Beneath the Waves (Ocean Song Book 1)

*UPDATED* Chapter 3: Drowning

The seas are calm as she sits overlooking her perch. Gulls fly about, screeching loudly as they sore through the sky and the sound of the gentle waves lapping at the shore almost lull her to sleep. Almost.

Serena shakes her head as she pulls her bag to her and starts digging around inside in search of her calculus textbook. She blows a small raspberry upon pulling the heavy book out of her bag. The last thing she wants to be doing is calculus. Upon opening the page, she grimaces at the sheer amount of numbers on the page.

And of course, her teacher would see fit to assign the class a ridiculous number of problems to do. Serena's fairly good at math, better than she was in grade school, but despite the ease in which she could solve these problems, looking at them all makes her want to do them less and less.

After five more minutes of staring at the book with pencil and notebook in hand, she tosses everything aside and lies back on the ground. She stares up at the endlessly blue sky with the occasional fluffy white cloud passing into her field of vision.

For a second, she sees an image of her father in the sky, smiling at her like he always does. He tells her to smile more because that's what her mother loved most, but what's there to smile about nowadays?

She rolls over onto her side and curls up just a little bit, barely on the cusp of a fetal position. She stares blankly at her cell phone, lying just a few inches away. What she would give for one of her brothers to call and say that her father had come home, but the phone remains still-its screen black. Not a single indication of a call or text coming in.

A small frown tugs at her lips as she rolls back over onto her back and closes her eyes. In the darkness of her eyelids, again, she sees her father. Memories of her childhood springing to mind.

One particular memory sticks out the most amidst the others. She was about...nine in this memory. She had come home from school wanting very much to go to the beach that day. Her father had been sitting at the island looking at something in his hand, but her short stature prevented her from being able to see it. Her brothers had been walking in behind her, not quite as eager as she to run into the house like a hyperactive little dog.

Her father glanced down at her. "Excited today, are we?" He knew what she wanted, always did. It wasn't that hard considering it was the one thing asked for, but always denied. Even more so after the death of their mother.

Serena's lips had pulled into a small pout, her gaze explaining all that her father needed to know. He had stared at her for a good ten minutes trying to convey his own feelings to her. But a nine-year-old understood little and was less likely to do anything she's told.

And he knew that, painfully so as a sigh slipped past his lips. He had turned back to the object in his hand with a forlorn expression.

"Daddy?" She had called quietly. He then released a small chuckle as he slipped the object in his pocket and stood up.

"Alright, alright. But don't go in the water."

A bright grin blossomed on her face. "Okay!" She dumped her bag right there on the floor as her father took her hand. Her brothers seemed less enthused by the idea and opted to stay home instead. Caspian was left in charge since he was the oldest and he was fourteen at the time-just having started high school.

She had cheerfully skipped out of the door with her father at her side, eager to get to the ocean for no other reason to stare out at it. Such as it had always been. Even her father couldn't resist repeating this action every day, though he didn't take her with him quite as much either.

A drop of water falls onto her face, effectively bringing her forth from her reverie. Serena's gaze flits up to the sky. More clouds have come and overtaken the sun.