The Deep End

4:30 AM practices will turn anyone into a zombie. I shuffled through the school's back entrance, chlorine permanently welded to my skin, brain barely functioning. Three years of competitive swimming will do that to you.

"Hey, walking dead!" Marcus yelled from his locker. The basketball team's star shooting guard, total bull, but apparently that's charming when you're six-foot-two and can dunk. "Another glorious morning at the pool?" His friends snickered.

I flipped him off without breaking stride. That's the thing about being perpetually exhausted—you lose the energy to care. But Jade, my best friend since sixth grade, caught up to me looking frantic.

"You have to help me," she whispered, eyes wide. "My cousin's doing this thing. It's not a pyramid scheme, okay? It's a multi-level marketing opportunity and she said if I get three people to sign up, I can make five hundred dollars a week and—"

"Jade," I stopped walking. "That is literally the definition of a pyramid scheme."

"But she's already made two hundred dollars this month!"

"That's probably just the initial buy-in fee from new people she scammed. Look, I gotta get to the pool. Coach will kill me."

The pool was my sanctuary—cool, quiet, everything blue and muffled. Until Marcus and his crew showed up to "cheerfully" disrupt practice. Again. They leaned over the starting blocks, making kissy faces at the girls' team.

"Nice buttstroke, Torres!" Marcus hooted. His crew erupted.

Something in me snapped. Maybe it was the sleep deprivation, maybe it was the fake MLM Jade had almost fallen for, maybe it was just three years of his BS. I pulled myself out of the water, dripping wet, and walked right up to him.

"You know what's actually impressive?" I said, voice shaking. "Getting up at 4 AM every day for three years. Swimming until your arms feel like they'll fall off. Doing it again the next day. What have you done besides make fun of people who actually work for something?"

The hallway went silent. Marcus's face turned red.

"Whatever, loser," he muttered, and they left.

Jade was waiting by the bleachers, grinning. "That was... actually kind of badass."

"Yeah, well," I grabbed my towel, "sometimes you gotta stop swimming and start kicking."