The dim lights flicker like an old burning candle. The buzz of the neon strips accompanies the hum of the slowly dying fan. The vapour of the intoxicating chlorine embeds itself on my nasal hairs. Once I was here at this pool so early in the morning the surface was perfectly flat, glassy. Soon it will be choppy; the mosaics of the walls and the swimmer paraphernalia hanging from the hooks are reflected in tiny fragments of colour that reminds me of the autumn to come in a few months. Somehow, I wonder if those fall leaves will ever come. Each day draws out so long and thin that I am often surprised when the sun finally sets.
Waking up at 4 am was horrific, but worse than that was my Coach explaining the morning set: 200IM Drill, 50 Backstroke, 100 Streamline, 50 Butterfly, 100 Freestyle for warm up. It's 4:30 am the day before the biggest examination day of the year and I went to bed at midnight. 4 hours of sleep in total. Today, I will run on four hours of sleep. Oh, what fun.
Everyone around me is fighting their bodies to keep their eyes open. The girls are holding onto each other to stop them from falling. The boys are sitting on the concrete stairs in front of the blue diving blocks. Scattered on the edge of the starting platform, there are ten bottles of Gatorade and twelve take away coffee cups from the Starbucks around the corner.
Coach clapped his hands piercingly to signify the start of training. Ochre has her face buried in her crumbling dry hands and Gwen is struggling to find someone willing to cap her. I do because I need her to cap me too. The muscles tighten in my face as she pushes the cap back, ripping some of my hair as she does it. Great, now I know never to get her to cap me again.
With only a slight hesitation I dive in right behind the swimmer in front and let my cold limbs do the thinking for me. I was so good now that I could cruise along the lanes for two hours with barely a reduction in speed at the end of training. The water's a lion that was ready to swallow me whole and drown me in the life of a student athlete; school, training. Homework, training. Studying, training.
My shoulder blades naturally loosen and unlatch from their original place when I finish my kick from my dive and without thinking, snap my arms out front of me. The water breaks against my goggles giving me a pastiche crystallised vision of the tiled floor. I flatten my hands and pull my arms behind me, thrusting me through the water.
Before I know it, morning practice is over and my legs are shaking as I pull myself out of the water and rip my cap off. The Gatorade bottles and coffee cups are empty, but I have a bottle of chocolate milk in my swim bag for right now. The hunger overtakes my stomach like it normally does after training; I never seem to notice how hungry I am until I stop.
Chocolate Milk. Chocolate Milk. Chocolate Milk. Chocolate Milk is all that plays on in my mind. Storing my stuff back into the room takes longer than it should as everyone is moving so slowly. Hurry up I want to murmur, but don't so I'm not that girl.
Someone taps my shoulder and I shudder. "Cecilia, can I talk to you?"
I might not have gotten much out of swimming, but I did get a scholarship. Saint Paris University isn't much, but it is my home. It's also home to a particular individual that took my breath away and left me choking when I first did lay my eyes on her. I still remember the day; my eyes caught on the frame of the woman who had just entered the auditorium. She was thin, with broad shoulders and emerald eyes that mark the symbol of fertility. It was hard not to notice her, with her dark skin and striking brown-into-bright-blue hair. Her jacket, which was hanging unzipped over her torso, fit snugly on the curves of her muscles. Freckles were scattered across the bridge of her nose like stars scattered across the night sky. She looked real. She didn't look like the models in magazines or the actresses on the movie screens, but she was oh so beautiful.
