The Queen's Gambit

by Walter Tevis

Something in her life was solved: she knew about the chess pieces and how they moved and captured, and she knew how to make herself feel good in the stomach and in the tense joints of her arms and legs, with the pills the orphanage gave her.

“But, Beth,” Mrs. Wheatley said, “it makes you a celebrity!” Beth looked at her thoughtfully, “For being a girl, mostly,” she said.

Beth sat through it, not participating in the gossip and laughter during the commercials, until it ended at eleven. She was astounded at the dullness of the evening. This was the elite Apple Pi Club that had seemed so important when she first went to school in Lexington, and this was what they did at their sophisticated parties: they watched a Charles Bronson movie.