The Half-Year Off

For eight years, Karim had been the kid in his school who got up at half past five. He was a swimmer. He had been a swimmer since he was seven. He had been an *almost-good* swimmer since he was eleven, and a *genuinely-good* swimmer since he was thirteen. He had won a regional medal at fourteen. He was, his coach said, on track for the national squad by sixteen. His timetable was: pool at six, school at eight, pool again at five, dinner, homework, sleep. Saturdays were races. Sundays were a long swim and a short run. There was no other shape of week. On the first Monday after the New Year, Karim's alarm went off at half past five. He turned it off. He lay in his bed in the dark and looked at the ceiling. He did not get up. He thought, very clearly: *I am not going.* He did not know where the thought had come from. He had been swimming, technically, well that autumn. His times had been good. The pre-Christmas regional had gone fine. The coach had been pleased. There had been no obvious tipping point. There had been only a long, slow, eight-year accumulation of mornings when his hair was wet at school. Of meals where he had been too tired to talk. Of weekends where he had not, ever, gone to a friend's house on a Saturday because Saturday was a race day. Karim was fifteen. He did not, in that moment, have any of the language a fifteen-year-old needs to explain a decision