Seiji woke in the early morning, resisted the eternal temptation to use the shower curtain to smother Nicholas in his sleep for snoring, and walked outside. The sky had paled from dark gray to almost white, still nowhere close to blue. Seiji took his phone out of his pocket, frowned at the screen, and thought about calling his father.
Jesse’s parents and Seiji’s parents had been friends once, in the way Seiji had heard many parents were friends. They got together and talked about their children. Whenever they met, Jesse’s mother and Seiji’s mother would play a game of who could be most coldly polite. Seiji’s mother always won. She was very gifted in that way.
She is undoubtedly a genius in the boardroom, but when it comes to social situations, a moment in that woman’s company is like being stabbed in the heart with an icicle, someone had said in the society pages once. Seiji’s father had read it aloud to his mother, and she’d smiled. Seiji’s father was the only one who could make her smile.
At first, Seiji believed his father and Robert Coste would be real friends. Robert Coste had his son’s effortless charm. Robert Coste would speak extensively of Jesse’s and Seiji’s progress in fencing. Seiji was sure that if his father listened, he would come to like fencing more. Why would his father keep meeting with Mr. Coste if he wasn’t beginning to be interested? And Mr. Coste seemed to enjoy the meetings with Seiji’s father.
Seiji believed it was progress when his father made time to attend an important fencing tournament, but that had ended in disaster. All through the match, Seiji kept thinking about how his father was watching, and he let nerves overcome him and made mistakes. He threw off Jesse with his odd behavior. It was Seiji’s fault that Jesse and Seiji got bronze and silver medals, respectively, and another fencer with far less polished technique had a good day and got the gold.
Robert Coste took them to a side room afterward and delivered to them a detailed and helpful accounting of where they’d gone wrong. Like Jesse, Mr. Coste was wholly focused on fencing.
Seiji and Jesse listened attentively with their heads bowed while Jesse’s father outlined their mistakes.
Seiji’s father took a seat and listened quietly, too. For a while.
Then he lifted his head and said, “Shut the hell up, Robert.”
Seiji and Jesse were shocked, but nobody looked more shocked than Jesse’s dad.
“They won’t improve if—”
Seiji’s soft-spoken father cut Mr. Coste off with a flat, “I really don’t care. Don’t you ever talk to my kid that way again. Can I have a word in private?”
Through the door, Jesse and Seiji listened to the sound of a low, grown-up fight.
“We won’t ever fight, will we?” Jesse had murmured.
And Seiji had replied, “Never.”
Seiji had made sure to win the gold at the next tournament, but his father was at a business meeting and couldn’t come to the match, so it didn’t matter the same way the last tournament had. Robert Coste was there, though, and he praised them both.
He wished he hadn’t messed up that tournament his father had attended. Everything would have been all right if he hadn’t done that.
Seiji’s father said Seiji should tell him if Robert Coste spoke to him in a way that made Seiji uncomfortable, but his father didn’t understand how important fencing was. He thought Robert was obsessed and intense about fencing. He didn’t understand that Seiji was obsessed and intense about fencing. That was what it took to be a champion.
So Seiji didn’t tell his father anything about his matches again. Since Seiji’s whole life was fencing and the Costes, that meant Seiji and his father talked even less than before. Seiji told himself it was perfectly natural and nothing to be upset about. They were both busy people with little in common. Why should they talk much?
It would do no good to call his father, but for some reason, Seiji did it anyway. His father answered on the third ring.
Without planning to say it, Seiji burst out, “Jesse challenged me to a fencing match. He said that if I won then I had to leave Kings Row and go to Exton and be his fencing partner. We made a bargain.”
“So what?” Seiji’s father asked. “You didn’t sign anything. Even if you signed something, I have lawyers on retainer. Many lawyers.”
“I keep my word,” said Seiji.
He heard his father sigh over the phone. “I know you always try to play fair. But what if the other person doesn’t play fair?”
“I still do,” Seiji answered.
“Oh, Seiji,” said his dad.
He sounded sad. Seiji was sorry to make his father sad, but he couldn’t give way on this matter.
“Also, Nicholas and I had a fight,” he added. “I assumed we wouldn’t be talking after our fight, but he says he’s not angry anymore and he is talking to me. Actually, there seems no way to stop him doing it. I’ve grown accustomed. But I don’t understand why we had the fight and so I don’t know how to stop it happening again.”
“What was the fight about?” his father asked.
“Jesse,” said Seiji.
“Can’t express the depths of my surprise,” muttered his father.
Seiji sympathized with his father. He found it difficult to talk about emotions, too.
“Nicholas keeps getting angry with Jesse, and there’s no reason for him to get angry. The other students at Kings Row are sometimes cruel to Nicholas because of him being poor, but he doesn’t get angry with them, and he doesn’t get angry with me when I beat him at fencing or when I say the things that make other people angry. But he gets mad at Jesse, and I can’t figure out why. I hate it when it seems as though there’s a secret reason people act the way they do.”
So many social situations were opaque and distressing, but Nicholas was always transparent. Seiji didn’t want to be confused about Nicholas. He didn’t want Nicholas to be like everybody else.
“Have you considered that perhaps Nicholas is angry for your sake? Maybe he doesn’t like the way Jesse treats you.”
That hadn’t occurred to Seiji at all. He paused to consider the idea of Nicholas being angry for him, rather than angry with him. That would be pointless, like much of what Nicholas did, but Seiji didn’t find it totally objectionable.
“Sometimes…,” said Seiji. “Sometimes when I look at Nicholas, I see Jesse. I don’t know why that would be, but it’s true. I was—angry with Jesse, and it made me furious with Nicholas.”
His father’s voice was mild, in the way it was when he pointed out unassailable facts on business calls. “Well then, you’re going to stop that, aren’t you? Because you want to play fair.”
Seiji nodded to himself.
“I will. I have another question. Do you think I should do my hair differently?”
His father sounded surprised by the question. “It might be time for a change. A lot of people tell me that my ponytail is dashing.”
“I am not ready for a ponytail,” Seiji said flatly.
His father laughed. “Whatever you want. You’re a very handsome kid. You take after me, how could you not be?”
The sun was rising on a troubled sea, giving every choppy wave a golden crown. Seiji was somewhat abashed by his father’s words, and he was still deeply worried about the day to come, but it was like making up with Nicholas. Seiji was glad he’d called.
“Thanks.” Seiji paused. He didn’t want to seem like those people who only wanted to fence Seiji for the victory, calling his father purely to get something. He offered, “Next time, I’ll call just to… chat.”
He wasn’t sure what he would say, but he would figure it out.
His father sounded as though he was smiling. “Looking forward to it. Say hello to Nicholas from me.”
“I will,” promised Seiji. “Later he’s helping me trespass.”
“Um,” said his father. “What?”
Right. Nicholas had made it clear that the first rule of petty crime was not alerting authority figures.
Seiji told his first lie of the day. “Oh no,” he said. “The connection of this international call has gone wrong. You’re breaking up. We can’t continue the conversation.”
“Seiji—”
“Goodbye, I love you,” Seiji announced stiffly, then escaped from terminal embarrassment and criminal revelations by hanging up the phone.
The sky was pearl white over a slate-blue sea. It was time to face Jesse, but Seiji wouldn’t do it alone.