She frowns. “Why?”
“You’re too young for caffeine.” The frown deepens. I’m losing her. “I can help you with your homework,” I offer, trying to revive her enthusiasm.
“I drink coffee all the time. And I’ve been doing my homework alone for years. If you haven’t noticed, I’m not nine anymore, Mal.” She rolls her eyes, and I know I’ve lost her. “I’ll just hang out outside school with the other derby girls so you don’t have to do two trips.” She slips out of the car without saying goodbye, and I seethe about the youths till I get to the credit union.
I’d love to deposit the check to the family account, but I can’t think of a believable excuse that won’t involve me mentioning chess. Mom, I won the Powerball. I microwaved Darcy’s oatmeal for too long and it turned into a diamond. I have a secret writing career in furry erotica. Yeah. No.
I pay outstanding bills, deposit what’s left in my account, and run errands that would usually fall on Mom. And if in the grocery line, at the recycling center, by the library’s return desk, while I wait for Mom to finish working to have lunch with her— if whenever I have ten minutes to myself I spend them analyzing Koch’s games on my phone, well . . .
I shouldn’t. Boundaries and all that. Chess is just a job, and today I’m off. I made a promise to myself.
But it’s okay, a voice rebuts. You’re thinking of prize money. You’re not falling in love with chess again. You’re firmly out of love.
Yeah. Exactly. Precisely. That.
I pick up my sisters midafternoon and I’m aggressively thrown into the Grade 7 Cinematic Universe, which is more riveting than a Brazilian soap opera.
“. . . so Jimmy was like, ‘Pepto pink makes me throw up,’ and Tina was like, ‘My shirt is Pepto pink,’ and Jimmy was like, ‘No, your shirt’s a good pink,’ and Tina googled Pepto pink and it was the same color as her shirt, and Jimmy was like, ‘What do you want me to say?’ and Tina was like, ‘Admit that you hate my shirt.’ ”
“And what did Jimmy say?” I ask, pulling up our driveway, genuinely entertained.
“He was all, like— ”
“There’s a guy on the porch,” Sabrina interrupts us.
“Probably the mailman,” I say distractedly. “What did Jimmy do?”
“That’s not the mailman,” Sabrina says. “I mean, I wish.”
I look at where she’s pointing. Then immediately flatten myself as deep into the driver’s seat as I can go. “Shit.”
“Should you be saying shit in front of us?” Darcy asks.
“Yeah— what happened to the pedagogical modeling of appropriate behaviors?”
Impossible. He’s not here. He can’t be. I’m hallucinating. Paranoid delusions. Yes. From the chemicals in the Twizzlers. All that dye.
“ Mal. Mal?”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“A stroke, maybe? She’s starting to be of a certain age.”
“Call nine-one- one!”
“On it.”
“No— Sabrina, don’t call nine-one- one. I’m fine. I just thought I saw . . .” I glance to the porch again. He is still there.
Nolan.
Sawyer.
Is.
On.
My.
Porch.
Well. It’s either Sawyer or an alien wearing his skin. I’m kind of rooting for option two.
“Do you know him?” Sabrina asks.
“She sure looks like she does,” Darcy says. “Is he another one of your sex friends?”
“Maybe he’s her stalker,” Sabrina offers.
“Mal, you have a stalker?”
Sabrina snorts. “You didn’t let me watch You because I’m fourteen, and now I find out that you have your own stalker?”
“Should we run him over? Does blood stain wood?”
“No!” I raise my hands. “He’s not my stalker, he’s just, um, a . . . friend.” Who might hate me. If I am found strangled, look into his credit card purchases. You’ll find rope. Or lots of floss. “A colleague, actually.”
Darcy and Sabrina exchange a long, dangerous look. Then they jump out of the car with an overeager “Let’s go meet him!” I hurry after them, hoping this is a lucid dream.
Well. Nightmare.
Sawyer is leaning against the porch, arms crossed on his chest, eyes traveling between the three of us as if to soak up the resemblance that always leaves people befuddled, and I have to stop myself from blurting out, They’re my sisters, not my daughters— yes, people do assume. He’s wearing jeans and a dark shirt, and maybe it’s because there are no chessboards, no arbiters, no press in sight, but he almost doesn’t look like himself. He could be an athlete. A college student on a football scholarship. A stern, handsome young man who has not (allegedly) dated a Baudelaire, who has not (confirmedly) called an interviewer a dickhead for implying that his game looked tired.
“Are you Mal’s friend?” Darcy asks him.
He cocks his head. Studies her. Doesn’t smile. “Are you Mal’s friend?”
If the world were fair, Darcy and Sabrina would roast him and heckle him off our property. And yet, they giggle like they usually do in Easton’s presence. What the— “What’s your name?”
“Nolan.”
“I’m Darcy. Like Mr. Darcy. And this is Sabrina. Like Sabrina Fair. Mal didn’t get a literary name because . . . we’re not sure, but I suspect that our parents took a look at her and decided to temper their expectations. She said you work together?”
He nods. “We do.”
“At the senior center?”
Nolan hesitates, puzzled. Looks at me for the first time. Finds me on the verge of a panic attack. Then says, “Where else?”
“Do you ever feed the squirrels?”
“Guys,” I interrupt, “go tell Mom we’re home, okay?”
“But Mal— ”
“Now.”
They drag their feet and slam the screen door, like I’m depriving them of a fantastic afternoon staring at Sawyer. It’s not until they’re out of earshot that I let myself focus on him again.
There is, I believe, a bit of a standoff. Where I look at him, he looks at me, and we’re both fairly still. Assessing. Feeling each other out. In my case, monitoring escape routes. Then he asks: “Are you going to run away?”
I frown. “What?”
“You usually run away from me. Are you going to?”
He’s right. He’s also rude. “You usually lose your king to me. Are you going to?”
I was aiming for a sharp, jugular-cutting jab. But Sawyer does something I did not expect: he smiles.
Why is he smiling?
“Where did you get my address?”
“It wasn’t difficult.”
“Yeah, that’s not a real answer.”
“No. It isn’t.” He turns around, taking in my yard: the rusty trampoline I can’t be bothered to throw away, the apricot tree too dumb to yield fruit, the minivan I patch up once a month. I feel vaguely embarrassed, and hate myself for it.
“Could I have a real answer, then?”
“I’m good with computers,” he says cryptically.
“Did you hack Homeland Security?”
His eyebrow lifts. “You think Homeland Security stores home addresses?”
I don’t know. “Is there a reason you’re here?”
“Do you really work at a senior center?” He faces me again. “On top of chess?”
I sigh. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no.”