This morning, I’m not thinking about aquariums, or computers, or movies. No, today, it’s all about swimming, and for good reason: My times for breaststroke have been, in a word, fantastic.

Not that I’m going to the Olympics any time soon. Not that I’m the next Michael Phelps or Mark Spitz or anything. (Especially since they didn’t even swim breaststroke.) But I’m doing fifty meters in less than forty-five seconds, and that’s better than anyone else on my team in my age group. And so far this season, it’s been better than anyone else on the teams we’ve competed against.

Today, the first Saturday of August, we’re having our final swim meet of the summer. We’re hosting the team that holds the best record in our division—the team that also happens to have the guy who has clocked the fastest fifty-meter breaststroke in the eleven- and twelve-year-old age group. I’m with my teammates in the grassy area near the deep end of the pool, waiting to be called for my events.

“I’ve never been the best at anything,” I said to Dominique yesterday, “and I’m probably not going to start being the best at something now. Especially not something athletic.”

“Oh, man, what a tired old attitude!” Dominique said, and laughed. I shrugged and smiled. I smiled because Dominique was smiling again, and his voice was singing again, and his teeth were flashing again. He had felt so disappointed and angry when he didn’t get the scholarship. It had been especially hard to take, I think, because he knows, inside, that he’ll be an outstanding student who will go on to be an outstanding doctor.

But it doesn’t seem to be in Dominique’s nature to stay stuck in a funk. He told me he talked to his parents and to some of his professors at the community college and to his friends.

“I got my confidence back, Gabe, and that sort of squeezes out the anger. Also, why should I let people who don’t even know me take away my confidence? That’s mine, man. I shouldn’t have let them have it for even a nano-second.” Dominique had already apologized to Thomas for being so angry, and he promised that next week—when I’m all done with swim practices—he’ll help me set up Thomas’s aquarium again.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he continued. “Or are you just practicing a little reverse psychology—talking yourself down so your hopes don’t get too high, when deep inside you really believe you’re a winner?”

Me? A winner?

“Your breaststroke is up in three events, Gabe.” Don, our coach, taps me on the shoulder. “Evan, Brian, you, too.” We’re perched on those lounge chairs with vinyl webbing that leaves stripes on the backs of your legs.

“Let’s go,” Evan says. We make our way slowly to the check-in table, where we tell the mom who’s in charge that we’re the swimmers from the Rockwood Fins for the fifty-meter boys’ eleven- and twelve-year-old breaststroke.

I’m looking around for the competition. Three boys from the other team—the Matapeake Marlins—check in for the same event, but I don’t catch their names. One of them must be Timothy Fields, breaststroker extraordinaire, but I don’t know which one. It would be good to know who he is, so I could keep an eye on him during the race and pace myself against him. But I can’t just say to the three of them, “Timothy Fields, identify yourself!” I could ask the check-in lady, but now she’s busy with another group of kids, and anyway the loudspeaker is calling us to the starting blocks. This is it.

“Swimmers, take your marks,” the starter directs when everyone is in place. A pause. Then: Honk! The six of us dive in.

I know our teammates are cheering, but I don’t hear a thing. After my dive, I glide as far as I can, holding my body in a tight streamline. Then I take a good hard pull underwater before surfacing to begin my stroke. Pull, breathe, kick, glide. Pull, breathe, kick, glide. Pull, breathe, kick, glide. I get into my rhythm, my groove, and then I hit the end of the first lap—pull, breathe, kick, touch—and push off for the second twenty-five meters.

After I come out of a long underwater glide, I steal a glance to my right. No one there. I look to my left, where I see the water currents from someone else’s stroke and glimpse that swimmer’s head bobbing in and out of the water. Pull-breathe-kick-pull-breath-kick—but that’s his rhythm. Don’t let it throw mine off. Just because he cuts his glide short, doesn’t mean I should. Get into it, really dive into it, pull, breathe, kick, glide. Pull, breathe, kick, glide. With each pull and breath, I practically lunge forward into my glide. I’m back in the zone again, that isolated, underwater feeling where it’s just me, the resistance of the water, and the wall beckoning from the end of the pool. I’m swimming away from a shark, a stingray, a barracuda. My legs pump the funny-looking frog kick, powering my glides. Go-go-go-glide, go-go-go-glide, go-go-go-touch! I’m at the wall, which I slap with a two-handed touch. Made it!

“Nice swimming, buddy!” a timer in my lane says.

“Way to go, Gabe!” I hear Dad shouting. He says that whatever event I swim, however I do.

“Whee-yuh! Whee-yuh!” I hear Maxie’s unmistakable cheer. And that’s how I first know I won this race, two-tenths of a second ahead of Timothy Fields, the boy in the lane next to me.

Back on the deck, Evan and Brian, who came in third and fifth, slap me high-fives.

“Great going, Gabe,” says Evan. He’s happy for me and very happy with his third place finish. Anything but last, and he’s satisfied.

We take our places back on the lounge chairs and sit quietly for a few minutes as our breathing slows down to a normal rate. The next race is beginning. I look for Don, who hasn’t been by yet to congratulate us. He’s over on the deck, but he’s not watching the thirteen- and fourteen-year-old breaststroke race. Instead, he’s deep in conversation with the referee, a man in sunglasses with a whistle around his neck. Don is shaking his head as the referee is talking, and the referee spreads his hands out as if he’s saying, There’s nothing I can do. That’s it.

What’s going on?

Don strides over to the grass where we are. “Great effort, guys,” he says. But he’s not looking particularly cheerful.

“Great effort, but what?” Evan says.

“Well. What happened is . . . there’s been a ruling. Gabe, you were disqualified. The stroke-and-turn judge said you took two arm pulls with your head beneath the surface after the turn. That’s an illegal stroke. You know, the rule is one underwater pull, then your head has to break the surface. The referee has disqualified you.”

I don’t get it for a few seconds. Then I hear Evan say, “Coach, what does that mean? That they came in first?”

Don nods. His face is pulled into a grimace. “Yeah. Gabe’s win doesn’t count.”

“So I’m second?” I say.

“Not even that, I’m afraid. Your swim doesn’t count at all.”

“My time?” I ask. The timer said I clocked in at forty-three seconds flat, my best ever—and our team’s record for the event.

“Your time doesn’t count, Gabe,” Don says. “I’m really sorry.”

Doesn’t count! I did not stay underwater too long.

Doesn’t count! What kind of stupid rule is that? I do my best, I try my hardest, and it’s not enough.

What do I have to do to win? Why is everything so difficult for me? I’ve wasted my entire summer on this dumb swim team!

My teammates are sympathetic and outraged for me.

“Stupid rule!”

“That referee must be seeing things.”

“Tough break, Gabe.”

I relive my strokes after the turn. I pushed off from the wall and had a good, strong glide. When did I look to the right and to the left? After the glide? After my second arm pull? I had a long underwater glide, a pull, and then surfaced and got back into my rhythm. My legal rhythm.

Or did I not break the surface in time? Did I stay underwater one pull too long? Underwater, where I feel safe, shielded from other people—whether I’m underwater in the pool, in my computer room, or just in my mind. Underwater I feel weightless, smooth, and easy—not difficult, not complicated, not edgy.

Did I stay under too long?

I don’t have much time to think about it; it’s time to get ready for my next event, the boys’ relay. Our line-up is Zach Traynor, backstroke; Peter Stefano, butterfly; yours truly, breaststroke; Daniel Lee, freestyle. Sometimes we win this one, and sometimes we lose.

Coach Don comes over to give us a pep talk before we check in. Zach, Peter, and I find each other and stand together. Daniel, whom I’m sure I saw on a lounge earlier, seems to have wandered off.

Before he reaches us, the coach stops to tap Evan on the shoulder. He says something to him that I can’t hear, and the two of them approach our relay-team-minus-one.

“Okay, guys, we have a change in line-up,” Don says. “Daniel is in the bathroom throwing up. So Evan here will join in the relay team today.”

So far, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. Daniel swims the freestyle leg of the relay. The coach is replacing Daniel with Evan, but Evan is terrible at freestyle.

“So listen up,” Don continues. “I’m putting Evan in as the breaststroke man. Gabe, you’ll be the clean-up man, swimming freestyle in Daniel’s place.”

“But—” I say.

“What’s wrong with Daniel?” Zach says.

“Dunno,” Don says. “He could be sick, or he could have gulped down too much water when he swam his fifty-meter freestyle event.”

“But—” I say.

“I’m still butterfly? Zach’s still backstroke?” That’s Peter.

“Yeah. You guys are the same.”

“But,” I say, “breast is my stroke. I’m better than Evan at breaststroke. Why should I have to do my second-best stroke?”

The final call for our relay event blasts over the loudspeaker.

“They’re coming!” Don bellows across the pool to the announcer. To us, he says, “Get going, guys!”

“But, Coach,” I begin again.

“Go, Gabe,” Don says. “Just go, will you?”

I go. At the starting horn, Zach leads us off with his powerful backstroke. He reminds me of a cartoon speedboat out there, his arms rotating like the blades of a motor, his head stretched way back so that it’s almost upside down. At the wall, he neatly executes his turn, lengthens his lead on his push-off, and brings it home with hardly any let-up in his motorized pumping.

Zach touches the wall, two body lengths ahead of the Marlins’ swimmer, and Evan dives in. His breaststroke looks okay, but his competition is the Marlins’ Timothy Fields, who, after all, just beat us both in the fifty meters. At first, Evan’s out in front, but that’s only because Zach put him there. Once Fields hits the water, Evan doesn’t have a chance. By the turn, Fields is ahead. He stretches out his lead on the way back, and by the time the two swimmers approach the end of their laps, Fields is five full body-lengths ahead of Evan.

When Evan finally touches the wall, Peter dives in the lane and starts to attack the water furiously with his butterfly stroke. Kerplunk, kerplunk, kerplunk—head up for air—ker-plunk, kerplunk, kerplunk—head up for air. At the turn, he hesitates and loses a little time, as he always does. Butterfly is a very tiring stroke.

“Move it, Peter!” I hear Zach and Evan shouting behind me. I’m perched on the starting block, waiting for Peter to come home. I see the Marlins’ freestyle man take off beside me once his butterfly swimmer is in. And then Peter touches and I’m off.

If breaststroke feels like deep-sea diving to me—quiet, smooth, easy—freestyle feels like running, no, make that plowing. It feels like hard work, all sloppy and slappy and splashy. It’s not my style.

Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, breathe. Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, breathe. I do have good lung capacity. Because I can hold my breath for so long, I can go more strokes than a lot of kids without breaking my momentum to breathe. Here comes the turn. Now I wish I’d practiced flip turns with Zach, but it’s too late for that—here’s the wall. Just dive like you’re evading a predator in DeepSea, become a submersible missile, somersault, and EXPLODE! off the wall.

I’m not sure about the submersible missile part—maybe it’s more like a Zygurt drone. Missile, drone, or human, I shoot out of my turn. I see the white water of the Marlins’ swimmer’s kick just ahead in the next lane.

Push yourself! There’s a tiger shark on your tail! That’s a blue marlin ahead of you—catch it! Yeah, yeah, the marlin’s one of the fastest creatures in the sea—catch it anyway!

Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, breathe. Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, breathe. Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap—wall!

My heart is beating wildly.

“Nice swimming, bud,” says the timer.

“Way to go, Gabe!” I hear Dad shouting.

My teammates are screaming wildly.

And then I hear what I’m listening for.

“Whee-yuh! Whee-yuh!” Maxie.

I caught the blue marlin.