Built into the sand there was a red lifeguard stand. A raised platform just big enough for a chair and sun umbrella. No lifeguard, but a white sign screwed into the frame warning people of the high pollution levels in the water, advising potential swimmers, strongly, not to do it. In so many words. Anouk took a deep breath. Even in this humidity, her lungs felt relatively clear. She stepped into the water.

Chill-ache up to the ankles. Up to the knees. The girl with the swampy lungs. The soles of her feet buzzed over lake stones that shifted with each step, and she dug her toes into the gaps between the stones. Bathers swim at your own risk. She dove in. The cold was a shock and when she came up, had to fight for breath. She stood again, breathed until she was calm, and dove again under this water that was unknown. She took a few strokes, feeling strong, towards the end of the spit that curled a few hundred metres away. Dove again, deeper, colder and darker, and opened her eyes. Nothing to see but a green-grey haze. The river at home tasted like grass but Lake Ontario tasted more like the meltwater that might drip from a defrosting fish. But still. This was fresh water. Open water. Why did she listen to Nora? She was grinning now, dog-paddling in circles. She somersaulted and came up giggling as her insides continued to flip. She turned back to a shore that was further away than she’d expected and then spun and duck-dived and resurfaced, and did this again and again and came up in a front crawl. The spit wasn’t so far now so she carried on towards it, keeping an eye out for sailboats that might be crossing from the marina.

Close to the spit, the water shallowed again and then she reached the man-made bank of rubble, geometric chunks of pocked and stony concrete, rusty rebar tunnelling through some of the concrete pieces like worms through apples. She climbed the bank, grazing her elbows, her knees, and stepped up on to the spit. Flat and grassy, young trees in full, bright leaf. The grass had been left to grow wild and there was a lattice of paths running through it, and there were people here too. Dogs. Benches and garbage bins. It wasn’t like her island but still, it was a destination. She picked her way along the periphery, barefoot and agile, a skinny, sunburnt girl in a green bathing suit, and plucked a stem of tall, woody grass and chewed it. She picked a bouquet of soft-headed dandelions and sent the umbrella seeds floating with one deep puff, and her palms were left sticky with dandelion milk.

Standing at the end of the spit, she looked west towards the CN Tower and Toronto Island but to the south, out to the left, nothing but water. Birds here, plenty. Geese and gulls and slate-grey pigeons. Sparrows and chickadees and warblers, and she thought she saw a junco, fat and dark-eyed, but couldn’t be sure.