“You shouldn’t fence against Jesse.” Seiji’s voice cut the night air. “You can’t compete with him. He’s better than you are.”
Nicholas went silent, so Seiji must have won the argument. Seiji climbed into bed and set his alarm for four AM, Central European Standard Time, because Seiji wouldn’t let jet lag tell him what to do.
When he woke, the gray dawn light was reflecting off the sea and into their room, quivering like liquid so that the ducks on their shower curtain seemed as though they were in unfamiliar waters. Seiji could hear Nicholas snoring from behind the curtain, which usually made Seiji want to smother Nicholas in his sleep.
This morning he was so desperate he wanted to shake Nicholas and ask him for company, but Nicholas wouldn’t be even marginally coherent this early. Besides, in the cold light of morning, Seiji’s path was clear. Seiji didn’t need anyone to protect him from Jesse.
This was a training camp, and Seiji was here to train. He’d lost his fencing partner, but he hadn’t lost fencing. That was why he had come to France the first time, after losing to Jesse so catastrophically. France had reminded him that no matter where he was, if there was a piste, Seiji was where he belonged.
That was still true. Jesse couldn’t take that.
15 NICHOLAS
Nicholas dreamed of a trophy gleaming gold, which said, in Seiji’s voice, “He’s better than you are,” and his father’s newspaper clipping, which folded itself into a paper airplane so that it could fly away from Kings Row to find Jesse.
He woke up in a hopeless fight with the bedsheets, the sunlight shining through their curtains yellow as lemons or ducks, and realized he had slept through his alarm.
Oh no. Seiji.
Seiji got up every morning at four AM to train, but recently the two of them had been waking up early to train together. Nicholas had even been able to persuade Seiji to eat breakfast at a reasonable hour. He sat at Bobby and Dante’s table with Nicholas and sometimes Eugene. Occasionally the captain even sat with them—and with the captain came Aiden, so it was the whole team. Those mornings were the coolest, but Seiji wasn’t used to hanging out in a crowd. Nicholas had made a bargain with Seiji: Seiji would help him during practice, a hand on his shoulder or an arm correcting his form. In exchange, Nicholas would intercept any fist bumps or people talking to him when Seiji didn’t want them to. Unless Nicholas was there, Seiji would eat by himself.
Nicholas leaped out of bed and hurriedly flung on clothes, then rushed out of his and Seiji’s room. As Nicholas approached, he saw many people were gathered for breakfast in the common area between the buildings, enjoying their breakfasts at the carved beech picnic tables set in the orchard. A rich spread was laid out on the creaking tables. There were croissants, and pastries that were kind of like croissants but chocolate, and dozens of other pastries like cream tarts and éclairs. There were cuts of meat and slices of cheese heaped like dragons’ gold. Most of all, there was an enormous amount of lemon-related foods: lemon tarts, lemon curd Danishes, lemon meringue pie, puff pastry lemon knots, lemon cake, madeleines with lemon glaze, lemon bars, lemon meringue tarts, lemon poppy-seed scones, lemon muffins, and lemon ricotta pancakes—no, crêpes—folded up into tidy triangles. There were golden apples and peaches and dusky grapes and violet, black-veined figs, with a juice bar, an espresso machine, and an urn of hot chocolate to the side.
Nicholas decided he was starving; he couldn’t fence or find Seiji and the rest of the team if he was starving.
Once he’d acquired a few pastries to fend off starvation, Nicholas quested for help, but the first few groups of people he passed were speaking different languages. He recognized Spanish. He didn’t recognize several more. It was as if Nicholas was lost in a sea of strangeness. A girl asked him a question, in which he discerned the words parlez-vous français, and since Nicholas definitely didn’t parlez any français, he could only stare back at her.
Then he heard people speaking English by the juice bar.
“Hey, I’m looking for Seiji Katayama,” said Nicholas to a knot of boys wearing purple-and-green school ties and speaking in British accents that seemed to be mostly coming through their noses.
One boy with straw-colored hair blinked and said, “Oh, I know who you mean. The American who can actually fence. He’s over there, sitting with the Bordeaux Blades—Bastien, Marcel, and Melodie. They’re three fencers who have all been training in Bordeaux with the famous Coach Robillard since they were small. Can you imagine the luck? Bastien Robillard is the coach’s son, and the other two are his friends. Marcel had to go live in America, poor guy, and I don’t know much about the girl, but everyone says Bastien’s one of the best fencers in Europe.”
The boy pointed to a table under a tree. Nicholas saw Seiji first, the way he held himself unmistakable. Across the table from Seiji was an Exton boy, thankfully not Jesse. Nicholas recognized him as Marcel Berré, the aloof French guy who was the oldest member of the Exton fencing team. Assembled around Marcel was Melodie, the girl from yesterday, and an unfamiliar boy. The three of them didn’t look anything alike—Melodie, blond and fair-skinned; Marcel, black-haired and dark-skinned; and the strange boy, brown-haired with a summer tan—but they had a similar air of confidence. Maybe that was the training. Nicholas remembered the stern-voiced coach from the salle yesterday.
The boy Nicholas didn’t know, who must be Bastien Robillard, was talking to Seiji.
Beside Melodie sat Eugene. Nicholas was relieved that his bro looked better than he had the day before. Then his attention snapped to Seiji again. His back was to Nicholas, but he could tell that Seiji was listening intently to whatever the fencer from Bordeaux were saying to him. Seiji seemed all right. His shoulders didn’t have the tension they had when he was plunged into an uncomfortable situation.
“Bastien Robillard and Seiji Katayama. That is a table of fencing geniuses,” confided the boy, sounding awed. “I’m Rupert, by the way.”
“Hey, Rupert, I’m Nicholas.”
“Oh, I say!” exclaimed Rupert as realization dawned on his face. “You’re American. Sorry about what I said before! I’m sure you’re a great fencer, too.”
“I’m gonna be,” Nicholas told him with a wink, and departed for Seiji’s table.
Nicholas approached with a weird, disoriented sensation. He’d expected to find Seiji sitting alone. Instead Seiji was paying attention to the stranger seated next to Marcel. Seiji was even having a conversation with him. In French. Seiji appeared to be exchanging social pleasantries. That seemed more alien than anything else.
“Nicholas, you’re late,” said Seiji, switching to English and narrowing his eyes in annoyance.
Nicholas relaxed at this familiar greeting in a world of strangeness under foreign trees. “I sure am.”
Seiji’s breakfast was always healthy and wholly unsatisfactory, so Nicholas couldn’t steal from it. Nicholas had once expressed his feelings on this subject, and Seiji had told him to stop stealing food. That wasn’t happening, so they had reached a compromise: Seiji would bring a single small breakfast roll for Nicholas to steal, but Nicholas had to promise to steal it, because Seiji wasn’t eating it and unbalancing his lean, mean fencing-machine diet.