I picture a Mountain Dew Super Bowl ad featuring a chess player. Mtn Dew: The Drink of Grandmasters. “Is Oz also a fellow?”
“The opposite. He pays some of the GMs at Zugzwang to train him.”
“Oh.” I mull it. “Does he have a side job?” Maybe he does Instacart deliveries from 2:00 to 5:00 a.m.? It would explain the perennial bad mood.
“Nope, but he does have a dad who’s an exec at Goldman Sachs.”
“Ah.” I notice that the ChessWorld.com journalist is taking a picture of Oz and quickly step out of frame.
It’s stupid. Sabrina and Darcy are with friends till tomorrow; Mom has been better and is working on a few technical writing pieces, which should bring in some needed cash; I told them that I’d spend the day in Coney Island with friends, then stay at Gianna’s place for the night. So I am lying to them about what I’m doing, but there’s no way they’ll find out where I really went from the background of Oz’s picture on ChessWorld.com.
I’m being paranoid. Because I’m tired and hungry. Because Oz didn’t let me eat my PB&J. Monster.
“Hey,” Joe Alinsky says, suddenly ignoring Oz, eyes narrow on me, “aren’t you the girl who— ”
“Sorry, Joe, we gotta go freshen up before the tournament.” Defne grabs my sleeve and pulls me outside of the building. The morning air is already too hot.
“Was he talking to me?”
“I feel like Starbucks,” she says, walking away. “Do you want Starbucks? It’s on me.”
I want to ask Defne what’s going on. But I want an iced kiwi starfruit lemonade harder, so I jog after her and drop the subject altogether.
WHEN I SIT DOWN FOR MY FIRST MATCH, IN FRONT OF A MAN who could be my grandfather, my heart pounds, my palms sweat, and I cannot stop nibbling at the inside of my lip.
I’m not sure when it happened. I was fine till ten minutes ago, looking around the crowded room, staring down at my lilac sundress, wondering if it’s proper chess attire or whether I care. Then the tournament directors announced the start, and here I am. Afraid of disappointing Defne. Afraid of the sour flavor in my throat whenever I lose.
I don’t remember the last time I was this nervous, but it’s okay, because I still win in twelve moves. The man sighs, shakes my hand, and I’m left with forty-five minutes to kill. I walk around, studying interesting positions. Then I snap a picture of the room and text it to Easton.
MALLORY: i blame you for this
BOULDER EASTON ELLIS: Where are you?
MALLORY: some tournament in philly.
BOULDER EASTON ELLIS: Dude, are you at Philly Open???
MALLORY: maybe. how’s higher ed treating you?
BOULDER EASTON ELLIS: I’ve been sleeping three hours per night and joined an improv group. Put me out of my misery.
MALLORY: LMAO tell me about the improv
The little dots of Easton’s reply bounce on the bottom of the screen, then disappear and never come back. Not in five minutes, or ten. I picture a new friend walking up to Easton, her forgetting about me. She’s already posted a handful of selfies with her roommates on Instagram.
I slide my phone into my pocket and move to the next round, which I also win easily, just like the third and the fourth.
“Fantastic!” Defne tells me while we share a Costco bag of Twizzlers on the campus quad. She’s surreptitiously smoking a cigarette, which she lit saying, FYI, I am not modeling good behavior. “But it is an elimination tournament. The more you win, the better your opponents, the harder it’ll get.” She notices my frown and bumps her shoulder against mine. “This is chess, Mallory. Painstakingly engineered to make us miserable.”
She’s right. I get a taste on my last match of the day when I find myself dropping a rook, then a bishop against a woman who looks eerily like my middle school’s librarian. Not-Mrs.- Larsen is a fidgety, anxious player who takes ages to make a move and whimpers whenever I advance on her. I alternate between doodling on my score sheet and feeling like I’m at the zoo, staring at the sloth’s cage and waiting for it to move. The game drags until the end of the round, when we’re both out of time.
“It’s a draw,” the tournament director says dispassionately, surveying our board. “Black advances.”
That’s me. I’m moving to the next round because I was at a disadvantage. I know draws are exceedingly common in chess, but I am distressed. Frustrated. No— I’m furious. With myself.
“I made tons of mistakes.” I tear angrily into the dried apricots Defne handed me. I want to kick the wall. “I should have played rook c6. She could have had me three times— did you see how close she came to my king with her bishop? It was such a shitshow. I cannot believe I am even allowed within ten feet of a chessboard.”
“You won, Mallory.”
“It was a disaster. It qualifies for federal relief— I didn’t deserve to win.”
“Lucky for you, in chess deserving and undeserving wins count the same.”
“You don’t understand. I messed up so many— ”
Defne puts a hand on my shoulder. I quiet. “This. This feeling you have right now? Remember it. Bottle it. Feed it.”
“What?”
“This is why chess players study, Mallory. Why we’re so obsessed with replaying games and memorizing openings.”
“Because we hate to draw?”
“Because we hate feeling like we did anything less than our absolute best.”
The hotel is a five-minute walk from campus. My room is nothing to write home about, except that it is because: privacy. I cannot remember the last time I had access to a bed without the audience of a twelve-year- old goblin and the three-thousandyear- old demon who possesses her guinea pig. I should take advantage of it. I consider watching a movie. Then I consider whipping out my phone, pulling up dating apps, looking for matches in the Philly area. Perfect no-strings- attached opportunity. Plus, orgasms do improve my mood.
Instead I stare out the window, replaying my last game as the sun sets slowly.
It’s like that time I accidentally sexted Mom. Like that day the entire cheering team walked in on me while I pretended to open the automatic sliding doors with the Force. Like in middle school, when I walked into the teachers’ restroom to wash my hands and found Mr. Carter sitting on the toilet doing a sudoku. Whenever I do something really embarrassing, for days after the incident I live in a state of utter mortification. At night I close my eyes and my brain will yank me back to the deep well of my shame, projecting cringeworthy scenes in excruciating detail against my eyelids.
（Overdramatic? Perhaps. But I sexted my mother. I am allowed.）
My neurons cling to every splinter of embarrassment, won’t let go of the mistakes I made during my matches. I won, fine, but in my second game I left my knight open like that. Gross. Disgusting. Appal—
Someone knocks.
“Defne asked me to take you to the social and introduce you around,” Oz says when I open the door. He’s staring at his phone.
“The social?”
“There’s a reception downstairs, for players who moved to day two. Defne can’t go, since it’s only for players. There’s free food and booze.” He glances up, assessing. “How old are you?”