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Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg is a high school dropout, and it wasn’t even the roller coaster accident’s fault.
Spending several months alone after being shipped off to a hospital in Saskatoon to remedy a mild case of broken ribs, punctured lungs, caved skull? No, no that might’ve delayed graduation by a few months, but that wasn’t it. Forgetting how to focus, to write, to read, to excel, on those stupid meds? That would’ve been conquerable, climbable, as any mountain was and always had been. The visions?
The visions.
It started with the hum of the A/C. The faulty one, in the classrooms at St. Cassian, which would occasionally blow a gust too hard and topple her pencil right off her desk each time she shot a hand in the air, without fail. In need of repair, surely.
Then came the harsh, bitten words, right by the ear. At least, they could’ve been words. When she’d snap at the drug store attendant for not stocking the chemical-ridden deodorant she has to lock in her stationery drawer, or mutter beneath her breath about how Mark Meyer from Chemistry was surely up to no good, because he’s always out back with a joint in his hand before the bell rings. It was a whisper on the wind; fleeting murmurs, so faraway and yet close, jumbled and on the tip of her tongue’s recognition but always just so barely and excruciatingly out of reach.
And finally, of course: the Things.
In crevices of rooms, at corners of vision. Tricks of the light, she’d often tell herself; not enough sleep, too much espresso, side effect of those painkillers.
But she knew better than that.
On more days than not; on walks intended to clear the mind, in empty classrooms, at drug store cash registers. Every ghost of a nudge, chill up the neck, mutter in the ear was just that little bit worse; a little bit like the judgement she often passed herself.
Like reminders.
She took them. All of a sudden, compelled. Please, and thank you, and pardon me I’m so sorry, and let me get that, and have a great day, Ocean would say, and she’d never not said those things before, as convention and goodness would dictate. Only, what was strange about now was meaning it.
Then started the failing.
Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg was failing each and every class at St. Cassian High School, and it was nobody’s fault but hers. Her own heavier chest, thicker head, teeming with Things she’d never really seen before and thoughts she’d never really had before.
She started frequenting the antique store. Before all of this, before the Things, it always seemed so terribly pointless, slipping in behind the jingle of the bell just to take long, bleary-eyed looks at a bunch of stupid, useless knickknacks; wastes of time, space, money, she’d thought.
But now, they are not.
He would’ve thought that rose statue was ‘tragically beautiful,’ is what she thinks of them now. She would’ve put that lollipop lamp on the left nightstand by her bed. He would’ve tried to get Eminem to play on that fifty-year-old record player. She would’ve exorcised that blue-eyed doll from the ‘70s. He would’ve given that old collar to his favorite gray tabby—what was it again, Smoky? Dusty?
Ocean is pretty sure she is haunted. Not only at the Ye Olde Antiques—by every flavor in the ice cream parlor, every song on the radio, every godforsaken ride at the Fair. The St. Cassian Chamber Choir lives everywhere, and yet, nowhere; they are dead.
Because Ocean killed them.
Rolling over in bed to the sun warming the freckles on her face feels blasphemous. It didn’t used to. Once, after the Fall, Ocean and no one else had woken up in the morning, and that had been fine. Lately—now—it is not.
“I know you’re there.”
No, she doesn’t. But it sure feels like it, at every twist and turn of this town, on all days and occasions, in this very, very empty bedroom of hers. Is this not succumbing to textbook schizophrenia? Talking to the Things?
Nobody replies.
She crumples back down, at her desk fastened from the rotting oak in the backyard. Spectacular. Now on top of a murderer, and a dropout, and a sinner, she’s a schizo, too. Ocean O-C-R—Most Successful Girl in Town.
What a load of garbage.
The oak thunks to her forehead, wood splinters skin. “Please,” the beg slips, to and for what, the world might never know. To rid her of the Things? The thoughts? The thickness and the weight that shadows her everywhere? Nothing is right. Everything is wrong. Her head snaps up.
“I think you’re still here,” she blurts to this empty room. “I think you’re still here, and I’m sorry.”
The magic word she just had too much pride to conjure.
“I am sorry,” she says it again, quieter this time; not for the minuscule fragment of relief it brings, but just for the principle. She’s said the word before—for the sake of convention and goodness, as she once did most things. But maybe never, not until now, for the sake of what it meant.
Nobody answers.
Still: “Ocean was wrong,” she keeps on telling nobody, or possibly everybody, all of them, wherever they are. “Everyone else was right.”
How she would have loathed to hear those words out of her own mouth—but now, how utterly right they are. How she wishes, for the very first time, that she were a little more utterly wrong about this thing. But she is not.
“I messed up.” The understatement of the century. “It wasn’t worth it. Not without”—wealth? Salvation? Opportunity? Status? Success?—”you.”
That’s it. She figured it out.
One roller coaster accident—one choice—too late.
Acutely empty, Ocean deteriorates, head in arms, at the rickety old desk of this unbearable room. Tangles fingers in her hair and wonders, what the sense of it all was. She prided herself on intelligence, once—so what was the use in doing something so ridiculous as choosing to bring back a life on the condition that it was voided of all the things it’d have left to live for?
Ocean messed up, Ocean is sorry, and nothing matters.
It’s at this moment that it seems like the right thing to do is to just give up. To wake up every morning, but to shut the blinds, so as to never feel the joy of sun on skin. To do nothing but slink the aisles of antique shops and grocery stores, chock herself full of the torturous reminders she deserves to agonize over. To remove all things joyful and worthwhile from this life in pursuit of some arbitrary, unattainable sense of justice for the ones she ended.
Ocean just barely looks up, to turn the rod on the blinds and switch off the sun.
And there they are.
Except, they’re not there. Except, they are.
“Hey,” says the entirety of the St. Cassian Chamber Choir, inside her empty bedroom.
Ocean screams.
* * *
There was an adjustment period.
It wasn’t clear, at first, whether it should be a comfort that Ocean was not, in fact, crazy. Just haunted by the ghosts of the five teens she essentially murdered in a dilapidated warehouse situated on the crossroads between life and death.
Forgive her for the indecision.
But then, after a series of explanations and continued verifications that she was not suffering from the sudden onset symptoms of a stroke, it dawned: They were stuck. All six of them, in fact. The St. Cassian Chamber Choir could not leave Ocean, and Ocean could not leave the St. Cassian Chamber Choir.
They waited, they said. “Call it, holding a grudge,” said Noel, a little halfheartedly—with his voice, his actual voice. How often she’d shrieked that it was flat or sharp, before, in another lifetime. Now, it was better than Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. They waited to reveal themselves to her because they were mad. And God, as they should be.
But then: “You changed,” said Ricky, like a fact. Had she, truthfully? He always did dish out more mercy than this tiny planet deserved. “So, we’re here.”
They were. Even after rubbing her eyes, shaking her head, kneading her temples, double-checking the dosage on those pain-killers—no, no, still there. Still the St. Cassian Chamber Choir, except approximately fifty percent more translucent.
Still ghosts.
That night, most normal people, it occurred to her, would be kept up. Tossing and turning, shuddering at the notion of never experiencing true solitude again, horrified by the haunting, every move watched, every manner judged.
But that night, able to see the vague, shimmering outlines of Six—no, Five—Saints, draped along the rotting oak, foot of the bed, sill of the window, Ocean slept more soundly than she had in months.
Now, Ocean is haunted.
She figures there are far, far worse things to be.
* * *
“You should wake up.”
She doesn’t.
“Ocean?”
Nothing.
“Ocean.”
She’s still.
“Ocean, I know you’re awake.”
Ocean slits open an eye. “Why?” Her voice is scratching with disuse. Everything is heavy. The weight is crushing. The stitched quilt over her back is as good as a leaden slab of iron.
“Why, what?”
“Why should I get up?”
A sigh, soft and low. “Because there’s a lot of stuff to get up for. Like,” she goes on, before Ocean can wonder, “the sky. The grass—spring’s here, you know. Good food, warm baths. Spotting a ladybug, putting on a fashion show in your bedroom, rubbing that silky velvet fabric between your two fingers, cannonballing in the pool, turning over to the sun on your face. And”—just then, there’s the wispiest, silkiest of sensations, something so close to touch, there on her shoulder, so much like the prickle of her own skin or the flow of her own blood that she might’ve missed it, if she weren’t feeling for it—”school.”
Ocean’s finger twitches.
“You should go to school, Ocean.”
Her head tilts, imperceptibly.
“You gave up a whole damn lot to have this life.”
Her legs crawl for the edge of the bed.
“So go ahead, get up, and live it.”
Ocean sits upright for the first time in she’s not so sure how long. Her spine is crunched like it’s recently suffered a hydraulic press, head crowded with the weight, every muscle and limb encased in stiff syrup. But she sits up straight, shakes it around, and plants two feet on the rotting wood in defiance.
“Thank you, Connie,” she manages, despite it all.
“You’re welcome.” Constance’s shoes dangle beside hers, a little see-through. A little reminder. Her lips push into a smile. “Now, go and huff some markers for me today. Would you?”
* * *
“O’Connell Rosenberg, Ocean.”
A smattering of applause.
For a while, it was looking like she wasn’t going to get here—even moreso, that she didn’t deserve to get here.
No matter what, Ocean supposes, only one half of those things has a shot at being true, now.
St. Cassian High School graduation is a rickety old affair. There’s folding chairs in the sparsely-populated gym, several of the fluorescents overhead flickering, caps and gowns passed down from the last graduating class so caked with dust she had to briefly excuse herself to flap and snap them out in the open air before daring to slide her arms through the sleeves.
There are no distinctions, honors, or awards announced as she walks, either; something that might have sent the Ocean of days past into a coma.
But at least she walks.
Ocean stutters across the stage, each click of the two-inch heels that are murderous to walk in ricocheting all over this cave of an auditorium. She tries to keep her eyes straight ahead. Really, well and truly, she does, because anything else is stupid, and silly, and senseless.
But against all reason, Ocean looks.
Her head creaks, at around center stage. There are the rows of dinky folding chairs, off-white and rusted ancient and also, the pair she reserved in the very front row, empty.
Of course they wouldn’t. She’s not surprised. They’ve never been to anything else—not spelling nor geography nor science bees, not concerts nor tournaments nor talent shows, not birthdays and most certainly not hospitals—so of course they wouldn’t.
But a vicious, treacherous little hand still takes her throat in its fist and squeezes. Her heels threaten to stammer to a stop.
And then they show up.
Not the two of them, but the five of them. The St. Cassian Chamber Choir, plunked in the seats in various states of disarray, whooping and hollering with assorted degrees of enthusiasm. Visible and audible, only to Ocean.
“Thank you,” she manages to tell Pastor Paul, taking that fateful little sheet of paper between her ten trembling fingers and teetering down the steps. Immediately, the five of them all clamor to follow—not like they have much of a choice, but their faces are moderately bright, a little foggy and misty, something bitterly sweet there. Ocean walked, and it wasn’t at all how she dreamed it to be.
But at least it wasn’t alone.
* * *
“You have everything?”
Ocean nods, wordless.
“Food, clothes, ticket?” She can sense Noel peering over, to verify. She can do that now, without looking—just know when they’re there.
“Money?” Mischa makes some kind of cash-esque gesture with his hands.
She swallows. “Yes,” croaks Ocean.
They all frown in unison. She can sense that, too.
Ricky plops himself down on her bedroom floor, right across from the tattered suitcase meticulously stuffed to the brim. He’s pensive, thoughtful, open. “What’s wrong?”
And she crumples.
“This is a terrible idea.” Her spine wilts over, fingers tangle themselves in her hair, everything on the verge of coming apart. “You, you guys—what if I get there and they tell me they found someone else for the job? What if I fail my classes again? What if, the lady, what if she backs out of the lease? What if my parents come looking? What if I run out of money, what if the bus kicks me off because I sit in the wrong seat and I’m stuck on the side of the road begging for cash pushing a shopping cart and, and— what if, it doesn’t work out?”
“What if it does?”
Ocean looks up.
Ricky looks back, with those big eyes of his—so expressive and full, she’s learned, when she’d never bothered to look into them long enough to know before. One mistake of many in this short lifetime of hers. “There are infinite timelines of this very moment that exist in a continuum,” he says. “Of course, in a countless number of them, one, or some, or all of those things happen. And the bus crashes and the sun explodes and aliens are real. But in an equally countless number of others, everything is okay.” He phases a hand through her shoulder. It’s coldly comforting. “And in all the versions of this one, we’ll still be here with you.”
That is the one thing that stills her thrashing heart.
All of them curl around her, chilling her bones, in a way that eases her like nothing else does.
“Okay,” Ocean might cry, just a little, terrified beyond belief, so scared to run away she might just—run away. But she does not. “Okay.”
They pull back, and they’re smiling, small and soft. Ready—to leave this place. She’ll at least do that, for them. Fulfill the one wish she can, and get them out of this town.
She sucks in a deep, deep breath, zips her suitcase, and stands on wobbling legs.
“Let’s go catch a bus.”
* * *
Her leg jitters, wildly. Eyes flicker for the phone—nothing. Back again, to her lap. One hand tugs at a clump of hair at the follicles. Other’s fingernails insert themselves between her teeth, for chewing.
“You should not do that.”
Ocean freezes.
Another hand—translucent, gauzy—tries to peel her own away from her face and follicles, respectively, but passes through.
She pretends like it didn’t and stops tugging, stops chewing.
It’s Jane. “You will hurt yourself. That’s not good.”
Noel follows suit. “I thought we went over this,” he clucks. He’s blocked the path from Ocean’s line of sight to her cell with his body—even though he’s see-through. Ocean pretends like he’s not and lifts her eyes to his face. “In, what was it, undergrad, freshman year? You’re gonna give yourself, like, traction alopecia, or some shit.”
She blinks. The rest of them are there, too—crowded around the living room couch, faces all screwed up. When did they get there?
“Sorry,” she mutters.
“Well, it’s not ‘sorry’ worthy. Just gotta keep the habit kicked.”
Constance hovers in close, planting herself on the armrest. There’s a vaguely prickling sort of sensation up Ocean’s spine; a ghostly hand, doing its best to stroke up and down her back. “It’ll all turn out cool, Oce. No matter what,” Connie says, so gentle but with such surety it’s hard not to believe her, at least a smidge. “You know that?”
Ocean does know that. “Yes,” she says, small. “Yes, but, I, I need—sorry. I mean, I really, really want this job.” She had to backtrack, there, because her priorities were rearranged long ago; what she needs is the five of them. Everything else became secondary. They all get quiet.
They know.
This is make or break. Months away from graduating, if that call comes, she gets the chance to practice straight out of law school—no more paralegal work, like what’s been paying the bills. She could do more than just pay bills, with this job.
She could help people, with this job.
There’s nothing but the din of the TV for a while.
Then: “This is stupid.”
Ocean snaps straight up.
Mischa interrupts his own spread-eagle across the cushions to sidle up close, face set. She falters. “Huh?”
“You are being stupid.” She’s too stunned to be properly offended. “Three, four, five years ago, you worry you will not have job. You worry you will not graduate. You worry bus will crash, and, about shopping carts, and you will have nowhere to live,” he booms, gesturing around largely with his hands, in a way that’s become so usual. “Now, you graduate. You have job. Bus did not crash. You never push shopping cart.”
Ocean softens.
“This job is important, yes. But you tell us, not always did things go how you wanted them to. Still, even if they are different, they are good.” Mischa looks her dead-on, and she forces herself to do the same. “If you do not get this job, you will get new, even better job. Because you will be law doctor. Good law doctor.”
She lets this wash over her.
Historically, things have not worked out the way she once hoped they would—planned they would. One thing about being haunted by the ghosts of her five dead friends has taught her, however, is that maybe that isn’t always so bad.
Ocean forgets, sometimes. That all of this wasn’t in the plan; that at its heart, it’s not ideal, truthfully. How she longs to feel the divots of their weight in this couch and the warmth of their fingers along the skin of her back.
But it’s hers. This life is uniquely Ocean; uniquely theirs, by proxy.
And it’s good.
“Yeah,” she says. Throws them all a wobbly, tight, but still-there smile. “Thanks. It will all be cool.”
They grin back.
The phone rings.
* * *
Ocean pushes open the door.
And promptly smacks right into it.
“Turn the key, dimwit.”
“I did!” she squawks, punctuating with another emphatic twist. “It’s not going!”
“Jesus Christ, just give it to me.”
Ocean pauses, to shoot Noel a look.
It dawns on him. “Oh. Never mind.”
“Try turning it to the left,” suggests Ricky.
She does. “It’s not moving to the left,” Ocean grits, jiggling the stupid key some more, wildly.
“Other left, your other left.”
“What did you get that J.D. for?” mutters Noel.
Ocean sends him another glare. “I was turning to the l—” Click.
And all six of them stumble across the threshold.
“Lord, woman!” screeches Noel. “What were you doing, leaning with your whole…” He trails off. “Whoa.”
It’s an apartment.
Pivotally, however, it’s her own apartment.
She makes enough, now, to do that. It’s been a while, and yet also too short of a time to process; even as she was scrawling her name on the lease and shaking hands with the mousy salt-and-pepper woman administering it to her, the only thought in her mind was, I can’t believe this is happening.
It’s big, but not too big; a nice building, safe neighborhood, short commute. And it’s hers.
No—theirs.
The door shuts behind them.
“I can talk to you guys, now,” Ocean says, voice bouncing off the barren walls—not for long. The movers are showing up with the truck this afternoon. “All the time. Without Hailey looking at me like I’m crazy, that is.”
“She was nice,” chips in Ricky.
“But this is better,” says Noel, in no uncertain terms.
Everyone nods, solemnly.
She might’ve tried to deny that was half the reason—really, Hailey, fellow class of ‘17 and roommate throughout U of T law, wasn’t so bad. But she’s caught Ocean rambling to what she’s sure looked like nothing but the running dishwasher on several occasions, and so this is far better for her sanity’s reputation.
Usually, the Choir walks, maybe to feel more human, Ocean thinks—but now, they’re all but zipping through every hallway and corridor. Noel starts making pointed suggestions on decor and furniture placement; Connie inspects the stove and oven, vows this time is the one she’s going to teach her to cook properly; Ricky and Jane are tag-teaming the “feng shui” of the living room, Mischa failing to test the acoustics outside of her own head; everyone chattering, taking up space.
Making this house a home.
Ocean smiles.
It’s only her name on the lease, this time.
But she doesn’t live alone.
* * *
Some years after that, it starts to get obvious.
She’d accustomed herself to the red ties, pleated skirts, ivory button-downs of the St. Cassian High School uniforms they were destined never to change out of. On odd days, she thinks of how they’d all put them on that morning, never knowing they’d be the second skins they’d live in for the rest of eternity; never again able to slip into their favorite outfit, feel the embrace of a woolen winter sweater, like she can.
Ocean cries, on those days.
But generally, it never occurred to her that their five bodies were permanently stuck in stasis—while hers just kept on changing.
It occurs to her now.
As she examines her hairbrush, there’s some silver strands threaded in there with the strawberry ones, this morning. Premature, maybe. Ocean frowns.
They do, too.
“It’s because they are always asking you to do so many things,” hums Jane.
“And how many hours of OT you work,” adds Noel, helpfully.
Mischa crosses his arms. “And I never see you go to gym.”
Connie fumbles with her thumbs, murmurs, “Those cases have been stressing you out.”
“You could stand to cut back on the caffeine,” Ricky points out, not harshly.
It’s not just this, she knows.
Her back’s been bothering her lately, too. Eyes finally begging for those glasses she’s been insisting she doesn’t need; limbs more wobbly than usual, after those evening commutes; migraines starting to strike more often, and it could be because of all the conversation always surging in her head but she’ll never tell them that.
Because in their gentle critique, she can tell, there’s buried a veiled sort of plea; a mutual knowledge of the inevitability Ocean was just too naive, too hopeful to confront until today.
I don’t know what’s going to happen when you’re gone, so could you please stick around for as long as you can.
It might be, it is, she doesn’t, they have, and she could, Ocean deduces.
“You’re right,” she tells them, trying not to make the two words sound so heavy. “I’ll…do a little better.”
Forever young, the St. Cassian Chamber Choir watches over Ocean, as she tries to stretch at her desk some more; clock out at five like the rest of the firm; go on a jog around town thrice a week; take on just one less case at a time; swap espresso for tea, when she can; and take care of this body, so the six of them still have something to live in.
* * *
It’s a long life well-lived, and Ocean is tired.
Just last year, they took a bucket list tour. Everyone got one thing: Noel’s trip to France, Mischa’s back to the prairies in Ukraine; Ricky’s adventure to NASA Headquarters; Connie’s stint back in Uranium, to see Jonah all grown up; Jane’s request to see something “large and profound,” which was decided to be Niagara Falls.
They asked her what she wanted to do, and truthfully, she couldn’t tell them. She made something up. She said the beaches of Fiji, because it was the longest detour, even though her bones were too tired to enjoy the sand and waves. They walked down the shore for as long as her legs would allow her, watched sunsets of brilliant reds and purples, ate and laughed and rested.
They’ve been home, for a while. They’ve started to notice, surely; how she’s begun to spend more hours asleep than she does awake; how she’s stopped teaching at the university, as of a few months ago; how they have to remind her to open her eyes and down those damned meds every now and again.
Lately, Ocean is ready for one thing and not for the other. They haven’t spoken about it, and it’s no wonder; no matter how they’ve changed her over a lifetime, one thing will always be true about Ocean O’Connell Rosenberg: She’s a big, dumb coward.
Too big to see the expressions on their five young faces when it dawns on them, too big to wonder with them what comes next. Too big to even say one last sorry to them, for the fact they were forced to live their lives vicariously through hers because she robbed them of the ability to do so themselves.
It’s been long enough, and Ocean is ready for the ending of her own life, but not of theirs.
There they are, suddenly. Blurrier than they are usually, and it turns out this time, it’s not because she forgot to don her glasses; it’s because there’s mist in her eyes.
She’s quite sure, from the looks they’re wearing, they know. Have known.
She lay backwards in bed and weeps, peacefully. “I am sorry,” she gets the courage to tell them, in one of the last breaths that passes through her. “I am sorry, and thank you.”
For the first time, she can’t hear them, if they’re saying anything. It doesn’t look like they are, but they’re smiling. All five of them. All of the St. Cassian Chamber Choir.
Something’s happening. Ocean is weightless. Her heart’s beating, and still; breath traveling, and halted; eyes seeing, and sightless. All five of them are pulling her by the arm, a tug-of-war with this plane of existence, pulling, up, up, up.
She lets them. She’s taken them everywhere. This time, she’ll gladly be pulled by them, wherever they’d like for her to go.
Ocean gasps, everything is light, and for the first time, she feels the warmth of their embrace once again.