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Ocean has a recurring dream that she is melting into, well—the ocean.
Not drowning, not falling, not sinking, not swimming. Melting. Dissolving. Like in the original The Little Mermaid when the mermaid turns into a pile of sea foam at the end. It sounds bad, but it doesn’t necessarily hurt. It almost feels like a progression, something meant to happen, like ice to water, like a caterpillar to a butterfly, like the choir performing and getting second place no matter how much Ocean tries.
She doesn’t wake up screaming, or sweating, or terrified out of her mind. When she wakes up, she always just wakes up confused. When she wakes up, she’ll stare down at her hands and wonder why they aren’t falling apart and feel her legs and think about how they feel solid. She’ll look around and wonder why she sees Mischa’s basement and not the endless abyss of ocean water. When she wakes up, she feels human and it has never felt more wrong on her—like someone tried to stuff the entire ocean—the vast, open ocean— into a fish bowl. And then filled it with freshwater fish.
Once, when Ocean first stayed the night at Mischa’s basement curled up on the little beanbag (that would eventually become her designated bed before Mischa picked her up and put her to sleep in an actual bed), she caught Mischa staring at her. Not in a weird I’m a serial killer and I’m imagining how I’m going to maim you type of stare. It was a watchful stare, she was being monitored, yes, but more in a baby-monitor type of way instead of in a stalker-ish type of way. Which was still a little weird, but weird in an endearing way, not in an uncomfortable way.
Her parents, strong proponents of the Cry it out parenting style, never bothered to use a baby monitor with her.
After Ocean caught Mischa staring, she stared right back. Mischa didn’t look away either, and it just evolved into some weirdly intimate staring contest between the two of them. After about 6 seconds of staring, Mischa only cocked his eyebrow, almost to say Do you have a problem? And truthfully speaking, even if she would never say it out loud, she didn’t have a problem with it. She only turned it back towards him and tried to fall back asleep, briefly catching Mischa’s amused chuckle as he went back to texting Talia.
On some level, it was nice to be watched. Back in middle school, she had this nightmare that there was someone watching her through the crack of her bedroom door. (Her parents didn’t believe in things like door locks, claiming that locks carried repressive energy that would seriously mess up the vibrations of the house——or whatever nonsense her mom liked to parrot.)
She was terrified of that thing in her door, worried that it would sneak into her room through the tiny little crack in the door and eat her whole. But with Mischa, it didn’t feel ominous or repressive, it felt like someone was protecting her.
Taking care of her.
It was nice, so she never brought it up again, even if she was convinced that he still watched over her some nights.
There was no other explanation for the way that Mischa would rush to her side whenever she sat up in bed abruptly. She never told him the gritty details about the dream, not about the ocean, or the sea foam, and definitely not how freeing it felt to melt and just become one, but he managed to put two and two together after the 6th time it happened——not about the ocean, but about the dreams in general.
He didn’t try to comfort her, at least not verbally. He just planted himself by her side and pulled her into his side. It was easier to think of herself as solid, as whole, as human, when she was with someone. Her body felt more like muscle and bone and fat and less like salt water when Mischa held onto her.
Ocean couldn’t ever recall her parents holding her. The earliest memory she has of her parents was when she was four years old and found them stoned out on the floor of their living room, laughing at the supposed “sound waves” that emitted from the record player in the corner that was playing some Fleetwood Mac song.
Ocean can’t really recall anyone holding her at all—except maybe Constance whenever they watched scary movies during a horror movie, but that didn’t really count since Constance was her best friend and was always touchy with everyone. Although, if she really tried, if she dove deep into the depths of her mind, she could dredge up the faint memory of her cousin, Astrid, holding her when she was still a toddler. If she really focuses, she can vaguely make out the sound of Astrid’s voice, as high as a little girl’s voice should be, but with the accent, it oddly reminded her of Mischa’s voice. She can only hold onto the memory for a couple of seconds, before the tide washes it away, taking Astrid’s voice with it.
During slow, quiet moments in the choir, mostly after they finish up a big run-through and Father Marcus calls a 15-minute break, Ocean will catch herself staring at Mischa and seeing Astrid instead. It only lasts a second, but for a brief moment, she sees Astrid’s blonde hair instead of Mischa’s brown curls, and her heart aches. She hasn’t seen Astrid in years, not since her family moved to Uranium and her parents seriously cut back on any form of digital communication, but sometimes she finds herself looking through old photo albums to see a glimpse of her again. Whenever Mischa opens his mouth, the accent brings her back to when she and Astrid used to have late-night conversations in pillow forts, but then the childish voice bleeds away into Mischa's gruff tone.
When she falls back asleep, she always dreams of the ocean again. But she isn’t dissolving or melting or turning into sea foam, she’s just floating. Floating in the open ocean, back down and chest up. Her face tilted up with her eyes closed, taking in the sunlight. Even in the water, she is warm, she is dry, she is safe. The air smells like saltwater and sunlight, not CBD oil and lavender incense.
The water also always smells vaguely of Mischa’s laundry detergent, and somewhere in the background, far, far in the background, she can hear Astrid’s voice singing to her.