When I first got to Ellison, I decided to try out for the varsity fencing team, even though I had never fenced a day in my life. And because it was Ellison — which stressed academics, not athletics — I not only made the team, I was a starter. I was tall and left-handed and willing to show up to practice and that was all it took for them to put an epee in my hand and point me at an opponent.

I wasn’t flashy. My strategy, essentially, was to bore my opponents into submission, staying very still as they struggled to get my attention with feints and lunges, until finally, exasperated by my indifference, they would throw themselves onto my blade.

It was, I have come to realize, a strategy arising as much from cowardice as cleverness. Staying on the defensive. Protecting myself. Even as a fencer, I was afraid to make the first move.

Still, I won more than I lost in my Freshman year, which is more than anyone else on our hapless team could say.

Now, in the spring of my Sophomore year, I had defied all expectations and taken second in the Mid-Atlantic Conference finals, losing the last bout by a hair, five to four, against a much more seasoned and aggressive opponent.

That night, I was back in my dorm room, freshly showered and nestled in the black canvas of my butterfly chair. I was drinking some absurd rum drink, savoring the feeling of near triumph and the satisfying soreness in my thighs.

My reverie was shattered by the ringing of my phone.

I had not considered, when I collapsed into this chair, how low to the ground it was, and I paid the price for my lack of forethought as I struggled to my feet, muscles shrieking.

“Hello?” There was a silence. “Hello?” I said again. 

I was about to hang up when a tenuous female voice said, “Hi, Aaron?” I didn’t immediately place the voice, but a chill ran through my body. “It’s Carrie.”

Carrie waited for me to say something, but I couldn’t think of anything. “This might sound a little awkward,” she continued. I nodded in agreement and let out a breath that was trying to be a laugh. “But I heard about how well you did today and I was very impressed." 

"Uh... OK," I managed.

"Well, congratulations." 

"Thanks." 

There was a drawn-out, uncomfortable pause, and then she hung up. 

My shock quickly gave way to self-righteous anger. For the previous eight-and-a-half months, Carrie had chosen to conspicuously ignore me. And now this weird phone call from out of nowhere? Fuck her.

But as I finished my sickeningly sweet Bacardi and whatever-the-hell I mixed it with, I reconsidered. This was, after all, an enormous gesture on Carrie’s part. It was an extremely hard call for her to make — bridging a fifteen-month chasm of wounded hostility — but she had overcome, more or less, her own terror and made it. Say what you will, she was trying.

I resolved that, the next time I saw her, I would meet her halfway.

The next day, when we passed each other under the stone archway of Bunnell Hall, I smiled at her. “Hey, Carrie.”

She looked at me, said nothing, and kept walking.

It was then I realized that I really didn’t care if she was nice to me or not. I just wanted her to be consistent.