there would be consequences.
“Hey, Seiji?”
Seiji was still squinting at the shower curtain.
“Seiji!”
“I won’t move the curtain, Nicholas.”
“I wanted to say… thanks for being a great teammate,” said Nicholas. “Sorry the weight lifters lifted you.”
“That was the worst part,” Seiji agreed.
He put on his raincoat. Then he located a spare raincoat he had, for some reason, and fixed Nicholas with a stern and cold glare until Nicholas gave up and wore it to stop Seiji’s fussing.
Raincoat on, Nicholas glanced from the opened shower curtain to the pile of watches on the bed.
“Seiji. Hey, Seiji. Seiji, I just had a thought. No problem at all if not, obviously, but I thought it might be cool. If you agreed that it would be cool?”
“What is it now?” asked Seiji in a weary tone. “We’re going to be late for our social engagement.”
Nicholas asked shyly, “Do you maybe… wanna be best friends?”
“Oh my God,” exclaimed Seiji. “No!”
He gave a put-upon sigh, and shepherded Nicholas out the door of their room in case they were late for their social-engagement-slash-totally-fun-bonfire.
“You act like you don’t even know what words mean,” Seiji continued reproachfully. “Best implies that someone excels at an activity. It should be perfectly obvious that I am not practiced at being friends and cannot be expected to excel.”
“But I think you’re good at it already,” argued Nicholas, prepared to be stubborn about this.
Everyone said Seiji was a fencing prodigy. It made sense he would be a prodigy at other stuff also.
“Your standards are appallingly low,” said Seiji. “Probably due to your deprived childhood.”
“Yeah, maybe so, but I still think you’re great at it,” Nicholas persisted. “So even if you’re bad, I don’t mind! Let’s do it.”
Chad of the weight-lifting bros had been walking past them, humming a tune, but his head seemed to spin around 180 degrees without his rather thick neck moving at all. The tune ended.
Seiji cast Chad a wary glance, but when he made no sudden movements, Seiji relaxed and returned to scolding Nicholas.
“No!” said Seiji. “Stop bothering me about this. I’m not ready.”
As they made their way down the back stairs, Chad lunged. Seiji sped up to get out of the way, but Chad was actually reaching for his teammate.
Nicholas, who hadn’t been expecting to be grabbed, was halted by Chad’s inexorable grip. It was instantly clear that if he tried to struggle free, both his shirt and his new raincoat would rip at the seams.
Chad’s face was unusually serious. “Couldn’t help but overhear what you were talking about with my man Katayama back there.”
“Uh,” said Nicholas. “Okay?”
“You should wait until you’re both emotionally ready, bro,” Chad told him in a stern voice.
Nicholas nodded uncertainly. Chad gave him an encouraging thump on the back that almost knocked Nicholas to the ground. Then he ran after Seiji, down the stairs, out the double doors, and into the woods. Nicholas glanced over his shoulder before plunging in among the trees and saw Kings Row waiting behind him, fancy windows blazing in the dark, as if someone had finally left a light on to guide him home.
Chad was right, Nicholas decided. He probably shouldn’t bring up being best friends again for a while, not until Seiji’d had a chance to think it over.
Maybe Seiji would be ready next week?
Maybe Nicholas should wait until they’d won the state championship. Seiji was bound to be in a good mood then.
The woods were awesome, dark and deep, like in the poem his English teacher had gotten Nicholas to read. Nicholas was pretty sure that’s how it went.
Coach had found a grove and taught them how to build a bonfire as a team, which largely meant that Harvard and Eugene did fine and the rest of them had various issues. Nicholas felt it wasn’t fair to blame him for not being good at making fires. The teachers at all his old schools had been extremely clear that Nicholas shouldn’t set fires.
“But if we’re allowed to play with lighter fluid at Kings Row, that’s cool, Coach,” Nicholas said, and Coach sent him to sit on a log with Aiden, who was mysteriously in his fencing gear and wrapped in one of the stripy woolen picnic blankets.
Since the jerk had so much confidence, Aiden was able to make the picnic blanket look like something he’d chosen to wear on purpose. He was staring into the carefully constructed pyre of branches as the flames began to catch, but he nodded to Nicholas as he sat down, in a more companionable way