When she
came to the middle of the pool, she slid under the water long enough to wet her
hair, then twisted and rolled onto her back, surfacing face first, her breasts
and hips and thighs and feet following as she leveled in slow motion. She kept
her head tilted back, aligning her spine so she wouldn’t have to use her hands
to stay afloat. She vaguely recalled swim classes with her mother as a child,
the red of her mother’s bikini present in her peripheral vision as she
struggled to stay afloat, the muffled sound of her mother’s voice encouraging
her to relax as Rosalie panicked, certain she would drown.
Rosalie
looked up at the sky, almost as black as the water beneath her. She turned
herself so she was floating away from the exterior lights of the hotel, seeing
only the sky.
