I had never seen an indoor pool before. The possibility of being able to swim any time you wanted amazed me and the whole rest of the day, I closed my eyes and tried to conjure up that smell.

The next afternoon, Leah was late getting home. When she walked through the door, she handed me a brown paper bag. Inside was a bathing suit with the tag still dangling from the strap. After that, we went once or twice a week. A modern athletic complex had been built several blocks away so the pool at the college was almost always deserted.

It didn’t take long for us to develop a routine. Leah always brought her sketchbook and sat on the bleachers watching me. The first thing I did was slip in up to my chest, holding my breath and feeling the funny sensation of being half wet and half dry. I liked running my hands around and making big angry circles and then lifting them up high to let the water drip down, making tiny splashy ones. My hands looked softer and cleaner underwater.

Once my body got used to the temperature, I would flip over on my back so that I could tilt my head and let the water fill my ears. The bathing suit Leah had chosen for me was turquoise and I would pretend that I blended into the pool so well that no one would ever be able to find me. Floating was easy and soon my lips would stop spelling and then it would get so quiet that I could forget that I was in a swimming pool in a room in an art building in a place far away from my sister and mother.

I would stay submerged for as long as I could.

Leah didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t tap her foot the way that many of the grownups in my life did. She looked up at me from time to time, but mostly she was busy with her sketchbook.

One day I stayed in for so long that every fingertip on my hand shriveled. Leah was engrossed in her work and didn’t notice me coming out of the water. I sat down and watched her draw and then for some reason started thinking about oranges—specifically the one she was working on the very first time we met.

“Why do you draw things so big?”

She looked up for a minute then back down. “Because not everything appears as it is and if I draw really big I know I won’t miss any of the details. It’s my way of getting to know something.”

I didn’t say anything.

“I don’t like surprises,” she added.