But, of course, the day couldn’t end without taking a wrong turn.
“Seiji! What a totally unexpected surprise,” declared a familiar voice. There against the lemon trees and the strange sky stood Jesse Coste.
His father’s other son. Seiji’s other fencing partner.
“You again,” mumbled Nicholas.
Jesse didn’t seem to hear him. Jesse didn’t seem to even notice him. He only had eyes for Seiji.
The Kings Row team stood in the dust kicked up by the bus wheels turning on the narrow road, silently staring at the apparition that was Jesse. Seiji seemed to have turned to wood, his whole attention on the boy in front of him.
Jesse Coste wandered closer, blond as Nicholas’s worst nightmare. The more he grinned, the more Nicholas wanted to punch him, and the deeper Seiji seemed to enter his fugue state. Seiji said in a determinedly calm voice, “Hello, Jesse,” and continued to stare.
Seiji and Jesse seemed in a world of their own, where nobody else existed. Certainly not Nicholas. Seiji was always more affected by Jesse than he ever was by anyone else. Jesse got everything, and Nicholas couldn’t help the resentful knot that formed in his stomach, even though Jesse had no idea Robert Coste was Nicholas’s father, too.
Apparently, Jesse had no idea Nicholas was alive.
Coach Williams saved the situation by striding out in front of her team and offering a hand to the woman in the Camp Menton uniform. “Sally Williams, Kings Row. Thanks for having us. Sorry we’re late. Our flight was delayed.”
The woman shook Coach’s hand. She had exciting earrings and a very sculpted hairdo, and she looked like a film star from a super-old movie, cut out and superimposed onto real life. She said, “Je m’appelle Colette Arquette,” which Nicholas figured probably meant My name is Colette and not A woman named Colette has stolen my apple. Colette clearly didn’t care about any of the drama unfolding before her.
“Je suis—” Coach Arquette’s gaze swept the team’s expressions of polite incomprehension. “I am one of the managers at Camp Menton. Welcome, all of you. How delightful to have American teams with us for the first time.”
Her voice was entirely flat.
“It will be my pleasure to show you around the camp,” she continued, voice still flat. “You can leave your bags here. They will be taken to your rooms. This is Melodie Suard, who volunteered to assist with the initiation of the American teams, and this is Jesse Coste, another American.”
“Jesse’s been waiting here for your bus since this morning,” reported the girl by Coach Arquette’s side. “He says he knows one of you.”
“Seiji,” Jesse filled in. “Since childhood.”
Without looking at the girl, Jesse continued to direct the sunlike force of his attention back on Seiji, who was still doing his impression of a statue impervious to sunshine or rain.
Nicholas looked over at Melodie. Initially, he’d been surprised to see her. Nicholas was familiar with girls, obviously. Coach was a girl. His mom was a girl. He used to go to school with girls. The guys back at his several other schools had talked, and seemed to think, about girls a lot. Nicholas didn’t. He was busy thinking about fencing. Since starting at Kings Row, he’d almost forgotten about the existence of girls his own age. He wondered if she was any good at fencing. As she was at Camp Menton, he guessed she must be.
“Follow me,” said Coach Arquette.
She turned and made her way up the tree-lined avenue, their coach at her side. Harvard and Assistant Coach Lewis were right behind them.
Even though he was with his teammates, Nicholas found himself feeling very alone. Seiji and Jesse were maintaining an intense silence, the air between them seeming to crackle with fraught, unspoken words. In fact, nobody was talking, except for the girl. Nicholas felt as though he might burst if he kept watching Seiji and Jesse watch each other, so he looked at her. Melodie was compact, had hair that was even lighter than Jesse’s tied up in a messy bun, and wore fencing whites. She was eyeing their whole group with a disappointed air.
“I hoped,” she announced with a sigh, “that one of the American teams would show signs of a real workout ethic.”
Nicholas stared at her in bewilderment.
“I pictured you Americans as rugged. I thought you were all so interested in training and in, oh, what is the English word… gains,” Melodie continued. “I’m very intrigued by the practice of using bodybuilding to enhance fencing. But you are all so skinny.”
“I think of us as leanly muscular,” suggested Nicholas.
Melodie scoffed.
Silence reigned among the lemon trees. The glamorous coach named Colette was showing them the common area between the buildings, where people gathered for meals when the weather was nice. There were carved beech picnic tables set under an orchard of swaying green and gold. Nicholas already missed the fiery fall colors of the trees around Kings Row.
Apparently, rich people donated their summer houses to act as dormitories for the Camp Menton kids. Through the trees, Nicholas glimpsed rambling cottages with rose briars growing up the walls, and modern buildings the sparkling-white color of fresh laundry. They looked like houses from magazines. It was beautiful, not like anything he’d ever seen.
He glanced over at Seiji, wanting to share the wonder as he had when they were looking out on the town, but Seiji wasn’t looking at Nicholas. He was still totally focused on Jesse. He seemed entirely unaware Nicholas was there.
Nicholas swallowed and tried to pay attention to the tour.
The centerpiece of Camp Menton was not the orchard cafeteria or the fancy dormitories. Coach Arquette led them to a building made of crumbling gray stone, with a peaked roof and a tower with a bell currently hanging silently. She led them through an echoing stone corridor, past the armory, where sword maintenance was carried out.
“The salle d’armes at Camp Menton was modeled after the Honved Fencing Club in Budapest. That was a converted synagogue, and this is a converted chapel,” announced Coach Arquette with justified pride.
It was a cavernous space, white plaster walls curving to a ceiling stenciled with gold symbols against a blue sky, starting cerulean blue and ending in cobalt at the dome. The seats for the audience mimicked an amphitheater in ancient Rome, tiered benches enclosing the space rising up on every side. The converted floor had fixed metal pistes made of corrugated steel sheeting set into the floor, demarcated by broad swathes of smooth dark green.
“Honved also has a record number of women champions,” piped up Melodie.
Nicholas was distracted by the sight in the salle d’armes. There were fencers doing drills along each piste, their masks and fencing whites making them an anonymous, undifferentiated mass, shifting along the strips with unbelievably smooth precision. These fencers moved like the sea by the cliffside roads leading to this place only reversed: Theirs were the same fluid motions as the sea, but with white beneath and the silver of their clashing swords as the crests of the waves. Nicholas noticed that many of them were using a French grip, a different type of hilt on a fencer’s weapon that gave extra reach but allowed fencers less stability. Seiji was the only fencer he’d ever seen use a French grip before.
The training of the Camp Menton fencers was being overseen by a tall, stern man with gray eyes and graying brown hair. He paused snapping out commands to nod in their direction.