It took her a few seconds to understand. Turning back she could see Blum was smiling at her. She looked at the margarita and dropped it on the ground.

Her first fear was for Junior. She worried Blum might have somehow also slipped the drug to him. Junior was in the deep end. She jumped in and swam to him. It looked like he was breathing normally. He did not appear to be drugged. Perhaps she was no longer able to judge. She paused to watch the beauty of the dappled light on the bottom of the deep end.

By the time she got out, the sun was going down. The pool around Junior, she was surprised to see, was filled with writhing snakes. The snakes were talking. She couldn’t hear their small breathy voices well enough to know if they were talking to her or to each other. Even in this hallucination, she did not have good hearing.

And while she was struggling to comprehend the snakes’ words, time began to shift. It became something she could see. It flowed past her, muddy with moments.

She’d never realized before that time was a river. She suspected this was because its flow was so consistent and she lived deep under the surface, facing directly into the current. Under these circumstances, it was easy to miss the constant slide of it, the weight and press, the slow churn.

Until now, when it came to a gentle stop. The river stilled.

She turned. To the side, she could see the motionless current itself, the frozen turbulence. Turning further, she could see her past.

Curious, she kicked off, floating backward. She arrived at a day long before she was born, her parents courting, her dad clean-shaven and slender, her mom round-faced, nearly as young as she was. Her parents as almost-strangers, holding hands, walking along a dirt road, her mom looking at him from the corner of her eyes, luminous with hope.

So Cora dog-paddled forward, seeing their courtship, then the ramshackle farm. The births of her brothers. Then her.

She paused, watching that last night with her hearing intact, her feverish head on the kitchen table. How small she was, her eight-year-old shoulders, her jug ears, her mom singing at the sink.

She swam on, passing herself wearing the bunny suit in the loud club, weaving through the crowd, a tray of drinks on her shoulder, her expression confused.

Next she saw herself holding her mask and flippers, standing on the beach seeing the chute for the first time, then slowly walking down it to the research center, to the lagoon and the dolphins.

She lingered on this past summer, examining the dolphins, watching them fly through the water. She heard them sing, learned she loved them and this work, that she was good at this. This summer of a life she was meant for.

Once she reached the present, she could see Kat and Mother in the sea. They were in a pod of other dolphins, swimming fast through the dark deep water off the island, hunting fish, watching for sharks. As she approached, they turned to her, surprised. Calling out with joy, they scooted ahead. Of course they knew how to move through this kind of current.