Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

A FIDE employee asks me to stand. She takes my elbow to guide me off the podium. I follow her past Nolan’s chair, and when my hand brushes against his shoulder blade, I’m not sure whether it’s an accident or desperation.

I step out of the room knowing that he hasn’t looked at me a single time.



I STAY AT THE GALA FOR LESS THAN TEN MINUTES. I’M chewing on my fifth bruschetta and craning my neck, on the lookout for broad shoulders and cropped dark curls, when Defne whisks me away with a hand on my wrist. “Okay, you made your appearance. Now we leave.” Her bright red lips stick to a polite smile as she crisscrosses me through the crowd.

“But I only just got there. And the bruschetta is amazing.”

“And you gotta be in bed by nine, since tomorrow’s the most important game of your career.”

“Is it? Because as far as I know, I have twelve coming up.”

“The first one sets the tone, Mal.”

“I . . . Won’t it be rude to leave?”

“Maybe.” She pulls me up the stairs. “But your opponent didn’t even bother showing up. As long as his rudeness eclipses yours, you’re golden.”

That’s how I end up wearing my jammies at 8:53, tucked in, pillow punched underneath my head. Easton slides in on her side of the bed, Darcy curls right between us, and Sabrina settles at the foot of the mattress.

A veritable slumber party.

“According to my trainer, I should be asleep in five minutes,” I point out.

“Ah, yes.” Sabrina doesn’t look up from her phone. “Is Defne going to come burp you, too?”

“Come on, Sabrina,” Easton scolds her. “You know she first needs a diaper change.”

We argue for the longest time over what to watch on the 8K TV. Then we give up on finding a movie that won’t be vetoed by at least one other person, and settle for pulling up random You-Tube videos. After nine centuries of surprisingly violent roller derby footage that have me worried for the state of Sabrina’s brain, Easton blesses me with a Dragon Age playthrough. For a minute it feels like it used to be— the two of us, and Solas being an asshole on screen. When I turn to grin at her, I find that she’s already grinning at me. Then I remember something, and my smile slips.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing. Just . . .” I shrug. “I watched one with Nolan once.”

“A playthrough? Is that gem of a boy into DA?”

“Not really.”

“Ah. I’ve seen your press conference, by the way. Nice job making it look like you totally despise him even when he said nothing but super- nice things about you.”

“I didn’t.”

“Yes, you did,” Darcy and Sabrina say in chorus, without tearing their eyes from the TV.

“Whatever.” I roll my eyes. Because they’re right. “He hasn’t really . . . Maybe he said mediumly nice things, but don’t be fooled. He hasn’t acknowledged my presence.”

“Mmm.” Easton nods. “Have you considered acknowledging his first? Maybe be like, ‘Hey, whadup, I didn’t really mean the many horrible things I said about you.’ ”

“Right.” I clear my throat. Look away. “No.”

“Did you call him a bitch, too?” Darcy asks.

I tilt my chin up and groan. “I refuse to engage on this topic with anyone who’s under eighteen, or with anyone who’s over eighteen but needs a twenty- five- minute pep talk to add a heart emoji to a text,” I declare. But ten minutes later, while a Texan lady nurses an injured bat back to health (Darcy’s selection), I start composing a text. The most recent blue bubbles are dated January 9, middle of the night: the response to my Either Emil’s really good at sex or he’s gutting Tanu, was You mean, it’s not a foghorn that woke me up? I half smile and write:

can we talk?

Then I delete it. And type again:

you’re right about some things. maybe not all of them. but I overreac

Delete.

did you know in your 2016 game against Lal you missed a checkmate. nice queening, though.

Delete, delete, delete.

im sorry about

Delete.

hi.

I don’t hit Send. But I leave it there, in the typing box. And when I set my phone against my chest and go back to watching TV, it feels several pounds heavier than ever before.





After a match— usually during one of those press conferences that I always assume will have twelve viewers but instead are streamed by hundreds of thousands of nerds like me— people will ask me how, in a specific moment, at a specific turn of the game, I decided what to do. How did you know to sacrifice the pawn? Why that trade? Rook e6 was perfect— what made you think of that?

People ask me. And all I can say is: I just knew.

Instinct, maybe. Something innate within myself that helps chess come together like a fully formed shape. A rudimentary, gut understanding of how things could be if I let myself follow a path.

The pieces tell me a story. They draw pictures and ask me to color them in. Each one, with its hundreds of possible moves, billions of possible combinations, is like a beautiful skein of yarn. I can unspool it if I like, then weave it together with others to create a beautiful tapestry. A new tapestry.

Ideally, a winning tapestry.

If it hadn’t been for Dad, that instinct would have stayed coarse, unspun within me. If it hadn’t been for years of hard work, of practicing, studying, analyzing, thinking, reliving, obsessing, playing, playing, playing, my instinct would be worth very little. If it hadn’t been for Defne, after falling asleep for four years, it would have stayed dormant.