There's a beach. People throw their garbage there, old appliances and broken things, empty bottles, wrappers and trash. It piles up so high you can't see the ocean.
Oliver stops there every day after school.
It's not on his way home. It's not even a detour, it's in entirely the opposite direction.
He doesn't want to go there, but he does.
He walks out of school, bag heavy with books and mind heavy with thoughts, intending to walk straight home, and his feet take him to the beach.
The first time it happens he's... ten? Eleven? Wandering aimlessly, one arm bruised black and the sleeve of his uniform torn. He doesn't want to see the face his mom will make at the sight.
The trash pile is just a trash pile to him, then.
Maybe there is something to it, under the surface, that makes him veer off the road and start climbing, but maybe he's just tired and scared and wants to go somewhere he isn't likely to meet people.
He climbs until he reaches the top, and then he climbs down until he reaches the ocean, stepping carefully on precariously balanced broken things.
It takes his mind off things, to climb the garbage pile. When he has to focus on his feet and his handholds every moment, so he won't fall or cut himself, he can't think about anything else. Not his mom's worry. Not school. Not Carlos, or his burning hands.
Oliver lets his mind fill with old appliances, the way they balance and set, and where it is and isn't safe to step, and in the background, in the cracks between his thoughts, the sound of waves grows.
He climbs one slow, painstaking step at a time, until he isn't thinking at all but for the next handhold, the next step, the even, hissing drone of the waves, and then it ends. He stands at the edge of the world, waves lapping at his toes and roaring in his ears, and he is entirely hidden by the pile of dead things at his back.
He stands there for a long time. The tide is slow, almost hesitant to touch him, but the water is up to his ankles by the time the sky flares red in sunset.
It jolts him back to reality, and he shakes the water out of his shoes and runs. Around the pile, this time, not over it, and then all the way home.
His mom is in hysterics when he finally gets there, crying so much her sleeves are almost as soaked as his shoes are. She nearly called the police, she says. Where has he been?
He isn't sure. He doesn't feel like he spent any time at all on the beach. It feels like he spent a lifetime there. He says something vague about getting lost, because he thinks he might have, and she cries so hard he starts crying too, in sympathy.
His tears taste like the ocean.
He eats a bite or two, because by all means he should be hungry, even if he doesn't feel like it, and then he goes to bed.
He doesn't dream.
It doesn't take a week before he goes back.
The waves left something in his head. That's the first thing he notices.
He wakes up, and his head is filled with white noise, crowding out his thoughts. He moves through his morning in a haze, putting his pants on backwards twice before he gets it right, almost forgetting to eat breakfast, and he's halfway to school before he remembers that his sleeve is still torn.
He folds it up and hopes no one notices.
It gets better, through the day. The white noise stays, a faint noise in the back of his head he can't quite touch, distracting, but not much else.
He takes his notes, watches hero news on his phone during class and tries to avoid Carlos' attention. It's normal. Mundane, even. He's not sure why he feels unsettled.
When the day is over, he gathers his things, walks out the door, and gets half a block before he realizes he's walking in the wrong direction.
He shakes it off and goes home.
His mom has dinner ready for him when he gets there, and he eats, hungry again for the first time since the day before. She fixes his sleeve too.
He goes to bed that night and his dreams are dark, only touched by a distant hiss of waves.
Over the next three days, he starts getting annoyed with his feet. Every day, without fail, they take him in the wrong direction, and he has to stop and correct himself. The weekend comes and goes, and he's restless, moving through his house aimlessly.
The white noise in his head doesn't get any worse, but it doesn't get any better either. It's a constant hiss in the background, filling his dreams with something just out of his reach.
It's there. It's always there, though it slips from his grasp if he tries to focus on it, and it drives him to distraction.
The first day back at school, Carlos notices him again. He flinches down and tries to make himself small, but it doesn't help. It never does.
He isn't hurt this time, and his uniform isn't damaged, but he's jumpy, so when he tries to correct himself from walking in the wrong direction and sees Carlos walking there, on his way home, he turns right back around and follows his feet.
Once he does, breathing is easy. The hiss in his head stops being so dissonant, and his steps are light and quick, like walking takes less effort. In the blink of an eye and the breath of salty wind, he's standing before the pile of trash again.
They're all dead things, he thinks. Forgotten things. Unwanted things, left here to look out over the ocean so people don't have to think about them.
Oliver wants to be forgotten. He wants not to be noticed. If he's forgotten, they won't hurt him anymore. Forgotten things get to breathe, to exist without being thought of.
He can faintly hear the waves on the other side of the pile, and he is so tired of that sound being distant and untouchable in the dark of his dreams. He also doesn't want to be seen, standing on the curb so far away from home, and so climbing is natural.
The climb calms his mind. The dead things order his thoughts. The sound of waves gets closer and closer, and it fills up the cracks he would otherwise have filled with mutters and brooding.
Standing on the shore after the climb, on his own, with the cold ocean licking his toes, feels right. And it feels wrong.
Most of him doesn't belong here. Living things don't belong at this boundary between the world of broken things and he ocean, and Oliver is very much alive, but the waves wash through his mind and he needs to be here.
It's like it's drawing him in, flattening out his thoughts and removing everything that doesn't belong, just so he can find his place here, among the waves.
The trash heap smells like trash heaps do, sharp rust and old rot, with the buzzing of flies in the sun to accentuate it. The ocean smells like salt and fish, and he takes deep breaths.
When the sky goes red and the water laps at his ankles, he shakes himself out of his stupor and jogs home. His head is entirely quiet, not even a hint of white noise present.
