I haven’t had much sleep because my father’s been badgering me, and Uncle Stew and Brian were arguing, and Uncle Dock yelled at me for leaving a line lying loose on deck, and it’s been raining and foggy, and the sea’s been heaving, and things keep crashing on my head.
When I do finally sleep, Sophie wakes me, screaming, because she’s having nightmares, but she won’t say what they’re about. One time she told me about that little kid she knows.
When the little kid was maybe three years old, the little kid went to the ocean. Maybe the little kid’s mother was along, too, but Sophie wasn’t quite sure about that. The little kid lay down on a blanket (it was blue, Sophie said), and fell asleep.
Then there was water, water, pouring over the little kid; it looked like a huge black wall of water. The little kid’s mother grabbed the little kid’s hand, but the water wanted the little kid and was pulling, pulling, and the little kid couldn’t see and couldn’t breathe.
Whish! The little kid’s mother yanked the little kid upright.
“You know what, though?” Sophie said. “That little kid still dreams about a wave coming.”
“You mean that little kid is still afraid of the water?”
“I didn’t say that,” Sophie said. “The little kid loves the water, loves the ocean—”
“But why does the little kid keep having that dream?”
“I don’t know,” Sophie said. “Maybe it was something about the unexpectedness of it, the being safe and sound asleep and warm and happy, and then that wave sneaking up and trying to take the little kid away—”
“Wow,” I said. “It’s as if the wave is haunting the little kid, like the little kid is afraid that the wave will come back—”
“Maybe,” Sophie said. “Or maybe not—”
All day long, Sophie acted weird. She’d stare out at the water and then rush below deck and then she’d rush back up, as if she was suffocating down below, and up and down she went, up and down. Maybe she was worrying about the little kid.