At this hour, he has the pool all to himself. Posted signs on the tiled walls prohibit swimming without a lifeguard on duty, but that’s a laugh—Rory swims better than any of the students hired by the fitness center to patrol the pools. His freshman year, he even earned a few extra bucks doing the job himself, though he’d much rather be in the water than perched high above it, watching others. After one semester as a lifeguard, Rory had enough, and stuck to the Olympic-sized pool and the swim team, and serious swimming. The public pool is much too juvenile for him.
The smell of chlorine is sharper as Rory exits the locker room down a tiled hall that ends at the head of the pool. Unlike the public pool, the Olympic-sized pool only has one depth, so there is no “shallow end.” The entire fift
