Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

I dry my eyes and shuffle downstairs to steal a sandwich from the lounge area. Some of the other challengers are sitting there, eating and drinking and laughing. They’re all going to be playing tomorrow, but the stakes are low for them. Their tournament is over.

Davies, the British guy I beat on day two, notices me and beckons me closer. My previous informal interactions with other chess players have taught me to just . . . not, but I can’t believably pretend I didn’t see him. I go to him, clutching my caprese panini, fully expecting some version of She doesn’t even go here. The group quiets. “Greenleaf, we need to ask you something.”

I brace myself. “Yeah?”

“A favor. Not a question.”

The bracing intensifies. “What’s that?”

“Could you please massacre Koch tomorrow?”

Everyone laughs. At me? With? “Excuse me?”

“We’d be really grateful if you could humiliate the shit out of him,” someone adds.

“Every time he loses, a dragon shits a goldbrick.”

“Sex is good, but have you ever heard Koch’s little whine when he’s checkmated?”

“Basically,” Davies cuts through the others, “we despise him as a human being and we’d revel in any unhappiness you could provide for him.”

“Please, Greenleaf, don’t doodle on the score sheet.”

This time when everyone laughs, I join in. “Wow. And there I was, thinking I was alone in my revulsion.”

“No way. He’s been a total dickhead to every single one of us.”

“And his stupid tricks. When he trash- talks during a game while you’re trying to focus.”

“Or when he starts walking in circles around the chessboard. I’m thinking about the next move and he’s making me dizzy!”

“You’ve only been dealing with him for a few months—we had to put up with his cologne phase.”

“Sauvage by Christian Dior. Jesus.”

“He bathed in it.”

“I’m pretty sure he drank it.”

I shake my head, laughing. “I’d love to win. I just don’t know if I can.”

“You are an alchemist,” Thagard- Vork says kindly. “You can do anything you want, Greenleaf.” I feel myself flush.

“Hey, Greenleaf.” Kawamura. “Are you on Discord?”

“Discord?”

“The messaging app. We have a server with most of the toptwenty players. We talk chess, gossip about FIDE, the usual. I’d love to send you an invite.”

“Oh.” I scratch my neck, looking around. These guys range from my age to late thirties. Would I even fit in? “I’m not in the top twenty.”

They laugh. Someone says, “Yet,” and they laugh harder.

“Koch isn’t in it, by the way. Which is great, since we have a whole channel dedicated to him.”

“And we’d rather crap glass twice a day than voluntarily interact with him.”

“Our love language is anti- Koch memes.” More laughter.

“Nolan’s also not in it.”

“But we did invite him. He declined.”

“Yeah, we don’t hate Sawyer. Though he did used to be a little shit,” Petek says.

“He just used to be a teenager,” Kawamura says. More laughter. The mix of accents and intonations is almost musical, and it makes me feel a little uncultured. I barely speak English. I don’t really know the difference between lay and lie, and I keep forgetting when to stick an apostrophe in your.

“But Sawyer is not important, you see,” Davies explains. “We can’t beat him— no one can, except for you. So we like to pretend he doesn’t exist.”

Petek clears his throat and turns to me conspiratorially, voice pitched low. “Please don’t tell Sawyer I said that he used to be a little shit. He’s really fit, and I have a wife and two beautiful daughters back home who would really miss me. I’m teaching them to play chess, and they were rooting for you during our game. They wouldn’t mind an autograph, actually.”

“Why would I tell . . . Oh. Oh. No, Nolan and I . . . we’re not really dating. We’re barely friends. Don’t believe the press.”

“I usually don’t. But I thought that might be true, since he showed up for the Challengers. He usually doesn’t. My apologies. Would you like to see a photo of my family?”

Like it’s becoming a habit of mine, I lean forward to see the picture, and pretend I didn’t hear the rest.





The match between Koch and me is delayed, because the livestreaming demands are record high and something needs to be done to adjust FIDE’s website’s capacity. It takes about twenty minutes to fix it, which I spend in the lounge, eyes closed. I try to think about nothing, but flashes of critical positions pop up behind my eyelids, snatches of earworms I cannot purge.

Koch and I are alone on the stage. I’m wearing the longsleeved white maxi dress that Darcy and Sabrina call “my Corpse Bride outfit,” purely because it’s Mom’s favorite.

I think I need a hug.

But I also think I might be able to win this, if I manage not to go all Bob Ross over my score sheet.

I do what Tanil (God, it’s catchy) recommended and open with the Ruy Lopez. It’s the opening Koch has the worst track record with, and I’m happy to be playing White. He answers with the Berlin variation, and I reply with the anti- Berlin. A couple more moves, and Koch castles short.