by Rena Rocford
“I’ve been taking fencing lessons in the salle over her studio for years. I know what she’s like.” I turned back to my sketch. It was a hand, and I had enough of the bones of it that I could tell it was a right hand. Not having one, I possibly had an unhealthy attraction to those strange things at the end of everyone else’s right arm. I pointed at Rochan’s arm. “Hold on, let me see your hand.”
He held out his left hand, but I grabbed his right hand. I set it on the table and put my hand next to his. “What are you doing, Cyra?”
“Coming up with my senior project.” I scowled at my doodle. “Yours are too knobby. I’ll have to find a different model.”
He pulled back his hand and rubbed his wrist. “What are you going to do?”
“Make art.” I sketched a couple of pieces and slapped the top down on my sketch pad. “Your concern, though, is Sara. She isn’t who you thought she’d be, and you’re far enough in to know what it is that you’ve gotten yourself into. She didn’t fall madly in love, and she’s annoyed that she has to let a relationship bloom or smolder at the same speed as the rest of us mortals.”
Blinking, he leaned back. “But how can she? I mean, I care about her—a lot—and I don’t want to hurt her, but she’s always just…” He held his hands out in front of him, grasping for some invisible clue.
“Self destructive? Self absorbed? Wrapped up in her own little world?”
“Yes, but that’s so terrible. I can’t really feel that way about someone I think I love.”
I nodded. “I hear you. But”—I held up my hand, pointing my finger at the ceiling—“you may need to ask yourself: is it really Sara you think you love, or the idea of Sara?”
Deflating on the spot, he went back to his own sketches, quiet for a minute. “I’m crazy, aren’t I?”
“Yup. Join the club. We have jackets.”
He laughed. “Why can’t she be more like you? I can talk to you. You’re like a regular person.”
“Ha, you’re in trouble when you start calling me a regular person.” Flipping the pencil in my hand so the not sharp side pointed at him, I poked him. He went to parry, but I easily evaded and picked his side. He squealed like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.
Mr. Connor swung over. “Cyra, I told you not to beat up the guys.”
“Sorry, Mr. Connor, I was just recounting my win over the weekend.”
He nodded in that I-don’t-care-get-back-to-work way that all teachers perfected. “Still, I’d appreciate if you got back to it. I want you guys to run these projects by me for approval.”
“Oh, do we have any sort of epoxy compound or something? I’m looking for pourable clear plastic.”
“So you have an idea for a project? Excellent.”
Rochan cleared his throat. “I was wondering if I could do something in photograph.”
Mr. Connor frowned, disappointed. “I suppose you can, but it’s going to have to be more than what you’ve put out before. Your pictures are great, but, as artists, we try other mediums to keep ourselves fresh. Your work is exceptional, but you need to come up with something new.”
Mr. Connor drifted away as Rochan seemed to melt into the desk.
“Bummer,” I whispered when I thought Mr. Connor was out of sight.
“Tell me about it,” he groaned back.
“But seriously, if you don’t think Sara is the one you want to spend your time with, then don’t.”
He half shook his head. “I mean, sure, but I started it. Isn’t it rude to end it?”
“Isn’t it worse to lead her on?”
He bit his lips. “Why are you so easy to talk to? Usually I have a hard time talking to people, but you sort of know.”
I held up my stump. “All malice lives in the right hand. That’s why you use it for writing both love letters and pink slips.”
“A letter?” His eyes lit up. “Cyra, you’re a genius.”
The bell blared to life and he jumped from his stool, dragging his sketch book. A pencil leapt from his hand, and he grabbed it with a huff of impatience. I slipped my sketch book into my bag and slipped it over my shoulder. A smile threatened at my lips, but I didn’t want to tip my hand.
All through PE, I tried not to let Sara catch me smiling. By the time the bell rang, I had a permanent grin on my face. Without checking to see if anyone was trying to wave me down in the halls, I slid through the crowd to get to my car. In seconds, Christine emerged from the crowd with that sour look she always had after coming out of her junior English class. She managed to look both insecure and inconvenienced, like she was deigning to come down out of the clouds to grace these mortals who couldn’t see how much practice time this cost her. Still, she moved like someone only staying earth-bound as a courtesy to the ancient powers of gravity. Like she showed the force of nature respect but was not actually bound by it. She could race the stars and win.
Her Passat beeped as she grabbed the handle, and I leaned back into the faded paint of my MGB, crossing my legs.
She shook her head at me. “You look like—what’s the expression?—the cat who caught the canary.” She dumped her bag in through the door, and a stray eucalyptus leaf fluttered in. She fussed with it for half a second before turning back to me.
A smile sharpened on my lips. “He’s going to break up with her.”
“What!”
I feigned preoccupation with the chrome on the door handle.
Christine stood in the space directly in front of me. Despite being a waif of a person, decidedly on the low side of healthy, she still managed to command the presence of a drill sergeant. “Tell me everything.”
Instead of answering, I pointed. Rochan fled through the throngs of people, and he had the look of a rabbit in full knowledge that a wolf was closing in on him. He darted from one group of all male friends to a group of jocks. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it was clear he was talking over something very un-Sara. Maybe he’d done head shots for the school paper for homecoming or something.
What I didn’t see was Sara.
Her forehead pinched. “He doesn’t look happy.”
“So when do you want to make a splash? This week and have the drama of the full moon, or Halloween and costumes?”
She shook her head. “It’s such a terrible idea to have Homecoming on Halloween.”
“Sure, but if you’re going to have a gaggle of crazy teens, you might as well have it on Halloween. Two birds, one cafeteria.” My eyes widened to emphasize the crazy.
In a move completely devoid of grace, she rubbed her hand across her chin, careful not to hit the deep red lipstick that accentuated her porcelain pale complexion. “Why am I even thinking? Let’s do this on Halloween. If we jump too early, he might still be upset about breaking up with Sara.”
“It’s a risk no matter what.”
Rochan slipped into a shadow and through one of the walkways out of the school. The shadows swallowed his dark skin, but even as he disappeared into the wooded path, his white sneakers winked back out as he slipped away, sending an almost ghostly effect of shoes without an owner.
“Halloween,” she said again, more firmly.
ist drifted in through the open windows like a creature from a Lovecraft story. Small streams of water dripped down the walls at the edges of the windows and puddled on the floor of the salle. I ran the drill one more time. I liked winning, and winning on the strip happened at practice. Higgs still let me use the salle even though he didn’t give me lessons anymore, something about not disturbing the greatness of Ferrero’s work. Sweat dripped off my arm, and I lunged again.
“Cyra,” Ferrero called across the room.
My head snapped up. I had never seen Maestro Ferrero in the salle on Fourth. It was like running into a teacher at the movies or the grocery store.
A man trailed behind her. His Hawaiian shirt matched his flip flops and swim trunks. He looked like he’d just come from surfing or sun bathing, an odd hobby for late October in the North Bay.
“Cyra,” Maestro Ferrero said again, “I’d like you to meet Julian. He’s decided it’s time to up the ante at Berkley.”
I staggered back a bit. I hadn’t even considered Berkley. It wasn’t that they weren’t a good school, but I’d just always thought I’d go to Stanford. They had more fencing. Berkley had a club team. Not that there was anything wrong with that, but I had hoped for some NCAA action. I hadn’t even started filling out applications for the UC schools.
I took the offered hand. Despite looking like a beach bum, Julian shook my hand with the heavy firmness I’d expect from a lifetime of training. My lips scrunched to the side of my mouth as I tried to place him. “Not Julian Pascal who went to the China Olympics.”
“Ah, you know your history, and I was only an alternate on the squad. I didn’t fence a single bout.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply. I just had a tape of Nationals from around then. You were amazing.”
He smiled, his first unguarded moment. “It’s the shirt. It’s a dead giveaway.”
Ferrero also smiled, but I’d watched her enough not to trust all of her smiles. “Julian says he’s looking to build the women’s team next year.”
Julian lit up. “That’s right. Jessica here tells me that you’re raging through the epee pistes. I’d love to see you fence sometime. Maybe you could come by, take a tour of the school, you know, that sort of thing. We’re having a tournament.”
He handed me a flyer.
“Oh, um, I wasn’t planning on a UC school.”
He paused for just a beat. “But you should. We’re less expensive than the private schools.” He coughed and I caught a not well-disguised Stanford in the mix. “And we offer a highly respected degree as well. What were you planning to major in once you choose a school?”
“Getting on to the Olympic team.”
He barked a laugh, then said to Maestro Ferrero, “I see why you like her.” He smiled back at me. “I still know people on the selection committee.” He rubbed his chin. “I can tell you that you’d still have access to the best education and the best training. If that’s what you want, that’s something I can definitely help you with.”
My head slipped on his words. I must be falling. My whole body went to fluff, like I’d lost track of the whole planet and static filled my head with fuzz. He could help me land the Olympics.
Sweet Syllables of the Bard, he could help me get a fair shot?
He had the experience. Even if he wasn’t talented enough to beat out his teammates, he’d been there, done it. He’d traveled with the team.
My mind painted me walking in the Parade of Athletes, dressed in some silly costume, maybe even wearing a cowboy hat or something else ridiculously American. My mind ran with it, and I saw myself standing on a podium, the national anthem playing through the arena. In my wild fantasy, I even painted the medal bearer bumping my head because I was taller than expected. I had never been awarded a medal without someone snagging on my head.
I snapped back to reality, a lopsided grin pasted on my face. Julian’s grin matched my own. He knew what dream I’d just seen. He’d been part of it once.
He offered his hand. “I hope to see your application soon. You have all of November to fill it out, but if you need to, you can file for an extension.”
Ferrero, Higgs, and Julian left the room, chatting back and forth and laughing. I waited for them to leave before I started back in on the lunging drill. Crap, I’d need another set of letters of recommendation. Well only one, I still had two extras. When was the application deadline?
Why did college have to be so ridiculous to get into? Letters of recommendation and have just the right number of extracurricular activities. All I really wanted to do was fence, but I’d list every art project and drama club poetry reading because I wanted this.
As I put my gear away, my mind churned over the details of putting together a college application. It was something like ten pages of filling out my name and address, listing things, declaring a major.
What major is easier to get into at Berkley? I wanted to go to the Stanford writing program, but I didn’t even know what that was like at Berkley. Research, I needed research.
I slipped out of the uniform and into a comfy pair of jeans. My legs quivered with fatigue, so I stretched. In the MGB, I’d be cold by the time I got home. Old cars had crummy heaters, and old convertibles leaked. There was just no getting around it; I’d need the hardtop on the car soon. I hated giving up the possibility of having the top down, but winter was coming.
The weapons in my bag gave it a fair heft, but I slung it over my shoulder like most women carry their purses. I didn’t carry a purse; I kept everything I needed in my school bag. When I hit the stairs, all I could think about was applications and getting everything ready in time, because there wasn’t much time left. I’d be up all night for sure.
When the stairs outside the salle were dark, I didn’t think anything of it. The stairs here were shared by three floors of various activities, and the lights were always going out. Darkness didn’t scare me. People in the darkness, however, that scared me. As I stepped onto the stairs, I listened first, moving slowly to mask the sound from my clothes and the bag. There could be serial killers in here. What I wanted was one of my weapons in my hand. Sure the points weren’t actually pointy, but a bell guard to the head would bring most people to their knees. And really, when I got hit on the strip, it took a second to recover. Imagine what it might do to some fool who didn’t know they were in a fight with a metal fist.
But to get the weapon out, I’d have to stop. I’d be a bigger target getting it out of the bag. And my bag was heavy. If nothing else, I could drop it on any attacker dumb enough to go after people who played with swords.
One foot carefully in front of the other, I slipped down the stairs. I knew the steps better than anyone else, having been practicing at this salle for years. The third stair from the bottom creaked if you stepped on the south side of it. I sank down onto the board without a sound. A light framed the door to the outside in blessed light, but there was a whole area in the bottom where a person could easily hide. My eyes tried to pierce the darkness below, but try as I might, I couldn’t tell if there was anything down there.
I took a chance and stepped a little bit closer.
Something moved, and I squeaked. The lurking form screamed.
My heart thumped into action, and adrenaline coursed through my veins. Without meaning to, I ran backward up the stairs while dropping into a menacing crouch of doom. The screaming form flopped around on the landing, tripping out the doorway, framing her leotard clad form in the light.
“Sara?” I asked as my brain returned.
“What?” she asked from the bottom of the stairs, halfway out the door. Tension melted away from her body as she recognized me. “Jesus Christ, Cyra, you scared the shit out of me!”
“I scared you? What the hell were you doing sitting at the bottom of the stairs? Dance class was over almost an hour ago.” My heart pounded in my throat, and my stump pushed on my chest like I could keep the air in if I just pushed hard enough. If my legs hadn’t been wobbly before, they were now.
As she picked herself up off the ground, Sarah crumpled a piece of paper against her chest. “That’s none of your business.” She stuffed the letter into her pocket. Standing in the lamp light outside, mist swirled around her, and her breath made fog. Even that wasn’t enough to cover up the red wheels around her eyes.
“Well, the least you could do is not skulk about in shadows and then act surprised when people trip over you in the dark.”
She pulled on her snobbishness like a coat against the cold. “Well, it’s no surprise you tripped considering how big and clumsy those legs are. You’re just lucky you didn’t hurt me when you stepped on me.”
“I didn’t step on you.” I climbed down the steps, rearranging my bag.
“Thank god you didn’t step on me. Considering how much you weigh. I’
m sure you’d have broken something.”
My jaw clenched, but I held my tongue and pushed past her.
“I mean, really, you’re so fat I’m shocked you don’t go out for sumo instead.” She sputtered as I kept walking through the door. “Yeah, that’s right, you’re just a big, dumb sumo wrestler. Oh wait, I forgot, you need two hands for that.”
Without getting permission from my brain, my hand whipped out and grabbed her skin-tight leotard, twisting her sweater into her dancing uniform. With the turn of my wrist, I pulled her off her feet so I could look her in the eye. “I don’t know where you get the idea that just because you’re pretty and dating the cutest boy in school you get to call me anything other than ‘Cyra,’ but it’s clear you need an education.” I pulled her even closer, so our noses nearly touched. “I’m stronger than you, taller than you, and any time you want to compare GPAs, I’m there. You seem to have forgotten that the only reason I don’t smash your pretty face into an imitation of a Picasso is because I’m a law abiding citizen with a general wish to put the idiocy of high school behind me. So if you want to refrain from having me rearrange what’s left of your looks, I’d recommend keeping your mouth shut.” I dropped her and turned to walk away.
Sara staggered to catch her feet. “What’s left of my looks?” She sputtered again. “How would you even know what good looks are? You use red eyeshadow.”
“That was in seventh grade, Sara,” I called over my shoulder. “And just a hint, when your boyfriend uses a letter to break up with you, cry somewhere private. It’s embarrassing to the rest of us.”
“What? I—you! How did you—I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
I turned to face her but kept walking backward toward my car. “You don’t expect me to believe that? You think Rochan could really like you? Other than pliés and mirrors, what else do you do? Hair? Did he just not find you that interesting? Come on, Sara, you know you were in a brains rich environment, and you only dated him to piss off Christine. She must be really good if you’re resorting to sabotage even before you go on stage. I can’t wait to see who gets which parts for The Nutcracker this year.”