TJ is the one who sat on the rock, feet in the river, black bike beside him. Day after day, he watched me, quiet and still. He named me Baleine. He believes he was only a witness to the story I was telling, but I knew he would keep my story alive when the river grew silent again. He believes I came to remind us what courage looks like when no one asks it of you. To show that wonder still exists, and that sometimes we must dare to leave the place we are meant to stay to find it. His words are raw and imperfect, but they are from his heart, and anything that comes from the heart carries imperfections. Without him, there would be no book. Without him, my extraordinary journey and defiant breach before Montréal would have vanished into memory. He is the one who dared to keep it, and I was the one who dared to come. “The ones who leave the biggest splash are not the ones who stay, but the ones who dared to come.” Baleine