The indigo door opens. A gust of foul smelling, hot, ashy wind blows into the house. I take a cautious step outside, burying my foot under the layers upon layers of oil, trash, and micro-plastic until my toes touch the cool, fine sand.
I take a shallow breath, and tiredly scan the beach. I notice the waves are stained a faint shade of red.
Another one.

I scan again, this time much more alert, rotating my head like an owl to find the source of the blood. I notice the waves crashing up against a large, black object. 

A whale. A humpback whale. 

Some of the few people left in my neighborhood are gathered around it. I take a shaky breath and cough from the air quality. I step back inside to grab my sandals. Once I’m back out, I take off and bolt across the beach, panting with each stride.

As I near the animal, I see her markings. Distinct white speckles underneath her flukes. Light discoloration around the dorsal. Tiny, barely visible white dots on her eyelids. I think hard for a moment. She seems familiar. And then I remember her. 

It was a beautiful, humid day, only a couple of years ago, in February 2029. The whale and her pod had just arrived in Hawaii a couple months earlier to breed, and my freediver friends and I were anxious to observe them. When I rolled off the boat and into the ocean, I watched her round, gentle eyes shift towards me. She studied me for a minute, and then decided to glide in my direction. I swam calmly alongside her for hours, and in those hours, I noticed that she was moving her body very carefully, and glancing at me from time to time. It seemed like odd behavior while it was happening, but I realized as I drove home that night that she was trying hard not to bump into me, not to even touch me, because it could put me in danger. That made me realize how complex those creatures really are, and I thought about her whenever I encountered a whale since. I thought I’d never see her again. Turns out I was wrong.

My attention focuses back to the present, and I wade through the water to where the people are standing. Some of them place flowers on her, though they are dried and dead because of the heat. There’s trash spilling out of her mouth, and a huge boat propeller gash in her side, where the blood is leaking from. Tears form in the corners of my eyes. I take the fake flower from my hair and drop it onto the mountain of trash that is spewing from her mouth. Whales are gentle. People not so much. 

I start back to my house, fists clenched in rage.

It was June 17^th, the last day of school, as I dashed from class to class. I started thinking about all the things my friend, Jackson, and I would do over the summer. When the bell finally rang, I was out the door in 5 seconds or less. At home I burst through the door, threw on my bathing suit and shorts, grabbed a beach towel, and headed for the lake.

          “Hey Liv” Jackson greeted me, “what’s up”” Not much,” I replied:” Hey! I have an Idea. Let’s swim down to the bottom and see who can find more gunk. Whoever has the least loses, deal?” 

“Deal!” he yelled as he belly flopped into the lake. “Ow” he whispered “ow indeed,” I laughed. After trying to do a cannon ball, forgetting, and belly flopping. Then I explained where our piles would be.” on your mark, get set, GO!” I screamed as we dove down into the murky depths of the water. Right away I felt sea weed, and I wrenched it out of the ground and flung it towards the dock. Then I dove back down and felt something hard and wooden. I grabbed it and pulled it out of the water. It was a box of tea from the Boston tea party, that was in perfect condition. “Wow” I mouthed “Jackson, get over here”

          As soon as he touched the box, I started to feel dizzy. I clutched the box as tightly as I could. I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t make a peep. Then everything stopped. The box of tea was gone, but it didn’t matter at this point. There, in front of us, was a vast ship. We of course made the smart decision; we went inside, and decided to split up.

          We didn’t know what we had gotten ourselves into. On the deck we ran into a guy throwing boxes like ours into the water. I asked him what he was doing and why.

 “Dumping this stupid tea,” he replied 

“why” I asked

 ” Because now-a-days it’s so darn expensive. They’re taxing everything from everywhere calling it the ‘tea act’ I think”

” wait, what year is it?” “I have a bad feeling about this.”  I thought

 ”1773,” he answered,” why?”

I didn’t even answer; I just ran off to find Jackson. When I told him what I found out he started to look nervous.” Liv, how are we supposed to get home?” 

“Think, think, think,” I whispered. “The tea! If one of the tea boxes got us here then it should be able to take us back.” 

“But which box? There are 342 of these things total. How will we know which one’s ours?” 

“The guess and check strategy! We will both take half, like our game. on your mark, get set, GO!!” 

We dove into the icy water and started searching. We put the ones we had checked on the dock, and, just our luck, the last one was it. We started spinning again and we were safe. At least I thought we were.

We were back in the lake clutching a box of tea. “wait I thought we fixed it” I exclaimed. “yeah what happened” there in front of us was the same exact ship.

We ran the library to look at the news papers from 12/16/1773 the first caption explained it all” TWO YOUNG BOYS” I was offended by this “SAVED THE BRITISH TEA” “I know what happened!” I exclaimed “when we put the tea on the dock it wasn’t ruined! Which means Brittan is probably still taxing us, so we have to fix this!”

We ran down to the lake and dove into the water. There just as I had expected was the box of tea.

This time we knew what to do, we shoved all the tea back into the harbor and grabbed our crate. 

When we got back, we bolted to the school on my desk there laid my  notes. I ran to see if they still had the same notes, "The Boston  tea party 12/16/1773" Phew I exclaimed.