I dreamed it was around the last day of school. The air was swelteringly humid, and in my pocket was a TTC day pass all scratched off, ready to go. I should've known it was a dream at that point. They don't make paper day passes anymore. Maybe it's because someone finally achieved the dream of amassing a collection of 365 day passes over the year, each with a different date scratched out, and the year of travel conveniently left blank. Unlimited transit for every day of the year. 

But for me, only the day ahead mattered. We boarded a bus. It was empty at midday, but stuffy nonetheless, as the driver had not seen fit to turn on the air conditioning. We loosened our backpacks and tried to ignore the way our clothes clung to our bodies in the new summer heat. 

The bus trundled down a route I hadn't taken before, winding through a city that I did not live in. The houses looked so small and quaint outside the dust-smudged windows, as if they were shrinking away from the grime splattered against the bus's flanks. Looking away in the same way that you try not to look at the megaphone preacher at Yonge-Dundas square who had never heard of the aphorism say it don't spray it, or your fellow bus passengers, ensconced in thick, fluffy parkas of anonymity. 

We weren't wearing parkas, though. We were wearing flip-flops and cargo shorts and tee shirts, emblazoned with the names of indie bands du jour and the crisp, new-printed slogans of youth that had not yet begun to peel from the cotton. The age of the parka was over. The age of the flip-flop had just begun.  

The bus screeched to a halt, sending the overhead handles aswing. The accordion doors folded open. I stepped off the bus and onto the dazzling pale expanse of sand, nearly deserted on a weekday afternoon. And if the sand was hot, I did not feel it as I kicked off my sandals and ran across the little dunes, stumbling in the uneven ground. For beyond that was water, a blue that blurred with the sky, cool against my skin as it soaked into my clothes and splashed onto my friends' laughing faces. 
 
And I laughed too. How could I not? 

Joke was on me, though, because I woke up, sunbeam across my face, back damp with sweat. 

That wasn't how it happened, I told myself. Things were different the first time around. There is no bus that stops right at the sand. No deserted paradise that awaited us on the first real day of summer. Or - since we'd picked up summer internships and placements and other colours and flavours of resume padding, before diving right back into the academic fray again - maybe it was already the last day of summer. 

Anyways that, my friends, is the story of how my day could only go downhill from there.