forteandfoible

[forteandfoible]

Chapter 3: Family Feuds

After a week of chasing Katie up and down frat row and athlete housing, Elle was reconsidering her life choices. She had Google alerts for Katie now, which she felt supremely uncomfortable setting up and even now made her cringe a little every time she got a notification. The same went for her Twitter and she was overall far too involved in social media for her taste. She just wanted to be the stereotypical art student, carrying her camera around for the perfect shot and occasionally smoking a blunt on the roof of the design building. This was completely out of her wheelhouse and to be honest, she didn’t think she wanted to do it anymore. She put her head in her hands as she heard her phone ping yet again, wondering if it was still the fallout of Katie’s decision to go mingle with the football team last week or if she’d gotten herself into a fresh pile of trouble this time.

Instead, it’s a text from Katie.

Keystone: hey. Team’s throwing a little thing tonight, thought you might be interested. You can meet the rest of them, could be cool.

Elle: where/when? Should I bring something?

Keystone: I’ll send the address, it’s the captain’s house off-campus. 10pm. Bring yourself and whatever ur drinking.

Elle smiled and tucked her phone away. She should pack her things up and head to the library if she was going to go to this – her paper on Ansel Adams’ technique wouldn’t finish itself and she’d never forgive herself if she let down her 20th century Photography professor yet again. As she descended the staircase, she caught a glance of Marie on the sofa. Normally she would have just kept walking, but the way that the sunlight glinted off of Marie’s bottle-blonde hair, making it shine like spun gold, caught her attention. Quietly, so as not to alarm her, she reached for the camera around her neck and focused in. The photograph was fuzzy around the edges, the morning sun creeping its way into the otherwise dimly-lit room. Marie had her face turned away, a thick tome spread across her lap as she was reading Ayn Rand or Plato or Socrates or whatever literature was deemed essential by the philosophy department. Her pencil dangled from between her fingers, precarious in its fight against gravity. Elle smiled at the screen of her camera for a moment, then clattered down the rest of the stairs, causing Marie to jump and startle.

She slid her feet into combat boots and gave a little wave to her housemate.

“I’m going to the library, need anything from campus?”

“Nah I’m all set. Studious streak, huh?”

“Oh, I’ve been called on to be social tonight. Gotta get some stuff done before then.”

One of Marie’s eyebrows jumped precariously close to her bangs.

“A party? Who’s hosting a party that’s exciting enough for your introverted ass to show up?”

Elle laughed, one hand on the door.

“Hey, I’m not that antisocial! I go out sometimes. And it’s the fencing team, Katie thought I should meet some of her teammates, so I stop hanging around her as much, I think. It’ll be pretty cool.”

With that, Elle turned away and headed out the door. Marie’s face flew through a wild array of emotions, before finally settling on something that seemed like a mixture of disgust and mild interest.

“Katie, huh?”

---

The windows of the house that Elle’s phone led her to seemed to be shaking when she approached the door. This had to be it, the eclectic mixture of pop and rock and folk blasting from inside matched what she heard at practices while simultaneously making her wary of the team getting a noise complaint. She texted Katie as she stood on the porch, unsure of the protocol for this scenario. What do you do when your coworker? Liability? Frenemy? Friend? Invites you to a party where you definitely will stand out like a sore thumb as the only person that doesn’t seem to be gargantuan and very interested in weaponry? Before she had time to ponder that quandary further, the door flew open and Katie was standing before her, grinning with a red solo cup in her hand and waving her in.

Katie was dressed up much nicer than Elle usually saw her, she realized. Instead of her baggy sweatshirts and old competition t-shirts, she was wearing a skintight pair of jeans and a halter top that was cropped just above her diaphragm, leaving her abs on full display. Horrifying. Elle quickly tore her eyes away from Katie’s midriff, blushing furiously and hoping that the younger hadn’t noticed.

If she did, she certainly didn’t say anything as Elle came inside. In the house, the floor seemed to shake with every bass note and many more people than she had expected milled about in various stages of intoxication. She accepted a can pushed into her hand without comment and let Katie lead her around by the elbow, clearly intent on introducing her to everyone in the house. She was much more tolerable, cute even, when she was drunk. Elle had to tamp down that thought too, this was not the path she wanted her thoughts to wander down. Instead, she focused on trying to match faces to names.

Some of the people she was introduced to were more familiar than others. Nightingale she remembered from her first practice. The freshman seemed as quiet and contemplative as before, sitting on the couch arm and watching with a muted smile the intense beer pong match going on across the living room. Next to her was a very tall guy who introduced himself as Jonas? Yonas? through a thick German accent and seemed intent on smiling at everyone that passed, complimenting them on their style or something that they’d done recently or just telling them that he appreciated them. He grinned at Elle and complimented her pink combat boots and she could tell she liked him already. Katie ruffled his hair as she passed on to the pong table, where a very serious woman that Elle vaguely recognized from a practice was squaring off against a much shorter man with some serious baby face. She glared at her opponent, then blew off the ball and sunk it cleanly into one of the four cups left.

“SUCK IT! RERACK, BITCH!” she crowed, as the man sighed and rearranged the three remaining cups.

Katie whispered to her that she was Svetlana, or Sveta, the women’s saber captain and undefeated pong champion. Also, she was apparently the kind of Russian fencer that made other fencers cry when they saw her at a tournament, whatever that meant. Watching her play was hilarious, as she made another three clean throws to decimate her opponent, a foilist named Bentley. He wiped his beer-damp hands on his pants, which Elle realized a second later were made out of velvet and sauntered over to Katie to introduce himself. A smug grin had situated itself on his face like that was its resting state and he stood on his tiptoes to pull a strand of Katie’s hair.

“Sup, I’m Bentley. Are you Katie’s new arm candy?”

From the way Katie’s hand twitched it looked like she was about to slap him. Instead, she just bopped him on the back of the head.

“Team publicist, Bentley. Don’t be weird.”

“That’s a pity, being weird is my best attribute,” he laughed as he disappeared back into the pulsating throng of people.

From there, the people seemed to blur together. Elle noted that most of them seemed to be upperclassmen, with the exception of Nightingale and Katie. When she asked, Katie said that they were the only two recruits that decided to join the team her year, but that there were a few sophomores out there… somewhere.

The can in Elle’s hand had warmed and she cracked it, slowly sipping as she fell into conversation with some of the other juniors who were standing by the kitchen. She lost track of Katie’s pink hair out on the dancefloor, instead commiserating with her two new friends (Emily? Mary?) about the sudden graduation requirements and how quickly college seemed to fly. Emily was just telling her about how she had planned to go abroad after her sophomore year and get rid of a bunch of requirements for her Spanish major when all of a sudden, she had qualified for a major tournament in July and had to completely rearrange her class schedule. Elle and Mary’s sympathetic coos were interrupted by a loud cheer as someone burst through the door, holding a bottle of tequila aloft.

“TEAM SHOTS!” he called and suddenly Mary was grabbing Elle’s wrist, pulling her flat to the wall to avoid the sudden thrum of motion as the entire team seemed to rearrange itself to fit in the kitchen.

The newcomer, whose name Elle had completely missed, was motioning to Sveta at the kitchen cabinet as she pulled out anything that someone could remotely drink out of. A red solo cup with a splash of tequila was pressed into Elle’s hands by someone she didn’t recognize and then the team was cheering, screaming, throwing back a shot.

Elle was observing what was going on, wishing that she had her camera on hand, when Katie came up to her. She grinned and plucked the untouched cup out of Elle’s hands, throwing it back with practiced ease before patting her on the back and leaving. At some point she had gotten glitter smeared across her cheekbones and she looked almost fey in the dim fairy lights, her hair wild and untamed around her shoulders and her green eyes glinting as she spun away. Emily followed Elle’s line of sight and then raised an eyebrow.

“Say, how do you know Katie?”

“Well, it’s kind of a weird story. Coach gave me an internship if I could… clean up her act? It’s honestly one of the stranger jobs I’ve worked but I get to hang out with all of you so it’s not that bad.”

Emily and Mary chuckled, and Elle took another long sip of her now thoroughly warmed beer.

“That’s funny. I had figured Katie would be pretty staunchly against whoever they got to babysit her, but she seems to like you pretty well. Most of the time she’s not nearly that friendly – hell, it took almost the entire summer training month before she’d even talk to me,” Mary noted, almost to herself.

Elle almost choked on the mouthful of beer. To her, she still felt sometimes that Katie was only friendly to her when she was well on her way to being blacked out. That either boded poorly for the amount of alcohol in her system or said something truly horrifying about Katie’s true feelings about her. She took another swig of beer, hoping to hide the blush that had quickly crossed her face. The girls either didn’t notice or pretended not to and Mary quickly launched into a story about how she had once tried to bring her boyfriend to one of these parties, only for him to get so weirded out by the team’s culture that it took him months before he would even show up to a stereotype. Something about seeing Kyle half-naked, she said. When Elle inquired, Mary pointed out the tequila-wielding man that had barged into the party fashionably late. He, apparently, was the captain of the Epee team. She made a mental note that she might be seeing a lot more of him if this internship kept working out the way it was.

Before long, Elle found herself lost in the cycling of the music. She hummed along to some songs, mostly listening to the chatter of the people around her. The hours seemed to slide past in a tipsy haze, until the jovial atmosphere was shattered by a sharp rap on the door. Quickly sobering eyes darted to each other, before another gargantuan woman who Elle remembered as Jenna, one of Katie’s squad mates, hushed everybody and stepped forward. She opened the door and slid through the crack outside, while the upperclassmen quickly found Katie and Nightingale and pushed them into the kitchen.

Katie noticed Elle’s quirked eyebrow and put a finger to her lips as Kyle pushed her out of direct sight of the door. He then went to stand with the juniors, smirking at the door.

“Figured it was about time for a visit from the fun police. How dare we enjoy ourselves.”

When he noticed Elle’s wild panic, he laughed openly.

“Don’t worry. Worst comes to worst they’ll just tell us all to leave. Not that I don’t trust Jenna or anything, but I don’t think she can sell the forty of us as being under fire code for this dump.”

Just as he spoke, Jenna came back in. She raised her voice to be heard over the panicked murmuring.

“Party’s over kids! Pick up your shit, clean up your act, and SCOOT!” She yelled into the living room, and immediately the assembled fencers devolved again into madness, piling trash into the overflowing trashcan and filling the sink and counters with abandoned cups and shot glasses.

Mary and Emily gave Elle a sympathetic smile as they started getting ready to leave.

“You might want to go take care of your charge,” Emily said, nodding towards the kitchen as she walked away.

Elle glanced quickly to see Katie leaning heavily against the kitchen counter. Well, that was new. Nightingale was next to her, patting her back and looking around. When she locked eyes with Elle, she frantically gestured until Elle put down her bag and came into the kitchen.

“She’s definitely too gone to walk back into Wilson Hall. I don’t want someone to spot her and blow her spot up, right?” Nightingale explains, still trying to get Katie to stand up. “Could you, maybe, take her instead? She can sleep it off till tomorrow and then she’ll go back. I’m sorry about this.”

Elle gently lifts Katie’s arm over her shoulder and wraps a steadying arm around her middle until she shifts her weight and is standing. How this had happened without her noticing was beyond her, they needed to have a chat about taking it a little easier.

With a cautious smile, she started walking towards the door.

“Sure thing, Nightingale. You go get some rest and I’ll make sure she’s all set.”

Getting Katie’s shoes and jacket was the easy part. Putting her in an Uber, still relatively fine. Once they were standing on the porch of Elle’s house, she started to realize that she might have bitten off more than she could chew. She didn’t want to leave Katie on the downstairs couch, but there was also no way she wanted Katie to wake up in her bed and not know what was going on.

As they carefully scaled the stairs, Elle made up her mind. She unlocked her bedroom door and shushed Katie as she helped her onto the bed.

“You sleep here tonight, I’ll go grab the spare bedroom. See you in the morning. And hey, text if you need anything, ok?”

Katie nods and smiles at Elle before turning over once and falling asleep, still fully clothed on top of the sheets. All of Elle is screaming to wake her up, make her more comfortable, stay there so she wouldn’t wake up with no memory of how she got into Elle’s bed. Instead, she indulges herself just enough to tuck a blanket over Katie’s fast-asleep form before retreating downstairs to the couch.

She just wouldn’t tell Katie that there was no guest room, if she remembered their conversation at all.

---

Elle barely slept. She woke every few hours on the couch, every truck and car passing by the house jolting her out of an uneasy sleep. All she could think about was the easy way that Katie had touched her when she was drunk, her weight on Elle’s shoulders as she sung along to the party soundtrack on their way out the door. Mary’s words kept cycling through her head.

“She’s not nearly that friendly.” Surely, she meant something else, because Katie was anything but friendly to her most of the time. Outside of this one interlude, most of their meetings were still focused solely on business, on Katie’s image and her classes and making sure Elle was doing enough that when she met with Coach he’d smile and praise her. Still, she couldn’t shake the fact that her brain, her stupid photography brain had catalogued every smile Katie had aimed at her and was now set on playing them one after the other, like a nightmare sequence haunting her with what could have been if things were different.

Eventually, as the dawn broke across the campus, Elle’s anxious thoughts were drowned out by sweet sleep and she manages a few more hours of rest.

Soon enough, she felt her phone buzz and realizes she has a text from Katie.

Keystone: hey just woke up.

Keystone: thanks for this

Elle jumped off the couch, then immediately chided herself for being overeager. Her body creaked angrily at the movement and she falls back against the couch before standing more slowly. She needed to get better sleep, because her bones didn’t like this one bit. Just as she stepped into the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee, she heard the creaking of the stairs. Katie appeared in the door, still dressed in her going-out clothing and rubbing sleep from the corners of her eyes. When Elle smiled, she gratefully and gracelessly collapsed into one of the kitchen stools and rested her chin on one hand.

“So, I think I browned out a little last night. Woke up to quite a few texts from Night and the gang, wondering if I’d been spotted or something. So, thanks for taking me in yesterday, I guess.”

Elle stays with her back turned to Katie, focusing all her energy on filling the coffee maker with water and pouring in the grinds. She doesn’t want to think of the implications of taking Katie in, she’d much rather just think about this next step in her morning.

“It’s nothing. What do you take your coffee with?”

They both knew that’s a futile question – the two of them had enough business meetings that Katie had started ordering for the both of them. She took her coffee with cream and sugar, so light it was almost dessert. Elle drank her coffee with a splash of almond milk or completely black. Like my soul, she joked the first time to Katie’s blank stare.

Still Elle was soothed when Katie didn’t mention it and instead answered the same as she always had. She wrapped her hands gratefully around the proffered caffeine a few minutes later, as Elle poured her own brew into a chipped and well-stained novelty mug reading “I went to Vegas and all I got was this ceremony.” Ezi had thought it was hilarious when he and Joshua had gotten engaged and it now lived in their cabinet forever.

They were quietly talking at the kitchen island when Elle felt the rest of the house start to wake up. At this point it felt instinctual, the little beeping of alarms up the three stories and the creaking of floorboards as its residents got out of bed. Marie was the first down the stairs, still blinking as she stepped into the kitchen and immediately startled.

“Oh, hi?” she intoned, shooting a puzzled look at Elle.

Elle only shrugged and introduced Katie, who waved and then kept sipping her sugary concoction. Marie stared for several seconds longer, her gaze oscillating between Elle and Katie. Elle didn’t want to know what fantastical tale she was spinning in her head, so she spoke up before Marie could say anything else.

“Katie decided to stay here instead of going back to her dorm last night. It was easier for me to let her sober up here than to have her deal with the freshman dorm security.”

Marie nodded, still taking in Katie’s clothing and demeanor as she seems to fold under the scrutiny, focusing even more intently on stirring the cream into her coffee and turning the whole cup into a barely-tan affair.

With a shrug, Elle’s housemate pushed past her to the fridge and pulled out a yogurt. She gave Elle a small, soft smile and then fled the kitchen. Katie glanced at her form before raising one eyebrow at Elle.

“Now, I know I just met her. But is she always like that? Because that felt weird. That was a weird amount of silence.”

Elle just laughed a little as the silence and the tension broke and she relaxed against her kitchen counter. She would deal with whatever had happened between her and Marie later. First, caffeine. Then, bringing Katie back to Wilson. After that, she was going to go fall asleep in her bed for the rest of the day.

[forteandfoible]

Chapter 2: Fragile Agreements

The text that Elle had received from an unknown number said simply “you said to send my schedule. I’m in class all day. Find a time.”

She had sighed at the moment and emailed Coach to immediately get a more detailed schedule from him. Now, she was waiting in the dining hall with a rapidly-cooling cup of coffee and her laptop, preparing herself for the inevitable shouting match that was coming.

Elle hadn’t meant to, but after talking to Coach she had spent the night doing research. She had read every article on Katie and her scandal, every analysis of her talent and potential from every unknown blogger, even read up on the international fencing federation and the Olympic committee’s ruling. She wanted to come into this informed.

Her eyes were pulled from her screen by the sound of a chair scraping out, and she glanced up, about to say “sorry, taken” only to make eye contact with Katie. Oddly, she looked completely different today. Her hair was hidden under an oversized beanie and she wore what looked to be a novelty t-shirt with a possum on it under an honest-to-god cardigan. The only thing that seemed to match the furious girl Elle had met before were her razor-sharp eyeliner wings. This was a marked departure from what she had seen yesterday, maybe this was a sign for the better. Katie gave Elle a rare, small smile before she settled her expression and set down her water bottle.

“Okay, you got me here for a meeting. What do you want from me?”

Elle pushes a few sheets of paper that she’d prepared for this very moment across the table. At the top, in her impeccable handwriting, she had written “Katie Keystone Social Media Plan.”

Katie Keystone Social Media Plan

General: make any non-public facing social media private immediately, scourge the internet of anything that isn’t horrifyingly wholesome. This means separating a finsta from your public Instagram, removing anyone on Snap that you don’t know well, going through your Facebook with a fine-tooth comb.

The goal is to get rid of anybody that might leak something.

The second order of business is to start churning out some inspirational, “look at my growth” content. We can brainstorm, but I was thinking fencing on the beach. Could be fun.

Third: minimize the potential for things you do to be publicized. You are already in the public eye so you can’t be going out to clubs with a fake ID and then getting pissed when you trend on Twitter.

Elle watched as Katie’s brows climbed as she read. Well, so far she hadn’t actively started cussing her out so it could always be worse. Finally, she set the pages down and stared at Elle across the table.

“You want me to completely change the way I act for this.”

Elle blinked slowly, then tried to force a smile.

“I wouldn’t think of it as completely changing, just managing your risk. You can still go do whatever your little freshman heart desires, just don’t do it so publicly. Plus think of it this way – I’ll always be your bailout. If you’re at a house party gone wrong, you suddenly got a call from your manager and I’m so furious, how could you, you have to leave immediately…”

She sees Katie crack another tiny smile and immediately has to tamp down a flutter deep in her throat. No time to unpack what that meant now, she has bigger things to worry about. She’s almost sold Katie on this. That little smile, however, grows but doesn’t seem to reach her eyes. Katie stares at her and pushes the papers back across.

“Well that’s all well and good but this seems to be benefitting you way too much. You get your precious internship and you get to use me like your puppet doll for a year while I have to stop going out and stop posting online.”

Elle’s about to dispute that those are not part of her plan at all, she made this so that Katie could still go out! That was the whole point! when she realizes that Katie wasn’t done talking.

“I want something out of this too.”

Elle stares at her dumbfounded. How dare she. Here Elle was, trying to help Katie regain her reputation, and she was demanding something from her.

Katie grins at her again but now it seems different, malicious somehow. Like a shark staring down a minnow moments before disaster.

“How about this – I dial back on going out if you jump into the campus pond.”

She packs her backpack and stands up to leave. Before she does, she makes eye contact with Elle again and continues:

“Tomorrow, noon. I’ll see you there.”

And with a wink, she’s gone.

The next day, Elle braces herself for whatever is about to happen. She makes a point to wear her oldest shorts and a shirt from some event she doesn’t remember anymore. Hopefully she can jump into the pond at a point when nobody will see her and – oh who is she kidding. Katie wants her to go viral, there’s no way she’d suggest this for any other reason.

She barely listened to her morning class, somewhere deep in the back of her mind she noted to furiously apologize to her 20th Century Photography professor after she had cleared her head. As she left the arts building, she briefly considered whether she should just call this whole thing off, call it a day and apologize vehemently to Coach as she hands in her resignation two days after accepting the internship. However, she thought for a moment longer about having to explain to her parents that she couldn’t actually graduate because she refused to throw herself into the disease-ridden campus pond at a moment’s notice to satisfy the whims of a petulant freshman. That was not a conversation she wanted to have today or any day, so she gave up on any last wisp of dignity and marched out the door towards the quad.

Katie was waiting for her with an expression of glee and her phone in her hand. As Elle put down her camera and backpack and took her shoes off, Katie grabbed them and moved them out of the way.

“Out of the splash zone,” she explained to Elle’s querulously raised eyebrow.

With a deep breath, Elle flipped off the camera, took three steps back and then did a running leap at the water. She tried her best for a swan dive but realized a moment too late that she hadn’t gotten as much spring as she wanted from the wet, loamy ground. Her bare feet slipped out from under her as she tried to push off and she landed in the water with a sickening thwack.

Her stomach seared with pain and it took her a moment to remember that she had to swim upwards as she started sinking downwards. She pushed her head above water and saw Katie doubled over with laughter and a sizeable crowd of students behind her, gawking at what had clearly happened. Elle dredged up her self-worth, wherever it had gone, and gingerly stepped out of the water. Beginning the arduous process of draining the water from her thick hair, she glared at Katie’s still-recording phone. Shit. She had been recording the whole time. As Katie grinned and pocketed the phone, Elle tied up her unsalvageable locks into a big mess and put her shoes back on.

“Are you happy now?”

“Yes, incredibly so. Or at least I will be once I send this to some viral accounts. Hope you enjoy your fifteen minutes of fame!”

She starts walking away, but then turns back.

“Oh, I realized you might want my socials. Both for seeing this lovely video and so that you can, you know, get your half of this deal out of it.”

Elle sends a hearty glare at Katie’s back and starts stalking the other way through the crowd of curious student onlookers.

“Lover’s quarrel?” one of them quipped at her and it simultaneously sent twin waves of rage and embarrassment to her face. She flushed and kept pushing through the crowd, sopping her way back to her house and up the stairs, past the astounded look of Marie in the dining room, and to her room.

Elle spent an hour trying to scrub the campus pond guck off of her skin and out of her hair and another twenty minutes sitting in her towel in the crappy third-floor bathroom reminiscing on her life. She had skipped her afternoon class to do this. She had missed a class that she really should have gone to, that was just as much of a requirement for her graduation as this internship that had her jumping into pond water and completely embarrassing herself for some idiot freshman.

She didn’t even want to check her phone when she finally returned to her bedroom, afraid of whether her friends would have somehow seen the video by then, if they’d be blowing up her phone or, worse, sending it to every friend, acquaintance, freshman-roommate’s-boyfriend’s-dog they had in their contact list. Instead, she flicked off the lamp and collapsed face-first into her comforter, letting herself melt into the feather-softness and closing her eyes against the world.

Two restless hours later, Elle jolted out of bed to realize that 1) it was well after dinnertime and her presence was likely missed in the kitchen and 2) she still hadn’t started her assignments or anything else on her to-do list. Cursing under her breath, she staggered down the stairs, poking her head in to say hello to Ezme, who responded with a hearty glare and a peace sign. In the kitchen, she foraged up a bowl of leftover chili and picked up her phone, ready to absent-mindedly scroll through Instagram while eating. She didn’t remember until a second to late as her phone buzzed to life, notifying her of the 23 missed texts, at least two calls and a voicemail, and what seemed like dozens of social media pings.

God, how was this her life.

Well, she had to start somewhere. The texts were mostly from her close friends, and with the exception of one which was preemptively sending her the notes from her afternoon class, they were all variations of the same: a screenshot of an Instagram/Snapchat/Facebook video and an accompanying message of “OMG is this you???” Emojis optional. The calls were from Marie and one of her childhood friends who went to another school. That was more concerning.

The voicemail, from the same friend, felt almost surreal. Elle hadn’t seen Amanda in years and here she was, her same bubbly voice pouring out of her phone speakers as she said she “was just checking in because you’re viral, babe!”

With a pit in her stomach, Elle opened her Snapchat only to find that Katie, fiendishly clever Katie, had put the video on the Crawford University campus story. God damn her. There was Elle, shoeless and belly-flopping into the murk of the campus pond. There she was pulling herself out of the water, flipping off Katie as she squeezed her hair out. How was she ever going to live this down. And then, she noticed it. Below the notification after notification of her friends and acquaintances trying to figure out this marked change of behavior, she had a friend request.

Snapchat: cottoncandykatie added you as a friend!

Heh. Cotton candy, that was cute. Elle shook her head, stopping any endearing thought in its tracks. She had bigger things to focus on now – she had to crack down on whatever Katie had planned. With what she knew so far, there was no way the girl would go down without more of a fight.

The next morning, Elle put off checking her phone as long as humanly possible. She made breakfast, padding up and down the stairs as many times as possible. She could probably get her steps in just doing chores, but at some point she had to get down to business. She gave a cursory glance to her notifications, which had significantly lessened since the day before, then checked her email to see if she had been completely decimated by her teachers. When she recognized that was not the case, she hurriedly sent apologies to her teachers from yesterday then allowed herself a moment to stare in horror at her Twitter and Snapchat and Facebook. Someone had reposted it and she thought for a moment about taking it down before deciding that it was probably not worth the effort.

After what felt like ten minutes of staring at her notifications and getting over her shock, she finally felt something deep in her gut. There was a deeper reason to why Katie had done this to her. She had dealt with her 15 minutes of infamy, her one day of getting texts and messages and odd looks. She’d likely deal with it for a few days more before the Crawford rumor mill churned out something new to fuel student obsession. Katie, sweet childish Katie, had dealt with this for months. Honestly, she was probably still dealing with it, little insidious comments, every day.

Elle sighed and buried her head in her hands. She was not getting paid enough to deal with this residual trauma or whatever the hell was driving Katie. She just wanted to get this over with. Resigned, she reopened her laptop and, closing out all notifications, started the process of writing out what effectively felt like a marketing plan. If Katie was still dealing with the fallout of what had happened last year, she was going to rebrand her so that there was no way that could be the focal point anymore.

In the evening, Katie opened her phone to two texts from an unsaved number.

“Hey, thought about the video.

Let’s talk ideas – I was thinking having a lil Instagram thing where you talk about competing as a kid? We’re going endearing now. E.”

Smirking at the signed text, Katie saved the number in her phone as “elle” and closed it again, picking up her eyeliner and focusing in the mirror. She had just been informed that the football team was throwing a mixer and she intended to be there.

[forteandfoible]

Chapter 1: My Kingdom for an Internship

The café at the edge of campus was bustling as always when Elle found a table outside. She tapped the edge of her mug with her nails, click click click, as she scanned the street in front of her. Finally, she saw a frizz of red-grey hair peeking out of a scarf and perked up. Professor Maggie Thereux sat down gingerly, smiling over her scarf at the precocious young woman seated across from her.

“Elle, it’s good to see you. I hope you don’t mind that I was a little bit late, the lecture went over as always.”

Elle smiles and nods, hiding her jitters behind her coffee cup.

“Maggie, I’m glad we could meet. I wanted to just go over my requirements, make sure I’m all set as I get ready for junior year…”

She stops as she sees the expression on the older woman’s face turn serious. Dr. Thereux fixes her with a steady look as she sighs and pulls out a stack of paperwork from her bag.

“I realized you haven’t given any thought to your internship requirement, Elle. It’s honestly pretty late now, as it’s expected you do your internship junior year so you can spend senior year working on your portfolio and post-graduate opportunities. I know this is last-minute but in your record you hadn’t had any other opportunities and it’s something you have to do to graduate–”

“My WHAT requirement???”

The paperwork in front of her taunted her. Upperclassman Individual Experience – Application for Credit. She didn’t need this. Her photography classes, her social media accounts, her summers working for a wedding photographer were her individual experience. She didn’t need to work for some school department to be told how to market her photography, her expertise, her own skill.

Nonetheless, this was the barrier between her meticulously-planned schedule and graduation with a degree, Magna cum Laude, in photography and communications from Crawford University. Elle took a deep breath, curled her toes into the floorboards so harshly she could hear her bones creak, and opened her laptop to draft the first email.

“Hello, Dr. Shpazhkin. My name is Elle Kobayashi-Simon and I was told that you had a media internship opening for this dumb stupid idiotic requirement–” Delete.

“Coach Shpazhkin– Hello, my name is Elle Kobayashi-Simon and I am a current junior at the university. I am looking for an internship in the athletics department and was told by my forgetful-ass advisor–” Delete.

After another half hour of bathing in the radiating glow of her computer screen, she finally skimmed the email and sent it before she could have second thoughts. Well, if this coach has issues with getting an email at 1:17 AM from me, we wouldn’t work well together anyway. I can say I put in the old college try and file for exemption or something.

Elle was pulled out of her introspection by an electronic ping and her phone lighting up. One new email: From Adam Shpazhkin RE: Internship Position? Oh god. They were already more similar than she wanted.

The email was too technical for this early in the morning, she quickly realized. The coach seemed to hurdle directly over formalities and swan dive into the details of the position. She got through “social media management and direct contact with particular athletes to protect privacy and keep Olympic prospect” before she crashed on her bed.

In the morning, it took a while for Elle to remember that she had an email to reply to. She spent the first thirty minutes after her alarm staring blearily at the ceiling and chasing spots from her eyes. The last 24 hours didn’t seem real yet, it wasn’t possible that she’d secured an interview for an internship mere hours after learning about the requirement’s existence.

Well, to be fair. It wasn’t completely out of her character to immediately and furiously pounce on any obstacle in her way. But still.

The noise of her housemates getting ready for the day jolted her out of her reverie as she realized the sunlight beaming through her window was a bad sign. Tugging a tee-shirt over her head, she flew down the stairs while still buttoning her pants. Toast from the kitchen, laptop in her bag, camera safely around her neck, phone in her pocket. Hopefully that was enough for her first three classes, as she slipped on sandals and raced out the door and down the rickety stairs just in time to jump onto the last bus before her nine AM class.

During her commute, her mind wandered back to the email from the night before. Reopening it, she scanned the wording more carefully. It seemed the coach wanted her to come in to discuss the position, but it was all but hers. Easy enough, managing the team social media and taking pictures, working with fencers to keep them up to speed and out of the public eye too much. Nothing more intense than any other athlete at the school must face, this wouldn’t be too bad at all. She replied that she would be available in the afternoon and vowed to put it into her calendar as soon as she was in her building. She got this.

Her media marketing class was soul-sucking, Elle realized as she gathered her things after her third consecutive class and checked her phone. She’d have to find time soon to get through her new assignments before she got overwhelmed by her portfolio –

An email from Coach Shpazhkin sat front and center on her lockscreen. Would you be available to meet in an hour? Before practice. I am in room 104 of Webson, across from armory.

Well, she would be available now. Rushing out of the building, Elle made it back to her house in record time and barely waved hello to the people in their living room before she was hoofing it up three flights of stairs and collapsing in her room. Quick. What business casual clothing did she own that wasn’t covered in paint or obscenely ripped. Somewhere deep in her closet she knew there was a blazer her father had gifted to her when she’d gotten into Crawford. Well, that’d have to do with some nice shirt because she wasn’t going to an interview with her Cape Cod Beachsing shirt still on if she had any say in it.

The Webson athletic complex was oddly quiet at two in the afternoon. The glass and steel of the windows reflected Elle like a funhouse mirror. You’re out of your element. She steeled herself before approaching the desk with a bored student behind it.

“Hi, I have a 2pm appointment to meet with Coach Shpazhkin?”

The student waved her in, pointing to the right. A long hallway, well-lit by fluorescents, unfolded in front of her as she approached the offices. The coach’s door, as promised, was ajar and she could hear a muffled conversation as she approached.

“–I don’t understand why you decided I need a babysitter. I am an adult, I can do things for myself now.”

A female voice, shaking with indignation. Elle’s ears perked up, almost against her own accord.

“Katie, this is not your decision. I was there for what happened the last time. I do not want you to miss another opportunity. This will be good.”

This, clearly, had to be the coach. The Russian accent was apparent, as was the careful patience with which he dismissed - Katie’s, was it? - anger.

Elle paused outside the door, suddenly unsure. This was a collegiate athletics internship. Should she have worn sneakers, leggings, something to look more like the built students around her? She fidgeted with the hem of her blazer, adjusting and readjusting it. Her stomach felt like lead, she could feel the knot in her throat growing by the second. She just had to get it over with and knock, but just as she raised her hand the door swung open to reveal a furious, tall, pink… oh.

The girl in front of her had more than a head on her, Elle realized as she took a step back. She was enormous, built like a tree trunk with a vibrant shock of pink hair tied back into a messy ponytail and green eyes that glowered at her roadblock. She stalked out, throwing a “bye Coach” behind her before slamming the door to a room labeled the salle.

Elle gingerly knocked on the wide-open door, closing it behind her. The aforementioned coach, a Russian man who looked to be in his mid-forties, gave her a weak smile as he shook her hand.

“Hello, you must be Elle. I am Coach Adam Shpazhkin, but you can just call me Coach. You just met Katie, who I feel you may be working with quite a bit this next year.”

Katie had been one of the greats. It was rare for the fencing world to see talent not only start young but continue to a global level. By fourteen, she had earned a top National ranking and was a regular star at the Junior Olympics. By fifteen, she had become good friends with the other members of the national team and traveled with them, competing with the adults and regularly managing the top eight. At seventeen years old, facing off against her first Olympic eligibility, it seemed like she would be the one to rock the normally traditional fencing world as a high schooler competing in the 2016 Olympics. But then everything changed.

A leaked video showed Katie, her then-blue hair in a messy bun post-competition, taking tequila shots at a hotel party after a National cup. That would have been enough, but the blurry photo of a baggy of white powder in the corner of the hotel room was what blew it into national media. Suddenly, a sport that normally was lucky to have triple-digit spectators was front page news as the scandal about a promising young woman partying after she qualified for the USA fencing team became the new topic for sports journalists. To this day, Katie stated that she didn’t know about anything else in the room, but she also defended her rights. She was a teenager. She was taking the freedoms she deserved.

Coach sat back, watching Elle’s face as she took this in. She remembered when the story had broken, she’d been a freshman in college and had laughed at the idea of an athlete getting in trouble for just drinking when she knew of several people on the campus that had done much worse. And yet now she was being faced with the direct consequences of those actions, Katie Keystone, Olympic hopeful. Coach explained further that as Katie was starting her freshman year, she was getting back into shape to compete and qualify for the 2020 Olympics and put the past behind her. For that, she needed a handler. Her handler would be Elle.

The team was chatting in small groups when Elle pushed open the door to the salle. She could see the pink-haired girl from before, Katie, at the opposite end of the room talking to somebody else. Coach follows behind her and closes the door before addressing the group.

“Hello – this is Elle. She will run our social media.”

Elle gives a small wave and pointedly ignores the laser-like glare she gets from Katie. She’ll have to deal with that ticking time bomb on her own, she figures.

The rest of the team seems happy enough to see her and she has her first moment to grab her camera and watch as they grabbed their gear and began their practice. Coach explained that they had already warmed up on the track and today would be mostly preparing for their competitive season. Elle had never seen fencing outside of movies and was quickly picking up on the terms thrown at her by Coach. Epee. Foil. Sabre. Simple enough. Then, en garde, pret, allez, the idea of right of way and an advance, a lunge, a fleische and what constituted a bout and suddenly an hour had passed, and her camera was still slack in her hands. She watched, mesmerized, as the two fencers on strip slowly, carefully timed their every motion before exploding into a flurry of motion, stopping only with the electronic chirp of the scoring machine.

She managed to pull it up to her face and get a picture of the girl Katie had been talking to, her jet-black hair a stark contrast to the white and silver of her uniform as she saluted after a bout. She had introduced herself, briefly, as Nightingale Smith. Elle had commented that she liked her name and Nightingale had smiled patiently, reservedly, in the way that Elle recognized when it was a comment she’d heard many times before. Now she was completely serious, flicking her weapon in a salute before dabbing gently at the sweat on her brow.

Turning, Elle almost jumped out of her skin to find Katie looming behind her. She didn’t realize just how Amazonian she was in stature until that moment, with her paralyzing gaze focused completely on her.

“So I guess you got the briefing on me, huh?”

Elle could only nod, slowly lowering her camera and straightening her back to face Katie outright. She could do this.

“Ok. Well. I don’t need a babysitter, I know you don’t want to be chasing me down all the time either. Just stay out of my shit and we should be peachy keen, yeah?”

It took every muscle in her body not to just continue nodding to Katie’s question. Elle forced herself to steel her gaze as she responded:

“I promised your coach that I’d help you. As much as I want to just get this over with and graduate, I don’t back down from my promises. Send me your schedule, we’ll set up a meeting.”

She turned on her heel and left the salle before she could watch Katie’s face morph. She didn’t want to see the anger, not just yet.

She waved a goodbye to Coach, thanking him again for the opportunity and grabbed her bag from his office as she scrambled to exit Webson before the team finished practice. As her father used to tell her when she was younger, she’d burn that bridge when she got to it.

Thursday was family dinner night according to her housemates, and Elle aimed to deliver. She loved her housemates at the end of the day, they were her weird art student soulmates and they helped split the rent on her dilapidated townhouse in enough parts that she could afford it. As she knocked her foot against the door to hold it open, she could already smell the soup bubbling away and jollof rice being warmed in the microwave. Eki’s laugh bubbled from the kitchen, followed by Joshua’s gentle tone. Somewhere in the house, she knew Esme must be washing the clay off of their hands and Marie would be putting down her dog-eared tome before flying down the stairs–

Crash.

The arms wrapped around Elle’s waist confirmed her train of thought as she was suddenly tackled by a blonde, glittery cloud of knitwear. Marie giggled as she extracted herself from Elle and brushed non-existent dust from her sweater.

“You’re back just in time! Where were you?”

Elle ruffles the sophomore’s hair fondly as she hangs her keys by the door and takes her shoes off.

“Oh you wouldn’t IMAGINE the day I have had today. Here, set the table and I’ll grab drinks.”

As she pulled four beers out of the fridge, she felt a wave of calm wash over her. Surely, she could manage this.

[forteandfoible]

fuck it posting chapters here