Fence--Striking Distance

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  Then he looked at the price tag on something shiny in a glass cabinet even fancier than the cabinets in which the Kings Row trophies were kept. He swallowed.

  The jewelry store staff showed the other Kings Row students a shiny array of cuff links. The staff was dressed in white shirts and black pants that might have been a uniform but could have also just been fancy clothes. They were like weird polite penguins. One of them gave Nicholas a look up and down, then back up almost incredulously, as though he couldn’t reconcile Nicholas’s face with the Kings Row uniform.

  “It’s the scholarship kid who tried to have a scuffle with us the other day, isn’t it?” asked the nasal-voiced student. Nicholas suspected his name might be Eustace, though that was a terrible thing to think about anybody.

  Eustace’s tone suggested that he’d kicked Nicholas’s ass somehow due to being rich, instead of Nicholas backing off on his own. Now all three of the jewelry-selling penguin people were giving Nicholas dubious looks.

  “You wanna go now?” Nicholas demanded, surging their way.

  When he strode forward, a member of the staff coughed pointedly.

  “Bro,” whispered Eugene. “No, bro.”

  He tugged Nicholas aside to a shiny glass case full of watches. Nicholas stared at the price tag on one watch. Surely that was a typo. It was a watch, not a rocket.

  “We could take those guys,” Nicholas muttered.

  Eugene seemed agitated. “There’s a lot of glass in here. And I’ve never actually been in a fight!”

  “Seriously?” Nicholas glanced at Eugene, who Coach Joe would’ve described as beefy. “But you’re huge.”

  “I’m a lover, not a fighter!”

  The Kings Row jerks were pointing at Nicholas and miming him slipping stuff into his pockets. The quiet, discreet staff quietly and discreetly asked Nicholas to leave.

  Nicholas had been wrong. Turned out you could kick someone’s ass just by having money and wearing your uniform the right way. Without throwing a single punch, those rich boys had won the fight.

  Eugene’s whole big, usually good-natured body was bristling as they left the store. He resembled the offspring of an angry cat and a weight-lifting porcupine. “They acted like you were going to shoplift!”

  Nicholas shrugged. “Who hasn’t shoplifted, right?”

  Eugene said in a hollow voice, “Oh my God.”

  “I mean,” Nicholas elaborated, more squirming than shrugging at this point, “when you’re hungry? I mean, if your mom got wrapped up with work or whatever and maybe forgot you, and you could use a snack.…”

  Eugene said, in a very different tone, “Oh my God!”

  “It’s not a big deal,” Nicholas said with finality. “I don’t care. What I do care about is that we haven’t got Seiji’s watch fixed, and I don’t see how we’re gonna do it. They’re not going to let me back in there, and honestly, I think that place would charge more than I could afford.”

  “Yeah, I…” Eugene squinted. “I think you might be right.”

  He said it almost apologetically. Nicholas shrugged again. He didn’t see what Eugene had to be sorry for.

  “My cousin’s friend works part-time at this store which mostly sells, um, maybe stolen phones,” suggested Eugene. “Maybe he could help?”

  He escorted Nicholas down the narrow, winding backstreets of Kingstone until they passed a wall with some graffiti on it. Beyond some smoking kids and above what used to be a stable door, in white letters on black paint, was written NEEDFUL BLING. Nicholas felt this was definitely more his sort of place.

  Eugene’s cousin’s friend wore an old Kings Row hoodie and was chewing gum and barely took his eyes off his phone. Eugene explained the problem.

  “Bro, you gotta help us,” said Eugene. “We can’t go back to that store.”

  The guy finally lifted his eyes from his phone. Nicholas gazed at him in mute appeal.

  “I was a scholarship kid myself,” said Eugene’s cousin’s friend. “I’ll see what I can do about the watch.”

  Nicholas grinned at him shyly. “Appreciate it.”

  Nicholas thought that’d been a totally successful trip into town, but for some reason, Eugene remained unusually quiet and thoughtful as they strolled out of the store and down the hill toward their school.

  “My family doesn’t have a lot of money compared to some of the other Kings Row kids. We can’t, like, take vacays in Europe. I sometimes feel kinda lousy about it,” offered Eugene as they walked back through the winding streets.

  “Oh really?” asked Nicholas. “I thought you guys were totally rich. Like, you have all those brothers and sisters, and I heard them mentioning having their own rooms? Even though there are so many of them!”

  Nicholas hadn’t always had his own room, even though there was only one of him. Sometimes he slept on the sofa for a few months, until they had to move again. When they’d had a studio, he’d slept on the floor.

  Eugene was quiet for a while longer.

  “It’s relative, I guess, bro.” He shook himself out of whatever had him twisted up to add, “Those guys from our school? Don’t let them get you down. They’re jerks and bullies.”

  “Oh, whatever.” Nicholas rolled his eyes. “They can try. Kind of adorable, if you ask me. Wow, I’m so sad—I totally didn’t notice I don’t have any money until you pointed it out, dudes! C’mon.”

  He mimed wiping away tears running down his cheeks with his fists. Eugene was still looking a bit shell-shocked, for some reason.

  Nicholas searched his mind for something to cheer up Eugene.

  “Hey, you wanna know something funny? I thought you were trying to bully me the first time we met. When you gave me the wrong directions on my first day of school, and I got lost in the woods.”

  Eugene, to Nicholas’s surprise, looked dismayed rather than amused.

  “No!” he exclaimed. “Oh no! I thought it was a totally awesome prank! ’Cause, like… you were new, and you didn’t know which way to go, and you’d get… lost in the woods. In a hilarious way. ’Cause pranks are fun, right?”

  Nicholas shook his head, grinning a little.

  “You know we’re bros now, right?” Eugene asked anxiously.

  Nicholas’s grin spread. “Yeah, I know we’re bros now.”

  They fist-bumped. Eugene went home for dinner, since it was Saturday, and Nicholas walked slowly back to Kings Row alone.

  He and Eugene were bros, but Eugene didn’t get it. He couldn’t, not really. Other people weren’t gonna make Nicholas feel lousy. It wasn’t about what other people did. It was about what Nicholas did, or failed to do. Or who Nicholas failed to be.

  Hey, Dad, Nicholas thought defiantly, taking a detour to stop by the framed photograph of Robert Coste beside a shining trophy. Even in his mind, it felt like a lie. Robert’s blue eyes were fixed on his glittering prize. He couldn’t see Nicholas.

  Nicholas didn’t care about limos or watches or morons. But he cared about other stuff.

  Robert Coste didn’t know about Nicholas, and he wouldn’t want him if he did know. Robert knew about Jesse, though, and Jesse fit in at a school even fancier than Kings Row. Jesse was one of those rich kids who always got what they wanted.

  Everything in the world that Nicholas wanted… it all belonged to Jesse. Even Seiji.

  10: HARVARD

  Harvard was pretty nervous about his second date of the weekend. He was afraid he’d spend another night feeling the same absolute wrongness he’d felt on Friday, wondering why he wasn’t happier to be there. He never wanted to feel that vacancy in his chest again, the knowledge he was expected to do something and couldn’t possibly do it. But Harvard worried if he chickened out now, he might never date again.

  His mom had been understanding and embracing of all Harvard’s doubts on the phone, just as he’d known she would be.

  You and me, kid, she used to say in the hospital when Dad was sleeping, his father’s wasted body quiet and still under white sheets. W
e’re a team.

  Harvard always tried to be a good teammate, but his mom was the best. She was the one who encouraged him to go on a second date right away, told him that her friend Rita had a son he might like. She said she loved him and was proud of him, as she did every time he called, and she wanted him to be happy. She told him to grab every chance for happiness he got.

  Harvard had a happy family, but they knew better than most how fragile happiness could be.

  So he was going to try and be happy in a new way, which included figuring out who—if anyone—he wanted to kiss. He’d never thought about… physical stuff that much. That was Aiden’s specialty, and Harvard’s mind tended to veer away from the idea of Aiden and romance.

  This wasn’t about Aiden. It was about Harvard and some guy.

  Maybe a date with a guy would go better. Maybe it would feel better. He could only hope so.

  He had some time to kill, and he didn’t want to get worked up worrying about his date, so Harvard tried to be productive and write his teamwork essay. Coach hadn’t technically said he had to do it, but since everyone else on the team was doing it—even Aiden—Harvard had decided he should, too.

  He’d written about meeting Aiden when he was five, how they’d got along right away and how Harvard had known at once that Aiden was cool and funny and special. He knew what came next. He’d been avoiding it, but Harvard knew he shouldn’t avoid responsibility.

  When I was seven, my dad got really sick, Harvard wrote. He got better. It’s all good now.

  He felt he should add more to the essay about that, before he got onto the subject of fencing. Maybe about how his mom had been brave, and they’d been lucky?

  He looked helplessly around his room. Aiden wasn’t there. He was probably on a date. Possibly two dates, since it seemed like Friday night’s hadn’t gone well. More and more over the last few years, Aiden was nowhere to be found.

  When Aiden was out on dates and Harvard felt restless like this, he’d usually go to the salle and practice until he was exhausted enough to sleep and not anticipate the sound of Aiden coming in, accompanied or otherwise.

  He could go to the salle now. Or he could drive around on his motorcycle. He’d got his license when Mom and Dad took him to Italy last year and had so much fun his parents had surprised him with a motorcycle on his birthday. Harvard didn’t ride it a lot now that he was back at school, but Mom had forcibly suggested he should pick up his date on the bike. He didn’t know why, but she seemed to feel strongly that it would improve his chances with Neil.

  Driving the motorcycle would make Harvard think about the date later that night, which was exactly what he was trying to avoid.

  He went to the salle, crossing a lawn that was half-shadow, half-gold in the setting sun, and ran through the arched doorway. Fencing was simple, as so many things weren’t. Fencing came with the assurance that if Harvard tried hard enough, it would make a difference. Harvard wasn’t powerless, the way he had been as a kid. He could accomplish something real.

  Fencing also came with teammates. The salle was already occupied. Nicholas Cox was in there. Usually, Harvard would’ve joined Nicholas on the piste beside his, and maybe offered a couple tips, but this evening the sight of Nicholas made him hang back. Nicholas wasn’t practicing any of the moves Coach was trying hard to teach him, helping him catch up to the other students’ years of learned techniques. Instead, Nicholas was rushing forward, ever forward, in a flurry of swings. He seemed to be fighting invisible and unconquerable enemies that came from every side.

  From the look of him, he’d been doing it for some time. His T-shirt was drenched through with perspiration, his chest rising and falling so hard it was almost as though he were sobbing. As Harvard watched, Nicholas finally let his point drop and trailed his weary way across the room, sliding down with his back against the wall until he hit the floor.

  Harvard hesitated, then crossed the salle, knelt down, and asked Nicholas, “You doing okay?”

  Nicholas’s head came up with a jerk, but he didn’t look angry that Harvard was there. He wiped sweaty hair out of his eyes with the back of his hand, mouth trembling out of shape for a minute, then said, “What would you do if—if someone called you a loser?”

  “Who called you that?” Harvard asked with deadly calm.

  He knew how some of the kids at Kings Row were about scholarship students. It had never seemed to bother Nicholas, so Harvard hadn’t wanted to embarrass him by making an issue of it, but now someone had clearly pierced Nicholas Cox’s impressive armor. Harvard never approved of cruelty and stopped it whenever he could, but this was different. Nicholas was on Harvard’s team. Nicholas was Harvard’s responsibility. If anyone had hurt him, Harvard wanted to know.

  “Nobody from this school!” Nicholas assured him instantly.

  Harvard paused, unconvinced, but from his experience with Nicholas, he was an honest guy. After a moment, Harvard nodded.

  “Well, let me know if anybody is a jerk to you. If they wanna call you a loser, they can call me a loser, too.”

  Nicholas turned to Harvard with his eyes popping out and so circular, they were basically flying saucers.

  “Nobody could ever think you were a loser, Captain.”

  “I’ve lost matches.” Harvard gave Nicholas a little smile. “I’ve lost more than that. Everybody loses. Sometimes you lose more than you knew you had.”

  Writing the essay had forced Harvard to recall things he usually didn’t let himself dwell upon. It had all been a long time ago. He remembered being so little that when he’d sat in the hospital chairs, his feet dangled far above the floor. His mom had talked to the doctors behind a half-shut door, and Harvard had heard the words You might want to prepare yourself for the worst. His mother had gone into the room where his father slept, held his hands, and sobbed. Harvard had known with the quiet terror of a small helpless thing that despite what Mom had said about them being a team, there was nothing he could really do.

  “What if someone called you a loser and you knew it was… sort of true?” said Nicholas. “It’s not gonna stay true. But it’s kinda true, for now.”

  “It’s not true at all.”

  Nicholas scoffed.

  “Hey,” said Harvard. “It’s not losing that makes you a loser. It’s how you deal with it when you lose. I believe that.”

  There was a silence as Nicholas pondered this, forehead scrunching up and mouth pursed, looking the same way he did when Coach or Harvard or Seiji suggested a new technique to practice.

  At last, Nicholas shrugged. “I’m not used to losing anything.” He cracked a smile. “Not because I’m such a winner, obviously. It’s just I never had much to lose before. Now I have so much stuff. But at the same time, I feel kind of lousy about hanging on to it. Like I’m… maybe doing something wrong. Have you ever felt that way? I know it doesn’t make much sense.”

  Harvard murmured, “It makes sense.”

  “I know you and Aiden have been friends forever.” Nicholas’s rough voice was wistful. “It must be really cool, to have a someone you know will always be there. I’ve never had that, but I get that it would suck to let go of. That you wouldn’t want to, not ever. If anyone got in the way and messed stuff up between you and Aiden, you’d hate them, probably. Right?”

  Harvard thought of the first time he’d looked around for Aiden and hadn’t found him. They were going on fifteen and had been getting more and more into fencing. Aiden had got taller all of a sudden and started to move differently. Harvard registered it, but he hadn’t really noticed: Aiden was always Aiden, always great and cool, and without question beloved.

  Other people had noticed.

  They’d been walking around Kings Row, deciding if they wanted to go there. As they’d crossed the quad, Aiden was talking about the Kingstone Fair. He seemed to really want to go.

  “I was thinking,” Aiden said hesitantly behind Harvard, “that we could go together? You and me.”

  “Sure,” Ha
rvard had told him. “I could win you a bear. To be friends with Harvard Paw.”

  “Friends,” Aiden had said. “Great.”

  There was something funny about Aiden’s voice when he’d said that. He hadn’t sounded pleased like Harvard had thought he would be. Harvard had frowned, about to turn and check on him.

  Then someone had whistled and called out: “Hello, gorgeous!”

  There had been a moment of confusion. Harvard had glanced around for Aiden, expecting Aiden to be a step behind him the way Aiden always was. That was how they’d walked forever, since they were kids and Aiden was so much smaller than Harvard but trailed persistently after him.

  Only Aiden hadn’t been there. Aiden stood alone, attention distracted by the whistle that was clearly aimed at him.

  “Hey,” said the boy who’d whistled. “Yeah, you! What are you doing later?”

  After a startled instant, Harvard had seen a slow smile steal across Aiden’s face. He’d tossed back his hair—when had it got so long?—so he could see the guy who’d whistled better. His gaze had slid to Harvard, uncertain.

  What had Harvard expected, for Aiden to stay in his shadow forever? Even if that were what he’d wanted, it wouldn’t be right or fair. Nobody shone like Aiden.

  Harvard had taken a step back.

  That was the first time Harvard had realized they wouldn’t do everything together forever. They hadn’t gone to the fair together. Aiden had gone with some guy, and Harvard had stayed home alone.

  “Sometimes it’s right to let go of people,” Harvard told Nicholas now, thinking about that day. “But you can still be there for someone, even if you have to let go.”

  “Sometimes I feel like I’m messing stuff up just by being here,” muttered Nicholas.

  “No,” said Harvard. “Being there for someone is the most important thing you’ll ever do. Not winning or losing. Just being there.”

  The night they’d thought Harvard’s dad would die, Aiden’s latest stepmother had tried to pick up Aiden from the hospital.

  “I have no idea who this woman is!” little Aiden had claimed, always so smart even when they were tiny. He’d used the lethal combination of being articulate and having the cutthroat instinct for knowing exactly what to say, and secured the nurses as his allies.