Check & Mate

“Mal?”

“Mal.”

“Maaaaaaal!”

I blink awake. Darcy’s nose is pressed up against mine, eyes Galápagos- blue in the morning light.

I yawn. “What’s going on?”

“Ew, Mal.” She recoils. “Why does your breath smell like a skunk during mating season?”

“I . . . is everything okay?”

“Yes. I made my own oatmeal this morning. We’re out of Nutella.”

I sit up, or some approximation of it. Rub sleep out of my eyes. “Yesterday we had more than half a jar left— ”

“And today we’re out. The circle of life, Mal.”

“Are Mom and Sabrina okay?”

“Yup. McKenzie and her dad picked up Sabrina. Mom’s fine. She got up, then went back to bed because she was having a rough morning. But there’s someone at the door for you.”

“Someone at the— ?”

Memories of yesterday slowly begin to surface.

Sawyer’s king, held in check by my queen. Tripping on the sidewalk as I ran to the train. Texting Easton about a made-up emergency, then turning off my phone. The dull urban landscape outside the train’s windows, ever morphing into a chessboard. Then the rest of the night— a Veronica Mars marathon with my sister, my head emptied out of everything else.

Not to brag, but I’m good at compartmentalizing. Together with always picking the best item on the menu, it’s my greatest talent. That’s how I made myself get over chess years ago. And that’s how I manage to survive day by day without hyperventilating about all sorts of stuff. It’s either compartmentalizing or going broke buying inhalers.

“Tell Easton that— ”

“Not Easton.” Darcy flushes. “Though you could invite her over. Maybe this afternoon— ”

Not Easton? “Who, then?”

“A random person.”

I groan. “Darcy, I told you: when people from millenarian restorationist Christian denominations come knocking— ”

“— we politely inform them that eternal salvation is beyond us, I know, but it’s someone else. They asked for you by name, not for the head of the household.”

“Okay.” I scratch my forehead. “Okay— tell them I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Cool. Oh, and also, this arrived yesterday. Addressed to Mom, but . . .” She holds out an envelope. My eyes are still blurry. I have to blink to read, but when I do, my stomach twists.

“Thank you.”

“It’s a reminder, right?”

“No.”

“That we have to pay the mortgage?”

“No. Darcy— ”

“Do you have the money?”

I force myself to smile. “Don’t worry about it.”

She nods, but before stepping out she says, “I pocketed it when the mailman brought it. Mom and Sabrina haven’t seen it.” The freckles on her nose are shaped like a cloudy heart, and with the single neuron currently working in my brain I contemplate how unfair it is that she needs to worry about this stuff. She’s twelve. When I was twelve, my life was boba and refreshing chess.com.

I slip on dirty shorts and yesterday’s tee. Given Darcy’s gentle feedback, I decide to gargle with mouthwash while I turn on my phone. I discover that it’s 9:13, and that I have a million notifications. I swipe away dating app matches, Instagram and TikTok alerts, News highlights. I scroll through my texts from Easton (a panicked string, followed by Essay question: what does Nolan Sawyer smell like? Two paragraphs or longer and a picture of her vengefully biting into a cookie- macaron), then head outside.

I’m not sure who I expect to find. Definitely not a tall woman with a pixie haircut, a full sleeve of tattoos, and more piercings than I can count. She turns around with a grin, and her lips are a bold, perfect red. She must be in her late twenties, if not older.

“Sorry,” she says, pointing at her cigarette. Her voice is low and amused. “Your sister said you were sleeping and I thought you’d take longer. You’re not going to start smoking because you saw me smoke, right?”

I feel myself smile back. “Doubtful.”

“Good. You never know, the impressionability of the youths.” She puts out the butt, wraps it in a napkin, and pockets it, either to avoid polluting or to conceal her DNA.

Okay, no more Veronica Mars for me.

“You’re Mallory, right?”

I cock my head. “Have we met?”

“Nope. I’m Defne. Defne Bubikoğlu— but unless you speak Turkish, I wouldn’t try to pronounce it. It’s nice to meet you. I’m a fan.”

I let out a laugh. Then realize she’s serious. “Excuse me?”

“Anyone who trounces Nolan Sawyer like you did gets a lifetime supply of admiration from me.” She points to herself with a flourish. “Free home delivery, too.”

I stiffen. Oh, no. No, no. What is this? “I’m sorry. You have the wrong person.”

She frowns. “You’re not Mallory Greenleaf?”

I take a step back. “Yes. But it’s a common name— ”

“Mallory Virginia Greenleaf, who played yesterday?” She takes out her phone, taps at it, then holds it out with a smile. “If this is not you, you have some serious identity theft issues.”

She has pulled up a video. A TikTok of a young woman checkmating Nolan Sawyer with her queen. There are wisps of whiteblond hair falling across the side of her face, and her eyeliner is smudged.

I can’t believe Easton didn’t tell me that my eyeliner looked like shit.

Also, I can’t believe that this stupid video was taken and it has over twenty thousand likes. Are there even twenty thousand people who play chess?

“What was up with the dramatic exit, by the way?” she asks. “Did you double- park?”

“No. I— okay, that is me.” I run a hand down my face. I need coffee. And a time machine, to go back to when I agreed to help Easton. Maybe I could go back even further, just murder our entire friendship. “The game . . . It was a fluke.”

Defne’s brow furrows. “A fluke?”

“Yeah. I know that it looks like I’m some kind of . . . chess talent, but I don’t play. Sawyer must be in some kind of funk, and— ” I stop. Defne is laughing and laughing. Apparently, I’m hilarious.

“You mean, the current world chess champion? Who also happens to be the current rapid and blitz champion? In a funk?”

I press my lips together. “He can be the current champion and still be having a bad month.”

“Unlikely, since he won Sweden Chess last week.”

“Well,” I scramble, “he’s tired because of all the winning, and— ”

“Dude, stop.” She takes one step closer, and I smell something pleasantly citrusy mixed with the tobacco. “You won against the best player in the world. You completely blindsided him in a damn good game— the way you feinted a feint? How you got yourself out of that pin? Your queen? Stop putting yourself down and take credit for it— you think Nolan would be half as reticent? You think any guy would be?”

Defne is yelling. With the corner of my eye I see Mrs. Abebe, my neighbor, stare at us from her yard, a clear Do you need saving? in her eyes. I subtly shake my head. Defne just seems like a very passionate, very loud cheerleader. I think I might even like her. Despite the fact that she’s here to talk about chess.

“I can’t be the first person to win against Sawyer,” I say. As a matter of fact, I know I’m not. I studied his play, back when I still . . . studied plays. Antonov- Sawyer, 2013, Rome. Sawyer-Shankar, 2016, Seattle. Antoni- Sawyer, 2012—

“No, but it’s been a while. And when people win against him, it’s because he makes dumb mistakes— which he didn’t, not that I could see. It’s just that you were . . . better.”

“I’m not— ”

“And it’s not like this is your first feat when it comes to chess.”

I shake my head, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I looked you up, and . . .” She glances at her phone. Her case says, Check, mate! on a galaxy background. “There are articles of you winning tournaments in the area, and pics of you doing blindfolded simultaneous exhibitions— you were an adorable kid, by the way. I’m surprised you didn’t play in rated tournaments, ’cause you’d have killed it.”

I might be flushing. “My mother didn’t want me to,” I say, without quite knowing why.

Defne’s eyes widen. “Your mother doesn’t support you playing chess?”

“No, nothing like that. She just . . .”

Mom loved that I played. She even learned the rules to be able to follow my never- ending chess- related chatter. However, she also didn’t shy away from pushing back against Dad. For most of my childhood, the greatest hit in the Greenleaf household was Dad insisting that someone as good as I was at manipulating numbers and pattern recognitions should be cultivated into a pro; Mom replying that she didn’t want me dealing with the hyper- competitive, hyper- individualistic environment of rated chess from a young age; Sabrina emerging from her room to ask flatly, When you’re done arguing about your favorite daughter, can we maybe have dinner? In the end, they agreed that I’d start competing in the rated divisions of tournaments when I was fourteen.

Then I turned fourteen, and everything changed.

“I wasn’t interested.”

“I see. You’re Archie Greenleaf’s daughter, aren’t you? I think I met him— ”

“I’m sorry,” I interrupt her sharply. Sharper than I mean to, because of the sour taste in my throat. The things she’s saying, it’s like unearthing a corpse. “I’m sorry,” I repeat, gentler. “Was there . . . Is there a reason you’re here?”

“Right, yes.” If she’s offended by my bluntness, she doesn’t let it show. Instead she surprises me by saying, “I’m here to offer you a job.”

I blink. “A job?”

“Yup. Wait— are you a minor? Because if so, one of your parents should probably— ”

“I’m eighteen.”

“Eighteen! Are you heading off to college?”

“No.” I swallow. “I’m done with school.”

“Perfect, then.” She smiles like she’s giving me a gift. Like I’m about to be happy. Like the idea of making me happy makes her happy. “Here’s the deal: I run a chess club. Zugzwang, in Brooklyn, over by— ”

“I’ve heard of it.” Marshall might be the oldest, most renowned club in New York, but in the last few years Zugzwang has become known for attracting a less traditional crowd. It has a TikTok account that sometimes goes viral, community engagement, stripchess tournaments. I vaguely remember hearing about a more-or-less acerbic rivalry between Marshall and Zugzwang— which would explain her glee at my beating Sawyer, a Marshall member.

“Here’s the deal: some of our members decide to use their overgrown chess brains for something that isn’t chess, and— well, they go out in the world, get jobs in finance and other lucrative, amoral fields, make tons of money, and looove tax write- offs. Long story short, we have a bunch of donors. And this year we instituted a fellowship.”

“A fellowship?” Does she want to hire me to keep track of donors? Does she think I’m an accountant?

“It’s a one- year salary for a player who has the potential to go pro. You’d be mentored and sent to tournaments on our tab. The primary goal is to give a head start to promising young chess players. The secondary goal is for me to eat popcorn while you hand Nolan his ass, again. But that’s not, like, a must.”

I scratch my nose. “I don’t understand.”

“Mallory, I’d love for you to be this year’s Zugzwang fellow.”

I don’t immediately parse her words. Then I do, and I still have to turn them around in my head over and over, because I’m not sure I heard them correctly.

Did she just offer to pay me to play chess?

This is wild. Incredible. This fellowship— it’s like the stuff of dreams. Life changing. Everything fourteen- year- old Mallory Greenleaf would have wished for.

Too bad fourteen- year- old Mallory Greenleaf is nowhere in sight.

“I’m sorry,” I tell Defne. She’s still looking at me with a bright, happy expression. “I told you, I don’t play anymore.”

The bright, happy expression darkens a little. “Why?”

I like her. I really like her, and for a moment I almost consider explaining things to her. Stuff. Life. My sisters, and Mom, and roller derby fees. Bob, and changing windshield wipers, and the fact that I don’t need a one- year fellowship but a job that will be there next year, and the year after, and the one after that. Dad, and the memories, and the night I swore to myself that I was done with chess. Forever.

It seems like too much for a first meeting, so I condense the truth. “I’m just not interested.”

She’s instantly subdued. Her brow furrows in a slight frown and she studies me for a long while, as though realizing that there might be something she doesn’t know about me. Ha. “Tell you what,” she says eventually. “I’m going to get going— Sunday’s peak day at Zugzwang. Lots of prep. But I’ll give you a few days to think about it— ”

“I’m not going to change my mind— ”

“— and in the meantime, I’ll email you the contract.” She pats my shoulder, and I’m enveloped by her lemony scent once again. One of her tattoos, I notice, is a chessboard, with pieces developed on it. A famous game, perhaps, but I don’t recognize it.

“I— You don’t have my email,” I tell her. She’s already at her car— 2019 Volkswagen Beetle.

“Oh, I do. From the tournament database.”

“Which tournament?”

“Yesterday’s.” She waves goodbye as she gets into the driver’s seat. “I organized it.”

I don’t wait for her to drive off. I turn around, walk back inside the house, and pretend not to notice Mom looking at me from the window.