Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

Sabrina doesn’t talk to me once, but I manage to corner her in her room just before leaving. “Everything okay?” I ask. As early as weeks ago, the picture above her nightstand was of me giving her a piggyback ride in a pumpkin patch. Now it’s a collage: her derby team, some school friends, even a Polaroid of Mom and Darcy making faces.

I’ve been deleted.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around. But I’m earning really good money with this overnight thing.”

“Good for you,” she says distractedly, rummaging in her drawer, looking for a derby T-shirt she promised Nolan since it’s too big on me anyway.

“How has Mom been?”

“Fine.”

“Right. And Darcy?”

“Good. She’s actually almost bearable when you aren’t around. You must be a bad influence.”

I stifle an eye roll. “And you?”

“Fine.”

I sigh. “Sabrina, can I have your attention for sixty seconds?”

She finally looks up. Annoyed. “Mom’s fine. Darcy’s fine. I’m fine. The entire damn world is fine.”

“I’m serious. I rely on you to man the fort and tell me if I’m needed, so— ”

“Oh, now you care?” Her blue eyes shine with tears. For a second, I see genuine hurt in them, and my heart lurches in my chest. But it’s all gone in a blink, and her expression suddenly turns half uncaring, half hard. Maybe I imagined all the rest.

“Excuse me?” I ask.

She walks to me. I still have a couple of inches on her. Will she grow more? God, she’s fifteen. “We’re fine, Mal. We can function without you.”

“Well, last time I left, you seemed pretty upset, so— ”

“We’re fine. You can put your power trip away. No one needs to ‘man the fort.’ Mom, Darcy, and I are people and can take care of ourselves. We’re not pets you need to feed and walk.” She steps past me, T-shirt in hand. A surge of irritation courses through me— seriously? Seriously? Do I deserve this?— and I slap the doorframe. It only gets me a splinter stuck in my palm.

When we leave, they wave at us from the porch. “Come back soon, Nolan,” Darcy yells.

“And don’t feel like you need to bring Mallory with you,” Sabrina adds archly.

“What’s up with that?” Nolan asks once we’re on the road.

“You mean, with the way my sister would love to drown me in a barrel of mead?”

His mouth twitches. “I did sense some animosity.”

“I’m not sure.” I sigh. “I’m doing my best with her. I make sure she has everything she needs and nothing to worry about.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“When you’re with your sisters, you act like they’re your responsibility. Like you’re their parent, almost. It works with Darcy, but Sabrina might find it infantilizing.” He shrugs. “Maybe she just wants you to be her sister.”

“What do you even know about sisters?”

“Nothing. What do you know about defensiveness?”

I cannot help laughing, and then we fall quiet for a while. Nolan drives like he plays, steady and focused, and for once I don’t feel antsy for not being at the wheel. I let my eyes wander over the halo of the streetlights, the snow weighing down the pine trees, his firm hand as he shifts gears, like he’s moving a bishop across the board.

He’s thinking about chess. He’s thinking about the Koch game we analyzed this morning, the one with the Queen’s Gambit that he lost to Davies three years ago. I know it. Not sure how I know what’s in Nolan’s head, or when it started, but here I am. Knowing.

“Knight e5 was a stupid move,” I say.

He doesn’t skip a beat. “Koch’s attacks backfire a lot. Well.” He shrugs. “Backfired. Before he ate spinach and got an upgrade.”

“It might be a good strategy, luring him into becoming aggressive.”

“Yeah.”

I think wistfully about the tactics I’d use against Nolan if I were the challenger. He’s such an unpredictable player, always thinking of long- term advantages, of seemingly silent moves to exploit later, unexpectedly. I’ve heard commentators say that our styles are similar, but I think we’re oceans apart. I like to strangle my opponent, wear them down slowly, drain them of active play and attack possibilities one by one, until it’s just us— me and their king.

But Nolan would know how to deal with me. What to be on the lookout for. To beat him, I’d have to learn to let go of minute positional advantages and take more overt risks, earlier on. I watch him stretch his neck, strong muscles tensing under his skin, and think that maybe it would work, seducing him into a blunder. Maybe it wouldn’t, but it would keep him on his toes. He’d give me one of those long, knowing looks. Smile, even. He’d smile at me, and I’d get to smile back as I took his king.

It sounds like a dream. A thing imagined.

“Darcy pulled me into your room,” he says, “and conspiratorially whispered that she’s ‘in the know.’ ”

“Unlike Mom and Sabrina, she googles. Probably hangs out on the dark web. Signs up Goliath for Piggie- Tinder.”