Finding Aiden and being too young to understand what he’d found. Only knowing Aiden was necessary to him and wanting Aiden there always. Of course he loved his best friend, of course he did. That was always such an absolute truth that Harvard could never question it.
Harvard gasped against Aiden’s mouth. He should have questioned it before now. He should have asked himself what he was feeling. Only he’d been afraid.
Dating someone else hadn’t been Harvard’s idea, and with this new clarity he realized he didn’t actually want to do it. He hadn’t wanted to be alone, hadn’t wanted to be left behind, but it was impossible and distinctly horrible to think of being like this with anyone but Aiden.
Only very recently, as Aiden dated more and more people and the potential for distance between them started to feel far more real, had Harvard started to feel lonely. If it hadn’t been for Coach suggesting dating, it might never have occurred to him.
Why would he go out and look for a partner when he had one at home? Why would he go searching for a lightning strike when there was all the brightness and all the pain he could wish for, always with him?
He’d never cared about dating, never really felt the need to find someone, because he’d been otherwise emotionally committed all along. Apparently, Harvard’s subconscious was insane, bent on his own ruin. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d just decided he was Aiden’s boyfriend, without consulting Aiden. Without even consulting himself.
He’d been in love with Aiden the whole time.
This was an emotional natural disaster, the equivalent of an earthquake. This could level every carefully built structure in Harvard’s life.
“We have to stop,” Harvard said, abrupt and desperate.
“Wait, why?” Aiden murmured, reaching to drag Harvard back when Harvard pulled away, barely seeming to understand the words Harvard had spoken. “I don’t want to. You said you didn’t want to…”
He trailed off, hands still grasping Harvard’s shirt, exerting pressure to bring Harvard back where he had been. Aiden’s eyes were heavy-lidded, almost as if he was drowsy, but it was an electric drowsiness.
For a terrifying moment, Harvard looked at Aiden and couldn’t remember why they should stop. Then he looked at Aiden and did remember.
“I don’t want to, but we have to,” Harvard tried to explain.
Aiden looked suddenly wide awake and affronted to be so, like a cat disturbed from his rest.
His voice as sharp this time as it had been soft before, he said, “Why?”
When Aiden had agreed to help Harvard with practice dating, Harvard remembered vividly the exact words he’d used. I know how dating works. It doesn’t matter, and this wouldn’t even be real dating. It doesn’t mean anything. It won’t change anything.
He looked at Aiden, his chest feeling cold and empty, bleak with despair. Harvard was just like all the rest of Aiden’s guys, only worse. He was the one who really knew Aiden, and he should know better.
Harvard said, “Because this means nothing.”
26: NICHOLAS
The next day at breakfast, some teachers came and marched away two seniors. “We need to talk to you about all the watches we found in your room,” the whole cafeteria heard a teacher say distinctly.
The boys went ashen and started pleading and protesting innocence, one of them crying and the other talking incessantly about Daddy, so Nicholas felt kind of bad for them. Then he squinted and stared at the passing criminals in shock. Oddly, Eugene didn’t seem surprised at all. Eugene seemed worried, for some reason. Seiji was eating his tragic breakfast with total calm.
Nicholas jerked his thumb toward the departing guilty parties. “Wow, what a coincidence.”
“There are no broincidences,” murmured Eugene in a fraught voice.
“No, but seriously,” said Nicholas. “I think I know those guys?”
“What do you mean?” Seiji asked, his voice suddenly a razor. “You think you know them?”
Nicholas wasn’t paying attention to Seiji. Usually he did, but his close brush with crime had him distracted.
“Wow, Eugene, this is amazing! We were totally in the same shop as these guys. I guess we were there right before they did the job.”
This seemed to puzzle Eugene, and to enrage Seiji. Many things enraged Seiji, but Nicholas wasn’t following the reasons for his current episode of fury.
“You guess you were there?” demanded Seiji. “When they implied you were a thief and insulted your pride, and you were visibly upset all day?”
“Huh?” said Nicholas. “They what?”
He wondered what he could’ve possibly been upset about that day, and then remembered Robert and Jesse Coste. He couldn’t tell anyone about that. He didn’t want anybody to know about his dad, not until he was better, and… Nicholas realized with a sinking feeling that he never wanted Seiji to find out he had any connection to Jesse Coste.
Seiji had been violently disturbed the time he decided Nicholas fenced like Jesse.
Seiji had told Nicholas he didn’t want to be Jesse’s reflection. He wouldn’t want to look at Jesse’s reflection, either. Especially not such a currently lousy version. It was starting to seem like Seiji had refused to go to Exton and had come to Kings Row purely in order to get away from Jesse Coste. If Seiji knew Robert Coste was Nicholas’s dad, Seiji wouldn’t want to be roommates anymore, let alone friends. If Seiji found out, he wouldn’t see Nicholas as anything but a warped version of his true rival. He wouldn’t want to see Nicholas ever again.
While Nicholas wrestled with this dilemma, Seiji and Eugene were in the middle of their own argument.
“Eugene said that these boys deeply upset you with their classist and prejudiced remarks!” Seiji fixed Eugene with an accusing stare.
“Bro, I didn’t think that you were going to become a master criminal in Nicholas’s defense!” Eugene protested. “Nobody could have predicted that!”
“What do you mean, become a master criminal?” Nicholas boggled. “Seiji? In my defense? None of what you’re saying makes any sense!”
Eugene didn’t shed any light on the situation. He had his phone out and was texting busily, tongue sticking out of his mouth. Nicholas glanced at Eugene’s phone screen and saw that he was texting Please come and get me, Mom. The other kids at Kings Row are scaring me.
Nicholas turned an inquiring gaze on Seiji.
“I have to go!” Seiji announced.
Nicholas was still gazing around in confusion, waiting for answers that never came, when Seiji rose, stalked toward the door, and walked right into the wall of impressive muscle that was Eugene’s weight-lifting friends. They’d left their table and arrayed themselves in a towering line in front of Seiji.
“You did it,” said Eugene’s massive friend Chad, who’d taken a strong liking to Seiji. Chad was eyeing Seiji with even more approval than usual. “You got those guys so good.”
Seiji looked apprehensive about where this was going.
“Sick, my dude!” agreed Even More Massive Julian.
“Nasty!” contributed Brad, as though making a great concession.
“Why are you all hurling insults at me?” Seiji asked in an injured voice.
“From now on, when we speak of a prank that is truly legendary, we will call it a Seiji,” vowed Chad. “Boys, grab him!”
To Seiji’s evident and overwhelming horror, Eugene’s weight-lifting bros seized him and lifted him bodily over their heads.
Nicholas moved very fast, using all the speed he’d been born with. He grabbed Eugene’s phone out of his hands and took a picture of Seiji’s expression at the moment they were lifting him. Then Nicholas texted the photo to his own number. He’d found his new phone background.
“Seiji!” Chad began to chant, and the others joined him. They clearly intended to parade Seiji all around Kings Row.
Picture secured, Nicholas felt vaguely as though he should rush to Seiji’s rescue, but he was also aware by now what it mea
nt when Seiji’s face set in these particular lines. Someone should probably rush to the weight lifters’ rescue.
“It’s true!” said Seiji in ringing tones over the chant. “I am a master criminal. Now put me down, or I will visit a horrible revenge on you all.”
Meekly, the weight lifters put down Seiji. Seiji gave a single cool, dismissive nod, and then fled for his life.
“Gotta jet, bro,” said Eugene. “My mom is unexpectedly coming to pick me up.”
He tried to stand and couldn’t. Nicholas had grabbed hold of Eugene’s tie. He held on and ignored Eugene’s imploring gaze.
“Bro… let go, bro…”
“If you don’t tell me what’s happening, I’m gonna commit a felony,” Nicholas promised. “I mean it.”
Eugene closed his eyes in terror. “No more crime,” he whispered. “Please.”
Nicholas could be beaten in fencing matches—though only by people who were super good—but he couldn’t be psyched out or intimidated. He didn’t know how to back down, and he found that very useful.
Right now, Nicholas raised his eyebrows, like he did in a fencing match: Go ahead. Try me.
Eugene took a deep breath and launched into a long and strange tale. Apparently, Eugene had made a mysterious mistake and informed Seiji that these boys had upset Nicholas for no reason. Then Eugene had decided to tell Seiji that it would be good to prank these guys for upsetting Nicholas, and that the best thing to do would be to steal a bunch of stuff from this jewelry store and frame these guys.
Nicholas listened quietly, and sneakily ate Eugene’s bacon while he was too distracted to object. “Sounds like this was mostly your fault, Eugene.”
“Then I’m not telling it right, bro!” Eugene defended himself vigorously. “Because this was definitely Seiji’s fault. Let me stress the part where he sneaked off under cover of darkness on the night of the fair and did who knows what! Do you think he broke into the safe with, like, a blowtorch, bro? Do you think he has one of those pizza cutter things that actually cut glass? I hope he was wearing a mask, but if he was then it means he has a whole heist outfit, and I don’t feel good about that, either.”
All around them, Kings Row boys were discussing the thieves discovered in their midst. Eugene was wringing his hands. Nicholas waved his own hand, like Yeah, yeah, yeah.
“Can we get back to the important part?” Nicholas requested.
“Bro, Seiji being a master criminal is the important part!” Eugene exclaimed. “He is a terrifying madman!”
“No, he’s not,” said Nicholas dismissively. “I mean—he’s not a criminal. He might be that other thing, but it’s cool.”
“How is it cool?!” Eugene thundered. “How is any of this cool!”
Nicholas grinned at him. “I think all of this is really cool.”
Eugene stared at Nicholas’s grin for a long, stunned moment. “Thanks for sharing your unique perspective on the world, bro.”
“I mean, you two did a lot of strange stuff,” Nicholas admitted. “But you did it to make me feel better.”
The morning light was shining on the smooth walls and the gilt frames surrounding portraits of ancient bearded men. Those old dudes wouldn’t have thought Nicholas belonged in Kings Row any more than the jerks who’d been led out of the room this morning did. Nicholas didn’t belong here, but there were people who wanted Nicholas to feel he belonged.
“But you weren’t actually upset. We got it all wrong. You didn’t even remember those guys!” Eugene protested violently. “We did all that—Seiji committed so much crime—for nothing.”
“You both cared about how I felt,” said Nicholas. “Nobody’s ever cared how I felt before.”
Eugene made a funny long squeaking sound, as though he had a balloon in his lungs and someone had stepped on it, letting the air leak out noisily.
“But, I mean,” Eugene said in a feeble voice. “Like. Your mom cares.”
That made Nicholas think of trying—and failing—to write his essay for Coach.
He remembered an apartment from long ago. He didn’t recall which part of town it’d been in, or how they’d eventually gotten evicted. What he remembered was the light of a nearby convenience store, the flickering neon-red drenching the shattered place in the drywall. At the time, his mother had a boyfriend living with them, and the boyfriend shouted and threw stuff. He’d thrown a plate at Nicholas’s head. He was fast and ducked, though, so it didn’t hit him. Later that night, Nicholas traced the fractures on the wall, and thought about what that hurled plate would have done to his head. If he’d been just a little less fast.
Before then, Nicholas had assumed his mom loved him. Moms did. She was young for a mom, and they didn’t have much money, so sometimes she got stressed or forgot him or yelled, but that wasn’t a big deal. She was nice to him when she was in a good mood or had enough to drink but not too much. Sometimes she’d lie on the bed and hold him and say in a nice low voice that Nicholas should be quiet because Mommy’s head hurt. If he was quiet, he was allowed to snuggle up against her.
After the plate hit the wall, Nicholas remembered trying to tell her, That man scares me, Mommy. He vividly recalled the way she’d looked at him when he did. How her eyes had been hazy with drink, but narrowed with dislike, and profoundly cold. Nicholas had understood, in that moment, that she didn’t care what he was saying. She only wanted him to stop saying it. Nicholas felt as though Mom hated him for making her life even harder than it had to be.
“Nah, she doesn’t care,” Nicholas said quietly. He bowed his head for an instant, then bounced back and looked up. “But you guys did. You cared that I was upset, and you tried to do something about it. That’s what matters.”
This wasn’t a dream of how if Nicholas proved himself worthy, his dad might be sorry he hadn’t been there. Nicholas was aware that the Robert Coste who cared about Nicholas was a figment of Nicholas’s imagination. These were real people, who Nicholas really knew.
“I don’t know how I can ever repay you guys, but I’ll think of something. I super appreciate it, bro,” said Nicholas, and offered his fist for Eugene to bump.
After a very long pause, Eugene bumped Nicholas’s fist with even more vigor than usual.
“Don’t sweat it, my dude. I mean, I almost had a nervous breakdown, and Seiji Katayama is genuinely out of his mind, but… anything for a true bro.”
Nicholas was filled with an emotion that seemed so huge it made him feel bigger, expanding so this much feeling could fit. It seemed as if he could wrap his arms all the way around the entirety of Kings Row. As if he might embrace every one of the absurdly huge redbrick buildings with the fancy windows and the shiny cabinets full of shinier trophies, and every one of the people inside those buildings.
He had to find Seiji.
27: AIDEN
Harvard had said he would come back, but he hadn’t. Aiden waited all night, staring up at the ceiling and replaying the moment when Harvard had gone still and said, This means nothing. Harvard had wrenched himself away from Aiden as though he might catch something.
The slam of the door had echoed throughout their room.
And now it was morning and time to go to class. Surely Harvard would come to class.
Before Aiden left the room, he picked up Harvard Paw and his new friend from where they lay tumbled together on the floor. He set Harvard Paw carefully down on his pillow.
Then Aiden tossed the new bear up and down so it hit the ceiling and back again. Aiden’s careless grin was reflected in its empty glass eyes.
He threw the fair bear, with extreme force, into the trash can by the door.
Harvard Paw looked a little forlorn there on the bed by himself.
“Sorry if you miss him,” Aiden told his bear. “But you’ll get over it. You’ll thank me one day. You were born to be a carefree bachelor.”
He swung by the salle but didn’t find Harvard there. He found Coach instead.
“Where’s Harvard?” Coach dema
nded.
“That’s what I want to know!” Aiden snapped back.
Coach tried to run her hands through her hair, visibly came to the realization her hair was up in a bun, and scowled. “He was supposed to come with me and do a fencing demonstration in the town hall this morning. My students evading their responsibilities is nothing new, but—”
“Harvard Lee?” said Aiden. “My Harvard? Impossible.”
Except perhaps it was possible. If Aiden had upset Harvard enough, though Aiden didn’t even know what he’d done wrong.
He’d done plenty wrong, obviously. But he didn’t know what he’d done specifically to cause that terrible look on Harvard’s face last night, or what he could possibly do to make it right.
“Have you written your essay, Aiden?” asked Coach sweetly.
After a pause, Aiden shook his head.
“Are you going to write your essay?”
Another pause, then Aiden shook his head again. He tried for a rakish grin, conveying to Coach, Don’t hate the player, hate the game. Coach gave him a look that indicated she had no time for the player.
“Do you want another roommate, then?”
Without a pause, Aiden shook his head. Maybe Harvard would want a new roommate after all this, but until Harvard told him to go, Aiden wouldn’t leave their room.
“Then I think you’re volunteering yourself for a fencing demonstration, aren’t you?” Coach asked brightly.
Aiden shrugged. “A display is more suited to my particular skill set.”
Everything else in his life had gone wrong. He wasn’t doing that essay.
The upkeep of the Kingstone town hall was endowed by several illustrious former Kings Row students. There was a large gold clock face set in the gray stone façade of the building, and in gold letters over the double doors was written the Latin legend QUI MALA COGITAT MALITUS EIUS. Inside was a gleaming walnut platform that could be set up as a stage for mayoral debates, civil ceremonies, and—apparently—fencing demonstrations. It could hold upward of a thousand people.
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