by Rena Rocford
That was just how fencing worked. If you wanted to play, you had to be willing to play with the big boys.
And the small boys.
And the boys with something to prove, especially against women because they’d been raised to believe they were better for being born differently. Then, when a mere girl—let alone one with just one hand—beats them, well, bad tempers, drama, and hurtful words. Sometimes worse. Even if they didn’t score points, there were ways a person could exact revenge with three feet of steel.
But with fencing, it didn’t matter. A rating from a girl counted the same as a rating from a boy, and the rating handed out at the end of the competition was dependent on how many fencers showed up. It was one of the few actually equal venues. No one cared if there were women in the mix. The more rated fencers, the higher the rating could be given out at the end of the day.
I made a note in the margins of my spiral notebook that gender roles were going to crop up on the next exam. The bell rang, and the class dissolved instantly, not waiting for Rochan’s lovely, tortured voice to stop echoing from the walls. Mr. Bartlionus called the class assignment at the tornado of students dumping books into their bags and fleeing.
“What is with you lately?” Christine hissed into my back. “You stopped us at the best part.”
I rolled my eyes. “Right, the best part, the part where Sara of the cow eyes reads the romantic opposite to Rochan the radiant?”
She hit me with her tome, and the shudder ran through my half arm and up my spine. I caught myself before I fell out of the seat/desk hybrid.
“Whoa, Christine, we don’t abuse classmates. Be careful of that”—Mr. Bartlionus hesitated, the word arm on his lips—“student. She’s the only one looking to set the curve in the class.” He made a smooth recovery, but we both knew he was trying to cover for almost mentioning my one-handedness, as if people had to be careful with me because of it.
Odd that something so absent from my life had yet to let go of the thoughts of everyone around me.
Sara wrapped her arm around Rochan’s shoulder and pulled him from the classroom. When he slipped an arm around her waist, she cast a slit-eyed smirk over her shoulder. Christine burned.
As the door clicked shut behind them, Christine stuffed her books into her bag with a vengeance. “How could he? He can’t even see what she’s doing. It’s like she cast a spell over him.”
“A potent spell,” I said, widening my eyes like I was going to reveal a secret of the universe. Both Christine and Mr. Bartlionus turned to me with the same question on their faces. I widened my eyes for emphasis. “Biology.”
Christine punched me in the arm, but as a ballerina, the motion was as graceful as a humming bird taking to the sky on a delicate breeze. It had about the same force.
Mr. Bartlionus smirked. “I thought you were all into women’s equality.”
Head tilted, I shook my head. “Why set our sights so low?”
He smiled. “That’s why Mrs. Sesquahanah warned me about you. She thinks miscreants like you will turn the world to chaos.”
“Chaos. Equality. I can see why she’d think that.”
“Careful what you say about teachers, Cyra.”
“Well, what do you think, Mr. Bartlionus?”
“I think that when you set your mind on something, only raging bulls could keep you from it. And the bulls are in for a time of it.” His smile faded to a tight-lipped condolence, like he already knew that the rest of my life was going to be a fight. “Though, you might want to let some of the other students answer the questions in class. It’s hard for them to understand the lesson when you give them the answers.”
“But it’s Shakespeare!”
“Are you auditioning for the play?”
I shook my head. “I’m taking lessons from a new Maestro, and I wouldn’t be able to make the rehearsals.”
He directed his piercing gaze to Christine. “You could always audition, Christine. It’s worth extra credit for English. Not to mention, there’s no better way to understand Shakespeare than being entrenched in it.”
Christine shook her head. “I’m auditioning for a repertory company in December. They want to see three pieces, so I’m sort of dancing up a storm, Nutcracker, Swan Lake and, oddly, Juliet.” Her eyebrows went up as her lips stretched down. “I’m sort of booked up.”
“Well, remember to read the rest of Hamlet over the weekend,” he said, adroitly excusing himself from the rigors of teenage scheduling. He slipped out through an interior door that led to the faculty offices for the English department. He popped his head back in. “Oh, and don’t forget the college fair tomorrow. We won’t actually be having class, so be sure to get lots of really great information on the likes of Harvard and Brown.”
“Why wouldn’t we stay in the west? Go Stanford!”
He winked. “I like the way you think, Cyra, but not everyone has the grades and letters of rec to get into Stanford.”
“Not everyone can have the same opportunities.” For emphasis, I waved with my hook. He turned green and left for good.
Christine pushed through the exterior door. “Maybe I should audition. Rochan is practically guaranteed the role of Romeo.”
I shook my head and kicked a rock off the sidewalk in front of us. “Nope. You barely have time for tutoring and dancing. If you want to pass your senior year, you’ve got to cut back, not add more.”
“But she’s just using him.”
“Yes, she’s using him to get to you.”
Christine slumped under the weight of her back pack. “But you like him, too. How come you aren’t upset?”
“Who says I’m not?”
She contemplated as we made our way through the crowds to the library. The problem with two busy people trying to help each other out was there was pretty much no time to meet. We had a standing agreement with the librarians. We could eat our lunches in one of the study rooms so long as we weren’t caught.
Really, it was the same agreement I had with a number of establishments, such as the movie theater.
We slipped into the lobby, and I stopped at the circulation desk. “More returns, Cyra?” Mrs. McGallen asked. She had glasses and a sweet cardigan, but her eyes had that piercing look of someone whose dreams are bigger than the real world.
“I finished these.” I held up a book. “Are we going to get the next one of these? I don’t really have the money to go buy a copy, but I love this one enough to put some pennies together.”
She took the book and flipped it over. “Ah, you’re in luck! I just got this one today. How long will you be in the library today? I’ll have it ready for circulation by the end of the day for sure, but if I’m not interrupted, it might be ready by the end of this period.”
“Then I’ll be back before the second bell.”
She smiled, and we slipped past. Mrs. McGallen put my books under the desk. She kept a special ledger just for me because the school policy said a student could only check out three books at a time. I went through four a week.
The joys of not caring about social media and my mother forswearing TV. After all, every penny went to fencing lessons and gear. Besides, I took my time with the big books (GRR Martin took some time to chew through), but the rest of it was an easy haul. The hard part was finding books I hadn’t read. I suspected Mrs. McGallen used my numbers to argue for more funding. I knew she used my inner library loan requests to highlight our need for more stacks.
Christine just shook her head. “Do you even have a life?”
“I warn you now, you make one profane remark about dragons, drums, or rockets, and I will strike you from the record of my life.”
“It’s that important to you? They’re fake.”
“Ah, a generalization. I can ignore that for the official record.” I spoke to the air as if it could be found understanding as well. I spun on my heel to face her. “They are not fake. In the immortal words of Dumbledore the Great, ‘Just because it happens in your head, d
oes not mean it is not real.’ This is the principle upon which all fiction is based. You can have friends who aren’t real. You can have a meaningful relationship with a character from a book. I mean, really? You have all the emotions of the relationship. You feel joy when they succeed. You mourn when they die. You have had a relationship with them.” I shrugged. “It might not be as deep or as rich as real life. And let’s be clear: real life is messy. But book characters are every bit as important as real life people.”
Christine’s lips scrunched up like she was going to argue.
“Oh for serious, have you not had a relationship with the Nutcracker Prince? That Russian guy who does it? Haven’t you just fallen in love with him?” I started walking backward.
She gave me a sidelong look. “It is possible that you make sense. Maybe. In an alternate universe where ballerinas rule the world and fencers are little more than floor scrubbers, yes, you might be onto something. Possibly.”
I let her pass me, pretending shock. Then I caught up, quickly. “A victory by any other name would still smell sweet.”
“What are you saying?”
Clutching at my heart, I staggered for two steps. “Seriously? You don’t know Romeo and Juliet, and you were just talking about auditioning for the part of Juliet?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “Wow. I mean, that’s some balls there.”
She turned on me sharply. “So I’m not as smart, or well read, or philosophical as you. Does that mean you have to tear me down at every step?”
I froze. “I wasn’t tearing you down.”
“Well, whatever you weren’t doing, I didn’t like.”
“Look, you’ve spent so much of your life trying to be the perfect princess, but I’ve spent almost all of my life trying not to be the girl with one hand. You know who doesn’t mind how many hands I have? Books. So I read. And I read, and I read, and I read. Books don’t judge. They don’t mock. They don’t knowingly smile like Mona Lisa when they see me, knowing that my life is ‘harder’ yet pretending to treat me like everyone else. Books don’t have to pretend: they are the same to everyone. Just because I’ve read more than you doesn’t make you any less smart, it just makes you less read.” I paused for dramatic effect. “You, of course, know exactly how to fix that.”
She nodded. “I’m not sure which I hate more: the fact that you’re right, or the fact you are so unforgivably right.”
I held open the door to my preferred study room. She walked past me, shaking her head. On the opposite sided of the one-way windows that covered most of the newer buildings on campus, Sara sat on the ledge, and Rochan stood next to her, reciting something. His camera bag sat next to her feet. His fifth period was art.
Fifth period was art for me, too.
My stomach turned in disgust. And Sara knew this was my favorite study room. I spent all my lunches in here, but she didn’t usually give us a show. She knew full well these windows would give us full view of whatever she did.
Christine stood in the doorway, unable to move, dying to know, horrified to see. What if she kissed him right then and there? They were both such good students that none of the campus cops would even waste their time watching them. In the little alcoves of the library windows there was almost real privacy.
Sara said something we couldn’t hear, and Rochan laughed. It could have been half hearted, but it didn’t matter. He laughed at her joke. He stood with her. That thing. That size two ballerina robot with boobs. Didn’t he know she only had the artistry of her most recent choreographer?
Dammit, why, why, why did they always fall for the big breasted idiots?
“Cyra, I don’t know if I can handle this.”
“Well, I sure as saber can’t eat with this sort of filth in the room.”
She nodded. “It’s absolutely unfair to the entirety of humanity to watch those two together. It’s like, like, cats and dogs living together.”
“Uh-huh. I hear you. It’s a positive abomination.” I watched as the two little love birds cooed at each other. Rochan gave her an apple from his bag, and unbidden to my mind, I thought about how Eve was blamed. Maybe there was a reason for it, but even if Eve was trouble, Lilith was framed. “But really, it hardly matters. I don’t have the looks he’s after, and you don’t have the education. Maybe if you could trim out the pieces of you, meld them into pieces of me, then a chimera could date the all beautiful Rochan.”
Christine’s eyes lit up as she spun to face me. “That’s it. Oh my God, Cyra, you are brilliant, absolutely brilliant.”
“On general principle, I agree, but why on this particular occasion do I qualify for such effusive jubilations?”
“Don’t you see? Two people into one! You can do all the smarty pants stuff, and I can be the bearer of the messages.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. “Wait, what? I don’t follow.”
“You will write him letters—letters where you give me the power to turn his head—and he can see that what he wants isn’t really Sara, queen of dark and evil.”
I pointed. “To be fair, you only think she’s queen of dark and evil because of the whole she stole the guy you liked the second you made any indication that you liked him.”
Christine drew her hand across her midsection in the universal cut-off motion. “No, she is dark and evil because she is a viper, a worm, and a—a dream wrecking witch.”
“Hey, now, I happen to know some very decent witches.”
“In books?”
“Uh, yeah, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t nice. Who doesn’t love Luna?”
Christine shook her head. “I’m not talking about books, Cyra.” Her eyes narrowed to daggers. “I’m talking about true love thwarting deceit and revenge. She’s scared of me, so scared she’s willing to strike at me in any way possible. And that’s why I need you.”
“You need me to deceive the guy you like into liking you?” My whole face scrunched up in question. “You do know that honesty is the best basis for all relationships, right?”
“Oh come on, Cyra, you like him, too! And that wretched slime mold is dating him just to get back at me for dancing better than her. She’s going to break his heart for nothing! For nothing! If you won’t do it for me, then do it for him.” She grabbed my arm. “Please. I couldn’t write a couplet to save my life.”
“I don’t think it’s right to trick him like that.”
“Sara is a blood sucking vampire of doom.”
I shook my head. “No, this really, really isn’t right. Rochan would be ruined, and most relationships die almost as quickly as they come up. It’s totally unfair to trick him. Can’t we just talk to him rationally?”
“This is love! Rational didn’t show up to the party.”
I snorted. “Just because rational didn’t enter your brain, someone should remember that college applications are all up for grabs and now is the time when some of us are working our butts off to land scholarships and fence for schools like Stanford. I don’t think I’d have time to help you even if I wanted to.”
Christine’s face turned to the stony calculating mask of doom. “I’ll fail then. You don’t help me, then I’ll make sure my father stops paying you.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I don’t have to get into college. Most ballerinas get into a company and don’t necessarily go to college. Sure it’s an option, but it’s not necessarily the best one.” She let that sink in for a minute. “Quite frankly, it would be a relief to not need to study to pass entrance exams. I mean really, tests get me all worked up.”
She pretended not to watch me, but her eyes followed my every breath.
Was it selling my soul to turn this ballerina on the guy I’d crushed on for the past three years? Of course, it was really just trading one ballerina for another. But could I forgive myself for the lies? I’d watched Sara destroy people before. Would she blow through Rochan like all the others, gutted, a burned out husk emotionally destroyed for the rest of us?
And seriousl
y, he’d never see me anyway. I would always be that one-handed girl with the big thighs who fenced. My greatest accomplishment was my ability to quote Shakespeare, hardly soul mate material. But if I couldn’t have him, what made one of them better than the other?
At just that moment, Sara looked into the window, right at me. The mirrored windows meant Sara would only see her reflection, but her eyes were right at mine. She practiced a breathless look for half a second while Rochan was distracted. When he turned back, she stole a kiss from him. They embraced for just a hair past awkward. As they parted, Sara schooled her face into that perfect breathless look, like the kiss had touched some part of her soul.
Rochan blinked back, shocked, but his cheeks darkened and dimpled with pleasure. Even if he hadn’t experienced something earthshakingly great, the idea that he might have caused it in someone else was heady, almost as good as feeling it himself.
He looked away to fuss with something in his camera bag, and the façade fell from Sara’s face like toast flipping to butter side down: inevitable and fast.
My knuckles popped in my clenched fist. “That bitch is going down.”
es!” Christine jumped. “What’s the plan of attack?”
I turned back to her. “First we need some ground rules.”
“That sounds fair. Like what?”
“We need a new room.”
With a slant eyed glare, she nodded. “Absolutely.”
I held open the door, and we crossed to a slightly inferior study room with a big desk. This one didn’t have as many windows, so the light wasn’t nearly as good, but it did have the added bonus of looking darker, matching my thoughts. But how to strike down one without destroying Rochan?
My lips drew together like my nana’s. “I think there’s got to be a point where we tell him the truth, or if we don’t tell him the truth, then we have to pass it all off to you. That’s it. I’ll get you started. I’ll help you until Winter Ball. After that, I’ll coach you, but it’ll all be you.”