In Riptides

25 | clarity

N A T E

I jolt awake with my heart lodged in my throat, dragging in air like I've just surfaced from a near-drowning. For a moment I can't separate dream from memory. Splitting pain, sirens wailing somewhere behind me, water pulling at my ankles. But then the dark of my room settles back into place. The ceiling fan turns overhead, slow and useless. My sheets are tangled around my legs, my skin cold and slick with sweat. I sit up too fast, my back burning like there's still a row of teeth embedded.

I can't remember the last time I had a nightmare. Long enough that I actually let myself believe they were done.

Stupid.

Tonight everything blurred together in that scrambled way my brain likes to serve up the past, shoving old terrors down my throat all at once. Flames reflecting off my dad's helmet as he vanished into smoke. The metallic tang of blood from the shark attack. And Wes. Always Wes. Slumped against me, pupils blown, skin cooling while I begged him to stay awake.

My chest cinches tight. I press my palms into my face, trying to scrape the images out. There should be an expiration date on pain. There should be something to dull it.

I guess there used to be.

The thought arrives before I can block it. A flash of pill bottles. Powder. The way everything used to slow down, go blurry, go far. How easy it was to disappear into the quiet of not feeling. And how close that numbness came to killing me.

I exhale hard, shoving the memory back where it belongs. I'm not in that headspace anymore. I'm not that kid anymore, and I don't want to be. But nights like this make me remember why it was so hard to stop.

I push out of bed and cross the room in the dark, crouching to reach the wooden box shoved on the bottom of the shelf. The medals clink as I dig through them, until my fingers close around the cool, silver point of the pendant. The shark tooth catches a shard of moonlight as I unhook the empty chain from my neck to slide it on. I guess this is the next best thing since it used it help remind me I could survive things. That I already had.

I drop down to my bed again, toying with the chain. I don't think I've had a single nightmare since the end of summer. Not one. Is it a coincidence that that was around the time Lia crashed into my life? Maybe. But being around her made the static in my head fade, like she absorbed some of the noise without even trying.

I breathe slow, trying to convince myself it was only one nightmare. It won't happen again. But the truth settles around me in the dark, heavy and intrusive.

Ever since Lia cut me out, everything I buried in San Diego has been clawing its way back up in the back of my mind. The fire. The cravings. Blood. Wes. Static.

Surfing used to make it all fade away, but it's not enough anymore. And now, I don't know how to make it fade without her.

〰️〰️〰️

"You look like shit."

"Stop flirting with me," I mutter through a yawn. "Colton's gonna get jealous and try to kick my ass, and I really can't promise to go easy on him."

Alex huffs out a laugh, but the crease between her brows doesn't budge. "No seriously. You're never this tired."

I shrug as I shut my locker. "Bad night."

Plural. But she doesn't have to know that.

There's been three more nightmares since the first, all the same except now Lia is in there, like a ghost woven between all of it. My sleep is so shot I think I'm starting to hallucinate because yesterday at the beach, I swear I saw her standing at the shoreline. Hair whipped by the wind, sweatshirt sleeves pulled over her hands, just looking at me. Watching me. And I paddled in like a lunatic to get to her, but when I reached the shore she wasn't there. That's when I realized how screwed my head really is. Lia hasn't stepped foot on the beach in months, of course she wasn't there.