In the cockpit, she sits on the bench next to her grandmother. Nana looks so comfortable at the wheel, so natural, in the too-large windbreaker they found in the cabin, the wind tossing her grey curls around her head. “How do you know how to drive a boat, Nana?”

Nana takes her hands off the wheel and looks at them, as though the answer is etched there somewhere in the lines on her palm. “I don’t know, dear,” she says. She lowers her hands. “Who does this boat belong to?”

“I told you, it’s my friend Adam’s.” She had told Nana this an hour ago, but it’s like her grandmother’s brain is a sieve, and her words are like water flowing through the little holes. In fact, she probably wouldn’t remember anything London told her right now. “Actually, Adam’s not really my friend,” London says slowly. “I thought he was my boyfriend, but I was wrong.”

“Oh, well.” Nana pauses. “You’re too young to have a boyfriend anyway.”

London pulls the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands. “I’m so stupid,” she says, blinking back tears. “How could I actually believe that someone like Adam Pelley could be in love with me?”

“I believe it,” says Nana. “A boy would have to be crazy to not be in love with you.”

A confession starts bubbling up inside London, and she struggles to keep it in but it bursts out through her seams. “Sometimes I think it could all just be a lie, you know? And maybe when he didn’t recognize me, he wasn’t really pretending at all,” she says. “But I mean, what else am I supposed to believe? That someone I once considered my friend pretended to be the person I admire most in the world to trick me into telling secrets about myself? That she thought it would be hilarious to make me believe that I was special enough to be loved by Adam Pelley?”

“My darling,” Nana says gravely. “You are the most special person in the world. Look at what you’re doing.” She waves her arm out towards the lake.

London shakes her head. “All I did was steal a boat.”

“You took a chance.” Nana smiles. “You’re going to change the world, my sweet Serafina.”

“I’m not –” London stops. What does it matter? So what if Nana wants to believe that she is Aunt F? Or if London wants to believe she was really talking to Adam Pelley all that time? They are speeding across Lake Superior in a stolen boat looking for a shark in the middle of the world’s largest lake. Reality is basically, like, completely fluid at this point. They should both be allowed to live in their ridiculous delusions for a little while longer.

“Oh my,” says Nana. “What’s that over there?”

London stands up, peering out into the lake. “Is that…a fin?”