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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 hasruinedchess.”
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 putyou 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 playSkittles!”
SKITTLES IS LIKE CHESS.
Actually: skittlesischess— 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 thatsome 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 inourshared 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 sosorry!” 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 herDragon AgeSolas 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 wouldnotlike 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 formonths.”
People laugh. Emil and Nolan are on the couch, playingtactical 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.
