Check & Mate

The last day is the perfect combination of challenging chess, high stakes, and teamwork. We already know we don’t have enough points for the gold, but if we play our cards right, we can still make the podium.

And we do. I make the executive decision to put the events of the previous day out of my mind and focus on the play. My opponent tries the Muzio Gambit. I’m briefly confused, then remember going over it with Defne and know exactly what to do. We don’t quite kick Russia’s ass, but we spank it a little bit. At the medal ceremony, we all squeeze onto the lowest step of the podium, the national anthem mixing with the camera clicks in my ears. Tanu pulls me to her, Emil shouts, “It’s what we do!” and Nolan gives us a half- pleased, half- reproachful look. I feel part of something. Like I haven’t in a long, long time.

It’s a stupid chess tournament. I swore I wouldn’t care, and yet I feel happy. In the crowd, I spot Eleni Gataki from the BBC giving me the thumbs-up, and wave back at her, bemused. I guess I’m starting to know people in the chess world.

“Come, Mal—the press wants to interview us,” Tanu calls afterward.

“Oh . . . Actually, I’d rather not.”

“Why? It’s CNN! This is how Anderson Cooper becomes my bestie!”

“I think he already has Andy Cohen. ”

“You have to come,” she insists. “You’re the reason we won. Oh, lower that eyebrow, Emil, you know it’s true!”

“Really, I’m fine.”

“But— ”

“She doesn’t want to,” Nolan says, tone calm but final. I send him a grateful look. He stares back like either he didn’t notice or he doesn’t care about my gratitude. I’m pondering my frustrating, utter inability to read him, when someone taps my shoulder.

“Ms. Greenleaf.” It’s an older man in a gray suit. His beard is garden- gnome- long, his accent from somewhere I cannot place. “May I congratulate you on your victory?”

“Oh . . . sure.” I search for a non- rude way to ask him who he is and find none. “It was a team effort.”

He nods. “But you were by far the most impressive player on the team.”

“No more than Nolan.”

The man laughs. His gaze, however, is sharp. “It’s hard to be impressed by Sawyer these days. He has accustomed us to a certain level of performance. Some people even say that he has ruined chess.”

I frown, thinking about the people who have recognized him in the last few days, telling him that they took up chess after seeing him play. “I don’t think it’s true.” Am I feeling defensive on behalf of Nolan Sawyer? It’ll start raining frogs any minute. “He’s made chess visible and popular.”

“Certainly. But he always wins. He hasn’t had a rival in years, and people rarely get invested in a sport whose outcome is a foregone conclusion. I would know. I organize the Challengers tournament.”

“Oh.” It sounds familiar, but I don’t know why and I don’t care. This man, his hawkish gaze, and the odd things he says about Nolan are making me uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry.” I gesture somewhere behind me. “I need to meet up with my teammates.”

“I’ve been hearing lots about you, Ms. Greenleaf. I believed the rumors were exaggerated, and yet . . .” His look is long and assessing. I want to hug myself. “Run along. You friends will be waiting for you. Whoever they are.”

Yikes.

I wander away, checking my phone to look busy. I find a text from Defne (You done good, kid.) and millions from Darcy— apparently, they both spent the past four days refreshing ChessWorld.com.

DARCYBUTT: BRONZE!!!!!!!!

DARCYBUTT: You and Nolan got the most points in the whole Olympics. You guys should get married and have a child. She’d be so good at chess.

DARCYBUTT: Or she’d suck. She’d trudge through life saddled by crushing disappointment. Resent you well into your old age. Take away your car keys and put you in a home the second you let your guard down. Okay, abort plan.

DARCYBUTT: You’ll be home tomorrow night, right? I miss you. Sabrina only talks to me to say “Ew.”

MALLORY: ofc. and when she says ew she actually means i love you. or something.

MALLORY: what present do you want from canada?

DARCYBUTT: A mate for Goliath.

I sigh. And then the air rushes out of my lungs, because Tanu is hugging me again; a cloud of lavender surrounds me. “Last night in Toronto! You know what that means, right?”

“I was thinking of maybe taking a walk downtown— ”

“Oh, no. No way.” She pulls back and takes my face between her hands. Her eyes are night stars bursting with excitement. “Tonight, Mallory, we play Skittles!”

SKITTLES IS LIKE CHESS.

Actually: skittles is chess— without a clock or scorecard, surrounded by half-empty beer cans and Salt-N-Pepa songs that are older than us, under the light of a starry- sky LED projector that some girl from Belgium brought as a “hotel room– warming present.”

It’s a multicultural frat party, with chess instead of spin the bottle. For reasons that I must attribute to Tanu and Emil’s event- planning skills and Nolan’s reputation, taking place right in our shared area. People have been coming and going in a steady stream for hours, bringing their sets and playing blitz, rapid, Fischer Random.

Strip chess.

“Drinking age’s nineteen, Mal,” Tanu says when I decline a fruity drink for the second time. She lost a bishop and her socks about ten minutes ago. “It’s legal! Like en passant capture! Or queening! Or castling sho— Crap, I’m so sorry!” She spills her glass onto the Italian guy Nolan defeated yesterday and promptly moves to paint whiskers on a cute Japanese guy, forgetting all about eighteen- year- old me.

I go back to focusing on my rapid game against a Sri Lankan girl I bonded with after noticing her Dragon Age Solas pin. She’s very pretty, and a great player to boot, and a-couple-of-monthsago- Mallory would be making a move on her. I swore to Saturn and back that I wouldn’t play for fun. Yes, it’s exactly what I’m doing. Nope, I would not like to talk about it.

“—that time Nolan stole a black knight from Kaporani’s board at GE’s tournament and all matches were delayed by twenty minutes because of the search?”

“That was after Gibraltar, when Kaporani switched my water with distilled vinegar.”

“We’d already gotten revenge for that with the glitter bomb. He sparkled for months.”

People laugh. Emil and Nolan are on the couch, playing tactical team, surrounded by a mix of old friends and fans. There’s a girl, for instance, who’s almost as blond as me, curled up next to Nolan. Hard to tell how he feels about it, since he’s so focused on his game. He must have run a hand through his hair, because it’s vaguely mussed, unbearably attractive.

Something else I’d rather not talk about.

“Must be cool to play with him,” the Sri Lankan girl says, following my gaze.

I look away. “He can be kind of a dick,” I say, though he hasn’t really been one to me.

She chuckles, low and smoky. She’s really my type. “All geniuses are. I heard he has an IQ of 190. Maybe higher, but tests cannot measure it.”

“He doesn’t eat meat loaf like someone with a 190 IQ,” I mutter, resentful.

“Sorry?”

“Nothing. Um, checkmate, by the way.” I stand, wiping my palms over my leggings and abandoning my half- hearted seduction plans. My heart’s not really in it, or maybe I’m too tired to get laid. “It was great to meet you. I’ve got an early morning and— ”

“Where are you going, Mal?” Tanu appears out of nowhere. “It’s like, not even midnight!”

“Oh, you don’t have to keep it down for me. I just need to buy presents for my sisters tomorrow morning, so— ”

“But don’t go now! Don’t you want pizza?”

“Pizza?”

“Yes, let’s go get pizza!”

“I’m kind of tired, and— ”

“Then we’re getting it and bringing it back!” She turns around and bellows drunkenly, “Who wants to come get midnight pizza?”

Might be because Tanu is the life of the party, or because pizza is hands down the best food in the world, but in half a minute the music is turned off and our shared area empties out of everyone but me.

Maybe I’m eighty years old inside, but: Blessed. Quiet.

“You’re not coming?” the blond woman who was with Nolan earlier asks from the door. Her accent is very pretty. But we’ve never really talked, so I’m confused why she’d want to know whether I—

“No.”

I startle and turn around. Nolan— she was talking to Nolan. Who’s still on the couch.

“You sure?”

He barely spares her a glance. “Very.” He probably hates pizza. Only eats authentic Sicilian calzone made with tomatoes grown around the mouth of Mount Etna.

Whatever. I’m going to bed. “Nolan, when Tanu comes back, will you tell her that I went to sleep?” I wave past the chairs, the chess sets, the couch. “Have a good— ”

His hand snatches my wrist. I’m too surprised to wiggle out. “Let’s play a bit, Mallory.”

I freeze. I stiffen. And this time I do wiggle out. “I told you, I don’t— ”

“— play outside of training and tournaments. Yes. But you’ve been playing all night, outside of training and tournaments. With five different people.”

I scoff. “Did you count?”

“Yes.” He looks up at me. Stars dance occasionally across the line of his jaw, his cheekbones. “I was sure you’d end the night in Bandara’s room.”

“Bandara?”

“Ruhi Bandara. You two were just playing.”

I take a step back and refuse to admit that I entertained the same thought. Instead I say, “I don’t want to play against you.”

“A problem, since I really want to play against you.”

I shiver, because it feels like he’s saying something else. Like . . .

I don’t know.

“You already have.”

“Once.”

“Once was enough.”

“Once was nothing. I need more.”

“I’m sure there are plenty of people who’d love to play. Who’d probably pay just to sit across from you.”

“But I want you, Mallory.”

I swallow heavily, then look away. He’s right— I already broke all my no-chess-outside-work rules. So why am I resisting this so hard?

Maybe it’s because I’ve seen him play. I’ve seen him be brilliant, read positions with a glance, do things I can’t even understand. If we played, I’d lose. And yes, I hate losing, but this is hardly a fair match. So the number one player in the world is better than this year’s reluctant Zugzwang fellow. Big deal. As newsworthy as being slower than Michael Phelps in the 200m butterfly.

Maybe something else bothers me, then. Not that I’ll lose, but that he’ll know that I lost.

Yes. This . . . interest, obsession, fascination he seems to have with me came because I beat him. Once. I’m innately good at chess, but I’m not better than someone who’s just as innately good and has had decades of professional training. We’d play, he’d win, and then I’d be just like everyone else: someone Nolan Sawyer defeated.

His captivation with me would instantly wane, and—

That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? I don’t like Nolan Sawyer showing up to my house and talking Riverdale with my sisters, do I? I should agree to play, and end whatever this is.

And yet.

“No,” I hear myself say.

His jaw works. “Right, then.” He relaxes and reaches across the glass bottles, chess pieces, half- eaten bags of chips, grabbing a pencil and a German Chess Federation flier. “Sit down.”

“I told you, I— ”

“Please,” he says, and something in his tone stops me. I try to remember the last time I heard him say it. A simple word, please. Isn’t it?

“Fine.” I sit— across from him, as distant as possible. This is what I get for refusing pizza. “But I’m not going to play, so— ”

“Chess.”

“What?”

“You said you wouldn’t play chess. You didn’t mention anything else, so . . .” He turns the flier to me. He has drawn a three-by-three grid, put an X through a space, and . . .

I laugh. “Tic- tac- toe? Really?”

“Unless you have Uno handy? Checkers? Operation?”

“This is worse than Candy Crush.”

He smiles. Lopsided. “Don’t tell Tanu or she’ll put another pushpin under my pillow.”

“Another?” I shake my head, amused. “You can’t really want to play tic- tac- toe.”

He shrugs and takes a long swig of his IPA. “We could raise the stakes. Make it fun.”

“I’m not going to play for money.”

“I don’t want your money. What about questions?”

“Questions?”

“If I win, I get to ask you a question, any question, and you answer. And vice versa.”

“What could you possibly want to ask me that— ”

“Deal?”

It seems like a bad idea, but I can’t pinpoint why, so I nod. “Deal. Five minutes. Then I’m turning in.” I pluck the pencil from his fingers and write down my O.

The first three games are draws. The fourth goes to me, and I smile ferociously. I do love to win. “So I get a question?”

“If you want.”

I’m not sure what to ask, but I don’t want to forfeit my prize. I wrack my brain for a moment, then settle on, “What’s the Challengers tournament?”

His arches an eyebrow. “Your question to me is something you could easily google?” I feel slightly embarrassed, but he continues. “It’s the tournament that determines which player will face the current world chess champion.”

“Which would be you?”

“At the moment.”

I snort softly. “And for the past six years.”

“And for the past six years.” There is no boast in his voice. No pride. But it occurs to me for the first time that he became world champion at the same age I left chess for good. And that if I’d only stuck around a couple of years longer, we’d have met much earlier. In completely different circumstances. “The Challengers has ten players, who qualify by winning other super- tournaments or are selected because of their high FIDE ratings. They compete against each other. Then, a couple of months later, the winner competes for the World Championship title.”

“The one whose prize is two million dollars?”

“Three, this year.”

My heart skips a beat. I cannot even conceive what that money would do for my family. Not that I’d win against Nolan in a multiday match. Or that I’d end up at the Challengers, since I’m not invited to super- tournaments and my rating is currently hanging out with a piece of gum under the sole of my shoe.

I grip the pen a little too forcefully and draw another grid. My mind must still be on the money, because Nolan wins the following game.

I roll my eyes. “I was distracted. You don’t really deserve— ”

“Why did you quit chess?”

I tense. “Excuse me.”

“In September, after Philly, you said your father’s death wasn’t the reason you quit chess. What is it, then?”

“We never agreed that questions would be about— ”

“We agreed to any question.” He holds my eyes, a hint of a challenge in his tone. “Of course, you can always back out of the game.”

It’s exactly what I should do. Get out and leave Nolan alone with his stupid, invasive question. But I can’t make myself, and after a few seconds of lip biting and a burning desire to carve my next O into his skin, I say, “My dad and I became estranged a while”— three years, one week, and two days— “before he died. I stopped playing then.”

“Why did you become estranged?”

“That’s two questions. And if you win again, no follow-up questions are allowed.”

He frowns. “Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Because I say so,” I bite out. He is quiet for a second, but he reads my tone well, because he nods.

After that, we draw a few games. As in: twenty- three games. It becomes clear that neither of us wants to be in the position of being asked the next question when I win the twenty- fourth game, and Nolan channels his most traditional self by slapping his palm on the table. Honestly, it feels nice.

I wasted my Challengers question, so I think hard about what I’d like to know about him. Something about his relationship with Koch, maybe? The Baudelaire story? His grandfather? There’s something I’ve been wondering for weeks, but it seems like too much.

On the other hand, he did ask about Dad, and I am feeling vengeful. Maybe even vicious.

“At my house, when Sabrina asked you who you have sex with, you said . . . conflicting things, and . . .” I trail off.

“What’s the question? Who do I have sex with?”

I nod quickly. My cheeks are on fire. I’m already regretting this.

“No one.”

Uh? “Excuse me?”

“I don’t have sex. Or at least, I never have.”

It takes a few moments for the words to penetrate. For it to really sink in: Nolan Sawyer, the Kingkiller, blithely admitting that he’s a virgin at the age of twenty. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But.

No. I misunderstood. What about the Baudelaire thing?

“You’ve never had sex,” I repeat.

“Nope,” he says, confident, calm, like he has nothing to prove to anyone, like he doesn’t care to be anyone but himself, fully himself. At least here, tonight, with me.

“Oh.” I feel like I should tread carefully. “So you . . . ? I mean, are you happy with that, or do you wish that . . . ?” I flush harder. He takes pity.

“Do I wish I were having sex?”

I nod again. Jesus, I can speak. I am better than this.

“No.” He doesn’t even think about it. “Not until recently.”

“What . . . what changed recently?”

He stares for a long moment. “No follow-up questions, I was told.” The corner of his lip twitches into a smile. “Besides, I hear you have enough sex for the both of us.”

I groan. “I’ve barely been— You should never believe anything Darcy says. ”

“It’s not like it’s a bad thing.” He draws another grid. I’m still flustered, and he wins immediately. “What are you going to do at the end of your fellowship?”

“What do you know about my fellowship?”

“No answering questions with other questions.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m going to look for auto- mechanics jobs. Any leads?”

“What about chess? Are you going to just stop playing?”

“Yeah.” I steal the pen from his hand. “There’s no future for me in chess.”

He snorts. “You can’t just— ”

“Question answered. Next round.” He gives an annoyed, stubborn look, and immediately wins. How? He’s drinking and I’m not, but I’m the one slipping. “Whatever.” I roll my eyes. “No follow-up questions.”

He leans toward me over the table, dark eyes earnest, stars traveling on his skin. “Do you know how incredible you are?”

I cannot breathe. Temporarily. So I force myself to laugh. “Really? You’re wasting your question on this?”

“I am serious. Do you realize how exceptional you are, Mallory?”

“What are you— ”

“I have never seen anything like what you do with chess. Never.”

“I— You are ten times better than me. I beat you once, while playing White, and you were probably expecting an easy game.”

“You haven’t answered my question.” He leans in even farther. He smells like soap and beer and something good and dark. “Do you know how fucking good you are?”

My eyes hold his. “Yes, I know.” It almost hurts to admit to it. To this boundless talent I have, for something that I swore to myself I wouldn’t pursue— a promise I fully intend to keep. “Does it bother you, that I’m that good?”

“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.”