by Rena Rocford
“This is pretty cool,” Rochan said.
I tried not to snort. “You don’t even know what I’m doing.”
His smile wrinkled into a pair of self conscious dimples. “You’ve got me. I don’t know what it is, but you have this look right now. It’s like you know something the whole world doesn’t know. Secrets look good on you.”
My head whipped back in laughter. “I’ll never tell.” With a sly glance at him, I went on. “Speaking of never telling, how was your Halloween?”
He blushed. I’d never been certain what it looked like, but his complexion darkened ever so slightly as his cheeks shined. “Oh gods, Cyra. It was… I just—rapturous.”
“Wow, how on Earth are you going to beat that for your second date?”
He bobbed his head, deflecting my words. “Ha, ha. You saw it. It was amazing! And—and”—he pointed his finger at the ceiling—“she writes. I didn’t think she would, but oh, Cyra, you’d like some of her work. It’s really good.”
Imagine.
I feigned mild confusion. “Christine writes? I never knew. Her dancing is amazing.”
“Spectacular!” He grabbed my shoulder. My heart pounded at the sudden nearness, and I wanted to slap it. He was in love—IN LOVE—with Christine. I couldn’t poach. I’d worked hard to get him to see Christine. Now that he had, I was locked into a letter writing gig.
On the plus side, I got to use Christine’s ballroom when I gave her English lessons because there weren’t enough hours in the day to perfect my form, teach English, and write love poems.
The warmth of his hands buzzed against my arm. It was even my right arm. People avoided it like the plague, like you could catch Missing Hand Syndrome. Funny how people thought all ailments were communicable.
He noticed the touch and pulled back his hands like he’d just realized he’d grabbed a cactus. “Her dancing is,” he paused searching for a word, “exemplary.”
“You’re not the only one to think that. She’s dancing in a competition this weekend.”
He frowned. “I thought it was last weekend.”
“Last weekend was a different competition.”
His eyebrows threatened to come together. “How many competitions does she have?”
I pretended to think. “She has three in November and only the one in December.”
Rochan’s eyes widened with dismay. “But that means only Thanksgiving weekend is free.”
“I guess you’ll have to get better at some other form of communication. You could try video chat.”
“I could travel to the competitions.”
“Well, I know that one is more of a stone soup performance, and the one this weekend is an actual audition and competition combination. But once we’re into December, it’s all Nutcracker, all the time. Hint, she’s the Sugar Plum Fairy.”
“Why is dating a dancer so hard. Sara never talked about stuff like that.”
Carefully, as though considering his words, I said, “And would you say you had an exemplary relationship with Sara?”
He made a noise in his throat somewhere between growl and wounded animal. “Low blow, Cyra. Low. Blow.”
“Sorry, I’m fencing a new weapon. Everything is target.” With my hook clamp, I jabbed at his ribs.
“You make a smashing Hook, by the way.”
“Why thank you. It’s not many who can appreciate a well trimmed villain.” I wiggled my eyebrows to indicate some nefarious plan.
His dark features clouded over. “Why do you like the villains?”
“Villainy is merely a point of view. I like to think of Hook as a tragedy told from the unorthodox point of view of the antagonist.” With a tip of my head to the sky, like I was eulogizing the dearly departed, I said, “Poor Hook.”
Rochan stared at me. “Sympathy for the devil?”
“You have to be kidding me. Sympathy? Yes, Hook was a jerk, but Peter Pan Cut. Off. His. Hand. Then he fed it to a crocodile! And if that wasn’t enough, Peter Pan made fun of him the whole time, while bewitching the crocodile—who now had a taste for captains of the hookly persuasion—to chase after Hook. Honestly, it’s really very sad.”
He blinked at me like his head was exploding. “I guess I’ve never thought about it like that. I mean, wow.”
Mr. Connor came over with the plastic wrap and poked the setting material. “It’s firm enough,” he announced. They stretched plastic wrap across my hand, making sure it sat very close to the material. Rochan tucked the edges over, making sure they were well seated against my palm. My heart rushed at the nearness. He even smelled good. They molded clay around the edge of the tin and over the plastic wrap, making sure to get all the parts around my wrist before stuffing a matching pie tin over my hand.
“How’s your hand?” Rochan asked.
“Cold. And more than a little bit creepy to have it completely out of commission. Now I only have the pincher hook.” I held it up.
“Hold still, and I’ll pour the rest,” Mr. Connor said. With nary a shake in his hand, he sent the white goo into the mold. Rochan scooped up the spilled material with a piece of paper and dropped it into the hole.
“Any last requests?” Mr. Connor asked.
“I could really use an A in this class. Just so you know.”
A smirk tweaked his lips. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Seriously, I’m filling out the Cal Berkley app on Saturday.”
“Don’t you have a competition?” Mr. Connor asked.
I waved my hook. “Nah, competition’s on Sunday.”
Mr. Connor scowled. “Sunday? What if you wanted to go to church?”
I tapped the hook to my chest. “Church of Fencing, USFA branch. I’m a choir boy and everything. Baptized in fire.”
“She even takes after the holy saint, Hook,” Rochan chimed in.
I beamed.
Mr. Connor sighed. He’d told us on more than one occasion that great inspiration came from any location, and a strong desire to revel in the greatness of God was not to be ignored. After all, great art had been sponsored by the church.
He packed the top of the form with clay and pulled out one of the heat guns. They were more like turbo charged hair dryers, but they had a tendency to actually catch things on fire. “Use this to cure it a little faster,” he said to Rochan. “There’s a bucket of ice water over there, if things get hot.”
“How will I know when it’s done?”
“You’ll have to take it on faith that it sets in fifteen to twenty minutes.” He watched for my reaction. “Well, take it off before the bell, that’s all the time we have anyway.”
I nodded, and Rochan turned on the gun. It sparked in a most non-reassuring way before spitting out a steady stream of heat. Waves of heat wiggled through the air above the gun as he moved it back and forth in a methodic pattern across the pie tins, me playing the part of human rotisserie.
Almost immediately, the mold hardened around my hand. The material warmed until it was uncomfortably hot. I waited, sweat building on my forehead: I didn’t want to have to do this twice. It was bad enough to have my only hand encased in pie tins, but I was trying to think of holding it as still as possible and thinking about keeping it in a comfortable position. I’d spent more than a little bit of time practicing.
“You okay?” Rochan asked. “You’re getting red.”
“It’s just a bit warm in here is all.”
He nodded, flipping off the heat gun. “We should stop.”
“No, keep going. I want to get this in the first shot.”
He frowned at me. “How come you don’t usually wear the hook?”
I puffed the stray hair dangling in my face. “It’s hideous, ugly, and barely functional. If it’s going to be completely useless, the least it could do is be pretty.”
He narrowed his eyes, searching for something deeper. “You never talk about it, you know.”
“What’s there to say? You have two hands. I have one. If I were rich, I could hav
e two again.”
Mr. Connor came over, and Rochan put the heat gun down. “How’s it going over here?” He tapped the pie tin. “Yikes, you’d better dunk it in the ice bucket.” Mr. Connor pointed, and I dutifully dunked my pie tins.
he sweat trickled between my eyes to hang off the end of my nose. I puffed until the drop flew into my wire cage and waited for the ref to call the action. I hated tied matches. In epee, if you both scored, you both got a point. If you tied the match, it counted as a loss for both of you.
She pointed her weapon at my eyes. I held my form and waited. If we timed out, we’d both be exhausted for our next matches, but then our teammates would have a better shot.
But I wasn’t planning to run the clock down.
Her eyes flicked to mine. She was rattled. Two good shots to the head, and she didn’t want to get hit there again. She’d held her own and managed to sneak in a wrist pick on both of them. I was fencing like I held a foil instead of an epee. I needed to counterattack, not initiate. One touch stood between me and victory. I squared up my feet. Better footwork meant a better lunge, but also a better retreat.
Crab like, I scuttled away as she made a slight foray into my territory. I waited for her to show her hand, but she walked me down the strip, her weapon taking a bead on my eyes. I thrust my arm out, but we were too far to make contact. She skipped back, thrusting her arm to my head. I tried not to smile. We were done; she just didn’t know it yet.
We slipped again, coming closer together. I sank in my stance to give me every scrap of range I might need. My thighs burned, but that’s why I had a pair of legs better suited to speed skating than sun bathing.
She slammed her weapon into mine, springing off the rebound and lunging toward my face. With a tiny clench of my fingers, I drove the tip of my epee into her exposed wrist. Her hand caught up on my point, bending as she drove forward. Her hand never made it to her target somewhere between my eyes.
She threw her mask down on the strip with a muffled curse. With the barest hint of courtesy she held out her hand. I pushed my mask up onto my forehead and slipped my weapon under my right arm. I held out my gloved hand. Etiquette said we were supposed to shake with our ungloved hands, but I didn’t have one. She took my gloved hand with a sneer.
I decided to take her sneer to mean that she hated touching my glove with her non gloved hand—gloves stank.
The ref scowled at us but said nothing.
I caught Christine’s eye from the strip and lifted my eyebrows. Her face was the picture of scolding. I winked, but she just pursed her lips. She got up and helped me with the scoring system cords.
“You need to learn to beat them without emotion,” she whispered.
“Half of winning is getting under their skin.”
“Don’t play with your food. Why didn’t you beat her three touches earlier? You could have, but you let her play with you. You were clearly better. You move like a tiger.”
I considered her words. “Well, I mean, sometimes it’s hard to figure it out.”
“You mean you aren’t paying attention.”
I shook my head. “You don’t pay attention, and you lose. It’s more like leading them into a trap. Sure, I’ll pick up the scraps of points that are left out on the ledge, but the really big wins are calculated. They’re a feast, carefully prepared and served in the courses of my opponent’s demise.”
“If you already know, then why does a match take so long?” She released the cord, and it snapped back into the spring loaded winder, zinging across the floor. The ref scowled at us, and we both tried to look innocent. “Sorry,” Christine said.
“It takes so long because we have to figure out who is the cook and who is the dinner.”
Christine snorted. “So you don’t know?”
“They call it physical chess. Anyone could lose to anyone else. The key is to build your skills to take down everyone.”
She nodded. “I still think you play with your food.”
“Wait until the Direct Elimination rounds.”
She checked her phone. “Oops, I have to get down to the theater. Call was ten minutes ago.” She waved her hand at the room full of fencers. “Dispatch these pretenders. Curtain in an hour and a half.” She arched an eyebrow at me. “He’ll be there.”
“I’ll have the letter.”
Her eyes sharpened at the ongoing competition. “Remember your manners.”
I gave her a lazy salute and headed over to the officials’ table. They were already adding up the wins and losses from the round robin. The rest of the competition became a blur of reporting to the strip and plowing through the bracket. It was a coed competition, and the men fell just as easily until the semi final round.
We ended tied.
The stout ref gave me a look and offered the coin toss call to the fencer on the right. He was seeded higher than I was. The coin tumbled in the air, and he called tails. The quarter came up with a picture of Denali—tails. If we doubled our way to the end, he’d take the win and advance.
The ref lined us up. Before I’d gotten over having the coin toss thrown against me, the ref started the match. My opponent launched forward in a fleche. I barely got my point up, but it didn’t matter; we double touched. I lost the bout because of a coin toss.
Almost instantly, they had me on the same strip for the third place spot. My rage boiled. I’d lost because of a coin toss, and now that loser was going to fence for gold. Technically, pot metal with gold-colored chrome, but still, the top spot and the top rating for the competition. I took three deep breaths and tried to implement Christine’s advice. I had to move quickly to make the curtain for her competition, too.
The ref started the match, and I found that cold place inside myself. It wasn’t pretty. I tore him apart in a systematic lesson in anatomy and point control. It would have won me the last bout, but I focused on this moment. Before I’d had an opportunity to figure out if I was going to make a rating from this competition, he rallied back.
It wasn’t enough. The end of a competition with both of us flagging, the difference came down to endurance. He made more mistakes than I did, and the whole time an ultra critical voice ran through my mind. I needed to focus more on my training. A simple competition shouldn’t drain me like this. I needed Olympic endurance. I won with a healthy margin.
We shook hands, and he clapped me on the shoulder. He was disappointed to lose to a girl half his age, but fencing had a tendency to bring the old and young on a seemingly level playing field.
He narrowed his eyes at me before smiling. “Good job, kid. You should have been in the gold medal round.”
I tried not to be a poor sport about that and smiled. “Thanks.”
He pointed at the organizers’ table. “I think they have some concerns.” I followed his gaze. The three organizers sat arguing over some equipment. Sometimes competitions had prizes other than cheesy medals, and this one had equipment.
I took the winning slip, signed by both the winner and the loser, over to the committee table where three people were in the midst of a rather heated discussion. “This is why we never give out gear,” the woman hissed.
“Problem?” I asked as I put my winning slip on the table.
“These dunderheads seem to think the world is right-handed,” she said, pointing at the other organizers.
Entertainingly, there’s a bit of an advantage to being left-handed in fencing. Most fencers practice against right-handed fencers, so a lefty threw them for a loop. On the table sat two epees and two gloves, all right-handed. The gloves had second and third place embroidered along the cuff. Because really, who wouldn’t want to remember the day they came in third with a glove to remind them about how they lost?
I laughed. “I don’t even have the right hand for this glove.”
They all looked squeamish. One of the men started to stammer. Sweeping in from the side was my coach, Maestro Ferrero. “Did I miss anything?”
“Miss Berque just placed fir
st in the women,” one of the organizers said.
Ferrero smiled. “Well done. So what are the prizes this year?” She looked at the table and choked. “I see,” she said, hefting one of the epees. Its distinctive cant to the right and the pistol grip nicely showed it as a right-handed weapon.
“We can get you left-handed gear.” The woman stood, grabbing the glove from the table. “We can send it to your salle?”
“No, I think I need this glove.” I held it up. “Unfortunately, I can’t stay for the presentation. I have to get over to a theater on Geary.”
They all nodded. I started to walk away. “Wait! The epee!” The man on the left stood, passing me one of the epees. “Top woman gets an epee. We can send over the stuff to make it a lefty.”
Top woman sounded better than third place. I slipped the glove over my stump and took the epee from him. The other two committee members sat farther back in their seats, as if they could distance themselves from the sacrilege of a fake, wobbly ghost hand. I wiggled my eyebrows. “Thanks!”
Ferrero hid her face behind her hand and walked with me. When we were out of earshot, she squeezed my shoulder. “You know, they deserved that, but you shouldn’t mess with them so much. Senior competitions are supposed to be more serious affairs.”
“It’s their fault for drawing attention to it. Not to mention the coin toss was ridiculous.”
She nodded. “Ridiculous, but part of the game. You can’t afford to alienate people. You have a long way to go if you want to make it to the top. Don’t burn bridges if you don’t need to.”
I sighed and pretended to hear her.
“Are you listening to me?”
I blinked up at her.
She nodded. “This isn’t a joke. You have to do more than just win to get where you want to go. You have to look and act the part, too.” She pursed her lips at me. “Just don’t make enemies you don’t need to make.”
“Got it. Don’t make enemies.”
“I’ll see you on Tuesday. We need to talk strategy.”