Pool

|one|

Swimming
noun/
the sport or activity of propelling oneself through water using the limbs.

As we entered the mammoth-sized swimming stadium that dwarfed its surrounding neighbors, we were greeted with a chilling atmosphere. Arriving in the waiting hall, a hundred faces whipped around to stare at us as if we were aliens. The room had an office-like architecture. Grim faced marshals herded us toward the main room. The freezing winter-like air chilled us to the bone, taunting us. As we stumbled toward the twenty-foot tall gateway, we felt our heads throb, our faces paling, and our voices lost in the wind. Inside, we were met with a warm torrent of air, a fantastic change from the outside hall that had now released its ice-like grip on us. A brilliant, strangely dazzling light seemed to fill the entire stadium, giving it an unearthly appearance. The fifteen other schools that had gathered in this mighty building were all but strangers to us. Perhaps the stadium was merely filled with a large collection of teenage competitors, but they hungered for victory, as we did.

Two enormous swimming pools filled the center of the stadium. They were like strips of the ocean, minute waves rushing back and forth, rising up and down, and causing a roar that matched that of the audience. Tearing my piercing gaze from the pools, I examined the rest of the stadium in awe. Futuristic high-tech looking walls and glass windows loomed before me, covering an area of over two-thousand square meters and towering over thirty feet above our heads. Twenty huge bladed fans rotated on their axes, pumping in air at such high speeds that the building was virtually a small monsoon. Several heat lamps, posted in each corner of the stadium, then converted the cool air into a warm current of wind that slammed into us. The room had a grand total of one thousand seats, each fully occupied; we had a full house tonight.

As we headed for our designated seats, I noticed for the first time that the air had a salty tang to it, an ocean-like taste that once again added to our anxiety and impatience to start. The marshals and teachers of each of the fifteen schools bounded up and down the stairs, yelling out for the first wave of swimmers to enter the marshalling room. The way they went about conducting this ear shattering business, to us, was an incomprehensible babble of roars and shouts that ended with the swimmers' names. To the critical eye, the marshals resembled their military counterparts, yelling at the top of their voices, ungraciously weaving through the crowd. In addition to the marshals, a crowd of parents who had arrived to cheer on their children lined the last few back rows, surrounding the stadium like a ring of hooting rock fans hooting in a rather un-adult manner.

The stadium rang with life, ear-shattering and blinding at the same time. The competitors of the day filled the majority of the seats. We chatted nervously and enthusiastically. Many of us expressed last minute worries, while many others loudly announced final verses of confidence. Small and big, child and teen, the stadium boomed with our energy. For whatever reasons we were brought here together, on this day, in this mighty stadium of life, we were one. As the noise gradually subsided, a long silence followed. The energy that was once buzzing in the air like a thousand hornets now threatened to explode in a cataclysm of chaos. As the contenders for the first event stepped up to the diving stands, the entire stadium held its breath. The twenty fans above blew a final warm gust of air, filling our noses with salt-like air. To a newcomer, the entire room might appear to have frozen in time. The start marshal raised his start gun, locked and loaded. Ten swimmers leaped; one thousand fans exploded.

***

I am about two and a half feet above the water; I stare at it, and it stares right back at me. My goggles give the water a crystal blue tint that taunts me; the water thinks it is better than I am. From the height of the block, the black tile that runs down the center of every lane appears to me as a runway.

In just a few seconds I will be moving down that runway, trying to take off above the water. My eyes will be focused on that tile, to make sure I am in the center of my lane. I can see the water grinning and laughing at me now; I am standing on the block with my knees almost to the point of shaking.

The water can tell how nervous I am. Right now, it is so calm and smooth, beckoning me to dive in. But in just a few seconds, the glassy blueness will be turned into a churning white mass as the swimmers churn through it, causing a wake to run across the pool. For now, it is still laughing at me though, with my toes tightly wrapped around the edge of the block, my body coiled up like a spring ready to explode.

As if I did not have enough to worry about with my race coming up, and the calmness the pool, the silence of the pool area adds to it. There is absolutely NO noise, which amplifies the tranquility of the pool.

The water is not the sole enemy I have in my race, because it is working with the time clock to destroy my race. Right now it is set at 0:00, which seem so empty and heartless. It does not like to feel so hollow, and once it gets to start, it does not want to stop. Somehow the clock has talked to pool into being its partner in crime, and they are both against me. "This is the 50m freestyle. Swimmers, take your mark.."
BEEP. My body releases, my legs exploding from their coiled position. My head darts up, my eyes searching for the imaginary hole I am going to slide my body through. Once I find it, my head is tucked between my arms, and my hands and arms stiffen to prepare for the entry into the water.

*~*~*

A/N: heyyyyy, so this is my new book! I hope you enjoyed the first chapter although it's not very long. Oops. It literally took me 2 weeks to write this one chapter and I would like to update once a week so I'm sorry if my other chapters aren't as good as my first, no joke I'm not that as a good as a writer I took forever on this one, and if I want to update weekly it might not be up to standards, but I love to write so...

I hope you're as excited as I am for this story, I know exactly how the story is going to go :) but I'm sorry if I never finish the book, sorry if you liked it (if there's any of you out there) I'm not a very motivational person.

So I had already published this book but something weird was going on, like the title wouldn't show or the description. Thanks for the 2 people who voted on the last copy, it made me smile so much :)

Thank for actually viewing my book, you don't know how much it means to me like holy shiz balz.

-ME