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They fight hard, but in the end, it’s not enough.
The opposing fencer from MLC gets a final hit on Nicholas, bringing his team’s score up to 45 and winning the match. Nicholas sees it coming too… his right side is completely open, and there’s nothing he can do to stop the tip of the blade glancing off his white jacket. He barely feels it, but it’s enough. The ref blows the whistle, and just like that, it’s over.
MLC’s team begins to cheer, jumping up and down and hugging each other. The boy Nicholas was fencing pulls off his mask, grinning, and yells in elation. His teammates quickly swarm him, thumping him on the back and offering congratulations.
Nicholas pulls off his mask and drops it on the ground. The sound can barely be heard over the yelling. His fists clench inside his gloves, and his eyes water. This was supposed to be their year. The year they finally beat Exton and MLC and everyone else, and took King’s Row all the way to CIAC open division championships. Nicholas stares down at the lines of the piste under his feet.
They lost.
It’s over.
And they’re not getting a second chance.
“You left your right side wide open,” Seiji says from behind him.
Nicholas doesn’t even bother turning around to look at him. “I know, okay?! Just- I know.”
“Also, during the first round, you were bending your wrist and leaving yourself-”
“Shut up, Seiji! How can you be critiquing me right now? Don’t you get it?” He finally turns around to face his friend. “We lost. We’re done.”
“And?”
“And what? That’s it! That was our last chance! I lost us our last chance at winning this stupid tournament!”
“It’s not your fault,” the sophomore, Adam, says from the bench. “I didn’t score any points during my first round. If we should be blaming anyone, it should be me.”
Coach Williams stands up and walks over to Nicholas, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder and squeezing gently. “It’s a team sport. We win as a team, we lose as a team. It’s no individual’s fault that we lost.”
“But-”
“No buts.” The other guy on the bench, a freshman named Reid, snickers, but Coach Williams ignores him. “C’mon, let’s get all our stuff. If you hurry, maybe we can stop for burgers on the way back.”
“Yes, Coach!” the team choruses.
Nicholas is cleaning and putting his épée away when Seiji comes up behind him. Seiji has already changed back into his school uniform, and has his bag slung over his shoulder. He’s looking slightly uncomfortable, eyes fixed on the floor. “I’m sorry about earlier. I’m upset about losing too.”
Nicholas stands up and picks up his bag. “It’s okay. I probably shouldn’t have yelled at you. It’s just” - he gestures with his hands - “you know?”
“Yeah.”
They walk back to the bus together in silence. The rest of the team is already on board, and Coach Williams is standing by the door of the bus, making sure they don’t leave anyone behind.
Nicholas and Seiji board, and make their way to their usual seat, the one by the emergency exit in the middle of the bus. Seiji insists on always sitting next to the closest exit, and Nicholas likes the extra leg room, so it works. The rest of the team - all two of them - are sitting in the back watching something on Adam’s phone. Nicholas throws his bag onto the seat in front of them and sits down, leaning his head against the window. Coach Williams sits up front, next to the driver, with Coach Lewis next to her. The bus lurches, and they’re off.
Seiji pulls out a book from somewhere and starts reading, completely ignoring everything around him. Nicholas stares out the window, watching the scenery fly past. He didn’t notice much on the way there, because he and Seiji were too busy talking strategy, and he takes the time now to properly take it all in, letting his eyes glaze over.
His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he doesn’t look at it. It’s probably Harvard, or maybe Eugene, texting to ask how they did.
He really doesn’t want to talk to them right now.
His phone buzzes again, and keeps buzzing, indicating that someone is actually calling him. He fishes it out of his pocket and checks the caller ID before sighing and answering.
“Calling to gloat? Your team did worse than us, you know,” he says. Next to him, Seiji looks up curiously.
“Ex-team,” Jesse replies. “And I was actually calling to congratulate you. You got farther than I thought you would.”
“We still lost.”
“I mean, your freshman was kind of a mess, and Seiji was injured, so…”
“We still lost. I’m not going to be making excuses for the team.”
Jesse sighs, loudly and pointedly over the phone. “You didn’t win, but you still have a lot to be proud of.”
“Says Mister three time CIAC champion.”
“I didn’t win in my senior year either.”
“Oh, is that supposed to make me feel better about losing?”
“Look, Nicholas, you’re allowed to be frustrated. You’re allowed to be angry. You put in a lot of work, and you still feel short of where you wanted to be. But you also have a lot to be proud of.”
“...”
“Listen, the stories Gene used to tell me about your team? About how you and Seiji were always at each other’s necks, and Aiden would never show up to tournaments, and all that? And you were what? Division two? Look at you now. You accomplished a lot. And you’ve set everything up for the team next year to be even better.”
“Damn. When did you get so wise?” Nicholas asks.
“College does things to a man,” Jesse says, and Nicholas can almost imagine him dramatically flipping his hair on the other side of the phone.
“Uh huh.”
“In all seriousness, though, I am proud of you. You did well.”
“Wow, who knew you would be so quick to embrace the role of embarrassing older brother.”
“Oh shut up, brat. Don’t you have some teammates to make regret their life choices?”
“Oh ha ha, very funny,” Nicholas replies. “But, uh, thanks for calling.”
“No problem. Tell Seiji I said hi.”
“Will do. Bye.”
“Bye bye!”
Nicholas hangs up, then turns to Seiji, who’s gone back to being engrossed in his book. “Jesse says hi,” he tells him.
Seiji hums and flips the page. Sensing that he’s not going to get much more out of him, Nicholas rests his chin on his hand and stares out of the window.
It had rained earlier in the day, rare showers in May, and had stopped shortly before they left the gym where they were holding the tournament. It’s sunny now, a nice seventy degrees out, and everything is bright green. From the freeway, the soccer fields and parks they pass stand out starkly against the grey of streets and houses. Spring in Connecticut is always the best season, when it’s warm but not too warm, and school is coming to an end, with summer just a few weeks away.
Despite talking to Jesse, Nicholas’s chest still feels heavy from their loss. It’s not the actual loss that bothers him so much, but more the fact that they’ll never have another chance. It’s over. His last ever high school fencing match. He’ll still keep competing, of course, because he and Seiji promised each other they’d go to the Olympics together one day, but he’ll never compete for King’s Row again.
It hurts a lot. King’s Row was really the first place he felt at home. And, no offense to Coach Joe, it was the place where he really learned to fence properly. So having to say goodbye to it all, knowing that it’s already over… It feels like a punch to the gut. He glances at Seiji, wondering if he’s thinking the same thing. But Seiji, as much as Nicholas knows he loves the school, is focused on the future. King’s Row is just another step on the stairway to Olympic gold. But for Nicholas… King’s Row was everything. Is everything.
The bus pulls up in front of the school and everyone grabs their stuff and piles off. The tournament took all day, and the sun is setting behind Regina Hall, another one of the dorm buildings. Warm light floods the campus, and Nicholas begins to feel sleepy, stretching his arms over his head.
Coach Williams gives them instructions to meet her for one last team meeting the next day, then releases them. The boys walk slowly back to their dorm, silent.
Nicholas gets ready for bed and then spends a few hours mindlessly scrolling through youtube, watching anything not related to fencing. He doesn’t want to think about that right now. On the other side of the duck curtain (which has suffered massive amounts of abuse over the years), Seiji flips through the May issue of American Fencing Magazine. Both boys are quiet, and Nicholas doesn’t even protest when Seiji flips the lights off an hour early.
The next morning, which, thank god, is Saturday, the four members of the team roll out of bed and trudge down to the salle, still partially dressed in pajamas and rubbing sleep out of their eyes. Seiji is the only put-together one, his hair neatly combed and already dressed in his school uniform, even though it’s the weekend. Nicholas, on the other hand, is wearing plaid pajama pants and an old MCR t-shirt that he had probably bought in middle school. It pulls tight around his biceps, and everytime he raises his arms, he shows enough skin to make Eugene proud. The two others, Adam and Reid, are similarly dressed.
Coach Williams is standing in front of a large rolling whiteboard when they enter the gym. She gestures for them to sit down on the floor, then takes a seat in front of the whiteboard herself. They all stare at each other for a long moment before Coach Williams says:
“Okay. I know you’re frustrated. You’re allowed to be frustrated, and disappointed, and mad. Let’s just take a moment to do that, okay? Let’s take a moment to be angry at ourselves.” It sounds a lot like what Jesse told him yesterday.
Nicholas looks down at the floorboards of the gym and clenches his fists. He’s not going to cry. He’s not going to cry, because he knows he’s going to keep fencing. He’s not going to cry, because he made a promise to Seiji, and he still has to fulfill it.
He doesn’t cry.
“That said, there’s a lot of things about the match that were really good. So let’s talk about those first. Reid? Got any comments?”
“Well, I-” Reid starts, and Nicholas tunes him out, still staring at the floorboards off the gym.
He barely notices when Coach ends the meeting, pats them all on the back, and tells them to enjoy the rest of their Saturday. He trails behind the others as they make their way back to the dorms, climbing the stairs to the second floor and trudging down the hallway to his shared room. Seiji is already inside, packing and getting ready to go home for the weekend. Nicholas flops onto his bed, facedown.
Seiji leaves quietly, and suddenly Nicholas is all alone. He rolls onto his back, scrolling through the contacts on his phone in search of a distraction. But Harvard has a college tournament, Aiden is watching (of course), Bobby’s in France and Nicholas can’t remember what time it is there, and Eugene and Jesse are spending the weekend with Eugene’s parents. So he’s left alone in his room on a nearly empty campus, just a few short weeks before graduation. He grabs his shoes and heads outside, determined to find something to do.
He finds himself back in front of that trophy case in the lobby of the admin building, a scene eerily reminiscent of freshman year, where he would often sneak out at night in order to stare at the old photo of his father. He hasn’t come in a while, not since he and Robert reconnected, but something draws him here today. There’s a whole shelf of awards dedicated to the fencing team, but they’re all older, from several decades before. There’s a few ribbons from recent years, denoting fifth and sixth places in tournaments, but there’s nothing substantial. There’s nothing that will make people look back and remember them. They’re not leaving behind any sort of legacy.
Nicholas places his hand against the glass and sighs. Eugene would tell him he’s overthinking things. But is it wrong to want people to remember you? Is it wrong to hate yourself for throwing away that chance?
Nicholas steals one last look at the picture of his father holding his trophy before leaving and heading back to his room. There, he grabs a jacket and an old bus pass that’s a few weeks away from expiring, along with his phone and wallet and anything else he might need.
The bus stop is a full mile away from the actual campus, and Nicholas pulls up the schedule on his phone as he’s walking. He doesn’t have it memorized anymore. There’s a bus leaving in ten minutes, so he jogs the rest of the way and hops on just as the bus pulls up.
He finds a seat near the back and settles in for the hour or so long ride. The other people on the bus ignore him, and he ignores them as well, popping in his earbuds and staring out the window.
Absent-mindedly, he clicks on a playlist he made during freshman year, oh so cleverly titled ‘songs that remind me of home’. There’s a lot of Duran Duran, because they were his mom’s favorite, but there’s also an eclectic mix of songs that friends recommended, or that he used to listen to in middle school. It’s a weird mix of Bikini Kill, Kesha, and My Chemical Romance, and he turns the volume way up in order to drown out his thoughts.
He gets off at the bus station in front of the dry cleaners a few blocks from his old apartment. But his mom had moved two years prior, to the other side of town, so there’s no reason to go back there. Instead, he turns the opposite way and heads towards the gym he used to practice at.
It’s old and run down, and smells like sweaty gear, completely unlike the salle at King’s Row. But it’s familiar, and Nicholas finds himself grinning as he pushes open the front doors. The lobby is empty, so he makes his way back to the main gym floor. Coach Joe is teaching a class full of elementary school aged kids, so Nicholas finds a seat off to the side and sits down to watch. The children are all gripping their practice blades like someone’s about to jump out and attack them at any moment, and Joe patiently corrects their stances and grip. Nicholas remembers when Joe used to do the same for him, showing him where to place his feet and how to hold his body in a way that would make it harder for his opponents to hit him.
The class ends a few minutes later, and Joe instructs the kids on how to put away their gear properly before noticing Nicholas sitting off to the side. His eyes go wide as Nicholas offers a small wave.
After the last of the kids have left, Joe walks over and takes a seat next to Nicholas. “Didn’t think I’d ever see you here again,” he remarks.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t think I’d ever come back here either, but here we are.”
“Gonna tell me why?” Joe asks, crossing his arms. “Showing up out of the blue like this, there’s gotta be a good reason.”
“We had our last match of the season yesterday. We lost in the finals.”
“So? You’re used to losing, kid. What’s got you so worked up about this time?”
“It was my last match. Ever. I’m graduating this year.”
“You? Graduating high school? Never thought I’d see the day.” Joe chuckles.
“It’s not funny!”
“Whatever you want to tell yourself. So, you gonna keep fencing?”
“There were a few colleges that offered me scholarships. Seiji and I decided on an in-state school.”
“Seiji and you, huh? You’re still going to be fencing with him?”
“I said I would beat him one day. I don’t break my promises.” Nicholas sighs. “But it’s really weird, you know? To be leaving King’s Row after so much has happened. And we never got to win state. We came so close, so many times, but we never quite made it.”
“I don’t really see the problem. You’re going to keep fencing, aren’t you? Isn’t that all that really matters? I mean, that’s all that mattered when I was training you.”
“I just feel weird about leaving everything behind.”
“You’ve changed a lot, kid. Four years ago, you would have packed up and left in an instant. Hell, you did, when you went off to that fancy pancy school. And now here you are, down in the dumps because you can’t stay in high school forever.” Joe stands up and raises his arms overhead, cracking his back loudly. “Look, the season’s over. You lost. There ain’t nothing you can do about that now. But what you can do is look back on this experience and learn from it. Losing sucks. But it doesn’t define you, or your career. What you do after you lose does.”
“But… what do I do?”
“Do I look like I have all the answers, kid? Just keep fencing. Everything else will follow.” He glances up at the clock on the wall and frowns. “Now skedaddle. I’ve got another class starting in twenty minutes and I need a smoke.”
Nicholas stands up, and after a moment of internal deliberation, hugs Coach Joe. The older man freezes up slightly before relaxing and returning the hug. “Thank you,” Nicholas says, “I needed that.”
“Yeah, yeah. Now get outta here!” Joe pushes him away, grinning. Nicholas waves and heads back out the way he came in, pushing open the doors and immediately getting hit with a wave of summer heat. He shrugs off his hoodie and wraps it around his waist, wiping the beginnings of sweat off of his brow. Looking up and down the street, he notices that the sidewalks have been redone recently, and the cigar shop on the corner has closed, a Starbucks in its place. Someone painted a mural on the side of the drycleaners, and the signature on it says it was from two years ago. He’s never seen it before.
He waits at the bus stop for a good twenty minutes before the bus comes, just staring at the people coming in and out of the grocery store across the street. He thinks he recognizes Ms. Fields from upstairs at one point, but he can’t be sure. The bus pulls up and he gets on, sitting up front this time.
There’s always something about the return journey that seems faster. Maybe it’s because you’ve seen all the scenery before, but it feels like you could just close your eyes for a second and you’d already be back. Nicholas spends the ride turning Coach Joe’s words over and over in his mind, picking them apart.
He walks the mile back from the bus stop to campus, heading to his dorm room. It’s still the middle of the afternoon, but he doesn’t really have anything to do, so he wraps a blanket around himself and finds a trashy horror movie on Netflix.
He doesn’t feel sad or mad anymore, but rather, it feels like there’s something missing. Something important cut out from the spot right next to his heart, tossed aside to bleed out onto the floor. He feels like a marionette with all it’s strings cut, hollow, bones echoing with the thought of ‘what now?’ He’s going to keep fencing. But he won’t get to keep fencing in the King’s Row salle, with the wall of forbidden phrases and the stain on the floor from when Bobby dropped a huge bottle filled with blue gatorade. He won’t get to keep playing pranks on the freshman, or facetiming Eugene after practice as he’s walking back to his dorm. He won’t get to do any of that.
The door to his room creaks open and Nicholas jumps out of bed immediately, holding up one of his textbooks like a weapon. But it’s just Seiji at the door, backpack slung over his shoulder. They stare at each other for a few seconds before Seiji says:
“You can put the book down now.”
Nicholas sets the book on his bed. “Sorry. But, uh, what are you doing back so early? I thought you were coming back tomorrow night?”
“Plans change,” Seiji sits down on his bed and takes off his backpack, unzipping it and pulling out a tupperware full of onigiri. He pushes the curtain aside to hand it to Nicholas, who grins.
“Thanks, man. Your mom is the best,” he says, opening the container and immediately starting to eat one. Seiji rolls his eyes, but he’s long since gotten used to Nicholas’s habit of eating in bed.
“Anyways, I wanted to talk to you about next year. I was looking at the roster, and Finley Gillen was finally confirmed.” Seiji says, immediately turning the conversation to fencing.
“That guy from California? The one who placed top five at Nationals three times in a row?”
“That's him. I was thinking that we could…”
Outside, the sun sinks below the horizon, and pinks and oranges stretch their way across the sky, casting strange shadows through the windows of their room. Day becomes night, and the world keeps spinning.
It’s the end of one thing, but the beginning of everything else.