Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

“No.” He’s not lying. Does he ever lie? “Maybe it should. But.” He lets that but dangle mysteriously.

“Why?”

He clucks his tongue. “You haven’t earned a question.” New grid. New game. New victory for Nolan. It’s my turn to slam my fist on the table. Nolan’s bottle, now empty, clinks against the cheap plastic, and irritation bubbles up my throat. Screw this game.

“Are you cheating?” I ask, acid. Angry.

“No. But it’s fascinating how your performance suffers when you lose your composure. You might want to work on that.”

“I’m not losing my composure, and my tic- tac- toe performance is hardly— ”

“Question,” he interrupts, a new edge to his voice. “Why do you pretend you don’t want this?”

“This?”

He gestures around himself. But then he says, “Chess. Why do you pretend you don’t want to play it?”

“You don’t know me,” I bristle. “I just don’t like chess that much.”

He shakes his head with a small smile and draws another grid— then wins easily when I fumble. My hands are shaking, and I’m so done with—

“You feel it, too, don’t you, Mallory?” His tone is pressing. Low. “When you play, you feel the same thing I feel.”

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.

I don’t remember the last time I’ve been this angry. There’s bile churning in my stomach. I tear the flier from his hand and make another grid, almost ripping the paper in the process. It takes seven tries, but I finally win.

“What the hell do you want from me?” I snap, leaning closer with a glare.

He lifts one eyebrow.

“Because I don’t understand,” I nearly yell. “Why are you here when you have a tournament next week? Why do you presume to know anything about me? Why do you even care about my thoughts on chess— ” I end with an angry, beastly noise.

If Nolan is affected, he doesn’t show it. “I thought you were starting to get an idea.”

“I’m not. Just tell me what you want and— ”

A loud sound.

I turn to the door. Tanu and the others are walking inside, holding a stack of take- out pizzas, yelling something about pepperoni and anchovy discounts. I realize how close I am to Nolan and pull back. He keeps staring at me, the ghost of a sad smile on his lips.

“I guess the game is over,” he says, getting to his feet to help Tanu. “Goodnight, Mallory. And good luck.”





Darcy loves the guinea pig hoodie I bought her (“though it’s a copout, as Goliath will not want to copulate with a 2D piggy”) and even Sabrina is impressed with her new maple leaf skates that I almost missed my plane to buy and nearly couldn’t fit into my luggage.

But her love for me comes and goes. “You’re the best!” she tells me on Wednesday, after I give her a ride to McKenzie’s. But on Thursday, when I find her crying in the living room over something McKenzie posted on social media, it’s “Why do you have to be so nosy? Why can’t you ever mind your own business?”

“If they find my corpse in a ditch,” I say to Mom, “tell the police not to look into her. She probably did it, but I don’t want her to spend her life in prison.”

“It’s not just you. She’s mad at the entire world.”

“Was I this intense at fourteen?” It’s such a ridiculous question. I’m still eighteen, but I feel as ancient as the lady from Titanic. Except when I compare myself with Easton and feel stuck in some pubescent stage.

“I once asked you to stop leaving the peanut butter jar open, and you called me a dictator.”

I groan. “Will Darcy be like this, too?”

“Yup.” She pats my shoulder. “Though she’ll leave the Nutella open.”

All in all, though, I come back from my trip to the puzzling revelation that no life- threatening emergencies occurred, and that without me, my family . . . did just fine. I’m half shocked, half relieved.

Oz and Defne are at the Pasternak, which means that I’m mostly unsupervised. I should use the extra time to catch up on the García Márquez readathon I signed up for on Goodreads, memorize the world capitals, dye my hair vomit green. Anything, really. Instead, I study Nolan’s games.

The fury of our last night in Toronto has settled into cold resentment. Nolan said lots of things about me, some of which were correct— by pure coincidence. Broken clock, twice a day. Still, he had no right. His question game was stupid. I hope to never see him again. Probably won’t.

But I do want to study the aggravating masterpieces that are his games, and my hands itch to pull them up on the chess engine. I revel in his delicious ability to wear down his opponents, deprive them of active play, and then strike like a tiger. I’m developing a more- than- mild obsession, and that’s probably why I’m thinking of him when I match up with a guy named Alex on an app on Sunday night.