Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

“Merde,” my opponent murmurs before thrusting his hand at me, presumably to concede defeat. I take it with a shrug.

My second opponent is late. One minute. Two. Five. I’m playing White, and the tournament director encourages me to make the first move and start the clock, but it seems dickish.

As eliminations happen, the number of games per turn is dwindling. I can spot only a handful, all at distant tables, and notice that most of the remaining players seem to be around my age or just a little older. I remember something Defne said the other day, when she checked on whether I had upped my workout schedule (I had not): chess is a young person’s game, so physically, mentally, cognitively taxing, most of the top GMs start declining in their early thirties. The more I train, the more I believe it.

To pass the time, I doodle flowers on the scorecard, thinking about the email Darcy’s school sent: there are two kids with nut allergies in her class, and PB&Js won’t be allowed. They suggested sunflower seed butter, but I have a nonzero number of reasons to believe that if Darcy doesn’t like it, she’ll email CPS that I’m poisoning her—

“I am so sorry,” a British accent says. A tall guy folds into the chair across from mine. “There was a line for the bathroom, and I had three cups of coffee. The Hunger Games have nothing on the men’s restroom at a chess tournament. I’m Emil Kareem, nice to meet you.”

I straighten. “Mallory Greenleaf.”

“I know.” His smile is open and warm, teeth ivory- white against clean-shaven dark skin. He’s movie-star handsome— and he’s aware.

“Have we met before?” I ask.

“We have not.” He grins again, and the dimple on his left cheek deepens. There’s something familiar about him, and it doesn’t occur to me what it is until three moves in.

He’s the guy from the pool. Running. Wearing red trunks. Splashing water all over me and Nolan Sawyer, giving me a way out. I should probably weigh the ramifications of this information, but Emil is too good a player for me to let my mind drift. His style is careful, positional with bursts of aggressive advances. It takes me several moves to get used to him, and even longer to mount a sensible counterattack.

“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.

“Are you a pro?” I ask.

“Nah. I have a life.”

I laugh. “What do you do?”

“I’m a senior at NYU. Economics.” I tilt my head to study him. I thought he’d be closer to my age. “I’m nineteen, but I skipped a few grades,” he says, reading my mind.

“Are you a Grandmaster?”

“At this stage of the tournament, every player is. Except for you,” he says, with no malice and a lot of relish. “You’re going to send several of them weeping into the men’s restroom.”

“They seem to be more likely to key my car.”

“Just the wankers. Let me guess— you met Koch?”

I nod.

“Ignore him. He’s a pitiful little slug, forever bitter because he once popped a boner on national television.”

“No way.”

“Oh, yeah. Prize- giving ceremony at Montreal Chess. Puberty’s a bitch, and so’s the internet. They meme’d it into eternity. Just like that time he played an entire match against Kasparov with a ginormous booger dangling from his nose. That shit scars you.”

I cover my mouth. “It’s his supervillain origin story.”

“It’s not easy growing up as a prodigy in front of the cameras— journalists are merciless. When Koch was sixteen and decided to grow a goatee? Everyone took pictures. No one told him that he looked like his own malnourished evil twin with an iron deficiency.”

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.

I clear my throat. “Have you been playing for long?”

“Since forever. My family moved to the United States when I was little so I’d have the best training available. But unlike all these people”— he gestures around the room— “I only love chess a reasonable amount. I’d rather work in finance and play the occasional tournament for fun. It also doesn’t help when your closest friend is the best player the sport has seen in a couple hundred years. You keep losing your Spider- Man action figures to him. Makes you rethink your priorities.”

I frown. “What do you— ”

“White moves forward,” the tournament director says, interrupting us. “Next round’s in ten minutes.”

I hate cutting my chat with Emil short, even more so when I find Defne outside, sitting next to a sullen, gloomy, seething Oz.

“What happened?” I ask.

“My wedding planner is out of peonies. What do you think happened? I lost.” He glares. “This entire tournament could have been an email.”