At the Marco Polo airport duty-free shop, while I’m yawning and paying for an assortment of Kinder products Darcy selected, a girl in an I Heart Rome sweater stops me for a picture.
I don’t bat an eye. It’s been a little over a month since I formally accepted FIDE’s invitation to be the challenger, and after a bunch of viral TikToks on my games, this has been happening a lot. In line at the grocery store. At the DMV, standing in line to get Sabrina’s permit. While I attempt to jog, per Defne’s workout schedule.
According to Oz, I need a media team. According to Darcy, I should go on Celebrity Survivor if they ever ask. According to me, I just smile and sign whatever I’m asked— a receipt; a carton of Arby’s curly fries; on one memorable occasion, a dirty Nike sock. If my sisters are with me, they try to get in whatever selfie is happening. Everyone lets them because they’re cute AF.
“Do you think you’re going to win?” I Heart Rome asks me, vowels gliding happily. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I seriously doubt it. That I’m scared shitless.
“Who’s to say?”
“Well, I hope you do. I was first board on my middle school team. Had a Judith Polgar poster in my room. Never thought I’d live to see a woman in the World Championship with how terrible the men in the sport can be. And by the way, I know you and Nolan Sawyer have a thing, and it’s gotta be a little sad to have to play against him, but don’t go easy on him, okay?”
She leaves before I can think of an answer. The back of her sweater is an anthropomorphized Colosseum, winking at me.
“Is it?” Darcy asks.
I glance down at the piece of candy she’s already eating, disturbingly shaped like a hippopotamus. “What?”
“Sad? To play against Nolan?”
I take a deep breath. For a few beats, my heart turns heavier in my chest, twists and contorts into something painful that resembles regret. I wrench it back into shape and wrap my arm around her shoulders.
“Come on. We gotta go through customs. Let’s see if I screwed up our visas and we have to turn around.”
THE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP LOGO IS BAFFLINGLY, INEXPLICAbly, alarmingly ugly.
We stare at it— a stylized dude’s limbs knotted with another, equally stylized dude’s; a stripey, Picasso’ed chessboard on their laps— and almost miss the all-caps GREENLEAF on the sign.
“I . . . guess that’s our ride?” I say.
“Pretty sure that’s position number thirty-five in the Kama Sutra,” Sabrina mutters, which degenerates into Mom having to explain what creative intercourse is to Darcy.
I think I imagined Italy would be warm, but the February chill is nearly as sharp here as back home. The salt wind is cold, my hair tangles on the shuttle boat, and I let Darcy snuggle under my plaid coat while we point at the beautiful houses facing the canal. Romantic, I think. I’ve never been one to use the word, but the maze of calles and bridges spreading around the lagoon, the water lapping gently at the stone homes, it all seems so pretty, so ready to be explored. “Do you think Mrs. Abebe is feeding Goliath on schedule?” she asks.
The sun is on its way out. We chose a late-landing flight to minimize the wreck on our sleep cycle, but it almost feels meant to be: Mom, my sisters, Venice at sunset. Me.
I knew they needed me. But I never quite understood how much I needed them before this year. “I think Goliath would take her daughter hostage if she didn’t,” I tell her. “But I could text for updates, okay?”
The boat drops us off at a small dock in front of the hotel. The horrifying FIDE logo is everywhere, and I’m debating covering Darcy’s eyes, Sabrina’s, Mom’s, sending an aggressively worded email, turning back and sailing away, but I’m paralyzed by the grandiosity.
“Is this a castle?” Darcy asks.
“No, it’s . . .” I blink. “Maybe?”
“We’re not paying for this out of pocket, right?” Mom asks.
“FIDE’s on it. They shit money. Sorry, poop— they poop money.” She hands her suitcase to a smiling porter with a stilted “Grazie,” and I wonder how many months of mortgage a stolen ashtray would fetch.
I expect to share a room with Darcy, but Sabrina takes her in with a firm “We need you to rest and win and earn enough to sponsor my roller derby team.”
“They will buy new uniforms,” Darcy adds. “And I’ll be their new mascot. In a guinea pig costume.”
“Hmm.” My heart squeezes, like it always does when they assume that I’ll win. It’s not so simple, I want to scream. This is difficult. But they’re just trying to be supportive. “Sounds like you two have been talking this through.”
“Oh, we have plans for your money.”
The suite looks like something from the dry land half of The Little Mermaid, full of canopies, luscious rugs, antique furniture, and wall art that’s older than my monkey ancestors. It’s also empty, though, empty of something that I cannot pinpoint. I unpack three weeks’ worth of not-warm- enough clothes, set the chessboard to the Korchnoi versus Karpov, 1978 game I was studying on the plane, snap pics of the canal view through the arched window— then realize that every single person I might send it to is currently treated to the same sight.
I slide into bed, toss and turn for a handful of hours, admit to myself that I’m too something to fall asleep, slide out.
There is a large pool downstairs that the fancy brochure informs me is fully heated, and I’m splashing in it less than five minutes later. The water is filtered from the ocean and smells like salt rather than chlorine. I let the complimentary Nashville Open T-shirt I tried to sleep in billow around me, and stargaze.
Remembering the last time I was in a pool would be rolling down a dangerous path, full of unbearable things I don’t like to think about. So is the time before that: Easton and me, housesitting for one of her neighbors. It was the summer before senior year, and that pool was full of bugs and stuff that I refused to believe was squirrel turds. Easton kept repeating, “Ew,” but I managed to persuade her to dip her feet. I spent one hour floating about while she read her SAT prep questions out loud in a fake French accent.
I haven’t heard from her in two months. Before August, our record was two days. I oscillate between being angry, begrudgingly wishing the best to her and the girl she’s Instagram-official with, and being taken aback when I find myself still on the verge of sending her a Dragon Age TikTok despite our lack of recent history.
It’s risky business, focusing on the past. The future, the utter humiliation that’s to come in four days, even riskier. The now is where I am: ice-cold stars, mellow water, and Korchnoi’s inexplicable rook to a1 drifting inside my head.
It’s the deep of the night when I push out, shivering poolside in the cold air. All the hotel lights are off, except for a single window. I think I spot a tall silhouette through the curtains, but my eyes must be tricking me.
I blink once, and when I open them, there’s nothing left to see.
“Your next three days are wide open, so we’ll just be running your games through engines and looking for weaknesses. The day before the match is when things start filling up. You’ll have the morning for yourself, but there’s a press conference in the afternoon. And the opening gala at night, but just an appearance is fine.” Defne smiles from across the breakfast table. This morning she appeared out of a room that she may or may not be sharing with Oz. Sabrina mouthed “Schr?dinger,” and I nearly choked on my spit.