I get Mama to drop me off at The Wharf, again, which is stupid because the August afternoon sun is now blazing. I am depressed and hungry. And dressed like a skater grunge lumberjack. Mama zips away, already late for her shift at the Greeting Gale. There is no one around. The water is more agitated than it was this morning, little whitecaps whipped up by the warm wind. The fractured light glinting and bouncing off the choppy surface is almost too much for my eyes. I close them, and smell roses, unsure if the scent is brought to me on the breeze from a nearby bush, or something dredged up by the astrocytoma tendrils that tickle my sensory cortex in mildly amusing ways. Frankly, I’d rather the smell of rotting seaweed and burning doobies. The smell of roses makes me nauseous. Dave the Douchebag ruined roses for me by having a dozen sent to my office every Monday morning for the twelve months we were engaged because “ladies deserve roses.” Apparently I wasn’t a lady for the six years before that, during the on-again-off-again game of My Fair Lady he called our “courtship.” And I’m sure as hell not one now.

There’s no need of me sitting here, baking in the heat like this. I should go back to the house, eat a cheese sandwich, take the laundry off the line, and curl up in bed. Start rehearsing for my future as a tumour-plagued shut-in. Instead, my jaw clenches, my eyes narrow, my spine is tugged up by an invisible thread of defiance. Or bravado. Or insanity. Or all three twisted together into something thicker than thread. A rope, hauling me upright.

“Fuck it. I’m going in,” I say out loud, to the water, to make it more real.

Next thing I know, my clothes are in a haphazard heap. I’m standing buck naked on the wharf, my pasty flesh bathed in the warm rays of my noonday lunacy. Then, I’m in a quick sprint toward the end of the long cement path, with no space for second thoughts. There’s no chance to chicken out when you’re charging to the edge of that concrete cliff and catapulting yourself into the air for the six-foot drop. A moment of terrifying freedom. No ground beneath my feet. Nothing holding me, and nothing for me to hold onto. Utter uncertainty. The closest I’ll ever come to flying.

The chilly, choppy water swallows me whole. A fast rush of bubbles flutters up and over my body. Minnows zip through the translucent blue-green, brackish fluidity that surrounds me. Eel grass brushes my toes as I reach the low point of the plunge. Then, a faint stinging sensation as jellyfish tentacles graze my arse on the way up. I bob to the surface. My head breaks the water’s tension and the sun burns my salted eyes. A split second of feeling faintly reborn is followed by a gasp of terror. Do I still know how to swim? Should have thought about that before I jumped. Should have checked for jellyfish. It is August, after all.