Fence: Disarmed

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “You eating your tiny sandwiches?” Nicholas asked Eugene.

  “Yeah. Don’t mess with my protein intake,” said Eugene, as stern as Eugene ever got.

  Nicholas sighed, accepting his fate, and tried again to peek at the book Seiji was reading. Seiji held it farther away from Nicholas without taking his eyes off the page.

  “What’s the book about?”

  “The life and fencing experiences of Ibtihaj Muhammad. She was a bronze medalist in the 2016 summer Olympics,” Seiji told him. “She’s one of my personal heroes and role models. You can read the book after I’m done.”

  But what was Nicholas supposed to do now? He read the in-flight magazine, which told him more about the plane. Also about many whiskeys and colognes, but Nicholas didn’t really care about those. He looked up fencing documentaries on the search function on the screen in front of him and got a documentary about building a fence between America and Mexico. No thanks! The only actual fencing documentary was one Coach had already made them all watch six times. Nicholas felt the in-flight entertainment didn’t understand how to entertain him.

  “The flight attendant said if we recline both our chairs and bring down the armrests, we can lower a small pod over ourselves and sleep in our small pod bed,” Nicholas told Seiji. “Want to be in a small pod?”

  Seiji turned a page of his fencing book without even glancing up. “I don’t.”

  Nicholas felt a lurch of unease, though that might have been the plane swooping some more. This was all so strange to him, and so obviously nothing new to Seiji.

  “Are you still startled by the plane?” Seiji asked.

  Nicholas shrugged.

  “You can read the book with me,” offered Seiji. “But don’t ask me to turn a page before I’m ready. You know I like to take my time and make mental notes.”

  “Totally.” Nicholas leaned in against Seiji’s shoulder. After a few minutes of interesting reading, he asked, “When do you think you might be done with this page?”

  Seiji rolled his eyes, then said, “I’m not eating all my sandwiches.”

  Nicholas cheered up. He could get used to new situations, like he’d grown to love his school. He was starting to like the plane already. The Kings Row team was going on an amazing adventure. France would be great.

  10 HARVARD

  Harvard was frustrated. Just days ago, he would’ve been thrilled to have been seated next to his best friend for the whole trip from New York, to Paris, then to Nice. Before everything happened between them, they had shared seats on other flights, bus rides, and various trips. It was always comfortable, and it was always fun, but now everything was different.

  Now Harvard could only think of one of the last times he’d sat this closely with Aiden, when they’d shared a seat on a Ferris wheel on a date. Harvard tried not to reminisce about that day and what came after, but it was hard when Aiden was this close to him for the first time in days.

  They were stuck together on this flight to Paris. For seven hours.

  The seats in first class were huge, but the flight attendant had lowered the barrier between them so that they could sleep together in a pod. Which, obviously, they weren’t going to do.

  Who had invented the double meaning of sleeping together? It was a confusing and distressing phrase. Harvard had slept in the same bed as Aiden on countless sleepovers, had slept with their beds pushed together since they came to Kings Row. In the olden days, when people had to sleep in the same bed and nothing could happen, a sword might be laid down between them.

  Harvard’s obliviousness to his own feelings had been the sword laid between them, and now it was gone. Every molecule of Harvard’s body was terribly aware of the warmth of Aiden beside him, a fraction of an inch away and impossibly distant.

  Be a good team captain, be sensible, don’t let anybody down, Harvard told himself, and redirected his attention firmly toward the others. Bobby was singing a song. “I love fencing in the springtime, I love fencing in the fall—”

  Dante was sitting beside Bobby, a faint smile discernible on his face as Bobby sang.

  Seiji cleared his throat. “The high school fencing season typically lasts from early September until late January. Of course, for any serious fencer, it’s a year-round commitment. If preparing for the summer Olympics, I agree the springtime would be crucial.”

  “Um,” Bobby said in crushed, flat tones. “That’s a great point. Thanks, Seiji.”

  “It’s fine. Did you make up that song yourself?” Seiji asked, relenting and speaking in his I am taking an interest in Nicholas’s friends voice.

  The voice alarmed the other students even more than Seiji’s regular voice. Harvard sympathized. Seiji was a great kid, and an even better fencer, but seeing Seiji try to have normal social interactions was like watching the Terminator at a children’s tea party.

  “Ah… yes,” said Bobby.

  “Very droll,” said Seiji.

  “Sorry for bothering you,” whispered Bobby, staring at the back of Seiji’s head with love that—naturally—flew right over Seiji’s head.

  Dante’s smile had snapped off. Neither Bobby nor Seiji noticed.

  “You’re not bothering me,” Seiji told Bobby. “Nicholas is bothering me.”

  Nicholas, who was taking up half of Seiji’s seat because his arms and legs went everywhere, and was eating Seiji’s sandwiches, gave Seiji a thumbs-up. “You know it.”

  Harvard started when a weight hit him unexpectedly, then glanced to the side and realized Aiden had fallen asleep on Harvard’s shoulder.

  When Harvard moved, Aiden made a low complaining sound that, because something fundamental had gone wrong in Harvard’s brain, Harvard found sweet. Harvard shifted so that Aiden would be more comfortable, and sighed inwardly. Aiden really should take better care of himself. It couldn’t be all running around having good times with hot boys, Harvard thought, his chest twisting with misery, which he quelled immediately. This wasn’t about Harvard. This was about his best friend, and how Aiden should sleep occasionally.

  A lock of Aiden’s hair, silk soft as a whisper, brushed against Harvard’s ear. Harvard endured the torture and turned his attention desperately back on the rest of the team.

  Bobby appeared to have cheered up. He and Eugene were telling each other facts about France that they seemed to both know but seemed equally happy to hear. Bobby caught Harvard looking their way as they chattered.

  “You know everything, Harvard!” he said enthusiastically.

  “Not really,” said Harvard.

  Bobby sighed admiringly. “And you’re so modest. Will you tell us all about Camp Menton?”

  Harvard gave Bobby a kind smile, to make up for Seiji accidentally crushing Bobby’s tender heart on the reg.

  “Sure, I can tell you everything I know about Camp Menton. One thing to remember is that we’ll all have to be on our best behavior and train our hardest. They are famous for their discipline and how rigorous their training program is. Some teams have even failed out of training because they weren’t able to hack it. Can you imagine the shame?”

  Everyone looked alarmed, even sweet Bobby, who wasn’t on the team and wouldn’t be training at all.

  Harvard was sorry to frighten them, but trouble did seem to follow the Kings Row team around. This might be a good opportunity to scare the team into watching their behavior. “Maybe it’s an urban legend, but I heard one fencer was permanently banned from the camp. Of course,” Harvard added, to be fair, “maybe he deserved it. The guy was infamous for his bad temper.”

  He raised an eyebrow at Nicholas and Seiji, who’d been caught fistfighting in an equipment closet a few weeks ago. Seiji looked icily unimpressed. Nicholas gave Harvard a mischievous grin.

  “Sounds like a cool guy.”

  “Another time, a whole team was thrown out of camp, and then suspended from their school,” Harvard went on. “They say it was because they were having parties in their rooms at night, but who knows?”

/>   Bobby’s eyes went wide as saucers. “Do you think they were engaging in… debaucheries?”

  Dante’s faint smile was back, except now it was a faint smirk. “What kind of debaucheries?”

  Bobby hit Dante in the arm with a small fist. “Wild debaucheries! Don’t interrupt me. You talk too much!”

  Dante subsided with a grin.

  When Harvard’s voice sank, solemn and hushed, Aiden made a fretful noise in his sleep. Harvard passed a hand over Aiden’s water-smooth hair before continuing, and Aiden settled with a content sigh.

  It almost felt nice, until Harvard imagined one of the anonymous boys Aiden was clearly used to snuggling with. Then Harvard felt sick instead.

  “So we’re all going to train hard and behave perfectly, right, team?” Harvard asked.

  “Totally, Captain,” said Nicholas with automatic enthusiasm, then bit his lip. “Behave perfectly? Me?”

  “Yeah, we might be tilting at windmills here,” Harvard admitted with a grin. “But I trust my team can do anything.”

  Several members of his trusty team looked confused.

  “What does this camp expect us to do with windmills?” demanded Nicholas.

  “Tilting at windmills means trying to fight them,” Harvard explained.

  Seiji’s perpetual frown became more pronounced. “I do not see how you could win a fight against a windmill?”

  “That’s the point, bro,” contributed Eugene. “It’s become a saying for people who take on hopeless causes or fight battles they can’t win, because they’ve got big dreams.”

  “Hey, check you out, Labao,” said Harvard. “Unexpected breadth of literary knowledge.”

  “You can listen to audiobooks at the gym, you know. I’ve got depths,” claimed Eugene. “Many depths. I’m a brocean.”

  Harvard grinned at Eugene. “I believe in you.”

  “I’ll do my best to behave,” promised Nicholas, and sneaked a glance at Seiji. “I don’t wanna let anybody down.”

  Harvard knew he’d keep his word. Nicholas was a good kid, as well as a good fencer. He turned to the window and saw the sea glittering miles and miles below the plane, seeming distant as starshine.

  For a moment, when he turned, Aiden stirred. Harvard felt a flash of icy dread that Aiden might wake and be cruel again, and everything would be as cold and strange as it had been for the past few lonely days.

  Aiden just whispered, “Hey, Harvard,” in his ear. He sounded like he was smiling.

  Harvard couldn’t help smiling, too. “Hey,” he murmured back, soft as a song to send Aiden back to sleep.

  Once Aiden’s breathing had gone regular as Harvard’s heartbeat, he forced his attention off his best friend and back to his team. He was still smiling.

  “Enough doom. What are you guys looking forward to the most about France?” Harvard asked the group.

  “Did they invent French kissing in France?” Eugene asked. “Kind of interested in finding out more about that at Camp Menton.”

  Harvard was the captain and the oldest… and he’d had his first kiss last week. Now his horrible team had turned the conversation to kissing when Aiden was so close. He could feel his ears burning so hot they might turn to cinders and fall off.

  “Wow, Aiden and Harvard just broke up! Don’t be insensitive. Don’t worry about it, Captain,” declared Nicholas, a sweet kid who Harvard might be forced to drown. “I haven’t kissed anyone ever. Like, who cares? Busy being awesome at fencing, right?”

  “… PleasebequietNicholas…,” said Harvard.

  To Harvard’s intense sorrow, Nicholas kept talking.

  “So, Captain—”

  “Who’s being awesome at fencing?” Seiji asked Nicholas. “Surely you can’t be referring to yourself.”

  Undaunted, Nicholas said, “Have you had your first kiss, Eugene?”

  “Waiting for someone special, bro,” said Eugene. “Kinda hoping it will be magical. And I hear France is a romantic land.”

  “We are there to fence!” snapped Seiji.

  Thank God for Seiji.

  “Seiji, have you—” Nicholas began.

  “If I kill you in France,” mused Seiji, “will that be an international incident?”

  “I can’t believe we’re not even in France yet,” said Coach, “and already I have to make several new rules. No kissing. No killing.” Nicholas opened his mouth. Without glancing at Nicholas or even taking her eyes off her magazine, Coach added, “No arguing.”

  Forbidden to argue out loud, Nicholas and Seiji began to silently fight over the pages of Seiji’s book.

  Lulled by the sound of Aiden’s breathing in the sudden quiet, Harvard fell asleep. He surfaced briefly when they changed planes in Paris, stumbling to their connecting flight, but fell back asleep as soon as they sat down. He stirred when the pilot announced they had lost their slot on the runway and would have to circle Nice airport, and he let himself fall back asleep as they flew in slow sweet circles around in the sun. He woke at the jolt when the wheels of the plane hit the runway and found his cheek resting against Aiden’s hair. He was warm and content for a moment, then memories rushed back to scald him, and Harvard jerked away.

  Aiden stirred and pulled himself from his spot on Harvard’s shoulder. If he noticed Harvard’s slipup, he certainly didn’t show it as he gave Harvard a tight smile. None of Aiden’s smiles seemed sincere these days.

  Aiden was the first to rise when the plane came to a halt. He grabbed his suitcase, then stretched as he tied up his hair. Harvard gave him a single glance—the hair scooped up in Aiden’s hands was the color of sand in shadow, Aiden’s body a carelessly graceful arch against the pale sunlight—then looked away. The first thing Harvard had said during their first kiss, Harvard’s first kiss ever, was I love your hair. In retrospect, that was so humiliating. Could Harvard have been more of a clumsy fool, making it so obvious that the kiss meant far more to him than it should have? No wonder everybody knew. No wonder Aiden was trying so hard to make it clear he could do better.

  Harvard straightened up, shouldered the weight of his bag, and made his way out, too. Nicholas and the others followed him out into warm, dusty-gold air.

  They went through customs and, now officially in France, boarded a second bus.

  The sun shed brilliance across the deep blue sea, and the bus rattled down the road along the Côte d’Azur toward Camp Menton. Harvard didn’t let himself rest. Everything was bright, but the warmth seemed lost.

  11 AIDEN

  In the dream, he was warm and happy. At first, Harvard’s voice seemed a natural part of the dream: Of course he was there. Hearing him tell a story was how Aiden slept best.

  Then Aiden felt Harvard’s breath halt and his shoulder stiffen under his cheek. Ah, of course. Harvard must feel terribly uncomfortable snuggling with his buddy. Since that was all they were to each other. Obviously, Aiden had totally embarrassed them both, and shamed himself, by cuddling up to Harvard in his sleep.

  He was tempted to feign slumber for an instant longer, hold on to that feeling of peace and not let go, but since that was pathetic Aiden pretended to stir awake. He pulled away from his best friend’s body, barely taking a moment to shoot Harvard a tight-lipped smile. Harvard immediately glanced away, avoiding his gaze.

  Aiden’s chest tightened. So be it. It was better to just pretend nothing had happened, as if the position they were in was perfectly normal. As soon as the plane shuddered to a halt, Aiden jumped out of his seat so that he could get out of this metal tube and away from Harvard as quickly as he could.

  It wasn’t Aiden’s most graceful exit.

  Aiden wasn’t great at dealing with rejection. He’d had very little practice, because of being so good-looking. But the plain truth of the matter was that no one but Harvard had been able to hurt him in the past. He’d never loved anyone else.

  “It’s good that you got some rest,” Seiji said in his cool, neutral voice as they waited to gather their luggage in the main termi
nal. “You can’t fence at your usual skill level when not rested. And your usual skill level isn’t that high.”

  Aiden raised an eyebrow. “High enough to beat you that one time, as I recall.”

  He’d done so by taunting Seiji about Seiji’s spectacular loss against Jesse Coste. It wasn’t nice of him to remind Seiji of that, but nobody ever said Aiden was nice.

  “It won’t happen again,” said Seiji calmly.

  Seiji had a chiaroscuro sort of face, to go with his personality. He was a handsome enough kid, Aiden supposed. He was so far from Aiden’s type he resided in a different type galaxy, but little Bobby Rodriguez clearly thought Seiji was the dreamiest. Aiden didn’t see the attraction in severe lines, with no warmth or pity to be found anywhere.

  “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Seiji proceeded. “What Harvard said on the plane was correct. The training at Camp Menton will be rigorous. European fencers tend to be of higher caliber than Americans. I don’t want to be embarrassed for anyone from Kings Row, and your behavior has been embarrassing ever since you and Harvard stopped dating.”

  Aiden’s voice almost failed him. “Excuse me?”

  It hadn’t occurred to him that conclusions might be drawn about him and Harvard. When Aiden had agreed (far too eagerly) to teach Harvard the ropes of dating, he hadn’t imagined it would cause much comment. After all, Aiden had dated practically every hot guy in school. What was one more date?

  Nobody knew that it had never been real. That Harvard would never date Aiden for real.

  Clearly, Aiden was so transparent that Seiji Katayama, a guy who probably counted épées to send himself to sleep, knew what was going on.

  Seiji’s merciless black eyes searched Aiden’s face, seeing too much again. “I think perhaps I should not have said that. I was thinking about fencing. I didn’t intend to hurt your feeli—”

  “My feelings?” Aiden bit out. “Listen up, freshman. I don’t have those. Do you have any idea how many people I’ve dated? And I’ve never cared about any of them.”