Counting photos, I have three or four. First, a picture of sea stars, purple and glistening, then a field of flowers—both of which I’ve framed. Then, there’s the same family pose: just our heads, mine barely in view, my son and husband making faces, and they wonder why I never frame it or place it on my desk at work—why they’ve been replaced by sea stars and a lone flamingo at the zoo.

“Can we please try?” I beg, but the effort is just the same. Strangers have offered to take our pictures on vacation, but a stranger’s gaze will always be a stranger’s gaze: temporary generosity, the lighting off, a blurred line, my hair whipped into a frenzy, the stain I didn’t know was on my shirt.

But then, I’d heard that families were snapping photos on the ferry, timed just right with an orca pod, down the strait at around 8 a.m. on Sunday, so I booked a trip. Melvin, my husband, and Ross, my son, wander about, looking for tater tots or popcorn or both. The cabin fills with wayward coughs, and I’m regretting having done this. The price of the trip might cost us our health, but I wait, and hold my breath, while in between fits of coughs, a man tells his wife about a terrible creature—all scales and claws and the sharpest of teeth—and it lives here, in the strait, waiting to surface. And I wish he’d stop talking because it’s making him choke on phlegm, and I’m sure I’m breathing it in.

When the boat starts to round the bend, to where the strait comes into view, I find Melvin and Ross and push them onto the deck outside. There are a number of us, all lined up for photos, our backs against the rails, our camera phones pointed at our faces. We’re waiting for the first splash, the first orca breach, and I point my phone behind me, tilting my face just so, asking Melvin and Ross to really try this time.

I can hear the squeals and oohs and ahhs. The orcas are far off in the distance when I focus my camera, but in the foreground, I see something else. Something tall and scaly, with impossibly long arms and sharp nails, reaching just for Ross and Melvin, pulling them from the deck of the boat, just as I snap the picture.

But I’m still there, with them, in that final moment, and it’s far from perfect, but it’s the photo I frame and place on my desk to hold my family near once more.

Cecilia Kennedy is a writer who taught English and Spanish in Ohio for 20 years before moving to Washington state with her family. Since 2017, she has published stories in international literary magazines and anthologies. Her work has appeared in Bright Flash, Tiny Frights, Maudlin House, Tiny Molecules, Meadowlark Review, Vast Chasm Literary Magazine, Kandisha Press, Ghost Orchid Press, and others. Follow her on X @ckennedyhola or Insta: ceciliakennedy2349