Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

BRET EASTON ELLIS: Mal, no.

BRET EASTON ELLIS: Mal, please. Anything else.

BRET EASTON ELLIS: Mal, they’re TERRIFYING.

MALLORY:

“Hey, Greenleaf! I don’t pay you to browse Instagram or buy avocado sandwiches. Get to work.”

I roll my eyes. Internally. “Wrong generation, Bob.”

“Whatever. Get. To. Work.”

I slide my phone into my coveralls, sigh, and do just that.



“MAL, SABRINA JUST PINCHED MY ARM AND CALLED ME A DICK-breath!”

“Mal, Darcy just yawned in my face with her gross, smelly dickbreath!”

I sigh, continuing to prepare my sisters’ oatmeals. Cinnamon, skim milk, no sugar or “I’ll stab you, Mal. Ever heard of something called health?” (Sabrina); peanut butter, store- brand Nutella, banana, and “Could you add a bit more Nutella, please? I’m trying to grow a foot before eighth grade!” (Darcy).

“Mallory, Darcy just farted on me!”

“No— Sabrina is a douchewad who put herself in ass range!”

I absentmindedly lick discount Nutella off the spoon, fantasizing about pouring nail polish remover in the oatmeal. Just a dollop. Maybe two.

There would be some cons, such as the untimely demise of the two people I love most in the world. But the pros? Unbeatable. No more middle-of-the- night, likely- rabid bites on the toes from Goliath. No more vicious verbal abuse for washing Sabrina’s pink bra, for misplacing Sabrina’s pink bra, for allegedly stealing Sabrina’s pink bra, for not keeping abreast of the whereabouts of Sabrina’s pink bra. No more Timothée Chalamet posters staring creepily at me from the walls.

Just me, sharpening my shiv in the peaceful silence of a New Jersey prison cell.

“Mallory, Darcy is being a total poopstain— ”

I drop the spoon and stalk to the bathroom. It takes about three steps— the Greenleaf estate is small and not quite solvent.

“If you two don’t shut up,” I say with my most hard- ass 8:00 a.m. voice, “I’m going to take you to the farmers market and trade you for cotton candy grapes.”

Something weird happened last year: almost overnight, my two sweet little dumplings, who used to be the best of friends, became rival swamp hags. Sabrina turned fourteen, and began acting as though she was too cool to be genetically related to us; Darcy turned twelve, and . . . well. Darcy stayed the same. Always reading, always precocious, always too observant for her own good. Which, I believe, is the reason Sabrina used her allowance to buy a new lock and kick her out of the room they shared. (I took Darcy in— hence Timothée Chalamet’s Mona- Lisa- effect eyes and the forthcoming rabies.)

“Oh my God.” Darcy rolls her eyes. “Relax, Mallory.”

“Yes, Mallory. Unclench your butthole.”

Oh, yeah: the only time these ingrates manage to get along? When they’re ganging up against me. Mom says it’s puberty. I lean toward demonic possession, but who knows? What I do know for sure is that imploring, tearing up, or even trying to reason with them are not effective techniques. Any display of weakness is seized, exploited, and always ends with me being blackmailed into buying them ridiculous things, like Ed Sheeran body pillows or graduation hats for guinea pigs. My motto is rule through fear. Never negotiate with those hormonal, anarchic, bloodthirsty sharks.

God, I love them so much I could cry.

“Mom’s asleep,” I hiss. “I swear, if you’re not quiet I’m going to write dickbreath and douchewad on your foreheads in permanent marker and send you out into the world like that.”

“Might want to rethink that,” Darcy points out, wagging her toothbrush at me, “or we’ll sic Child Protective Services on you.”

Sabrina nods. “Possibly even the police.”

“Can she afford the legal fees?”

“No way. Good luck with your overworked, underpaid, courtappointed defense attorney, Mal.”

I lean against the doorframe. “Now you two agree on something.”

“We always agreed that Darcy’s a dickbreath.”

“I am not— you are a ho-bag.”

“If you wake Mom up,” I threaten, “I’m going to flush you both down the toilet— ”

“I’m awake! No need to clog the plumbing, sweetheart.” I turn around. Mom ambles down the hallway, shaky on her feet, and the bottom of my stomach twists. Mornings have been tough for the past month. For the entire summer, really. I glance back at Darcy and Sabrina, who at least have the decency to look contrite. “Now that I’m up with the chickens, can I have hugs from my favorite Russian dolls?”

Mom likes to joke that my sisters and I, with our white- blond hair, dark blue eyes, and rosy oval faces, are slightly smaller versions of each other. Maybe Darcy got all the freckles, and Sabrina has fully embraced the VSCO aesthetic, and I . . . If there weren’t so many five- dollar boho chic outfits at Goodwill, I wouldn’t look like an Alexis Rose cosplayer. But there’s no doubt that the three Greenleaf girls were made with a cookie cutter— and not Mom’s, given her once- dark, now- graying hair and tanned skin. If she minds that we take so much after Dad, she’s never mentioned it.

“Why are you guys up?” she asks against Darcy’s forehead before moving on to Sabrina. “Do you have practice?”