Page 29 of Under the Waves

You have ruined me.

Broken me.

Picking up the bowl, I scooped the rest into the bin hurriedly like he was standing behind me and watching over my shoulder. He may be gone now but his words lingered in my mind like a tattooed kiss. I chased the shadows of him through the halls, left alone to pick up the pieces of the familyhe’dshattered.

I knew from the first hit that I had always been too young for this.

Years I spent trying to figure out why he was different, why he was like that, but each time led to another beating, and I quickly learned that answers were never going to be a luxury I could own. Because when he hit her, she hit me. And the cycle never stopped.

I cleaned everything, dried it, and placed it back in the cupboards. I did the same with the pan and the spoon. There was no trace of it ever having existed.

Just how he liked it.

“What’s this?”

I turned to my mom and fear washed over me when I spotted the surf school flier in her hands. I stepped backwards, back pressed tightly into the counter.

“It’s nothing, I swear. I found it outside, I just forgot to put it in the bin.”

She couldn’t know I have a job. The last time I made that mistake, she spent all my pay checks on drugs and starved us both for a month. We had no money to pay for the electricity bill, and some nights, I even sneaked into my middle school late at night to sleep behind the bookshelves at the back of the library just to make sure I would be at school on time.

Half the time, I had no idea what time of day it was or what fucking day it even was. Everything blended together—the hours, the days, until I could no longer tell them apart. It was a huge blur. I think it was my brain blocking out the memories. Half my childhood was erased because it was so traumatic my own mind thought I couldn’t handle knowing the truth.

Ignorance was bliss, after all.

“Did you apply to work there with Daniel?” she asked, voice nothing more than a distant whisper.

My brows crossed. “Why?”

Anger started to flame in my chest. I needed to get out of this house before it killed me. Or before I killed her. Daniel had been more of a parent to me in five minutes than she had been the last five years. He said he knew me when I was little, but I didn’t remember him at all. It was probably my dad. Or my mom.Hell, my entire family was so broken it could’ve been either of them.

If I didn’t escape this house, I would end up just like her and I couldn’t let that happen.

But perhaps I was already too broken. Perhaps this was my only future.

“Because he’sdangerous, Poppy. Your father didn’t like him, and we don’t associate with him and that wife of his. Stay away from them.”

With that, she limped slowly to her room, slamming the door in my face as I followed her. I banged my fists againstthe door, shouting at her to open it but it was like she didn’t exist beyond that point. That once the door was closed, my mother was gone, and the depression was all that was left of her.

I wanted to scream. Rage buzzed in my blood as I grabbed my old hoodie from the edge of my bed and hastily tore my headphones from the pocket, flinging them over my ears. I flicked through my playlist, skipping over all the sad songs. I didn’t want to cry or to pity myself—I needed to scream, to release this anger inside me that was eating me whole.

Settling on my favorite playlist, I ran down to the beach and did not stop. Every muscle in my body was screaming at me to juststopfor once, but Icouldn’t. I couldn’t stop running. I couldn’t stop the pain because deep down, I deserved to feel it. I deserved to suffer.I deserved it all.

I caught the distasteful gaze of people walking down the street, but I didn’t care. I ran down the street until the pavement turned to sand. When I could feel the waves crawl up the beach to kiss my skin, I finally stopped running. I felt like I’d been running my entire life. From my home, from my problems, from my ownthoughts. My life moved at a million miles per hour, and I was getting steamrolled in the process.

I wasn’t surprised that I had ended up here—I always did. Someday, I wished to be as free as the ocean—unbound to anything tangible but a great force to be reckoned with. The smell of the ocean always had the power to draw me in and I willingly gave my soul to the waves it withheld. All I wanted was the ocean. The sea spoke to me in a language that only I understood. It knew my body and my heart and my soul. It was merciless and rough and uncontainable, and every time I stepped a foot into it, I was completely and utterly at its mercy. I respected the waves and overtime they grew to care for me too. It was the truest place I had ever felt home and that would never change.

Heat crawled up my spine, painting my cheeks, despite the harsh winds coming off the sea. I felt like someone was watching me. Spinning around, I gazed over my surroundings—to my left, the cliffs trailed upward, gettingsteeper and steeper. I knew some of the local teens liked to cliff jump off them.

Though, like everyone in this small town, I had heard the rumors of the boy who jumped. His body washed up on the rocks a few days later. The police released a media statement concluding that the young boy had jumped with the intention of never coming back up for air. They said he died a slow painful death; he drowned, lungs slowly filling up with salt water since the rocks cut him up but not enough to kill him outright.

Ever since then, they supposedly monitored that spot and placed up tape to stop people from following his lead. It was a long time ago now.

Salt water bathed my toes, and I felt myself instantly relaxing. Here was where Daniel said the surf school practiced. I had to admit, it was a good scheme they had. I wished something like that had existed when he was still here. Maybe that way, Oliver would’ve known what to do when the rip caught him. I shook my head, freeing myself of that thought. I had moved on from that. There was no point worrying over it anymore.

After a moment, I stepped closer into the waves. I didn’t stop until the salty water brushed past my hips. The surf was small and light right now and I knew the direction of the rip the second I stepped foot into the water. I didn’t know for sure, but I felt it in my bones, my soul, and that was good enough for me. Surfing was a ruthless sport and you had to know how to trust your gut—which waves to pick, which ones to back out of…it was a constant guessing game of chances, but after years of being out here, I trusted my gut more than any other person in my life.

My running shorts were damp, and the edges of my throw on top were skimming the surface of the water. My phone was clasped tightly in my hand, the wire of my headphones barely above the waves. I didn’t know what I was doing, butI neededthis—this calmness, this sense ofhome.