FenceStriking Distance - Sarah Rees Brennan Page 0,14
Twenty-Six Commandments of Irish Dueling. That sounded cool. Nicholas reached for it, but Seiji’s books were packed together so tightly he actually had to force the book out. The bookcase rocked, and a watch in a little case tumbled from the top shelf and hit the floor. A different book fell down and struck Nicholas’s foot. Nicholas, hopping in wild dismay, stepped on the watch. The plastic case cracked. When Nicholas hastily removed his foot, he saw that the watch inside the case had cracked, too.
The whole disaster took about five seconds.
Seiji sounded calmly pleased to be proven right. “I knew you would do something like this.”
“Um,” said Nicholas. “Oops. Sorry. I’ll pay for that! Or I’ll get it fixed or something!”
Seiji sighed dismissively, opening his book back up. “All right.”
That made Nicholas feel much worse.
There were plenty of guys at Kings Row who would’ve got very nasty about Nicholas daring to touch, let alone break, their stuff. Seiji wasn’t like that.
Seiji’s words might cut, but he didn’t say them to cut. Seiji wasn’t Aiden, whom Nicholas never paid attention to. When Aiden spoke, all Nicholas heard was: Blah, blah, blah, I’m a snotty rich kid who talks too much. Nicholas had never seen Seiji get any pleasure out of being cruel. That was what made Seiji’s words cut deep. Nicholas knew Seiji meant what he said.
“I’m real sorry.”
Seiji waved a hand, not looking up from his book. “It’s fine.”
Nicholas put the broken watch in his pocket, searching through his mind a little frantically for something that could make this better. The times Seiji and he got along best—well, the only times they got along at all—were when they were fencing or training.
“Wanna come train with me?”
“No, I can’t help you right now. I’m staying here so I can perfect my essay about my childhood,” said Seiji. “As I intend to excel at team bonding.”
Nicholas wondered if he should point out that staying here by himself and not coming to train with a teammate was the total opposite of team bonding, but he’d already asked Seiji to come with and Seiji had turned him down. Why should he help out Seiji? It would be really funny when Coach told Seiji he sucked.
“Not gonna happen, Seiji,” he said instead.
“I will decimate you at team bonding!”
Nicholas waved a hand over his shoulder as he left. “No way.”
He took a detour on his way to the salle, as he usually did, to the cabinet full of trophies and photos of famous former students. He headed right for the plaque Kings Row had won during the match that got them into the finals for the 1979 state championship.
Even the glass of the cabinet glistened, clear and clean. Nicholas’s breath fogged up the glass, making a little blurry patch of imperfection.
Nicholas was the only thing in this school that was in rough shape. Even the lawns here seemed made of smooth green velvet.
Hey, Nicholas thought as he looked up at Robert Coste’s face in the old photo under the glass, shining with victorious happiness and almost as young as Nicholas was now. Even to himself, he didn’t dare think Hey, Dad.
But that was what Robert Coste was. Robert Coste had had a fling with Nicholas’s mom and left her before either of them knew Nicholas was on the way.
Robert Coste was his dad. One of the greatest fencers of his generation. Of all time. Surely there was something of him in Nicholas. Surely that was why he’d loved fencing so much, from the very start when he’d hassled Coach Joe into teaching him.
I’m doing okay, Nicholas thought, telling his dad stuff about his day the way he’d heard other kids say stuff about their day on the phone to their parents. Coach had an awesome idea about team bonding. I think I’m going to rock at it! Seiji is not gonna rock at it.
He’d studied this picture of Robert Coste carefully, time and time again, since he’d started going to Kings Row. Robert was tall and blond and polished, like a trophy made into a person. Nicholas didn’t look anything like him. Jesse Coste, the guy with the name and the training, had gotten the face as well. But fencing mattered more than faces.
Nicholas was so absorbed in staring at Robert Coste that he didn’t notice a couple of older boys behind him until one shoved into his back, sending him stumbling a few steps down the hall away from the cabinet.