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 meant 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.”