Nicholas had the nerve and he had the speed, but athletes were made, not born. If he’d had a trainer from the age of seven like Seiji had, it might have been different. But nobody had shaped Nicholas’s potential.
Jesse was right. Facts were facts. You had to accept them, no matter how sad they might be. Seiji was used to accepting Jesse’s evaluation of fencers, and Jesse could see Nicholas’s every weakness in the same way Seiji could.
At that moment, Bastien deflected Nicholas’s blade with a strong, sharp grazing movement along it, beat and pressure at once. Nicholas actually dropped his épée on the ground, totally disarmed. A scandalized, horror-struck murmur rose from the crowd. They’d come to see the American get beaten, but they hadn’t realized he would be destroyed like this.
The memory of losing his final point to Jesse made Seiji close his eyes in a brief cold flash of shame.
“Poor kid,” said Bastien, stopping by Seiji once the match was concluded, and speaking too low for Nicholas to hear. “Nicholas is nowhere near your level.”
“This isn’t like you, Seiji,” added Jesse, loud enough for Nicholas to hear. “You know you’re a better fencer than everyone at Kings Row. You don’t belong there. You belong at Exton. With me.”
His eyes were clear and cool blue, the eyes Seiji had measured himself in all his life. Seiji kept telling himself to endure and win, but what if Jesse was right?
Seiji turned on his heel and left the salle d’armes. He caught up with Nicholas by the door to the armory.
Before Nicholas could speak, Seiji snapped, “You think that you can win just by wanting to. You can’t. The only way to win is to be better than your opponent. If you can’t do that, you’re just embarrassing yourself.”
Under his fading summer tan, Nicholas went pale.
18 NICHOLAS
At the end of training on their first day, Nicholas lay flat on his back in the grass and in a state of despair.
“Wow, your match did not go well,” murmured Bobby. “Even Dante could tell it went badly.”
Dante nodded.
“Yep, Bobby. Thanks, I know,” said Nicholas.
“The whole camp saw you drop your épée on the floor.”
“I know that, too,” said Nicholas.
Far worse than the whole camp seeing, Seiji had seen. Jesse Coste had seen while standing beside Seiji. And Seiji had been embarrassed by Nicholas.
That hurt to think about, far worse than Nicholas feeling embarrassed himself. Nicholas would never have made it to Kings Row if he’d let embarrassment stop him. The phrase like water off a duck’s back suited Nicholas, he thought. Water fell on you, and you shook it off, and that was that.
If Seiji had expectations of Nicholas, and Nicholas had let him down, then that wasn’t water. That burned.
His mom had never been impressed with him. She’d always been disappointed. His dad probably would be, too. It was pretty clear what someone used to Jesse would think of Nicholas.
Today Nicholas was being forced to confront a lot of truths he hadn’t wanted to admit to himself. Watching the drills he’d realized with a sinking feeling how much better Exton was than Kings Row. Exton had outperformed them on every level. Even MLC, who they’d beaten before, hadn’t made a show of themselves like Kings Row had. The overall level of the Camp Menton trainees was far higher than any of the American teams. Nicholas knew good fencing when he saw it. From the moment he’d seen Seiji fence, Nicholas had known what real excellence looked like.
These fencers were Seiji’s natural companions, with skill so finely honed their movements seemed like instincts. Seiji belonged among them, in a way he didn’t at Kings Row.
Admitting this burned like fire, but of all the Americans, only Seiji and Jesse could compare to the best at Camp Menton. That boy Bastien, who’d taken him apart on the piste, called this the Old World, but defeat had felt like realizing the real world was huge and terrifying beyond Nicholas’s dreams. It was as though he’d believed he was climbing a mountain, that he could see the peak far above him but within his reach someday, then the dark clouds parted, and Nicholas realized he had a sheer, towering cliff to scale.
He levered himself up on one elbow in determination and stopped contemplating the lemons of despair. Instead, he looked at his friends. Bobby and Dante were here for him. Well, Dante was probably just here for Bobby, but it was still so nice.
“This is actually great,” he told Bobby energetically.
Bobby blinked at him. “Um… how?”
“It’s only up from here. Every fencer that I face here gets me one step closer to being able to beat Exton.”
Nicholas nodded to himself with resolve. He was at a training camp, so this was clearly the ideal time to train.
Bobby nodded, too. “All the fencers here are so good. I’d love to be able to fence like them someday.”
Bobby’s attitude was the only possible attitude to have. Sure, Kings Row didn’t do great today, but the team could use the opportunity of this training camp to get better. Thinking of the team made Nicholas look around.
“Where’s Eugene?” he asked.
“He had to stop by the infirmary for a checkup after he saw your match,” Bobby explained. “Um! I’m sure it wasn’t that he felt ill after seeing your match. Tell him, Dante!”
Dante shrugged.
“I’m sure he only wanted to have Melodie, like, smooth his pillow and pat his hand.” Bobby laughed.
Nicholas stared off into the hazy blue among the trees. “Yeah, they seem like very good friends.”
Dante was suddenly struck by a violent coughing fit. Nothing was going right today.
Nicholas, Bobby, and Dante picked themselves up off the ground and wandered over toward the infirmary to see if they could help out Eugene, but the nurse told them Eugene already had guests and that they should come back later. The infirmary was a small brown brick building beneath the shadow of an olive tree. One of Nicholas’s few allies was in there.
Unfriendly strangers were all around. Somebody snickered as they went by, and mimed Nicholas dropping his épée. Whatever. Nicholas didn’t know why they had to point out what everybody had seen.
Bobby took hold of Nicholas’s arm so that he could be the bright link between Nicholas and Dante. Nicholas grinned down at Bobby’s beribboned head.
Nicholas couldn’t spot Seiji anywhere, but at least he was with his next-most-favorite person. Bobby could always cheer him up.
“Listen, I have an idea for an activity before dinner. And after dinner, Melodie says people hang out in the orchard,” Bobby said. “Everyone says the French are a fashionable people. Let’s try to look cool.”
Normally, Nicholas felt pretty fancy if he tucked in his shirt. But perhaps Bobby was right. They were in France.
Time to look cool.
19 HARVARD
Harvard had given a lot of thought to what made someone a good captain. A captain had to lead by example. A captain had to be the first person to laugh when things weren’t going well. Sometimes you were losing so badly, you had to lean into it and make light of the disaster.
Above all else, a captain had to be there for his team. So Harvard swung by the infirmary to check in on Eugene. He found Eugene being fussed over by the blond girl who had first greeted the Kings Row team, and looking delighted about life.