Take your mark.
The 6-year-old bends, clutches the lip of the pool. A tone sounds.
He and his competitors hurl themselves into flight, stretching their little bodies as far as they can out over the water. Then gravity takes hold and their freestyle sprint begins.
For the next 20 seconds or so, their arms and legs churn. They have one goal, the far wall.
Reach out. Touch first.
When the boy touches, his slight asthma makes his lungs burn.
He doesn’t know it now, during his first competitive races, but he has found the thing that will define much of his life and set him on a quest he’ll tell no one about. He’ll realize he’s not swimming for victory ribbons, or for his cheering parents and older sister, whose white skin looks nothing like his own.