FenceStriking Distance - Sarah Rees Brennan Page 0,30
now as we speak, cost?”
“I dunno, fifty bucks?” Nicholas shrugged. “It’s pretty nice.”
“You keep me humble, Cox,” remarked Aiden. “Of course, everyone else won’t stop telling me how amaz—blah, blah, blah, bloo.”
Nicholas tuned out Aiden and reached for his toast.
His day was looking up. Eugene was taking him to get Seiji’s watch fixed. Nicholas had twenty bucks. That should cover it. Seiji would be pleased. This would be simple.
It wasn’t simple.
Nicholas had never been to Kingstone before, but as soon as he arrived, he knew he didn’t belong there any more than he belonged at Kings Row. Nicholas and Eugene went down a broad main street flanked by white and black buildings that practically screamed We’re so fancy we pretend we live in a chess game.
“These are bow ties.” Nicholas grimaced as he gestured to the buildings. Eugene looked puzzled. “You know, stores so tiny and expensive you’re not supposed to call them stores?”
“Oh! You mean boutiques, bro.”
“Yeah,” said Nicholas gloomily. “I think I do.”
Nicholas knew at a glance, even before they went into the jewelry store, that Eugene had made a mistake.
WEIRS FINE JEWELERS was painted in discreet green and gold above the door next to a clock surrounded by fancy black iron swirls. Even the hands on the clock had little curly black iron paddles. The two Kings Row guys who’d tried to hassle Nicholas the other day were in there, talking about “Daddy’s birthday present.”
“Oh Lord, it’s the poors,” remarked the taller one as they came in.
Eugene flushed.
Nicholas did an imitation of the guy’s nasal voice. “Oh Lord, it’s the creeps who call their fathers Daddy.”
Then he looked at the price tag on something shiny in a glass cabinet even fancier than the cabinets in which the Kings Row trophies were kept. He swallowed.
The jewelry store staff showed the other Kings Row students a shiny array of cuff links. The staff was dressed in white shirts and black pants that might have been a uniform but could have also just been fancy clothes. They were like weird polite penguins. One of them gave Nicholas a look up and down, then back up almost incredulously, as though he couldn’t reconcile Nicholas’s face with the Kings Row uniform.
“It’s the scholarship kid who tried to have a scuffle with us the other day, isn’t it?” asked the nasal-voiced student. Nicholas suspected his name might be Eustace, though that was a terrible thing to think about anybody.
Eustace’s tone suggested that he’d kicked Nicholas’s ass somehow due to being rich, instead of Nicholas backing off on his own. Now all three of the jewelry-selling penguin people were giving Nicholas dubious looks.
“You wanna go now?” Nicholas demanded, surging their way.
When he strode forward, a member of the staff coughed pointedly.
“Bro,” whispered Eugene. “No, bro.”
He tugged Nicholas aside to a shiny glass case full of watches. Nicholas stared at the price tag on one watch. Surely that was a typo. It was a watch, not a rocket.
“We could take those guys,” Nicholas muttered.
Eugene seemed agitated. “There’s a lot of glass in here. And I’ve never actually been in a fight!”
“Seriously?” Nicholas glanced at Eugene, who Coach Joe would’ve described as beefy. “But you’re huge.”
“I’m a lover, not a fighter!”
The Kings Row jerks were pointing at Nicholas and miming him slipping stuff into his pockets. The quiet, discreet staff quietly and discreetly asked Nicholas to leave.
Nicholas had been wrong. Turned out you could kick someone’s ass just by having money and wearing your uniform the right way. Without throwing a single punch, those rich boys had won the fight.
Eugene’s whole big, usually good-natured body was bristling as they left the store. He resembled the offspring of an angry cat and a weight-lifting porcupine. “They acted like you were going to shoplift!”
Nicholas shrugged. “Who hasn’t shoplifted, right?”
Eugene said in a hollow voice, “Oh my God.”
“I mean,” Nicholas elaborated, more squirming than shrugging at this point, “when you’re hungry? I mean, if your mom got wrapped up with work or whatever and maybe forgot you, and you could use a snack.…”
Eugene said, in a very different tone, “Oh my God!”
“It’s not a big deal,” Nicholas said with finality. “I don’t care. What I do care about is that we haven’t got Seiji’s watch fixed, and I don’t see how we’re gonna do it. They’re not going to let me back in there, and honestly, I think that place would charge more than I could afford.”
“Yeah, I…” Eugene squinted. “I think you might be right.”