It was October. First week, third period. Jim had been at Baker Street Prep for almost a month. I had study hall that period, but rather than go to our dorm to practice the violin (as I should’ve done), I’d gone to the library. I used to go all the time, alone, when the procrastination bug hit or I was keyed up about an upcoming chess match.
Now, I bet you didn’t know this, Jean, but there’s a chess table in the farthest corner of the library. Like, if you go past the main space with the cathedral ceilings, then circle around that lounge area with the armchairs that have more holes than leather, and you finally duck through those really tall bookcases on the right—the ones that are so close together your shoulders almost touch either side—you’ll find the board.
It’s beside a dusty window (seriously, I don’t think it’s been washed in a decade). There’s an almost-as-dusty chessboard with two armchairs on either side of the table (mostly still leather since no one ever uses them), lit by a sad little wall sconce flickering overhead.
I’m, like, 99 percent positive that until Jim Moriarty came along, I was the only person who knew that chessboard was there. I mean, the narrow shelves hold books in French and Spanish and German—and let’s be honest: don’t no one read in French or Spanish or German unless it’s for class.
So there I sat, staring at the board in a makeshift Boden’s Mate pattern. The chess match against Scot’s Yard High was still a few months away, but I’d been reliving last year’s ass-kicking almost every night. Seriously, I would see pawns and bishops and Boden’s Mate in my sleep.
The landscaping crew was outside, hazy figures with wide-brimmed hats and a lawn mower that needed a new carburetor. At least, that was my diagnosis based on the hum-hummmm-hum-hummmm sound it made.
The crew had just scared the house sparrows from their nest above the window, and I was watching those dark, winged shapes swoop and swirl when a voice said, “Black bishop to F-five.”
I jumped. I might’ve screamed, too. It was actually really embarrassing, but in my defense, no one ever came back there. I mean, I was so accustomed to being alone I’d actually pick my nose sometimes.
I snapped my gaze to the shelves. Jim was standing there, with one of those little half smiles he does, where only the left corner of his mouth tows up. Elusive, that smile.
“Can I play?” he asked, motioning to the black side of the board.
I nodded dumbly, and Jim glided into the empty armchair. Leather squeaked, making him smile with both sides of that perfect mouth now.
He was amused. An emotion I wouldn’t have known Jim Moriarty could feel, yet there he was. Grinning.
At me.
He set a book on the floor beside his chair. I hadn’t noticed he was holding it since I’d been so focused on hiding the tremble in my hands. Madame Bovary, it read. Par Gustave Flaubert.
“Is it good?” My voice was shamefully tight, but can you blame me? There was a hot, mysterious guy who could read in French and who wanted to play chess with me. Things like that had never happened to Shirley Holmes.
“The story’s okay” was Jim’s vague reply. Neither a yes nor a no. His gaze had already settled on the board, his forehead knitting down the middle in a way I would soon come to recognize. To look forward to. Because that furrow meant he was playing chess.
With me.
“It’s also a scary story,” he said at last.
“How so?” I shifted my weight to move my hands beneath my thighs. They were still shaking—the bastards.
“It’s about a woman who spends her whole life believing in fairy tales.” His dark eyes flicked to mine. Then, in a move that would have set the whole school to sighing, he eased off his glasses.
He looks younger without them. Those thick black frames do a lot to hide his real face. Plus they leave two red marks on the bridge of his nose whenever he takes them off. Something about those marks made him seem . . . vulnerable. Exposed.
I swallowed. “What’s wrong with believing in fairy tales?”
“Reality will never live up.”
“Oh.” This conversation had quickly moved out of my depth.
Yes, you did read that right, Jean. I’m admitting that there’s something I don’t know better than everyone else, and I’m admitting that I felt—gasp!—uncomfortable by it.
But then Jim made his move (knight to F3), and I was back in my element. He’d made a mistake, see? Not an amateur move—he clearly knew how to play—but definitely not an advanced move, either.
I wasn’t about to go easy on him just because I thought he had nice eyes and was quite possibly the Coolest Person Who Had Ever Lived. Instead, I slid my bishop diagonally two squares before settling back to let him stare and frown and stare some more. The rest of the game unfolded in silence.
A short game because I slaughtered him. Like, I had his king in about ten moves.
“Checkmate,” I declared, sitting higher. Puffing out my chest. Preening, as you always accuse me of doing.
He laughed then. A sound that would’ve slayed the school. It slayed me. Such surprise. Such deep delight. Then he was slipping his glasses back on and smiling full wattage. “Play again tomorrow?”
Deer in headlights. All I could do was muster a nod.
“Good.” He pushed to his feet, swooped up his book, and headed for the tunnel of shelves. But at the edge, he glanced back. “See you tomorrow, Holmes.”
It was such a light tone. Playful. Flirty. And leaving me with no clue how to reply. See you tomorrow, Moriarty was a mouthful. And See you tomorrow, Jim was what everyone else in the world would say.
So I offered up a smirk and said, “See you tomorrow, James.”
As soon as the reply left my lips, I was cringing inside. No wonder no one ever invited me to the winter formal. I could not—and still cannot—flirt.
But Jim laughed. That same surprised burst of sound. Sure, it was now muffled by walls of foreign literature, but I, Shirley Holmes, had made him laugh.
Twice.
Jim and I played every day after that.
He got better. So did I, though.
Especially during the third week of October. Halloween was coming up, and Jim had commented on the heat wave right as we sat down to play.
“It’s weird,” he said, squinting through the dirty glass at a sunny afternoon. “Halloween should be cold and rattling with leaves. Or, at the very least, kind of cool outside.”
“Thanks, global climate change!” I moved my pawn to A4. “Seriously, though, James. Get used to it. It’s never cold here, so if you’re looking for a white Christmas, you’ll have to head up north. The only Decembers I’ve ever lived through hotter than these were when my family lived in Johannesburg.”
I was showing off a little. Hoping he’d ask about my South African mama.
He did (score!), so I relayed my go-to story about that time baboons broke into my grandmother’s kitchen and crapped everywhere.