Fence--Striking Distance

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  From the door, Coach applauded. She was a bright splash of color in the room, zip-up hoodie fire-engine red and blazing white.

  “You two fight together far better than you ever fight with anyone else. I like it.”

  Nicholas beamed. Seiji scowled.

  “I fence excellently at all times.”

  “You’re too used to being excellent,” Coach told him. “Nicholas’s speed pushes you to the next level. Technique is learned but it’s also invented, and Nicholas makes you get creative.”

  Speed was the first thing Seiji had ever noticed about Nicholas: the way he moved, and how there was a certain faint promise to his tactics. It wasn’t like seeing Seiji’s own skill brightly reflected, the way it was with Jesse, but more like glimpsing light catching faraway water. Seiji respected Coach, so he considered this idea of hers in the context of what he’d learned from Eugene.

  Technique is learned.

  Good training, like pajamas, cost money. Nicholas didn’t have any. Nicholas hadn’t been trained properly, and it wasn’t his fault. Jesse always said that being inadequately trained meant the fencer, not the fencing, was inadequate, but Jesse was wrong. Nicholas fenced like a Jesse who hadn’t been trained. His flaws weren’t from being lazy or arrogant, though Nicholas was occasionally both those things. It was as though Nicholas was fencing with a stick while the rest of them used épées.

  “I’d love to see your flunge, Nicholas,” Coach Williams mused, pining for sabers, as always. Seiji didn’t feel the need to introduce sabers to Nicholas yet. Nicholas had enough problems with the épée.

  Attacking with opposition meant pushing against an opponent’s blade. Nicholas had been living his whole life moving in opposition.

  It wasn’t fair, Seiji thought with sudden decision. Something must be done. Nothing should get in the way of people being as excellent at fencing as they could be.

  Nicholas didn’t look downcast by the injustice of the world. In fact, he was preening. “Did you come to tell us how skilled we are, Coach?”

  “Nope. The story of how you achieved your current ranking isn’t an intimate personal insight, Seiji,” said Coach, thwapping Seiji playfully over the head.

  Seiji self-consciously readjusted his hair. “It was personal to me.”

  “If it was, think about why,” Coach told him. “In fact, tell me—or anyone else—something that is personal to you. And, Nicholas, at least Seiji wrote something. Where’s your essay?”

  “Seiji ate it,” Nicholas told her earnestly.

  Seiji and Coach reached out and shoved him sideways, one hand on each shoulder, so Nicholas actually stayed right where he was. He grinned at them both, as though he was enjoying being reproached for delinquency.

  “Go write your essays,” ordered Coach. “Correctly this time!”

  Seiji and Nicholas hastily departed the salle.

  “You need to be trained,” Seiji mused as they walked out under the oak trees. “It needs to be one-on-one, and it needs to be intense.”

  Nicholas cleared his throat. “Does it?”

  “Yes, of course it does!” Seiji said severely. “You are years behind where you should be. There is no choice. I am taking charge of you.”

  “Uh,” said Nicholas. “But is that fair?”

  “I think it’s fair,” said Seiji. “Coach Williams can’t do everything.”

  “Coach Williams is the coolest!”

  “Her methods are peculiar but surprisingly effective.”

  Seiji’d had many coaches through the years, and received the indirect coaching of Jesse’s father. Seiji had never had a coach like Coach Williams before, any more than he’d had a fencing partner like Nicholas. He wasn’t sure how to feel about her not seeming to take pride in him for being advanced, nor wanting to hold on to his shoulder like a trophy. All he could think to do was to listen to her carefully so he might understand her better, and follow her unorthodox suggestions.

  “She’s the greatest, but that’s not what I meant,” Nicholas continued. “If you’re going to be training with me… I know I’m not exactly what you’re used to.”

  Oh. Nicholas was worried about this being fair to Seiji. That was odd. Seiji didn’t think anyone had ever done that before.

  “It’s sometimes… somewhat helpful for me to train with you.”

  It was a massive concession, but for some reason, it didn’t satisfy Nicholas. He was still frowning. Seiji didn’t know what Nicholas wanted from him. Did he want Seiji to ask him for something?

  “What if,” Seiji suggested slowly, “you helped me with team bonding? The social aspect, I mean. Since you’re extremely popular.”

  Nicholas blinked several times. “Sorry, what?”

  “You have breakfast with multiple people every morning,” Seiji pointed out. “So you can indicate to me if I’m accidentally offending people.”

  There was a thoughtful pause. Above their heads, bright leaves sighed as the wind changed.

  “Is it chill if you’re offending people totally on purpose?” asked Nicholas.

  “If you don’t want to do it, you don’t have to!”

  Seiji stalked off with cold dignity, but Nicholas just jogged faster and caught up with him on the stairs to the dormitory.

  “No, I do want to!” Nicholas said. “Deal. Deal?”

  He gave Seiji an expectant look. Seiji watched him warily.

  “If you spit in your hand and expect me to shake it,” he warned, “I’m making you sleep outside. Deal.”

  He nodded to seal the deal. Seiji felt good about nodding.

  “Hey, Coach thought we were good,” Nicholas said smugly as they returned to their dormitory. “Because we’re awesome rivals. We rock!”

  Nicholas had probably never had a proper coach before, Seiji reflected. He didn’t even know Coach Williams was unusual.

  “You’re not my rival,” Seiji snapped.

  He expected Nicholas to snap back “Not yet,” as he always did. When Nicholas didn’t, Seiji glanced up sharply to see what was wrong. Nicholas was still in Seiji’s half of the room. He’d pulled the curtain back to step into his side, but now he stood in the shadow of the curtain with his head bowed.

  Nicholas said, “I know you’d rather be fencing with someone else. I get that must suck. I’m starting to see that you and Jesse Coste were, like… best friends?”

  He seemed about to say something else, but Seiji interrupted.

  “Best friends,” he scoffed. “We weren’t best friends.”

  That was a childish concept. But they’d been children when they first met, he and Jesse. Seiji’s coach had warned that Seiji was too advanced to fence against kids his own age, but Jesse’s confidence hadn’t wavered. He’d smiled and said he hoped they’d have a good match, and they had. Seiji had been so relieved to find someone who could really fence, and someone who wasn’t put off by him. Jesse made life easier, on and off the piste. Jesse had enough social grace for them both.

  If Jesse had suggested being best friends when they were young, Seiji would have agreed. But they hadn’t been about that. They had been about skill.

  Tell me—or anyone else—something that is personal to you, Coach had said.

  Seiji couldn’t talk to just anyone, but Nicholas had said they were friends.

  “I was… Jesse’s mirror,” said Seiji slowly. “I reflected his—glow, his glories and his victories. I used to think it was an honor. We were similar, I told myself, in all the ways that really mattered.”

  Jesse was left-handed like Nicholas, so facing him sometimes felt like looking into a mirror. Like seeing yourself through the glass, a better, golden self in a different world. A self who fenced just as well but didn’t have to work as hard for it. A Seiji who did everything in life with the same skill as he fenced.

  “You’re not a mirror,” said Nicholas. “You’re real.”

  “It’s a metaphor, Nicholas.”

  Nicholas shrugged. “You’re still not a mirror. Mirrors
break. You never do.”

  Seiji thought of his moment of defeat against Jesse. The moment that Aiden had seen, and taunted Seiji with, making Seiji lose again. Seiji had trained his whole life to be strong, but somehow, he was still weak. Jesse had taken his sword, and Seiji hadn’t been able to stop him. The bitterness of that defeat sent Seiji to Kings Row.

  Always keep moving toward your target, his dad’s voice said, but somehow Seiji had ended up getting his target wrong. He’d moved toward loss and pain he still didn’t entirely understand.

  “I lost,” confessed Seiji. “Badly.”

  “Doesn’t make you a loser,” said Nicholas, having another lapse where he didn’t understand what words—let alone metaphors—meant. “You didn’t burst into tears and give up fencing. And you didn’t follow Jesse to Exton like a little lamb, the way he was expecting. You came to Kings Row, and you came to fence. You came to fight.”

  This view of the matter was so shocking that Seiji said something he’d thought he would never say to Nicholas Cox.

  “I suppose…,” said Seiji, “… you’re right.”

  Nicholas’s gaze remained fixed on the floor.

  “Being rivals shouldn’t be about being someone’s mirror. Both of you get to be real. Neither of you has to break.”

  “Sometimes you’re insightful, Nicholas,” said Seiji. Nicholas looked pleased before Seiji added: “I think it’s mainly by accident.”

  At that point, Nicholas rolled his eyes and stepped into his side of the room, yanking the curtain closed between them.

  Seiji lay back on his pillow, arm behind his head. He supposed he could see what Coach had meant about their fencing bout. Seiji couldn’t be on autopilot with Nicholas, making all the right moves he’d been taught.

  Thinking of the way he fought Nicholas, and the way he used to mirror Jesse, something brand-new occurred to Seiji. He couldn’t mirror Nicholas’s moves. Seiji had to make different ones, to adapt to such a wildly different style. He didn’t have the speed to mirror Nicholas. He was fast enough to mirror Jesse’s moves. Which meant… Nicholas was faster than Jesse.

  In all other ways, Jesse was infinitely superior. Nicholas could never match up. Nobody could.

  But if Nicholas had been trained, maybe he could use his superior speed against Jesse to score a point.

  In another world, could Nicholas win against Jesse?

  If that was possible, even in another world, could Seiji win against Jesse in this one?

  Seiji rolled in bed and stared at a moonbeam cast against the curtain, putting one of the cheerful yellow ducks in the spotlight.

  Over the past few months, stewing in the humiliation of feeling defeated and exposed and unworthy, Seiji had grown used to imagining Jesse as unbeatable and unrivaled.

  Seiji couldn’t help thinking… if Nicholas could be faster than Jesse, perhaps anybody could be anything at all. What else could Nicholas be?

  What else could Seiji be?

  Seiji didn’t want them to be stopped from finding out.

  14: HARVARD

  Aiden was no good at mornings. When they had been younger, Harvard used to call him and act as an alarm clock, urging “Beep, beep, beep” while Aiden made cranky sounds on the other end of the line. Now that Harvard slept in the bed next to Aiden’s, waking him was easier.

  It still wasn’t easy, though.

  Their beds were pushed close together so they could watch movies in comfort and so Harvard could talk Aiden to sleep on the nights when he had insomnia. Now when he wanted to wake Aiden, Harvard could just reach over and gently shove Aiden’s shoulder.

  “Hey. Hey, sleeping beauty. C’mon. Wake up.”

  “Never,” Aiden mumbled into his pillow.

  “Are you awake?”

  Aiden pulled his pillow and half his tawny hair across his face. “I’m hate wake.”

  “Let’s return to consciousness just a little more and start putting the words into sentences that make sense,” Harvard encouraged.

  Aiden rolled over, emerging from the covers and blinking up at the ceiling. “People who talk sense before noon should be fired from cannons into the sun. Especially on the weekend.”

  Harvard, propped up on his pillow, looked indulgently down at Aiden, who was a tangle of limbs and white sheets and long hair. Harvard had always liked this time in the morning, trying to drag Aiden into wakefulness.

  It was a chance to have Aiden to himself, and to have the conversation he’d been planning.

  “Your behavior has been weird lately,” Harvard let Aiden know. “I have noticed.”

  Aiden gave a tiny shrug, the sheet sliding a fraction farther down his bare shoulder. “As opposed to my usual flawless behavior, you mean?”

  “Even for you, this has been weird,” Harvard said gently. “I think I know what’s going on with you.”

  “Do you?” Aiden said in a distant voice.

  Harvard nodded. He’d read all about it in his mom’s magazines.

  “When friends get a significant other, they worry that their friend won’t have time for them anymore. But you never need to worry about losing me. We’ll always have bro time.”

  “Ugh,” said Aiden, burying his face in the pillow and then pulling the blankets over him and the pillow. “You sound like Eugene. For shame, Harvard!”

  Harvard smiled at the lump under the bedding that was Aiden.

  “If you got to know Neil, I’m sure that you’d like him.”

  The protesting lump under the blankets went still.

  “That’s why I want you to meet him,” Harvard proposed, hoping this was a listening silence. “I was thinking—maybe tonight. If you’re not doing anything else. We could have a double date. Have a fun time and a chat. Neil’s super funny. I know you guys will get along.”

  Aiden sat up abruptly, sheets pooling around his waist. Harvard blinked at him in astonishment. It usually took a good thirty minutes of coaxing to get Aiden out of bed.

  “I would,” said Aiden in a voice shiny and brittle as Venetian glass. “Of course I would love to do that, but I’m busy tonight. Very, very busy. I have business.”

  “I assumed you were busy,” said Harvard. “You usually are. That’s why I suggested a double date. Is there another time that works for you?”

  There was a pause, long enough for the sunlight to creep another inch along the rumpled sheets. Aiden looked troubled for some reason. Maybe he had dates lined up every day for a year and couldn’t see how to accommodate Harvard.

  “What do you mean, I’m usually busy? I’m never too busy for you.”

  “I appreciate that,” said Harvard. “And it’s true. You’re always there when I need you. But—I mean, you’re out almost every night. Hey, and good for you. It’s great that you’re having fun. I want you to enjoy yourself. I know it can’t be like when we were little and we lived in each other’s pockets.”

  “It can!”

  Aiden spoke very fast and was being ridiculous.

  Harvard remained determinedly reasonable. “I’m just saying—it’ll be better now. You have your, uh, social whirl, and I have Neil. No more nights home alone for either of us.”

  “If it bothered you,” Aiden said in an unusually subdued tone, “you should have told me. I wouldn’t have gone anywhere if I’d known you wanted me to be here.”

  “I couldn’t ask you to do that!”

  Harvard regarded Aiden with horror. What did Aiden think of him? What kind of best friend would ask their friend to give up all that? Playing video games with Harvard would be a real step down from Mediterranean cruises.

  “You could have asked me,” said Aiden. “I would have said yes. Whatever you ask me for, I’ll say yes.”

  His tone was unusually serious.

  Harvard smiled. “Then I’m asking you for this. You don’t have to give up every night for me, but will you please give me one?”

  “Yes. Yes, I will.” Aiden’s voice went extremely cheerful, brittle glass catching a gla
ring light. “A double date tonight! What fun. I wish I’d suggested this myself.”

  Harvard was surprised, but pleasantly so. “Really?”

  “I’m definitely not lying! Let me acquire a date right now.”

  “Did you not have one before?” Harvard asked, but Aiden wasn’t listening.

  Aiden had sprung from bed and was pulling on his uniform in a haphazard fashion. Somehow, when Aiden was a dire mess, he made it look good—in a particular way that made people stare.

  This was more of a mess than usual. People were staring more than they normally did as Aiden made his tempestuous way down the hall, Harvard following in his wake. Harvard had pulled on his own clothes, too, but he feared his was not a state of alluring disarray.

  Aiden halted by the first cute boy he saw. “What are you doing tonight?”

  The boy seemed staggered. Harvard didn’t blame him. Aiden sounded rather as though he was demanding the boy’s money or his life.

  “Being… heterosexual?” the boy answered at last.

  Aiden stood there being gorgeous at him. A stunned and dazzled expression grew on the boy’s face, as though he’d accidentally looked directly into the sun or encountered a pinup model.

  “Or maybe… not?” said the boy, a long pause between the words.

  Too long. Aiden got impatient with people.

  “Okay, I don’t have time for this, see you!” said Aiden, racing past with the boy calling “Wait!” faintly to his retreating back.

  Harvard gave the boy an apologetic glance, then jogged after Aiden. Over the years, he’d developed a stride that covered a lot of ground so he could keep pace when Aiden went rogue.

  People were mostly charmed by Aiden. Harvard understood that; he was, too. It didn’t mean he approved of everything Aiden did, and he pointed that out to Aiden often enough, but he was always more charmed than disapproving. It all reminded Harvard of being five and having Aiden tell him that he’d named his bear Harvard Paw. Naming the toy after the person who’d given it to him, and making a pretty advanced pun as well, was just like Aiden. He was always whip-smart, hilarious, and secretly sweet beneath everything else.