Felicity tapped the piste with her épée like a stern, unwavering coach.

  “Now, come forward.”

  I did as she asked, even if I felt uncomfortable. Even if I felt wholly out of place in Felicity and her fencing world. Even though she was masked, I could tell she was smiling underneath at just how horribly out of sync my first baby steps into competitive fencing were.

  We were both dressed in matching white fencing uniforms, but only Felicity looked fashionable. I was… a mess in comparison. A horrible mess. The best spare fencing uniform we could scrounge up from the cupboards was a size too small for me. My chest was being contoured inside out, and my pelvis was slowly being crushed by the tiny groin guard I was forced to wear.

  But it wasn’t the tight-fitting uniform that was causing me distress. I just felt so out of place. This was not my thing. I don’t think it ever was my thing, fencing. No matter how well Felicity looked or how well she performed, fencing and I did not mix. I knew that in my bones, even if it gave me the chance to be in her radiant presence again.

  And she did look radiant, even while she was masked. Her usual curls of ginger hair fell against the shining white of her uniform. I couldn’t find a spot of dirt or sweat on her as we worked out on the piste. She was perfect.

  For some reason, though, that perfection didn’t draw me in as strongly as it used to. I’d come along not to be in her presence, but just so I could have some company as I consoled myself without Winona.

  I moved this time not to be in her presence, but simply at her command. I moved, and I waited for the next one.

  “Then you feint to the head,” Felicity said, giving a faint whisk of her épée to demonstrate. I did as I was told, but it was hard to get an épée moving when your wrists felt as stiff as a corpse’s.

  “Then when your opponent is distracted—” Felicity dipped underneath and thrust her épée directly into my chest. “BAM. You finish them off just like that. Understand?”

  “I think so,” I mumbled. This would have been a whole lot more appealing if I’d been dressed a lot more comfortably.

  Felicity swayed me back to the other end of the piste, then tapped her épée against the white floor once again.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  I nodded. I still felt like I was being squeezed from all directions, like being in an assortment of wrestling locks that were slowly sucking the life out of me.

  “En garde!” Felicity beamed.

  I moved out, watching how strange my mannerisms looked in the mirror behind her. I really did feel like an Egyptian mummy as I shuffled my way over, hoping she didn’t take my pitiful performance as a fencer as an opportunity to skewer me and strike me down.

  Felicity waited as I stumbled my way down to her. She didn’t even pause to wait for me as I mimicked her little feint, only for her to duck underneath and stab me quickly in the abdomen before I could even think of doing it to her.

  “Not very fast on the piste, are we?” Felicity asked.

  “It’s hard to feel fast when I’m opposite the best fencer in America,” I murmured. I’d tried to praise her, but the words rang hollow to me. I wasn’t sure why.

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  “Just in America?” Felicity asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “No, the world,” I mumbled. Again, it felt very hollow. Very performative. In a very I wish I wasn’t here but I have nowhere else to go tone. I sighed, then walked off the mat to the water cooler. I felt Felicity’s beady eyes burning into my back.

  “Not your thing?” she guessed.

  I took a gulp of the ice-cold water I’d pressed into the plastic blue cup before answering. “No,” I said, “at least not competitive fencing, anyway.”

  She unbuckled her fencing mask to get a better look at me. I’d already done the same.

  “Not very sporty?” she pressed.

  “It’s not that,” I replied. “I just don’t like how cutthroat it becomes.”

  Felicity paused, then drew her épée against her neck, making a gurgling sound. I giggled. She could be quite funny when she wanted to be.

  “Okay, cutthroat is the wrong word,” I mused. “Just too competitive.”

  “And you think that’s just a fencing thing?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “No, I just dislike competition. I’m too empathetic.”

  “Life is one long competition, Nathan.” She walked up alongside me, then reached for a blue plastic cup herself and started pressing water into it.

  “I know that,” I replied. “That doesn’t mean I can’t dislike it.”

  “Why?”

  This put me on the spot. Thinking on it now, I wasn’t sure why I disliked competition so much. Why? I wasn’t very athletic growing up, so I missed my chance to play team sports with others. I wasn’t really a nerd, though. In fact, to be honest, I felt like the star quarterback when I compared myself to some of those guys when I came into contact with them back in high school.

  “Winning feels hollow to me,” I explained after much thought. “I like the exercise. I like how it keeps me in shape. I like how I get to spen—”

  “Why does winning feel hollow to you?” Felicity cut in. All the better, considering I might’ve made a social faux pas by saying out loud how much I enjoyed spending time with someone like her.

  “I don’t care about trophies or medals,” I said flatly. “All the time put into winning something like that might’ve been better spent creating something.”

  “Like what? Making music with Winona?”

  “Not just music,” I countered. “Anything else. I like building things. Creating something new. I get a sense of satisfaction from that I don’t get with anything else in life.”

  This seemed to make sense to Felicity, who carefully considered my words. I think it made sense to me, anyway.

  “And you?” I asked. “What’s the draw of fencing?”

  She smiled deviously. “To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”

  “I–I didn’t know you swung that way, Felicity,” I replied. I didn’t know what lamentations meant. Erotically charged groans at seeing a female fencer crushing her male counterparts? I had seen it happen already in real life.

  Felicity looked me dead in the eye. “What makes you think I like men?”

  I scratched the back of my head. Thinking on it now, why did I think Felicity liked men? Aside from the Dawson incident, I’d never actually seen her with a man at her side. Or a boyfriend.

  “What makes you think that I, Felicity Brigham, like men?” she asked again.

  Silence. She was always with… women. Raven and Blondie. Sorry, I meant Aisha and Kimberly. Never any men outside of the Hungarians she used as fencing practice to skewer with.

  Now that I thought about it, she hadn’t dated anyone back in high school either. She went to prom with her friends, while me and Winona went as best friends pretending we were a couple so we wouldn’t feel left out from all the other couples around us.

  I twiddled my thumbs, then gulped. “Well, I…”

  She giggled. “Of course I like men, silly!” Then Felicity shrugged. “And women too, but I’ve never dated a man before.”

  “You haven’t?” How could that be possible? How could Felicity Brigham — winner of the most popular girl in elementary, middle school, high school and now college — have not had a boyfriend beckoning at her call?

  She shook her head. “No. Have you?”

  I turned beetroot. “I–I don’t swing that way, Felicity.”

  She smiled deviously again. She had me. By my own beetroots.

  “I meant girls, you handsome goose.”

  “I’m not a goose, Felicity,” I replied, trying to sound decisive. Trying to sound like I could defend myself in a war of words with this international-level fencer.

  She giggled. “You are one now. Dressed up in white, and red in the face.”

  Gooses don’t have red beaks, do they? I always thought it was orange. I began to sputter out words again, and Felicity narrowed her eyes at me. She put aside the plastic cup and reached for my fingertips.

  “Come on,” she said. “Another round, shall we?”