightened.”

“How can you tell?”

But Clay just met my eyes. “Haven’t you ever been frightened?”

I sighed.

“Go explain all this to Alice,” I said, “so she can warn the officers.”

And then I started sawing at the net with everything I had.

* * *

By some miracle, the police got the memo and did not run their sirens.

They all had utility knives anyway, and as soon as they arrived, about ten different guys waded right into the water to start working on the net.

Clay didn’t protest, and neither did I. Clay’s pocketknife was pretty dull. I’d been sawing like hell, and I’d only managed to cut two strands.

Plus, if I’m honest, it was a little scary to be so close to this giant beast out in the black water all alone. I could feel the whale’s essential gentleness. Its wise, regal otherworldliness was palpable. I was humbled in its presence.

But I also knew that I was about one big wave away from getting crushed.

And something, too, about being so close to the blowhole, being able to feel its slow and ancient breaths, about suddenly having such intimate access to one of the most inaccessible creatures on the earth … it was intense.

When Clay’s mom showed up, she was almost hyperventilating with sobs. She fell to her knees in the sand as she clutched hold of Clay. He put his arms around her, too, but he kept his eyes on his charge in the water. And when the paramedics—Kenny and Josh, the same paramedics who had tried to save Max—wanted to evaluate Clay and check for hypothermia, he let them. They cleaned and bandaged his hands, and they changed him out of his wet shirt into a too-big Galveston Fire Department T-shirt they’d had stashed somewhere in the truck.

One of the guys put his bunker coat on him. “That’ll keep him warm,” he said, ruffling Clay’s hair.

Clay kept giving me instructions to relay to the team—and they followed them. A mass of giant men, working frantically and taking instructions from a nine-year-old: Make sure not to let water into the blowhole. No shouting or scary movements. Keep their voices gentle and calm. Don’t forget to sing.

When Clay spoke, they listened, and that’s how, as the rescue wore on, a whole crowd of adults, chest deep in the water, huddled around a hulking creature and fighting like hell to beat the tide—on Clay’s instructions, slow and gentle—wound up singing “Silent Night” to a whale.

Some of them even harmonizing.

I will never forget the sight of it—of so many people trying so hard to help. To rise above themselves and do the right thing. See that? I told Duncan in my head. This is what it means to be fully alive. To feel it all—the joy and the sorrow, the hope and the fear. This is what life demands of us. You just have to stay, and try, and let life break your heart.

* * *

Mrs. Kline notified the search teams that Clay had been found, and they made their way to the beach in pairs as they all heard the news and gathered on the shore to watch the rescue. Carlos and Coach Gordo went back to the school to gather buckets, and the group formed a bucket brigade, sloshing salt water over the whale’s exposed skin as the rescue team worked.

Once he trusted that we were following his instructions, Clay allowed the grown-ups to take over. He was clearly exhausted, and he was, after all, a child.

When the Marine Mammal Stranding Network arrived, they agreed with Clay’s assessment, his rescue strategy, and the calls he’d made—especially the urgency of the whale’s situation: Yes, this was probably a pygmy sperm whale. Yes, there might be hope for this one. Yes, time was running out. We had another hour or two at most before the tide would be too low.

The hope became that if we could just get the whale free from the net, it might be able to use its tail to power back out of the surf. And while half-submerged in the water wasn’t ideal, it was certainly better than fully beached.

The scene was undeniably inspiring: Police and firefighters working together to cut away the net—and taking gently spoken instructions from a lady marine biologist, no less: the ranking member of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network. Teachers faithfully working to slosh the whale with buckets of water. The exhausted Clay wrapped up safe in his mother’s arms. And all of us now gently humming “Silent Night.”

All of us on the same team, desperately coming together to work toward the same meaningful, important thing, in a way that human beings almost never do.

I want to tell you that all of this was enough to completely hold my attention—that I was 100 percent dedicated to Team Whale.

And I was.

But I confess that part of my brain was also wondering about Duncan. Where was he? Shouldn’t he be here by now? I kept checking the crowd. I wasn’t worried about him. I just felt like he ought to be here. That he would want to be here. That this remarkable moment somehow wasn’t quite complete without him.

Even though the thought of seeing him again was not appealing.

Even though the humiliation of it felt like liquid agony.

I still didn’t want him to miss it. I still couldn’t help but think about how good it would be for Duncan to see humanity doing something good for a change.

How good it was for me to see it, too.

How much I wanted to share it.

The news crews showed up—but the firefighters wouldn’t let them turn on their spotlights. Vacationers staying in nearby condos and folks who lived in the surrounding area appeared with coolers of water and boxes of cookies to help fortify the rescuers. As the crowd grew, newcomers either added their voices to the humming, or just stood gazing at the sight—everyone seeming to sense instinctively how important it was to stay quiet.

That is, until Kent Buckley showed up.

“What the hell is going on?” he shouted from the top of the seawall. “Nobody texted me!” He clomped down the concrete steps to the sand and then pushed through the crowd, his face red and flustered.

By this point, the firefighters had brought some beach chairs to Babette and Tina, and Clay had curled up on his mother’s lap—totally unwilling to leave the beach, but fighting to stay alert. When Tina saw Kent Buckley, she defiantly stayed seated, tightening her arms around Clay a little.

“You were supposed to let me know when he was found,” Kent said. “I had to hear the whole story on the news!”

“Shh,” Tina said.

The onlookers hummed a little louder, as if they could drown him out.

“You couldn’t send me one text?” Kent Buckley demanded.

“I was busy,” Tina said.

“He’s my son,” Kent Buckley said, sounding notably petulant. “I’ve been just as worried as you.”

“No,” Tina said. “Because you’re the reason he ran away in the first place.”

“I’ve already told you, my secretary didn’t remind me!”