Fence--Striking Distance

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  Aiden nodded, blinking rapidly. It was so strange to see the most familiar and dear person in Harvard’s world in a new light. To recognize the light he saw Aiden in, for what it had always been. Sunset gilded Aiden’s lashes and the wings of his collarbone, while the hollow of his throat was left in shadow. The curved bow of his mouth, usually curling, laughing, mocking, was today in an uncertain shape. Harvard had been such a fool.

  “Right,” Aiden whispered. “That never occurred to me. It should have. I know you, and I know your mom. But it didn’t. I would never go home if I didn’t have to.” He gave an easy, looping shrug. “Of course, my home’s a nightmare.”

  “I know,” Harvard whispered back, shocked.

  He knew, but Aiden never talked about it. He wondered what was different today.

  Aiden was wearing a strange, cracked-open, and almost vulnerable expression. Broken, but not entirely in a bad way. Like a mask breaking, or a shell breaking, so something new could be born.

  Oh God, Aiden knew, didn’t he? Aiden had seen what had been written all over Harvard’s face last night. Harvard had been afraid of this.

  “I have to tell you something,” said Aiden.

  “I know—I think I know what you’re going to say,” Harvard told him.

  Harvard didn’t want to hear it.

  Aiden’s mobile mouth worked for a moment, finding a crooked path to a smile. “Just the truth.”

  Harvard especially didn’t want to hear that.

  “Can I tell you what I have to say first?” Harvard begged. “Can you please just listen for a moment? Then you can say whatever you like. If you still want to.”

  Aiden nodded. He’d been hovering near the window as though he might turn and jump out, but now he folded his arms tight over his chest, intent. When Aiden gave his word to Harvard, he never broke it. He was listening.

  “Time for the truth, then,” said Harvard, and he took a deep breath and told himself to be brave. “I love you more than anything.”

  New light and shock touched Aiden’s face, turning his green eyes pure gold.

  “I,” he said. “I love you, too.”

  Harvard hurried on, before Aiden could say But not like that. “You’re my best friend in the world. I can’t picture my life without you. This dating mess has to stop now.”

  “I admit, it wasn’t exactly working as planned,” Aiden drawled.

  Aiden was undoubtedly at this stage extremely sorry he’d agreed to the whole idea of practice dating. Harvard understood how it must have seemed to Aiden: doing a careless favor for a good friend, acting the way he did every Friday or Saturday night, sweet words and gestures that meant nothing. It wasn’t Aiden’s fault that Harvard was made to take this kind of thing seriously, that every word and gesture had meant so much more than Aiden knew. None of this was Aiden’s fault.

  “You don’t understand how badly it could go. You don’t know what could happen,” Harvard told him.

  A pin-scratch frown appeared between Aiden’s brows, his features shadowed and barely visible with his hair outlined in fire and gold by the burning horizon. “What could happen?”

  “A total disaster could happen, Aiden,” said Harvard. “I could fall in love with you.”

  That shocked Aiden into silence. Harvard had suspected it might. They were on opposite sides of the room, staring at each other across the shadowed space, darkness making the tiny space between every floorboard a gulf. There was so much between them, more precious to Harvard than anything else, and suddenly what had been rock-solid seemed both fragile and in terrible danger. The most valuable thing in Harvard’s life, and it could be lost so easily, with nothing but worthless fragments between them.

  Surely Harvard hadn’t fallen already. There must be some choice involved, some crucial step taken off the edge that Harvard could avoid. Harvard believed in making plans. He could plan for this, too.

  At last Aiden murmured, barely audible, “If you did—”

  “I don’t want to,” Harvard returned, trying not to shout. “I couldn’t bear that. Anything but that. I can’t think of anything worse.”

  Aiden said, “Ah.”

  Harvard believed in making sacrifices—for your team and your teammates. Aiden hadn’t asked for anything like this, to feel devastated with guilt for what he’d done to his best friend or for any serious interruption to his golden, charmed, carefree dating life.

  There had never been anyone else looking out for Aiden: Harvard was the one who did that. He’d always wanted to, and never wanted to let him down like this. He could imagine only one thing worse than Aiden tactfully turning him down. The worst thing would be if Aiden felt forced to try dating him out of a misplaced sense of obligation.

  Heirs to Swiss banking fortunes. Stacks of offerings from hopeful suitors. A legion of pretty boys with no names. A whole glittering whirl of a life that Harvard could barely understand, but he understood Aiden had chosen to live that way. It was what Aiden wanted. Harvard had no intention of taking any of that glamorous adventure away from him, when Harvard had nothing to offer Aiden in its place. His best friend, about as exciting as his grubby old bear? He knew, as he’d known that first day at Kings Row when he took his first step back, that Aiden was born to shine.

  “I can’t bear the idea of being without you. I always want you in my life,” Harvard said. “So you can’t be—you can’t be in that part of it. You’re not like Neil.”

  “No,” agreed Aiden, as though it was a bleak fact as plain to him as it was to Harvard. It must be obvious to everybody.

  It had certainly been obvious to Neil. Harvard had stopped by Neil’s on his way home. To apologize.

  “So you finally figured it out, huh?” Neil had asked as soon as he opened the door. When Harvard nodded, Neil burst out: “Can you tell me, was the double date—was dating me at all—just an attempt to show the crazy-hot bestie what he was missing or what?”

  Neil’s shoulders had been braced to hear the worst. Neil was like Harvard in one way. He wanted something real, and he knew getting something fake would hurt more than having nothing.

  “No,” Harvard said, shocked by the idea. “I wanted the date to go well. I liked you. It wasn’t some attempt to make Aiden jealous, what—”

  As though Aiden would ever be jealous over him.

  Neil must have seen the pain on Harvard’s face, as well as the regret. His hackles went down, and he opened his front door a little wider. But not all the way.

  “I truly didn’t know how I felt about Aiden,” Harvard told him. “You knew before I did. And I’m truly sorry.”

  Neil had nodded, accepting. He had said Harvard could call him if he ever needed to talk. Harvard’s mother had been right about him. Neil was nice, and Harvard liked him. In another world, a world with no Aiden, a world Harvard had no interest in living in, perhaps that could have been enough.

  “Bye, Harvard,” Neil called from his front porch, where Harvard had first seen him little more than a week ago and wouldn’t be seeing him again. Even more wistfully, he added, “Bye, Harvard’s motorcycle.”

  And that was that.

  Aiden wasn’t like Neil, there for a week and then gone, someone whose absence could be borne. Harvard would never stop missing Aiden. If Aiden was gone, all the years of their past were gone with him, and all the years Harvard had ever imagined in the future.

  Losing Aiden would be like carving a heart out of his chest and expecting his body to stagger on as normal.

  “I understand what you don’t want,” Aiden told Harvard, speaking very carefully. Being careful not to hurt Harvard’s feelings, Harvard thought with a rush of guilt and affection. Now that Aiden knew he could. “Can you explain to me what you do want?”

  Not to be like those other guys, who would pine for Aiden long after he’d forgotten them. To be different. Not to be foolish enough to throw away a lifelong friendship for the sake of something that couldn’t last.

  Harvard couldn’t have everything
he wanted. He had to keep what was absolutely necessary to him.

  “I want what we already have. I want to know we won’t lose that. I want to know you better than anyone else, and for you to know me the same. I want to know that I’ll talk to you every day. I want what I can be sure of. I want to be friends,” said Harvard. “I want that always.”

  Friends forever. For the first time, that sounded like a death sentence instead of a promise.

  Aiden sighed. Harvard could only imagine how relieved he must be.

  “If that’s what you want. Then that’s what I want, too.”

  His tone was entirely cool and unaffected, but something gave Harvard pause. Maybe it was purely his own masochism.

  “What you want is just as important as what I want,” he said slowly. “Do you want anything else?”

  Aiden was quiet for a moment, contemplative. When he spoke, his voice sounded shockingly loud after the silence.

  “I want one kiss that’s real. To see what it would be like.” As Harvard stared in astonishment, Aiden gave the same looping shrug he’d given before, though his face was entirely different, shuttered with none of that brief new openness. “Call it curiosity.”

  No, absolutely not. Had Aiden not listened to a word Harvard had said? Why would he prolong this torture?

  Even as Harvard thought that, he was moving toward Aiden. Helpless to resist. Just like everybody else. He hated himself for it, but he didn’t hate himself enough to stop.

  He never knew who kissed whom first, moving together with terrifying ease and speed, as though these new moves had become instinct already. As though they would be difficult to unlearn. Aiden seized handfuls of Harvard’s shirt and pushed him up against the glass, his mouth an angry demand, and Harvard only pulled him in tighter. The kiss went through Harvard like light striking through a window or fire through brush, hot and vivid.

  The setting sun burned a red line against the darkness behind Harvard’s eyelids. Not a sword wielded but a spear thrown in the darkness, with no way to know whom it might hit or hurt.

  Aiden’s hand went behind Harvard’s head so Harvard wouldn’t hurt himself without breaking the kiss, starving and soothing, biting and gentling at once. They were almost clinging together and almost clawing at each other, and Harvard had to stop this, had to, but he couldn’t find the words.

  Sunk lower than the sun and trembling, Aiden whispered, “Arrêt.”

  When Harvard let go his desperate hold on Aiden’s fencing jacket, Aiden whirled and ran. The door slamming behind him echoed all throughout their room. Harvard listened to Aiden’s retreating footsteps echoing down the hallways of Kings Row. He turned his face to the wall and the window, leaning his forehead against the cold glass. He kept his eyes closed until the sun had set and he’d convinced his wildly beating and breaking heart of what he already knew: This was for the best.

  Then Harvard crossed their room, took the bear from their date out of the trash, and hid it in his backpack. He could take the bear home with him, to keep. Aiden never had to know.

  30: NICHOLAS

  The sun was setting, and it was almost time for the team bonfire Coach had promised them, when Nicholas found Seiji.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” he grumbled.

  He felt aggrieved to find Seiji in their room, sitting on his bed and frowning at his screen, with a heap of his belongings laid out on his neatly tucked blankets. It was possible that Seiji was the only one still trying to write that essay. Nicholas had given up. He’d just run suicides until he died or whatever Coach wanted; he couldn’t say any more about his childhood.

  “I don’t know why you would do that, Nicholas,” said Seiji. “Searching for your roommate is pointless. You literally know where they sleep, because you also sleep there.”

  Nicholas shrugged. “Well, I wanted to talk to you as soon as possible.”

  “Why?” asked Seiji. “People don’t tell me I’m an endlessly charming conversationalist.”

  Nicholas grinned. “Yeah, and they’re not gonna start. Maybe I just wanna have a chat with a master criminal. You know, for my street cred.”

  Seiji lifted his eyes to the ceiling. It wasn’t one of the fancy wedding-cake-looking ceilings like in the halls or some of the classrooms in Kings Row, but Seiji still liked to sigh and stare at the ceiling a lot. Nicholas just seemed to inspire this urge in him.

  “I’m not a master criminal.”

  “Oh man,” said Nicholas. “I feel all shocked and betrayed. But maybe not as shocked and betrayed as the weight lifters will.”

  “I don’t know how everybody in Kings Row doesn’t realize this,” said Seiji, “but money can be exchanged for goods?”

  Realization dawned, bright as the sun setting on the heap of not-actually-stolen watches in front of Seiji. Nicholas had known Seiji wasn’t a master criminal, but he hadn’t been sure about exactly how Seiji’s plan had gone down.

  “You bought all those watches.” Nicholas was certain now.

  “I consulted with my father to see if I could,” Seiji stipulated conscientiously.

  “Yeah, I just bet you consulted with your father!” said Nicholas. “You must’ve spent hundreds of dollars!”

  Seiji paused. “Approximately.”

  “So you bought a huge pile of watches, and then you lied about seeing a stolen stash hidden in one of the students’ rooms, and you made sure Kings Row was buzzing with gossip so the students’ rooms actually got searched.… All before anybody actually checked with the jewelers to see if they were robbed.”

  “Eugene mostly did the gossip part,” claimed Seiji. “I don’t gossip. It involves talking to several people.”

  “Must have been slightly embarrassing for the school when the jewelers said they weren’t robbed. Must have been slightly embarrassing for you when they gave you back a pile of watches and you had to explain where you’d got them, and how they turned up in someone else’s room.”

  When Seiji shook his head, Nicholas realized he’d underestimated Seiji. Probably, Seiji would be a great master criminal if he really wanted to be.

  “I said I wished to donate the watches to a charity,” said Seiji. “My father suggested I should do this, so it wasn’t a lie. I believe the school authorities think those boys stole my charity watches as an unkind prank, and they are still in trouble. Though not expelled for stealing watches.”

  He seemed faintly regretful about that. Seiji and Eugene had really taken a dislike to these guys. Nicholas wished he could remember anything they’d ever said, but when he tried to think back he only recalled a generalized Blah blah, don’t mind us, we’re jerk faces.

  Nicholas whistled. “Gossip, misleading the authorities, and a pretend heist. Why’d you do all that?”

  “It should be perfectly obvious why I did all that,” said Seiji.

  “For me,” said Nicholas. “Because you thought those idiots hurt my feelings.”

  Seiji glanced up, a look of pure horror on his face. “No! Of course not! I did it to win at teamwork.”

  “Oh,” said Nicholas, disappointed.

  Well, Nicholas was on the team, and he was the teammate Seiji and Eugene had been supporting, so he supposed that was the same thing. He cheered up.

  “Do you want one of the watches?” asked Seiji absentmindedly.

  “No, they’re yours!” Nicholas protested.

  “I already have one,” Seiji objected in a crabby voice, as though Nicholas was being ridiculous. “Anyway, if you won’t take a watch, have this. In exchange for you getting my watch fixed. My watch is of sentimental value to me,” he added in a tone that suggested he didn’t know what sentimental value was.

  He reached under his bed and shoved a package at Nicholas while Nicholas blinked at him in confusion. The package appeared to be pale-blue pajamas made of some stiff material, the same kind as Seiji’s. Nicholas gave the package a massive side-eye.

  “Uh…,” Nicholas said. “Thanks?”

  He di
dn’t want these and wouldn’t be wearing them. They looked as if they would be itchy and horribly uncomfortable to sleep in, but since Seiji wore them to bed and presumably liked them, he probably thought they were a good gift. Nicholas smiled down at Seiji’s bowed head, oddly touched.

  “It’s fine,” said Seiji, stiff as the pajamas. “I’m sorry the prank wasn’t useful. Coach is right, I’m not particularly talented at teamwork.”

  “No, you were right, you’re crushing it,” said Nicholas.

  “Maybe the definitions for success and failure are different in your lexicon, Nicholas.”

  “I don’t know what lexicon means,” Nicholas informed him. “Nobody knows lexicon means. Why would you use that word?”

  It was amazing how Seiji could go from concentrating on his paper to rolling his eyes at the ceiling again without even accidentally looking at Nicholas on the way.

  “What I mean is, you didn’t require defense from these students. So pranking them, however generally objectionable they were, was pointless.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” said Nicholas. “It was like the trust falls we did that one time.”

  “The trust falls we all failed at?” asked Seiji. “Yes, it was remarkably similar.”

  “No,” said Nicholas. “Not because of that. This time, the trust falls worked. This time, I know that if I was in trouble or whatever, my teammates would come help me out. Because you came this time.”

  There was a pause. Seiji put away his papers. Nicholas waited, wondering if he would get ordered to his side of the curtain for being an idiot.

  “Do you know…,” said Seiji. “Sometimes I have the oddest thought that there might be something to be learned from you, Nicholas.”

  This was news to Nicholas, but he liked the sound of it.

  “Oh yeah? Do you wanna copy my legendary speed in fencing?” Nicholas asked, beaming.

  Seiji rolled his eyes. So much eye-rolling happened in their room, and Nicholas didn’t foresee that changing anytime soon.

  “This isn’t about fencing.”

  “Who are you?!” Nicholas exclaimed. “What did you do with the real Seiji!”