It’s because there are things they don’t see. Combinations and tactics that elude them and seem to click only in my and Nolan’s heads. “Let’s just go watch Doom Patrol while the grownups work,” Emil said one night, after it became clear that no one could keep up with us.
But there’s something else, too. I pad barefoot across the hardwood floor first thing in the morning, knowing I’ll find him in the breakfast nook, ready to tell him about whatever revelation I had during my sleep; his eyes scan every room he enters, quiet only when they settle on me, and sometimes I have the urge to lean forward to flatten the curls growing on the nape of his neck.
We still don’t play against each other. We study, analyze, dissect, reenact other people’s chess, but we never play a match that’s ours. And yet . . . Something is happening, but I don’t know what. This thing between us is layered, complicated, fractured unlike anything I’ve experienced before. It lacks the coziness of a friendship, the ease of a hookup, the distance of everything else.
Maybe Nolan should just be some guy: not a rival, not a friend, not more than a friend, just some guy who plays good chess. Some guy who’s in my head and acts as though I live in his own.
“Can I borrow your car tomorrow?” I ask. We’re about one hour from Paterson. I’ve been visiting home once a week or so. Christmas, New Year’s. Whenever Mom needs me—which, with the new meds we’ve been able to afford, is not a lot. She thinks I’m making good money and sparing myself the commute by taking night shifts at the senior center, and . . . well. The money part, at least, is true. Nolan pays his seconds well.
“Sure. Where are you going?”
“Home for the day. Darcy’s birthday.”
He reaches for a dinner roll. “Can I come?”
“Don’t you have to, like, analyze Capablanca’s first-grade macaroni art?”
He shrugs. “It’s my free day.”
“And you want to spend it at a thirteen-year- old’s birthday dinner.”
“Will there be meat loaf?”
“I’m sure Mom can scrounge up some.” I scan his face. His handsome, ever-so-familiar face. “Don’t you want to spend your free day with Tanil?”
He looks pained. “Not you, too, with the ship name. Besides, my room is next to theirs. They won’t miss me at all.”
Emil and Tanu are on again—as all non-hearing-impaired individuals on the East Coast no doubt know by now. “They are loud.”
“That, or they have sex to whale noises.”
I laugh. “Still. You could . . . go skiing? Wear cuff links? Be positively aghast? Whatever it is that you rich people with vacation homes do.”
He gives me a dirty look, but he does come over, and my sisters are as happy to see him as they’d be Jungkook. I think about the interview I saw of him years ago, how stern and guarded he seemed, and I can barely recognize the open-smiled boy who gives Darcy a PetSmart gift card, lets Sabrina show him two hours of roller derby videos, raises one eyebrow at the Mayochup on our table.
“How’s Easton?” Mom asks while I clean the kitchen.
“Great,” I lie. My heart curls into itself a little. Truth is, I have no idea. She spent the holidays in Delaware with her grandparents, and I haven’t seen her or heard her voice in over four months. Based on my Instagram stalking, I suspect she’s dating someone named Kim-ly. I could ask, but it feels like admitting how apart we’ve fallen, since once upon a better time she used to text me pictures of all her meals.
“He’s good with them,” she says, looking at Nolan fixing Sabrina’s broken Polaroid in the living room. “Must be the caregiving experience at the senior center. I bet he’s great at reading romance novels to the elderly, with that voice.”
Of course, I chickened out of telling her the truth. I’m not going to the World Championship, which means that media interest in me has melted like sugar in hot water. I’m nobody. Nobodies don’t need to hurt people with uncomfortable truths.
“Yeah. He really brings turgid manhoods to life.”
Mom laughs softly. “You guys still not together?”
“Nope.”
“You sure?”
I turn to face her. “Of course.” I don’t have committed relationship experience, but I do know that it’s not a continuum. Either you’re in one, or you’re not. And if you are, you know you are. How could one—
“Excuse us.” Warm hands close around my waist and shift me an inch to make room in the kitchen door. “Darcy is going to teach me how to make a cup cake.”
“Mug cake,” Darcy corrects him with a patient sigh. “Mom, do we have any sugar?”
Mom’s eyes dip to Nolan’s hand, still pressed against my lower back, then lift up to meet mine. She tells Darcy, “In the cupboard next to the fridge,” her smile knowing and very, very annoying.
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.