Some days, you have to go to basketball camp, which is full of confusing words and phrases like 'offense' and 'pivot foot', and takes place in a hot, loud gym. And then you have to go to the boring grocery store, and then you have to drop off Goodwill items, which makes you very upset even though they belonged to your sister, because you spent years not being able to keep belongings you believed were yours, and then you have to walk on a sticky floor to drop off bottles at Roopers, which smells strange.
And then no one stops at your house to swim with you even though you hoped for that, and your Mom has told you 500,000 times that day to stop touching things that aren't yours, and to stop using your mean voice at her.
And you know that the tiny little bit of summer school you got approved for begins tomorrow, and you don't know what number bus will pick you up or whether it has a seatbelt, or which adult will be there to help you.
And so the whole damn world is stressful and overheated, and if you shout another thing at your Mom, or slam another door, you're going to wind up in your room again, and so you convince yourself to sit here, in this clear water, and methodically dunk and rise, dunk and rise, just to hear the drips rhythmically fall from your hair to the surface and to feel the cool pressure on your legs and your arms and your head, and to take the kind of non-destructive break that no one can get angry at you about, and that still allows you to be mostly alone, because without that space, which must be both physical and mental, there is no resolution to your internal chaos.