“I’m going to Ventimiglia today,” said Dante, and Nicholas was arrested by the unusual spectacle of Dante being voluntarily verbal. “See my cousins. Don’t suppose you want to come with?”
Nicholas understood the question wasn’t for him. Dante’s eyes were fixed on Bobby, who seemed disconcerted.
“Oh… no, Dante. I mean, I would, but we’re here to watch the fencing and learn. I can’t just skip a day. I hope you understand?”
“Yep.” Dante lapsed back into monosyllables.
Bobby’s small face was crumpled with worry. “You’re having fun here, right? You were watching the fencing all yesterday, and it was cool, right?”
Dante shrugged.
After breakfast, Dante headed off. Assistant Coach Lewis offered to take him, but he said he’d get a bus and his cousin would pick him up. With Seiji still nowhere to be found, Nicholas went with Bobby to see Dante off. Bobby stood waving forlornly at the bus stop until even the cloud of dust left by the bus’s departure had settled in the warm air.
“Well!” said Nicholas. “Time to train!”
Bobby looked behind him expectantly, mouth opening, as though he wanted to consult his shadow about training. Then he bit his lip.
“Yeah,” muttered Bobby.
Even Bobby was being weird today, Nicholas thought as they wound back toward the salle. He kept beginning sentences and then trailing off as though he’d forgotten why he was talking. Yesterday he’d bounced around Camp Menton, but today he was wilted, head drooping, like a colorful flower someone had forgotten to water.
Nicholas gave him a one-armed hug. “C’mon. Watching the fencing will cheer you up.”
Fencing always cheered up Nicholas. Today it was more important than ever. Nicholas had never refused a challenge in his life, and today was a vital challenge. He had to get better fast, so Seiji would want to stay at Kings Row.
Maybe it was impossible to get better that fast, but so what? Nicholas would try.
After the terrible, terrible exercises, they were told to partner up. Nicholas gazed around hopefully. Seiji was already surrounded by aspiring partners. So was that guy Bastien. Nicholas had been hoping Bastien would teach him some of his moves.
Nicholas noticed that Melodie wasn’t besieged by partners. He thought she’d be a pretty good partner. She and her friends moved in a similar way, as though they guided one another.
Nicholas wove hopefully over to where Melodie stood, with her hair now in braids wrapped around her head as she slid on her fencing mask.
“Want to do drills?”
“Sure!” Melodie seemed pleased to be asked. “Let’s get these drills down.”
“You bet.” Nicholas nodded with conviction and pulled on his own mask.
Melodie and Nicholas moved on their strips, passing through the motions over and over again. Coach Arquette stopped and watched them.
“You’re very straightforward in your attacks,” she observed crisply as she surveyed Nicholas’s movement. “Have you not considered further utilizing your speed for feinting?”
Nicholas blinked.
“Making a false movement so the opponent will not know in what line you will finish your attack,” she explained.
“I know what feinting is,” said Nicholas. “I just don’t know what you mean by using my speed.”
“Play to your strengths. Commit more fully to a false move, deceive your opponent’s eye, and still have enough speed to change your line of attack at the last moment.”
“Okay,” Nicholas said.
“I see a big improvement from last year, Melodie.”
“Wow, thank you, Coach Arquette!”
Coach Arquette nodded. “Keep training hard, and don’t let your focus be shifted by a handsome face.”
“Wow, thanks, Coach Arquette,” said Nicholas.
Coach Arquette snorted and moved on. Nicholas and Melodie continued by focusing on footwork and nothing else. Every time Nicholas suggested a quick bout, Melodie sternly refused. Usually Nicholas could coax Seiji to do one or two, but though this wasn’t fun like a match, the afternoon wore on and he did start to see a slight improvement. Not long ago, he’d promised himself and Coach Williams that he would put in the work to improve his basics. It was true he had to do the long, arduous labor of building a foundation, brick by brick, no matter how frustrating.
It was tough, but it wasn’t as bad as Seiji or anyone else from Kings Row being let down by him.
“Good work, you two,” suggested Coach Williams, passing by with a nod of conditional approval.
“Is that your coach?” Melodie asked. “She trained a cousin of mine in Switzerland. He said she’s fantastique.”
Nicholas glowed with pride. “Yeah. Hey, show me how Bastien beat me. In slow motion.”
After deep concentration on Melodie’s demonstration, Nicholas announced, “I think I have it.”
“I do not think you have it,” said Melodie. “Fencing takes long years of study to perfect. Also, you must do many training exercises to build up your musculature. I cannot stress that enough. You are so skinny.”
“Leanly muscled,” Nicholas insisted.
When the lunch bell rang, Nicholas dropped his épée.
“You dropped your épée again,” said Melodie in a teasing voice. “Is that a signature move of yours, constantly dropping your épée?”
She took off her fencing mask to reveal a grin. If her older friends Bastien and Marcel often helped her with moves, maybe it was a nice change for Melodie to be on the other side of training.
“Let’s do this again,” suggested Nicholas.
“Hmm, maybe,” said Melodie.
“Cool, thanks,” Nicholas said.
“If you are thankful,” said Melodie, “tell me some gossip. Did your captain, Harvard, and that boy Aiden ever date or not? I hear conflicting reports.”
“Yep, they did, but for, like, a minute. Maybe the captain got tired of all the talking? Aiden talks a lot.”
“Some people like that,” Melodie informed him wisely.
Nicholas stared. There was no accounting for taste. If Nicholas were looking for someone to date, he didn’t think he’d pick someone super chatty.
After considering for a while, Nicholas shrugged. “Maybe Aiden got tired of dating just one guy? Aiden’s always, like, breaking hearts and moving onto the next. Like a dating shark. Sharks don’t sleep, did you know that? They just keep swimming. Anyway, I guess Aiden was a shark toward the captain. Personally, I don’t get it.”
To Nicholas, it seemed a bit like wasting your time playing table tennis and volleyball when you could be focused on fencing. He didn’t really see the point in going after anything but what you really wanted.
He’d spent a lot of nights in narrow rooms listening to his mom stumble in drunk, watching neon lights play on cracked walls and thinking of everything he wanted. Desperation taught you to be sure.
He wanted to be great. He wanted to be a fencer his dad could be proud of. He wanted Seiji to stay.
Seiji didn’t eat with him again. Still, Harvard was there, and the captain complimented Nicholas on how fast he was catching on to new moves. Nicholas preened, and he and Harvard had a good chat about the camp and Harvard’s upcoming match with Bastien Robillard—exciting and cool, the captain would definitely win!—but it would’ve been better if Seiji had been there.