Fence: Disarmed

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  Harvard pretended to cuff Eugene, but then had a shockingly vivid memory of pretending to cuff Aiden and having his fingers graze Aiden’s silk-soft hair. There were so many ways of being best friends, ways he was desperate to get back to. Everything they had been seemed tangled inextricably around this new awareness. Their past was all tangled up with their present, and he felt like something indescribably precious was being dragged away with the tide, to sink past saving.

  When Melodie left them, Eugene leaned back against his bedroom door and sighed dreamily. “Do you think she likes me?”

  “She called you her little cabbage just now,” said Harvard. “So, I’m gonna go with yes.”

  “Did you have your first kiss when you were way younger than me, Captain?” Eugene asked wistfully.

  “No,” said Harvard, who’d had his first kiss less than two weeks ago.

  Eugene beamed. He looked tired but so happy, and Harvard remembered feeling that delighted and that radiantly certain, tangled up on a bed with Aiden before he had to pull away. Eugene clocked the expression on Harvard’s face. “You okay, Captain?”

  “I’m okay. Go in and rest, that’s an order!”

  I’m not okay, Harvard admitted to himself. I’m lying to everyone. He didn’t want to. He just didn’t see how he could stop.

  Harvard’s mom called him a late bloomer, and Harvard had always believed that was true. Now Harvard thought it was just that it had always been Aiden, and some part of his mind had been protecting himself, knowing it would be no good.

  He was exhausted, and he had a match tomorrow. He should go to bed.

  Instead, Harvard waited up for Aiden to get back, but Aiden didn’t. He was probably out with some guy. Harvard didn’t sleep for hours, but he must have fallen asleep at some point during the long night before Aiden got back, because Harvard never heard him come in.

  26 NICHOLAS

  The next morning, Seiji didn’t sit with the team at breakfast. Nicholas looked around for him, but he was nowhere to be found.

  “Maybe Seiji’s doing extra training,” Bobby suggested. “He’s so disciplined.”

  Maybe he was having breakfast with Jesse Coste, discussing how much fun they would have at Exton together.

  “I’m going to Ventimiglia today,” said Dante, and Nicholas was arrested by the unusual spectacle of Dante being voluntarily verbal. “See my cousins. Don’t suppose you want to come with?”

  Nicholas understood the question wasn’t for him. Dante’s eyes were fixed on Bobby, who seemed disconcerted.

  “Oh… no, Dante. I mean, I would, but we’re here to watch the fencing and learn. I can’t just skip a day. I hope you understand?”

  “Yep.” Dante lapsed back into monosyllables.

  Bobby’s small face was crumpled with worry. “You’re having fun here, right? You were watching the fencing all yesterday, and it was cool, right?”

  Dante shrugged.

  After breakfast, Dante headed off. Assistant Coach Lewis offered to take him, but he said he’d get a bus and his cousin would pick him up. With Seiji still nowhere to be found, Nicholas went with Bobby to see Dante off. Bobby stood waving forlornly at the bus stop until even the cloud of dust left by the bus’s departure had settled in the warm air.

  “Well!” said Nicholas. “Time to train!”

  Bobby looked behind him expectantly, mouth opening, as though he wanted to consult his shadow about training. Then he bit his lip.

  “Yeah,” muttered Bobby.

  Even Bobby was being weird today, Nicholas thought as they wound back toward the salle. He kept beginning sentences and then trailing off as though he’d forgotten why he was talking. Yesterday he’d bounced around Camp Menton, but today he was wilted, head drooping, like a colorful flower someone had forgotten to water.

  Nicholas gave him a one-armed hug. “C’mon. Watching the fencing will cheer you up.”

  Fencing always cheered up Nicholas. Today it was more important than ever. Nicholas had never refused a challenge in his life, and today was a vital challenge. He had to get better fast, so Seiji would want to stay at Kings Row.

  Maybe it was impossible to get better that fast, but so what? Nicholas would try.

  After the terrible, terrible exercises, they were told to partner up. Nicholas gazed around hopefully. Seiji was already surrounded by aspiring partners. So was that guy Bastien. Nicholas had been hoping Bastien would teach him some of his moves.

  Nicholas noticed that Melodie wasn’t besieged by partners. He thought she’d be a pretty good partner. She and her friends moved in a similar way, as though they guided one another.

  Nicholas wove hopefully over to where Melodie stood, with her hair now in braids wrapped around her head as she slid on her fencing mask.

  “Want to do drills?”

  “Sure!” Melodie seemed pleased to be asked. “Let’s get these drills down.”

  “You bet.” Nicholas nodded with conviction and pulled on his own mask.

  Melodie and Nicholas moved on their strips, passing through the motions over and over again. Coach Arquette stopped and watched them.

  “You’re very straightforward in your attacks,” she observed crisply as she surveyed Nicholas’s movement. “Have you not considered further utilizing your speed for feinting?”

  Nicholas blinked.

  “Making a false movement so the opponent will not know in what line you will finish your attack,” she explained.

  “I know what feinting is,” said Nicholas. “I just don’t know what you mean by using my speed.”

  “Play to your strengths. Commit more fully to a false move, deceive your opponent’s eye, and still have enough speed to change your line of attack at the last moment.”

  “Okay,” Nicholas said.

  “I see a big improvement from last year, Melodie.”

  “Wow, thank you, Coach Arquette!”

  Coach Arquette nodded. “Keep training hard, and don’t let your focus be shifted by a handsome face.”

  “Wow, thanks, Coach Arquette,” said Nicholas.

  Coach Arquette snorted and moved on. Nicholas and Melodie continued by focusing on footwork and nothing else. Every time Nicholas suggested a quick bout, Melodie sternly refused. Usually Nicholas could coax Seiji to do one or two, but though this wasn’t fun like a match, the afternoon wore on and he did start to see a slight improvement. Not long ago, he’d promised himself and Coach Williams that he would put in the work to improve his basics. It was true he had to do the long, arduous labor of building a foundation, brick by brick, no matter how frustrating.

  It was tough, but it wasn’t as bad as Seiji or anyone else from Kings Row being let down by him.

  “Good work, you two,” suggested Coach Williams, passing by with a nod of conditional approval.

  “Is that your coach?” Melodie asked. “She trained a cousin of mine in Switzerland. He said she’s fantastique.”

  Nicholas glowed with pride. “Yeah. Hey, show me how Bastien beat me. In slow motion.”

  After deep concentration on Melodie’s demonstration, Nicholas announced, “I think I have it.”

  “I do not think you have it,” said Melodie. “Fencing takes long years of study to perfect. Also, you must do many training exercises to build up your musculature. I cannot stress that enough. You are so skinny.”

  “Leanly muscled,” Nicholas insisted.

  When the lunch bell rang, Nicholas dropped his épée.

  “You dropped your épée again,” said Melodie in a teasing voice. “Is that a signature move of yours, constantly dropping your épée?”

  She took off her fencing mask to reveal a grin. If her older friends Bastien and Marcel often helped her with moves, maybe it was a nice change for Melodie to be on the other side of training.

  “Let’s do this again,” suggested Nicholas.

  “Hmm, maybe,” said Melodie.

  “Cool, thanks,” Nicholas said.

  “If you are thankful,” said Melodi
e, “tell me some gossip. Did your captain, Harvard, and that boy Aiden ever date or not? I hear conflicting reports.”

  “Yep, they did, but for, like, a minute. Maybe the captain got tired of all the talking? Aiden talks a lot.”

  “Some people like that,” Melodie informed him wisely.

  Nicholas stared. There was no accounting for taste. If Nicholas were looking for someone to date, he didn’t think he’d pick someone super chatty.

  After considering for a while, Nicholas shrugged. “Maybe Aiden got tired of dating just one guy? Aiden’s always, like, breaking hearts and moving onto the next. Like a dating shark. Sharks don’t sleep, did you know that? They just keep swimming. Anyway, I guess Aiden was a shark toward the captain. Personally, I don’t get it.”

  To Nicholas, it seemed a bit like wasting your time playing table tennis and volleyball when you could be focused on fencing. He didn’t really see the point in going after anything but what you really wanted.

  He’d spent a lot of nights in narrow rooms listening to his mom stumble in drunk, watching neon lights play on cracked walls and thinking of everything he wanted. Desperation taught you to be sure.

  He wanted to be great. He wanted to be a fencer his dad could be proud of. He wanted Seiji to stay.

  Seiji didn’t eat with him again. Still, Harvard was there, and the captain complimented Nicholas on how fast he was catching on to new moves. Nicholas preened, and he and Harvard had a good chat about the camp and Harvard’s upcoming match with Bastien Robillard—exciting and cool, the captain would definitely win!—but it would’ve been better if Seiji had been there.

  “Did anyone happen to see Seiji around?” Nicholas asked the table casually. In a nonchalant way.

  Everyone shook their heads.

  “Seiji?” Bobby lifted his eyes from the table and gazed around in what appeared to be mild surprise. “Oh, right, he’s still not here.”

  “No, he is not!” said Nicholas. He wondered how Bobby could possibly have missed that. Bobby was still in a weird mood.

  Bobby stayed in a weird mood all day. He didn’t even really watch the afternoon training, just sat in the stands and stared into space while Melodie and Nicholas trained together again. Bobby was talking a lot less than usual.

  After afternoon training and dinner, Bobby and Nicholas went on a walk that looped back around to the bus stop where they’d left Dante. They emerged from the trees to a path that ran along a low green hedge, beyond which were botanical gardens, a dozen different shades of green going muted silver with evening. As they walked down the winding road, a bus went by them, pebbles grinding beneath its wheels and the bus’s square windows yellow postage stamps against a black background. A tall figure stepped, with no fuss, off the bus.

  “Dante!” Bobby shrieked, dashing down the road. He hurled himself like a brightly decorated cannonball against Dante’s chest.

  Dante’s arms went around Bobby, catching him on reflex, but then he stared at Nicholas in alarm over Bobby’s head. “Did something happen?”

  There! This was what they’d come to. Bobby was being so weird that Dante was speaking in complete sentences.

  “I’m just really glad you’re back,” Bobby said into Dante’s shirt.

  “I’m glad you’re back, too,” contributed Nicholas.

  And he was glad. He was a normal amount of glad.

  Dante didn’t even glance at him. He was concentrating on the top of Bobby’s brown, beribboned head as Bobby poured his heart out.

  “I told myself all day I should’ve gone with you. I know you came to Camp Menton just to hang out with me, and I was only thinking about fencing and not about you. I figured it didn’t make sense to skip a day, but I would’ve liked going to Italy and meeting your cousins. I’ve been feeling like I was so mean, ever since you went.”

  “I missed you, too,” said Dante.

  Neither was paying any attention to Nicholas, and oddly Nicholas felt this was a moment he shouldn’t be part of. Probably a best friends thing.

  He sneaked away. People said he wasn’t subtle, but Nicholas could do subtle when it was important.

  27 AIDEN

  Aiden woke to a morning that was still dark and the sound of his phone buzzing beneath his pillow.

  He answered with a yawn. “Hello, Aiden’s house of repartee and recreation, please leave a tale of heartbroken love and longing after the beep.”

  There was a startled cough. “Aiden?”

  Aiden sat up in bed. “Claudine?”

  “No,” said the woman’s voice on the other end of the line. “It’s your father’s fiancée!”

  “Right,” said Aiden slowly. “So—Claudine?”

  “My name is Brianna!”

  “Is it?” Aiden could’ve sworn Claudine was the latest. This one sounded worryingly young. Aiden hoped his father wasn’t having a midlife crisis. “Are you calling to invite me to the wedding?”

  He slid into his jeans and walked out the door, so he wouldn’t wake Harvard. The misty, awful memory of last night loomed in his mind, too much for him to deal with right now. He scooped up Harvard Paw into the crook of his arm for comfort in these dark times.

  Brianna gave a tinkling, tight laugh. “Gosh, no, we’re planning a long engagement. No rush!”

  “Finally, the man learns caution,” murmured Aiden.

  “Sorry?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Aiden, as your new mother figure, your father asked me to give you a call.”

  “His genius at delegation is a vital part of his business empire,” mused Aiden.

  Brianna’s airy, youthful, television-presenter voice went shrewd. “So, you keep getting into trouble, don’t you?”

  Well, his father liked them to be smart. That was how he’d ended up with a beautiful, brilliant son. Aiden presumed his mother had been beautiful and brilliant, too. He had no clear memory of the woman. She looked good in magazines, but perhaps that was airbrushing.

  “Couldn’t comment,” said Aiden. “This maternal support is very touching. Out of curiosity, are you in your early twenties?”

  He wondered if Coach Williams had called his dad, or if it was the French coach who’d caught him when he crept in last night. He’d been sent to his room, and his body had been aching with exhaustion, but he couldn’t face Harvard after being expelled. In the terribly cold light of this terrible day, Aiden experienced a moment of out-of-body horror as the full impact of what had happened last night sank in.

  “We received the call you were expelled from Camp Menton. They’re letting you stay and leave with your fellow students, though you are barred from training, and you would face discipline at Kings Row if you were remaining there. But of course, you’re not. Your father says you’re not to worry,” Brianna continued. “He was never certain Kings Row was a good fit for you, but you did insist on going there because of your little friend. He thinks there will be more scope for your talents at a different school. He thinks that boy was holding you back from what you were truly meant to be.”

  So it was official. He was out of Kings Row forever.

  Aiden laughed, almost hysterically. “Think about that phrase, holding you back. Aren’t we all looking for someone who will hold us back? But we hardly ever find them. What does dear old Dad think I am meant to be?”

  “You could grow up to be a great man,” said Brianna. “You could grow up to be like him.”

  She sounded as if she meant it. That was sad. In a year, his father wouldn’t remember this girl’s name. Nor would Aiden.

  “The worst thing is,” Aiden said, “I really might.”

  The morning breeze was soft as gentle fingers in Aiden’s hair. Aiden turned his face up to the sun and tried not to feel as if a trap was closing in on him.

  Aiden hung up the phone in shock. He realized that he was going to be late for training, and then further realized that he was no longer welcome at training. He was really, truly out. Aiden felt weirdly empty about it and wa
ndered aimlessly back into his and Harvard’s room, where Harvard had awoken and was getting ready for the day ahead. Aiden sat down silently on his bed.

  “Aren’t you going to get ready?” Harvard asked in a measured voice.

  It would ruin Harvard’s day, to hear his team was down a member. Aiden snapped on his charm in an instant.

  “I don’t feel like fencing today.” Aiden winked. “Big night last night. Sorry!”

  Harvard stood there, stunned, and Aiden knew he deserved the disgust on Harvard’s face. Aiden always had.

  Maybe this was for the best. Aiden shrugged, took a last look at Harvard, and left the building.

  Once he was out, he realized he was holding his épée, as if he were going to training. For lack of anything better to do, he walked into the lemon trees and began to do the drills.

  It was long past time to stop lying to himself, Aiden realized as he spun through the movements. Fencing had always been a joy to him, something he’d learned when he was going through his growth spurt, turning the movements of his new body from startled awkwardness to smooth grace, turning growing pains into grown pleasure. Fencing was something he’d done with Harvard, the best game they’d ever been good at together. Pretending reluctance, being dragged by Harvard to matches, was part of the joy. It meant being on Harvard’s team, getting Harvard’s attention. Fencing meant that even though they were no longer children, they were always playing together.

  Until now.

  The sea breeze carried to Aiden the sound of measured footfalls on the earth. Aiden paused his drills and lowered his épée. Curious, he meandered toward the noise and spotted a boy in fencing whites with mussed golden hair and obnoxiously good posture who was running drills just as he had been doing. Jesse Coste.

  What was Jesse doing, training at the very outskirts of camp? Aiden supposed the real question was, why would Jesse not want people to see him training? This Exton freshman was up to something.

  Aiden couldn’t help recalling Seiji’s expression lately, the bleak blankness that was all Seiji let show when he was hurt. Aiden knew who was responsible.