Check & Mate

by Ali Hazelwood

Easton. I’ve never not seen her once a week to play Dragon Age, or talk about Dragon Age, or watch Dragon Age playthroughs.

But then I picture her gone to college for months—and me here, alone, trying to have a conversation about the latest Dragon Age playthrough with some date who just wants to make out.

Not to brag, but I’m good at compartmentalizing. Together with always picking the best item on the menu, it’s my greatest talent.

I told you: when people from millenarian restorationist Christian denominations come knocking—” “—we politely inform them that eternal salvation is beyond us, I know,

“Eat that—or anything else—in my car, and I will chop your hands off and boil them in my urine.” “I’m hungry.” “Then starve.” I bite the inside of my cheek. Honestly, I think I’m growing on him. “But this is my emotional support sandwich.” “Then have a mental breakdown.”

“Why the hell would she be my sister?” Oz asks. “I dunno, man.” He shrugs. “She’s blond. You’re blond. And she’s way too hot to be your girlfriend.” I stiffen. Surely I misheard. “Mallory is a chess player, man.” Oz’s tone drips disdain. Whatever antipathy he may harbor toward me, the Office Intruder, it’s nothing compared with what he feels for this guy. He doesn’t hate me, after all. I might even be his best friend. How heartwarming.

Oz Nothomb: unexpectedly, an emotional eater. “I had no intention of introducing you. No one should ever talk to them. Their place is on a top-secret mining colony on Mars, if you ask me. Sadly, no one ever asks.” He chews on his mushroom for a moment and then mumbles a stilted “Sorry about that.”

“Anyway,” Oz concludes, “everyone else in the top ten is less punchable.” I smile faintly. “Is ‘less punchable’ Oz-speak for ‘nice’?” He arches one eyebrow. “And what does that mean?” “Well, you’re not the nicest guy I’ve ever met.” “I am a motherfucking delight, Greenleaf. And for the record, you and I are equally hot.”

“Greenleaf,” he says with a self-deprecating smile when I take his queen, “show some mercy, will you?” He’s the first player to talk to me during a match, and I have no idea how to reply. Clearly chess is destroying my social skills. “Well, well, well.” I have him cornered, and he almost sounds pleased. “I see why he’s been going on about you now,” he murmurs. Or maybe he doesn’t, I can’t quite make out the words. He’s smiling at me again, pleasant and welcoming. I want to be his friend.

I let out a laugh—a real one, my first since the tournament started, maybe even since Easton left. Emil stares with a kind, curious expression. “He has no chance,” he says cryptically.

“First tournament, and you get to the final,” Oz mumbles, angrily splitting a twig in a million pieces. “Damn child prodigies.” “I’m eighteen,” I point out. “You are a chess child. An infant. I could shove my nipple in your mouth and you wouldn’t be able to latch on to it.” Defne’s eyebrow lifts. “I didn’t know you lactated, Oz.” “All I’m saying, she’s unjustly brilliant. Wunderkinds are so déclassé. You know what’s in? Hard work. Tribulations. People like you and Sawyer, with your gifted brains and boundless talent are the real plebs.” I exchange an amused look with Defne. Maybe I’m not growing on Oz, but he’s sure growing on me.

“I fail to see how doodling a”—he looks at the margin of my sheet; his eyebrow arches—“cat helped her win the match.” “It’s a guinea pig,” I mutter, and get a dozen dirty looks for my effort.

“I’ll go ahead and ask it, since we all want to know: Are you guys having sex?” “Oh my God.” I cover my eyes. “Oh my God.” “Sabrina,” Mom chides, “that is really inappropriate.” She turns to me. “But yes, are you?” “Oh my God,” I moan. “We aren’t,” Nolan says between bites of meat loaf. Third helping. Oh. My. God. “Maybe you’ll have sex tonight?” Darcy asks. “Is that why you came over?” My twelve-year-old sister, who sleeps with a stuffed fox, just asked the world’s number one chess player if he came over to bang me. And he just replies, matter-of-fact, “It seems unlikely. And no, it’s not why I came.” “Did you know Mal has sex with boys and girls?” Darcy adds. “I’m not outing her—she told me I could tell anyone.” Nolan glances at me. Lightning-quick. “I did not.”

“So, boys and girls?” Nolan shakes his head. “Nope.” “Mostly girls?” “No.” “Mostly boys?” “No.”

She and Darcy flank him on the couch, and Goliath is in his lap. (“What a strangely familiar beast,” Nolan said when she deposited him in his hands. “I wonder if I’ve recently seen a portrait of him.” I nearly forked him in the eye.)

“Does your family think we’re dating?” He doesn’t look upset. More in the ballpark of proud. “Who knows.” Probably. “Is it a problem?” I want him to say yes, and then throw in his face that it’s his fault for showing up unannounced. He thwarts my move. “Who doesn’t love a good fake dating scheme.” I arch my eyebrow. “I’m surprised you’re familiar with the concept.” “A friend is a huge Lara Jean fan. I sat through, like, six of her movies.” He means his girlfriend. “There are only three.” “Felt like more.”

“I want to play chess.” “You couldn’t find someone in New York? You had to drive all the way to New Jersey?” I’m assuming he owns the Lucid Air parked in front of the Abebes’ place. Because of course he’d own my dream car. “I don’t think you understand.” He holds my eyes. I think his throat moves. “I want to play chess with you, Mallory.” Oh. Oh? “Why?” “It should have been you, yesterday. It was . . . I had you there. In front of me, across the board.” His lips press together. “It should have been you.”

“Have you considered that Koch might be less of an all-around jerk to all of us if you spent a couple of minutes per week pretending to indulge his delusions of archrivalry?” “No.” “Right.”

fall quiet, because Darcy has navigated to a new page. It has a picture of two people: Nolan, looming darkly on one side of the board, shakes the hand of a blond girl wearing a flannel top that looks just like mine. Neither smiles or speaks, but they’re holding each other’s eyes in a way that seems almost intimate, and— My eyes fall on the title of the page: Who is Mallory Greenleaf, chess’s new breakout player? “Fuck.” “There’s a whole article about you.” “Fuck.” “And pictures.” “Fuck.” “And even a video, though I can’t make it work. I think pop-ups are blocked?” “Fuck fuck fuck.” Of course this shit’s online. The press was everywhere—what did I think they were going to do with the footage, scrapbook it? “Fuck.”

“And yet, you brought the Kingkiller into our house.” “How do you even know about—” “The Wikipedia entry was very thorough. Did you know that he once played Jeff Bezos for charity? He beat him in twenty seconds, then asked if the water bottle next to the chessboard was for peeing.” “A true hero of the working class. Darcy—” “Also, there’s tons of fanfiction on AO3, mostly of him making out with some Emil Kareem guy, but—” “What? How do you know what fanfiction is?” “I read it all the time.” “Excuse me?” “Chill. The PG-13 stuff.”

Have you known them for long?” “Forever. We trained together with . . .” He stops.

Her dad

“I wasn’t jealous. I couldn’t understand how someone could be so enthralled by the idea of being alone in a room with another person without a chessboard.” “But now you can?” He gives me a long look through his sunglasses. “Now I can.”

“You’re not here because I . . . ?” You’re not here because I’m here, are you? Come on, Mal. He’s not here because he’s still into that idea of playing against you. No way. He wants to hang out with his friends. Maybe he lied and he is into Tanu. Or Emil. Or both. Not my business. Who cares— “Yes,” he says. My internal monologue halts. “What?” “The reason you’re thinking.” His stupid, deep voice. Argh. “That’s why I’m here.”

I don’t even mind Nolan’s long, thoughtful, lingering looks. He always defeats his opponent quickly. Then he finds something warm to drink for the rest of the team, sets it by our boards, and comes to stand somewhere behind my opponent. His eyes alternate between me and my game, dark and focused and greedy in a way I don’t fully understand. He doesn’t fist-pump when I win. He doesn’t even tell me that I did good. He just nods once, like every single one of my victories is expected and his faith in me is as solid as a boulder.

I wake up tucked in my bed, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Someone took off my shoes, connected my phone to the charger, put a glass of water on my bedside. Someone took care of me. I don’t ask who.

“I thought he was incapable of caring at all before . . . well. On paper, he should have tons of game, but in reality he has very little.” She smiles reassuringly. I want to ask her why she assumes that I’d worry, or what before means,

I recognize her immediately. My stomach flips, then freezes into a block of concrete that should drag me through the floor. Instead, snippets of a four-year-old conversation swarm my head. Who was she? No one. But you were— No one, Mal.

“What’s wrong?” Nolan asks the second I step out of the bathroom. He’s been waiting for me, and I nearly face-plant into his chest. “I . . . Sorry about the draw.” “I don’t care. Who was that arbiter?” Shit. He noticed. “No one. I just . . .” I step around him, but one hand closes around my upper arm. “Mallory. You’re not okay. What just happened?” His tone is firm.

I wake up in the middle of the night, feeling more like myself. When I sneak out to use the bathroom, I find a brown bag outside my door. Inside are a sandwich, a Fanta, and a pack of Twizzlers.

Stop I'm crying.

I go back to focusing on my rapid game against a Sri Lankan girl I bonded with after noticing her Dragon Age Solas pin.

my heart

I grit my teeth. “I have no idea what you feel. Chess is a stupid board game, and—” “It is a stupid board game, but it’s yours. I see the way you look at the pieces. It’s your world, isn’t it? The one you choose for yourself, well within your boundaries. You can be the queen in it. The king. The knight. Whatever you want. There are rules, and if you learn them well enough, then you’ll be able to control it. You’ll be able to rescue the pieces you care about. So unlike real life, huh?” How dare he act like he knows me, like he— I hate him.

Nolan. Nolan will know. He’ll want to fix this, too. I need to get in touch with him, but how? I don’t have his number. Do I summon him with a pentagram made of rooks, or—Emil!

I can’t wait that long when someone is wrong about me on the internet.

I google Nolan. I have to comb through more results than anyone who’s barely twenty years old should have, including a Tumblr of him as a cat, and explicit erotic fanfiction of him and Percy Jackson sixty-nining on a hippocampus.

I’m a good person. I pick up Mrs. Abebe’s garbage can when the wind tips it over, smile at the dogs at the park, never make fun of people who say irregardless. I don’t deserve this.

“I like sex. It’s fun. It feels good—really good, sometimes. Especially when you’re in the mood and you do it with attractive or interesting people. I’m not ashamed of it.” “You shouldn’t be,” he says, but I can tell that he doesn’t completely get it. That sex, desire, are something he’s still wrapping his head around. “What about feeling closer to someone? Making a connection?” “Maybe. I’m sure sex means different things to different people, and they’re all valid.”

“Was it at least the best game of your life?” I ask. He stares into my eyes. “No. It wasn’t.” “Which one was, then?” More staring.

I put the soup in his Emil’s Little Bitch mug because it’s a mental image I deserve to have.

Just go nap while I waste my day watching Dragon Age playthroughs on your Wi-Fi.” “Dragon what?” And that’s how I find myself on Nolan’s leather couch, telling him about elves and eggheads and the end of the world, soothed by the video and by Nolan’s presence.

So what’s stopping me? Maybe it’s that I want it too much, I think.

“I don’t understand why you’re in my head.” “You’re in mine, too. But I know why.” I groan and make myself look at him. He’s not smiling anymore. “Just . . . what do you want from me?” “I want everything.” His tone is calm. Matter-of-fact. Naked, in a way that has nothing to do with his clothes. “I’m all in.”

I don’t want her pity. I want her to be with me because she wants to.” “Ah, yes.” He nods knowingly. His chin dips into the raised neck of his coat. “You do like being in charge.” “What do you mean?” “You like having the upper hand. Feeling like you’re doing something for others. Like you’re in control.” “No.” I frown. “That’s not it at all.” “I think it’s easier for you to be with people when you feel needed than when you need them. Less risky. Less messy, right?”

Excuse me I did not sign up for this therapy session Ali Hazelwood.

“Listen, I know you don’t like this, and I respect it, but you’re starting to sound nuts.” “And you would know crazy.” I say it calmly. Coldly. And even when I see something fracture in his eyes, I power through. “You don’t love anyone except for yourself. You’re manipulative, selfish. You’re alone, because your family hates you. And now I hate you, too.”

Woww

Here they are. The lies, the betrayal, the disappointment I was waiting for.

And that's the problem

I never cry. I didn’t cry when I told Mom about what Dad did. I didn’t cry when he packed his bags and left. I didn’t cry when we received that phone call from the highway patrol at five thirty in the morning. I didn’t cry when I declined my scholarship offers, when Bob fired me, in Defne’s car on my way back from Nolan’s house. I never cried, even when I wanted to, because when I asked myself if I had the right to those tears, the answer was always no, and it was easy to stop myself. But I’m sobbing now. I hide my face in my hands and wail loudly, messily, fat drops sliding down my face, pooling in my palms. At once, the last few years all feel so real. All my failures, my mistakes, my bad choices. All the losses, the minutes, and the hours spent going in the opposite direction of life,

I oscillate between being angry, begrudgingly wishing the best to her and the girl she’s Instagram-official with, and being taken aback when I find myself still on the verge of sending her a Dragon Age TikTok despite our lack of recent history.

“You’ve always been like this, and I don’t know how I could have forgotten. Even before your dad did what he did, you didn’t want to be a burden. Didn’t want to impose. You were always the leave ’em before they leave you kind of person.

I close my eyes, feeling my chest swell. “I love you. And I’m sorry. And I missed you.” I’m tearing up again. It’s like crying once tore down what used to be a very architectonically sound dam: in the past month I’ve sobbed while watching My Girl, after Darcy’s teacher told me that my sister is gifted, when Sabrina won her derby meet. I’m a crier now. Maybe I always was.

Easton blesses me with a Dragon Age playthrough. For a minute it feels like it used to be—the two of us, and Solas being an asshole on screen. When I turn to grin at her, I find that she’s already grinning at me. Then I remember something, and my smile slips. “What?” she asks. “Nothing. Just . . .” I shrug. “I watched one with Nolan once.” “A playthrough? Is that gem of a boy into DA?” “Not really.”