He lay back into a kind of modified backstroke. The water was just perfect, almost the same temperature as his skin, and for a moment it was hard to tell where his body ended. He looked up at the skeins of cloud set absolutely still across the sky. He felt good.

After the upper-formers had had their fill of climbing up on the rock and jumping off, they swam back to the dock to sit in the sun again, and the rock became available to newbs. Hutch and Evan were the first, and they stood up there and presented their chests and set their fists on their hips and looked up into the brave future like mountaineers posing for a summit photograph.

Ben looked back to the dock, and his eyes met Ahmed’s for an instant. He immediately regretted it; it was as though the impact of his gaze had lifted Ahmed to his feet. Ahmed came down to the end of the dock, still with his T-shirt and shoes on. His torso looked like a cake decorator’s icing bag. Ben realized he had been convinced Ahmed couldn’t swim. Without taking off his shoes or shirt, Ahmed leapt into the water with his arms reaching out in front of him as though bracing for a fall, and then his head came above the surface of the water and he started wriggling forward. His face had the determined look of someone cleaning something foul.

Ben rolled over and took several hard strokes toward the rock with his eyes closed, then picked his head up and saw he was a few feet off course. He corrected his direction and took several more strokes, hoping to get out there before Ahmed could come close. Hutch and Evan were still the only ones up on the rock.

The sun reached a place that was suddenly late afternoon, and Ben looked across the water to the library and chapel glowing their different shades of umber. He swam to the edge of the rock, looking up at the two other boys, the water turning their blond hair dark, both of them with the first long hairs starting to grow off their chests.

They cleared a space for Ben, he set his hands on the top surface and started to twist his way up, and Evan took him by the upper arm as he came to standing. Ben steadied himself. He could just see the lighter surface of the rock below the water, and it was slick enough under his feet that he had to keep his knees bent to hold his balance. He looked around at the black plane all around him and the surrounding trees.