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.
“Don’t think you’re going gold anytime soon, new kid!”
Nicholas rolled his eyes as the Kings Row guys passed him, talking in pretend whispers that were intended for Nicholas to hear.
“Can’t believe he’s on the team, even as a crappy second reserve.”
The other guy sniggered. “I heard his last coach was basically a hobo.”
Nicholas threw the guy against the wall.
He’d had to trail Coach Joe all around his tumbledown old gym back in the city, bugging the coach to teach him how to fence. Coach Joe hadn’t wanted to train Nicholas, but he had, and he’d done it the best way he knew how. Now that he had Coach Williams, he understood Coach Joe hadn’t been exactly all a coach should be, but it wasn’t as if Nicholas were the ideal student. Coach Joe had texted Happy birthday, kid, hope you had a blast a couple of days after Nicholas’s last birthday. He was the only person who’d remembered it at all. Coach Joe was great. Nicholas whirled his fist around, already imagining the satisfaction when it connected with this smug idiot’s jaw.
Then Nicholas remembered if he got caught fighting, he’d be thrown out of Kings Row. It had never mattered before. One school was pretty much the same as another. Nicholas had nothing to lose.
Thinking of all Nicholas had to lose now—real fencing, Seiji, Coach Williams, Bobby and Eugene and Harvard, being at his dad’s old school—it would matter a lot.
Nicholas took a deep breath and stepped back. Stepping back didn’t come naturally to him, and he didn’t like it.
“Watch your mouth,” Nicholas muttered. He didn’t care what they said about him. They were mostly right about him, but they could leave Coach Joe alone.
After a moment, he remembered to unclench his fists. Both the boys wore slightly startled expressions, but after a moment they shrugged off whatever was holding them back and resumed their swagger down the hall.
“Sorry, didn’t realize the hobo was like a father to you!” the older boy scoffed over his shoulder.
Nicholas waited until they were gone, then made his way toward the salle. Coach Joe wasn’t anything like Robert Coste.
Nicholas’s father being one of the greatest fencers of all time hadn’t mattered to Mom. She’d been mad that he’d hit it, quit it, and skipped town with his fancy friends. That was all she ever said on the subject. Robert Coste was just one more in the list of men who’d let Mom down, a passing mention in a string of drunken bitterness.
The only one his father mattered to was Nicholas.
Sometimes Nicholas imagined that the truth might matter to Robert Coste, too. Some day. Not right now, obviously. But one day, possibly, when Nicholas was so great at fencing that he was officially acknowledged rivals with Seiji, and he had lots of trophies. Maybe after they won the state championship, the way Coach wanted. Nicholas might then casually hint at the facts, and Robert Coste would immediately be like, Wow, my son—makes total sense. I’m so impressed… if only I’d known before; would you call me Dad?, and Nicholas would be like, No need to make a big deal of it or anything; I’m doing fine, Dad.
Those half-formed dreams hadn’t ever coalesced into a real plan of action. They’d seemed even more far-fetched once Nicholas had laid eyes on Jesse Coste. The son Robert knew about, the son he’d had with his wife and who’d grown up in his, no doubt, fancy house. The son Robert Coste had trained to follow in his fancy Olympic footsteps. Jesse, the guy Seiji wanted to fence with, because Jesse got everything.