The day before her grandmother went over Kakabeka Falls in a barrel, she was going to drive London to Duluth, Minnesota, three hours south of Thunder Bay. In retrospect, London supposes it might look like she was taking advantage of her grandmother, but London would never do that. Never. She loves Nana so much. Even though London had pretty much been avoiding her since the Around the Track incident – which was pretty embarrassing for London, the way it just gave everyone one more thing to make fun of her for – she really had thought that Nana understood what she was going through and wanted to help her. And London knew her grandmother had been depressed lately, so maybe helping her granddaughter would give her some kind of renewed purpose in life? And it would be life-affirming, London thought, for Nana to go on one last adventure, something that she could remember the way she remembered her wedding day or any of the other big events that had happened in her life. (London couldn’t think of any right then, but she was sure there must be a few.) There wasn’t much that Nana remembered these days, but London was pretty sure that taking her to Duluth would be one of them.

And it wasn’t like it was premeditated or anything. London and her grandmother had been at the grocery store, shopping for ingredients for the bake sale that London was organizing to help raise money for the World Wildlife Fund at the community centre the next weekend. She was telling Nana about how she had wanted to hold the bake sale at school a few months earlier, but then Anastasia Peters and a few of the other suck-up student council girls complained that it would compete with their bake sale to raise money for some kind of stupid dance, and the vice-principal said they had priority because it was school-related, even though their brownies were super gross and probably just from a package and everyone liked London’s cookies so much better.

“I’m so proud of you, baby,” Nana had said. “You’re really trying to change the world. And you will.”

London shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s just a dumb bake sale. There are people out there who are doing actual, real important work, you know?” And suddenly she was spilling it all, telling Nana about Duluth and Adam and the bull shark that he was going to try to rescue. The next thing London knew, they were driving down Highway 61 towards the border.

“This is going to be fun,” Nana had said. “We’re going to meet a real live celebrity!”

“Yeah,” said London. “And we’re going to help him rescue a shark. Remember? That’s the important part.”

“Oh dear. What’s a shark?” Nana asked. “It sounds familiar.”