Fence--Striking Distance

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “If people see us holding hands in the hall,” Harvard hazarded, “they might think we’re really together. I wouldn’t want to cramp your style.”

  Aiden’s mouth curved. “Let people think what they want. People are used to seeing me with one guy or another. I don’t care.”

  Another snag in the plan occurred to Harvard.

  “I care if it’s my mom,” Harvard stipulated. “My mom can never hear of this!”

  Aiden raised an eyebrow. “I thought your mom liked me. But, fine, agreed. I won’t text your mom with any fake news. What else do you not want? Tell me.”

  Harvard’s mom did like Aiden, whom she thought of as being eternally tiny and a total scamp. She’d immediately begin planning a June wedding. Harvard could only imagine Aiden’s horror.

  If this went on too long, she would find out, and Harvard would cramp Aiden’s style. He was bound to.

  “We should put a time limit on this,” Harvard suggested.

  Aiden nodded crisply. “Fine. Let’s take the week. Friday night you can go back to Neil, wow him with your new skills, and make it official. What else?”

  Aiden’s tone was extremely brisk and businesslike. Harvard’s head was whirling.

  “Um…,” said Harvard. “I don’t know; this is your area of expertise. Like you said. We have to make this plan together. You tell me. What else could go wrong?”

  Aiden considered. “Being roommates could make this messy. After a date, we should leave the practice at the door.”

  As opposed to taking it inside. Into the room. With the beds in it. Harvard’s mind felt like it was bending and might fracture under immense weight.

  “Look,” Harvard said. “There’s one flaw in this plan. I know we don’t talk about it, but it’s pretty obvious. Right?”

  Aiden hesitated. When he spoke, he seemed to choose his words with care. “I’m not certain what you mean.”

  Oh God, was it not obvious?

  Harvard would have to say it.

  “I don’t think you understand the profound depth of my inexperience. I’ve never even kissed anybody!”

  This seemed to take Aiden aback. Harvard had feared it might. Probably Harvard didn’t even qualify for practice dating. Obviously, you didn’t plan a team strategy with someone who’d never fenced in his life before.

  After a stunned pause, Aiden said carefully: “I thought you and Neil must have—”

  “No,” said Harvard.

  A few times, Harvard had thought a kiss might happen. Both nights Neil had let Harvard take him home, Neil had lingered, talking to Harvard on the porch for some time as though he might be waiting for something. But Harvard had no idea how to make the first move.

  In retrospect, Harvard regretted the motorcycle. He thought the motorcycle might’ve led to Neil having certain expectations of Harvard that Harvard couldn’t fulfill.

  “Oh,” said Aiden, softer than breath.

  He was probably wondering what he’d got himself into, and how to get out of it. They’d known each other since they were five.

  Since they were five, Harvard thought with sudden misgiving. Surely that would make everything weird.

  No matter what people said about Aiden, Harvard knew he didn’t just indiscriminately kiss everybody. Usually, Harvard imagined, the people Aiden did kiss tended to know what they were doing.

  This might be a solution to Harvard’s problems, but Aiden didn’t have any problems in this area at all. He should give Aiden the chance to back out gracefully.

  “Look,” said Harvard. “We’ve known each other a long time. I understand it might feel… very weird to try anything.”

  Aiden’s voice was mild. “Are you physically revolted by me?”

  “I mean, of course I’m not!” said Harvard.

  They’d slept tangled together on hospital seats and lying on the ground camping and in beds, too. They were very physically comfortable together. They always had been. Aiden’s touch had always been welcome and natural to him as sunlight.

  He was afraid of losing that.

  “There you go. I’m cute. You’re cute,” Aiden said. “So that’s not a problem, but if you don’t want to, that is a problem. If you don’t want to, we shouldn’t try this.”

  Harvard had no idea how to deal with the jolting sensation caused by part of what Aiden had said, so he fastened desperately on to the last sentence.

  “I do want to!” Harvard exclaimed.

  He lifted his chin and stood up from the bed. Aiden’s upward glance seemed like a challenge, familiar from times when Harvard got Aiden to take a match seriously and Aiden’s eyes gleamed above their crossed swords. The look was wildly out of context, and seemed far more dangerous, when thrown in their room.

  Aiden’s voice rasped as he asked, “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah,” said Harvard. “Come on.”

  Something flickered in Aiden’s gaze. Harvard nodded encouragement at him. Come on, let’s get with the plan.

  “You said nothing should happen in the dorm room, right?”

  Aiden answered, “R-right?“

  Harvard said recklessly, “So let’s leave the room.”

  18: AIDEN

  Harvard had never been kissed. Was Neil actively deranged? Aiden wondered. Would Harvard be safe with someone who might at any time progress from inexplicable inaction to delusions that he was a teapot?

  He didn’t want to think of Neil at this time or any other.

  Harvard led the way, down the back stairs of the dormitory and out into the quad of Kings Row. Once they were outside, Aiden took deep breaths of cool night air. He couldn’t possibly have agreed to this. He wasn’t actually going to try to teach Harvard about dating.

  Aiden was clearly in the process of losing his mind. He thought he could actually feel his mind dissolving. The tiny fragments that used to be his mind would float away up into the night sky and get lost among the stars.

  The stone pillars that surrounded them glimmered silver in the gathering dusk. Their school buildings were lost in shadows, but Aiden knew exactly where they were. They had crossed this stretch of lawn hundreds of times.

  Aiden had imagined the date to Kingstone Fair in excruciating detail, lived it in a hundred vivid daydreams, but he’d never planned out any date he’d actually had. Who cared?

  Only now it was Harvard, so now Aiden cared, and literally all his experience was worse than useless. He couldn’t be cold to Harvard or careless or hurt him. If Harvard understood what he was asking for, he would be horrified.

  None of Aiden’s experience applied to Harvard. He couldn’t do this.

  “I’m not sure…,” Harvard began.

  “You’re so right, this was a terrible idea!” exclaimed Aiden. “Obviously you’re overcome with shock. You were panicking. It’s fine. Neil is deranged, but that’s his problem. He probably thinks he’s a teapot. Don’t worry. There are a lot of teapots in the sea. I mean, fish. I mean, guys.”

  Silence reigned under the stars.

  “There are a lot of teapots in the sea?” Harvard repeated.

  Aiden took a deep breath.

  “You can tell me that you’ve changed your mind. I’m not the guy who could plan a perfect date, but I’m not… I know you haven’t done anything like this before, and I wouldn’t push. I’m not that guy, either.”

  He whirled away, intending to escape, but then Harvard followed him. Harvard was wearing a button-down shirt—one of his uniform shirts, but with jeans. When Harvard wore shirts that buttoned, he buttoned all the way. Harvard committed like that. What Harvard wasn’t wearing was the woolen sweater or the blazer that came with the uniform shirt. When he leaned his shoulder against Aiden’s, the warmth of his skin spread to Aiden. His shoulder against Aiden’s was strong and solid. He was right there, a warm and astonishingly comforting presence. Aiden was enveloped in that strength and comfort.

  “Hey,” Harvard murmured, running his hand down the line of Aiden’s back. Aiden felt every
muscle in his body go liquid and his head go dizzy from the release of tension. “I know that. I know you. Calm down.”

  Aiden leaned his head against Harvard’s and breathed. “I’m cool and poised at all times.”

  Harvard laughed. “Oh sure.”

  They stayed like that in a perfect silence, in which Aiden could breathe easier than he had in days, until Harvard made a sound that wasn’t a snort but was still too close to scoffing for Aiden’s taste.

  “I haven’t changed my mind.”

  “You can,” said Aiden. “Anytime.”

  “I know that, too. Would you give a guy a minute before you enact a whole dramatic scene?” Harvard grumbled. “Why are you like this? I cannot believe you chose this moment to decide I’m a wounded fawn you hit with your dad’s limo.”

  “My dad let my last stepmother take the limo,” Aiden mumbled.

  He had calmed down. He should pull away. Aiden knew exactly how to extricate himself from moments like these, had learned from long habit, and he was about to do so in a smooth, practiced maneuver when he became aware Harvard’s attitude had shifted.

  “We should—” Aiden began, and would have finished with go back inside, except his mouth was dry.

  “Yeah,” murmured Harvard. “You said we should hold hands.”

  There was a certain set to Harvard’s shoulders and tilt to his jaw when he came to a decision and decided nothing would sway him from his course. When this determination gathered during a match, Aiden would always grin, knowing Harvard’s opponent was about to be decimated.

  He wasn’t certain what Harvard’s familiar determination would lead to in a moment as strange as this. Aiden held still and waited.

  Harvard drew in a deep breath. It seemed as though he were drawing in all the air from the sky.

  “If you don’t like it,” Harvard murmured, “tell me.”

  He slid his hand from Aiden’s back, palm skimming lightly down Aiden’s arm, and laced his fingers with Aiden’s. They had held hands before many times. When they were little, Harvard and Aiden used to grab hands before crossing the street. They would swing their joined hands as they went, happy to be together, Aiden knowing he was safe with Harvard.

  It was different now. They were older. It felt different—to actually twine their fingers together rather than clasp hands. It was such a small thing, this tiny advance of intimacy. Palm to palm, linked together. This didn’t feel entirely safe.

  “So,” Aiden said, slightly breathless.

  Harvard squeezed his hand. “Yeah. Well, what next? Do we try going on a date?”

  “Yes,” said Aiden, trying to sound calm and judicious in his capacity as a teacher of the ways of dating. “I think that would be a good next step.”

  “Where would you like to go on our date?” Harvard asked.

  If he’d asked What should we do?, Aiden wouldn’t have known how to respond. They shouldn’t be doing any of this. But Aiden knew where he would like to go.

  It was years late. It wasn’t real, but it could finally be the way Aiden had always imagined, since the very first day they saw Kings Row.

  “I’d like… to go to the fair,” Aiden confessed.

  Harvard smiled at him, the tiny smile that was just for Aiden, and said, “That sounds really nice.”

  19: NICHOLAS

  In the name of teamwork, Nicholas insisted that he and Seiji must talk when they were going from one class to the other, and that at the end of the school day they should meet and discuss the day’s events.

  “Nothing has changed in the eighty-seven minutes since I last saw you,” Seiji reported on Monday afternoon. “I don’t know how anything could have changed significantly in that amount of time. I cannot elaborate on my classes. You wouldn’t understand advanced mathematics even if I tried to explain it.”

  Nicholas nodded happily. “It’s good to catch up. Hey, who do you sit with in the classes we don’t have together?”

  “I sit by myself,” replied Seiji. “It is pleasant and restful.”

  “Cool,” said Nicholas. “I sit with Bobby and Dante. We pull up a third desk so we can all be together in an extra-long row. Dante says Bobby and I aren’t allowed to talk about fencing for more than eighteen minutes at a stretch.”

  Seiji squinted. “Dante is such a strange person.”

  Nicholas privately agreed, but Dante was Bobby’s best friend, so Nicholas owed him loyalty.

  “Don’t think you can call anyone else a weirdo, Seiji.”

  “Nor can you!” Seiji said sharply.

  Nicholas nodded. “Fair.”

  The hallways were filled with boys hooting and jumping and running around and throwing paper airplanes. One got caught in Seiji’s black hair and he halted, a look of affront descending on his face like winter. The thrower of the offending plane retreated hurriedly. Nicholas plucked it out of Seiji’s hair and sent the airplane flying after its maker.

  Right after the end of classes, Kings Row was always a zoo, but this was more than the normal rush to escape education. People were high-fiving in midair. Kally and Tanner, who Nicholas knew from fencing tryouts, were playing air guitar and singing to each other. Students were shoving into Seiji, who normally projected a force field and stopped strangers from touching him by will alone. Nicholas saw someone leap up and grab the top of the arched doorway leading to the stone steps outside. He was starting to think there was something unusual going on.

  Eugene ambled over to them in the middle of the chaos. He was grinning broadly.

  “So, are you guys going to Kingstone Fair?” he asked.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Nicholas.

  “I never go places,” answered Seiji.

  Eugene seemed daunted by this response to his conversational overtures.

  “See, the thing is, Eugene, unless you or Bobby or Dante tell us about something, we’re not going to know about it,” Nicholas explained. “We have no other friends at Kings Row. Nobody talks to me because I’m a vandal with a scholarship, and nobody talks to Seiji because… well, because…”

  “Because of my personality,” said Seiji.

  Nicholas nodded. “Right, because of that.”

  “Or lack thereof,” Seiji added in a brisk, factual tone.

  Nicholas raised his eyebrows. “Oh, you’ve got one,” he said. “Don’t know that I can describe it, but you’ve got one.”

  Eugene slapped Seiji on the back. “Totally, bro.”

  Seiji endured being slapped on the back, his jaw setting. Another boy whooped and swung around a marble bust of a former principal. Seiji gave him a look, and the boy backed away.

  “Kingstone Fair is held in the woods on the other side of Kingstone,” Eugene told them, seeming happy to share his lofty experience with the freshmen. “It’s every September. Everyone’s really excited to go. There’s fried dough.”

  Seiji’s interest seemed caught. “This is a popular social event?”

  “Yah, bro, obviously. Fried dough!”

  Eugene offered Seiji a fist bump over fried dough. Seiji made a fastidious shape with his mouth, and glanced at Nicholas in search of help. Nicholas intervened to accept the fried-dough fist bump.

  “So everybody will be at this fair,” mused Seiji. “And the school will be deserted. What a perfect opportunity.”

  “To go to the fair!” Nicholas nodded with enthusiasm. “Let’s all go together! As a team.”

  “I do not intend to go to the fair, Nicholas,” said Seiji. “It seems frivolous. I meant it was a perfect opportunity for me to catch up on some of the training I’ve been missing by having indulgent breakfasts. It’s also a perfect opportunity for Eugene to take you away from school so that I can have some peace. As Eugene and I were talking about earlier. Remember, Eugene?”

  Seiji’s tone was slightly sinister. Eugene’s eyes went wide.

  Nicholas ignored this in favor of complaining to Seiji. “If you’re in the salle and I’m in our room, you could still h
ave peace.”

  “Not enough peace,” said Seiji. “You could show up at the salle at any time. You often do. I wish you to be entirely off the premises, so I may attain complete peace of mind. Eugene will take you away. As previously discussed.”

  Nicholas had no objection to going to the fair, but Eugene seemed shaken. Maybe he was afraid of heights? They didn’t have to go on the Ferris wheel or anything.

  “Whoa, bro,” Eugene remarked in hollow tones. “Having peace of mind sounds fun. I wish I had some.”

  “Uh, Seiji,” said Nicholas. “I think you’re overlooking one important thing.”

  Seiji blinked interrogatively.

  “If Eugene and I go to the fair together, then we will be rocking at teamwork, as usual”—Nicholas accepted another Eugene fist bump, this one actually intended for him—“and you will suck at it. As usual!”

  “Is that so?” Seiji asked, his voice extraordinarily calm.

  Eugene made a faint protesting sound.

  It seemed as though there was something going on here that Nicholas didn’t understand. Nicholas felt grievously injured. He’d become Seiji’s friend first, but here Seiji was having secrets with Eugene.

  On the other hand, Seiji didn’t train with Eugene, so that was sort of like Nicholas having a secret with Seiji. And going to the fair with Eugene would be fun, though obviously it would be better if Seiji were there, too.

  “Fine, Eugene and I will go to the fair without you.”

  “Enjoy yourselves,” said Seiji. He seemed in a weirdly good mood.

  “What’re you doing, Seiji?” Eugene was speaking from the corner of his mouth.

  “I haven’t done anything,” said Seiji blandly.

  “What are you going to do?” Eugene asked in an unnecessarily loud voice. Nicholas wasn’t fussy about indoor voices like Aiden, but there were limits. Seiji obviously wouldn’t do anything bad. “I’m starting to get that intense feeling of disquiet again, bro! Bros don’t let other bros fret. Tell me what… Okay, everybody shut up right now.”

  Seiji frowned, his particular frown of being imperiously disappointed that the world was failing him by making no sense.