I know Quinn made the poster as soon as I see it. She’s smiling and pointing to the different prizes, acting like she’s the queen bee of chess. All we had last year were free ice-skating passes and a gigantic bucket of jelly beans. But this year Quinn’s dad donated these special Patriots tickets in a box with other fancy football things, and now everyone in the entire middle school is lining up for a chance to win. She twirls the end of her long blond locks, soaking in the attention. She has this look on her face like she’s happy and also like she just ate a handful of yellow Sour Patch Kids.
I walk by the crowd of people waiting to buy tickets. I have fifteen minutes to eat before Red and I take over for Quinn. When I get to our table in the back corner of the cafeteria, Red is there with Dylan, which is new and not normal. Dylan usually sits with Isaac in the middle of everything.
“We were just talking about chess camp,” Red says as soon as I sit down. “I can’t believe it’s in three weeks.”
I can’t, either, but I don’t say that, because I don’t need to remind him that I forget about everything. I’m already wearing his jersey.
“Mr. Lee said Katerina is teaching a chess clinic for the top twelve.” Dylan pushes his floppy hair out of his eyes.
“Shut up,” Red says. “What about everyone else?”
“I didn’t listen to that part. Sorry.” Dylan looks at me.
“We still have three weeks of practice and two tournaments before camp. A lot can happen,” Red says. “You can turn things around.”
“Dude,” Dylan says. “Don’t lie to her.”
“I’m not.”
“You are. But whatever.”
“So, if that’s a lie, what’s the truth?” I ask, because I want to know, even if it hurts. And I can count on Dylan not to care about my feelings.
“Mr. Lee isn’t going to play you in a tourney, because he just did, and—” He stops himself. “He wants to win. So practice is your only chance to show him that he was right to pick you in the first place. You have to do something major.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“Take a risk. I’d mix in some coffeehouse moves.”
“No way,” Red says. “He’ll think you’re unreliable.”
“Not if you win.” Dylan looks at me. “It’s just a riskier style of chess that uses tricks. I’m not saying cheat or act stupid, but if you really want to train with Katerina—”
“I do!” I say.
“Then you need to show him you’re not afraid to be creative and that what happened at the tournament wasn’t who you are as a player. Worst case—it doesn’t work. At least you tried something. Whatever you do, don’t play it safe, or you’ll have zero chance of getting picked.”
“I don’t even know where to start learning coffeehouse moves,” I say.
“I have a book. My brother bought it for me,” Dylan says. “You can, um, borrow it, if you want.”
“Yes,” I say. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” He smiles at me, and my stomach drops, which is weird. And right now it seems like everything is flipped, because Red is wrong and Dylan is the one who’s helping me and saying exactly what I need to hear.
I drink the rest of my milk and force down a banana and half of my sandwich, because I need energy for chess. I have to win today.
After we finish eating, we walk over to the raffle table. I can’t see what’s happening, because there’s a crowd of people waiting to buy tickets, but I can hear Quinn say, “Step right up. Support the chess team. We’re really good this year!”
“If by really good, you mean you lost your big tournament.” It’s Vivi.
“It wasn’t our fault,” Quinn says.
“Didn’t you lose, like, every round?” Vivi asks.
“Um, no. That was Clea. She bombed. I don’t know why she got picked. She’s not even good,” Quinn says. “I think it was, like, charity or something.”
My heart stops.
“She must be so embarrassed,” Vivi says.
“Who cares? We’re the ones who have to pick up her slack and win the rest of our tournaments if we want a shot at the championship, which we obviously do,” Quinn says. “She should really quit. She’s already done enough damage.”
I feel my heart in my throat.
“It’s not Clea’s fault we lost. And she’s not quitting,” Red says. “It was her first tournament.”
Everyone turns to look at us.
“And her last.” Quinn smirks.
“You wish,” he says. “You’re just mad because she’s good and she keeps getting better, unlike some other people on the team.”
“Please. Whatever.” Quinn rolls her eyes. “At least I showed up on time. I mean, seriously. What were you even doing?”
Red doesn’t say anything. I can’t just stand here and let her talk to him like that.
“He was a few minutes late. So what? Get over it.” My mind is racing, spinning so fast that the words are out of my mouth before I can find the brakes to slow down and stop them from coming out the way they do—fast and harsh. “You seriously have no clue.”
“No, Clea, that’s you. It’s like you can’t help yourself. You just keep messing up.” Quinn laughs. “Maybe you should stop hanging out with Red. I think you’re contagious.”
“And I think if your dad got married and didn’t invite you to the wedding and then showed up right before the tournament to tell you he’s having another baby, you would have been late, too.” I don’t realize what I’m saying until the words are already out of my mouth and it’s too late. All I want to do is suck everything I just said back in like spaghetti.
Someone gasps, and a few people giggle and whisper, murmuring loudly to each other. I look at Red, but his eyes are glued to the floor.
“Awkward,” Quinn says, dragging the word through the air. “I hate to break up this little pity party, but it’s twelve fifteen, so it’s your turn to be in charge of the raffle,” she says. “Bye!”
I walk over to the folding table, like I’m ready to take over. Red doesn’t follow behind me. He keeps his head down and walks out of the cafeteria with Dylan. There’s a lump in the back of my throat getting bigger, making it hard for me to breathe. I want to run after him and tell him how sorry I am and promise I’ll never do anything like that ever again. But Quinn is gone, and there’s no one left to sell tickets. And I can’t ruin things for the team—again.
When I look up, Sanam is standing next to me. I hope she didn’t hear what I said. I don’t want her to think I’m the kind of friend who can’t keep a secret, because I haven’t told anyone about her crush on Red. But by the way she’s looking at me, with strained, sad eyes, I’m sure she heard everything. “Need help?” she asks.
I nod. I want to say thank you, but I’m afraid if I say anything, everything I’m feeling will come pouring out of me, and I can’t let that happen.
After our fifteen minutes are up, we hand the table over to Lily and Layla, and walk outside. Dylan is in the courtyard with a big crew, but Red isn’t there, or on our bench, or on the field playing soccer. He isn’t anywhere, and I have this horrible sinking feeling in my stomach that he’s avoiding me.
We still have ten minutes before electives, so Sanam and I sit on the grass by the playground. The leaves on the trees around the perimeter of school are orange and yellow and red and starting to fall in scattered clumps, and the air is cold, even in the sun. “We didn’t lose because of you,” Sanam says. “No one thinks that, except for Quinn, and she’s wrong. She makes fun of people who are in her way, like you and me, because we’re really good at chess.”
“You are,” I say.
“Trust me, if she thought you had no chance of beating her, she’d ignore you like she did last year.”
“I don’t know,” I say and tug at the grass.
“I do.” She says it like it’s a fact that won’t change. “What happened back there with Red? Why did you say all that stuff?”
“I didn’t
mean to. I was trying to stand up for him.”
“Well, I know,” she says. “That was obvious. But you kind of went too far. Is everything okay?”
I’m going to tell her now. I want to. “It’s like—I lost control,” I say. “I think it has to do with my, um, ADHD.”
“I didn’t know you had that,” she says.
“Me neither. I found out last week.”
“Wow. Seriously? I thought I was the only one on the team—”
“Wait—you have ADHD, too?”
“Well, no, I have dyslexia and—”
“What? But you’re so good at school.”
“I work really hard,” she says. “And I usually meet with a tutor at lunch. We practice reading and she helps me with homework, so that makes a lot of things easier. Not reading out loud or writing on the board. But mostly everything else is okay.”
“Oh,” I say. “I thought you were in a special language class.”
“I am.” She smiles and fiddles with the zipper on her jacket. “I wasn’t trying to hide it from you. I guess I don’t really talk about being dyslexic that much, because it’s part of me. I mean, I’ve known about it since first grade. And tutoring is what I need to do so that it doesn’t get in my way.”
“That’s what my doctor said about meeting with Ms. Curtis and taking medicine. If I do those things, having ADHD will get easier for me.”
“It definitely will,” she says. “I seriously can’t believe you just found out. It would be like if this whole time I thought I was totally regular, but the letters were all mixed up in my head and moving around whenever I was reading or writing, and no one else knew about it except for me. Only I thought it was like that for everyone else, too, but I was just slower and not as good.”
“Yes! That’s exactly what it’s like,” I tell her. “Except I thought I was dumb and lazy and not trying hard enough and that’s why I couldn’t finish my work or follow directions or stop my brain from getting distracted.”
“That must be so hard,” she says. “It’s like out of nowhere everything you thought about yourself before right now is totally wrong, because you didn’t have all the information. If I were you, I wouldn’t be able to think about anything else.”
“I’ve been trying not to think about ADHD, because it feels like an excuse for why I’m bad at everything. But it’s like no matter what I do, it’s always getting in my way. And not just in school.”
“You’re making it seem like your ADHD is fake or like you could shut it off if you wanted to, when you can’t. And the fact that you didn’t know about it is the reason everything’s been so hard.”
I like the way Sanam talks about ADHD. She makes it seem important and like it’s okay for me to be mad that no one noticed I needed help for way too long, which feels good, because I am. “I can’t believe I did that to Red—in front of everyone.”
“Does he know you have it?” she asks.
“Yeah.”
“Good. I feel like that might help when you apologize.”
“I really hope you’re right.”
“Me too,” she says.
I have to ask: “You seriously don’t think it’s my fault that we lost the tournament?”
“No way,” she says. “Mr. Lee wouldn’t have picked you if you weren’t a really strong player. He just doesn’t do that.”
I nod and try to let her words sink in.
She continues. “So what if you got distracted because it was your first tournament and you kind of have a lot going on right now? Don’t blame yourself for the whole tournament and get psyched out when you’ve gotten this far. That’d be such a waste.”
“True,” I say, because I’m pretty sure Sanam is right—everything I thought about myself before now is wrong, and I guess I still need to get used to seeing myself in this new way. But I really want to.
* * *
Red shows up three minutes late to practice and sits on the other side of the room next to Dylan, even though there’s an empty seat by me.
“Today I want to talk about open files, half-open files, and batteries by looking at how you can set up your rooks to work together in order to control the board,” Mr. Lee says.
I open my notebook and start writing everything down, but I keep glancing over at Red, waiting for him to look back at me. He stays still and statuesque, arms crossed, like he can just listen and remember.
Mr. Lee hangs up the demonstration chessboard, which is good. It helps me to have a visual while he talks through strategy.
Once he’s done teaching, we only have twenty-five minutes left. “Let’s play with ten minutes on the clock,” he says. “Quickly pair up and get to it.”
As soon as Mr. Lee finishes, Quinn stands up and bolts across the room and over to Sanam, like she’s on a mission.
Normally I love when Mr. Lee lets us pick, because it’s basically the only time Red and I ever get to play against each other. I automatically look over at him, because we’re partners in everything—it’s a reflex. But he’s sitting across from Dylan. He doesn’t even glance in my direction. I know I just need to apologize, because I really am sorry, and then everything will be better. It always is. It has to be.
Everyone else is already paired up. I don’t move, because I don’t know where to go. There’s no one left.
Mr. Lee walks over to me with a chessboard. “We’re an odd number today,” he says and sits down across from me. The only person who’s volunteering to be my partner is the teacher. Great. Just great.
I can see his The Lord of the Rings T-shirt under his button-down teacher shirt.
Mr. Lee starts the game.
I make my move, tap the clock, and write down what I just did.
We go back and forth, and I feel pretty good about how I’m playing because I get him into check once, but Mr. Lee wins.
When the bell rings, everyone starts to clear out of the room.
“Clea,” Mr. Lee says, stopping me before I can stand up and walk away. “I wanted to check in with you about the tournament.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “You gave me a chance and I—” Even if I wasn’t the only reason we lost, I was one of the reasons we didn’t win. “I’m going to play a lot better next time—if you ever pick me again. I love chess.”
“I know you do,” he says. “I’m glad to hear that you aren’t discouraged after Saturday. It can be hard to lose, but it always helps me to remember that even the best players have days like that. I’m happy to tell you all about the times I lost big when I was playing competitively.”
“I thought you were a National Master,” I say, because now I’m confused. Maybe I had the wrong information about Mr. Lee’s ranking.
“I was. But I still lost a lot. That’s how I learned to be good,” he says. “The players who gave up or were afraid to fail ended up being average. If you want to be great, you have to learn from every game and push yourself to improve. That’s the reason we write everything down, so we can review where we got tripped up and use those mistakes to our advantage later. We have to take risks and get things wrong to develop and become smart players. Good chess players are persistent.”
“I’m persistent,” I say, remembering what Dr. Gold said about me.
“You are,” he says. “And you have great instincts.”
“Thanks.” I grin, because it feels good that Mr. Lee believes in me and thinks failing makes you better and smarter. It’s awesome news for me, because I do it a lot.
At dismissal, Red is standing by himself. I look around to make sure Dylan is gone and take a deep breath before I walk up to him. “Can I, um, talk to you?” I ask.
“I’d rather you didn’t,” he says. “But it doesn’t seem like you care what I want—so talk, don’t talk, do whatever.”
“I’m really, really sorry.”
“I need my jersey,” he says.
I drop my backpack, and even though it’s cold out, I take off my coat and then his shirt. Before I have a chan
ce to thank him for letting me wear it, he grabs it from me and walks away.
* * *
Mom asks a lot of questions on the ride home. She wants to know how everything went with Ms. Curtis and how I’m feeling after our meeting with Dr. Gold. I tell her about my new planner and the four things Ms. Curtis asked me to do tonight. And how I’m excited that school is going to get better. I like knowing I have a plan and a person I can talk to. I think that’s going to help.
When we get home, I go straight to my room. All I want to do is call Red and say I’m sorry again, because I am and I want to make sure he heard me. But I know I should wait until I finish my homework, because if I call him now and he doesn’t pick up, I’ll spend the rest of the night staring at my phone willing him to call me back, which never works.
I take out my planner and open the checklist I made today with Ms. Curtis. I start with Spanish, because I love writing en español and imagining I’m someone else who is happy living in España, eating tapas super-duper late at night, instead of boring American food at 6:30 p.m.
I set my alarm and hold on to the balloon filled with sand, squeezing the squishy ball between my fingers as I read the directions out loud twice, like Ms. Curtis said I should. It’s weird how doing something with my hands makes it so much easier for me to focus and for the words to sink into my brain. When my alarm starts blaring thirty minutes later, I’m done with everything on the worksheet, even the extra credit question. I check Spanish off my list, set my next alarm, and start working on history and then math. Check! Check!
Dad calls during dinner to see how the rest of my day went. I tell him about my meeting with Ms. Curtis and about what Mr. Lee said to me during chess. “That’s incredible, Clea. I’m so proud of you.” Dad sounds happy. “All your hard work is going to pay off. I know it.” It feels good to have Dad and Mom on my side.
After dinner, I go back up to my room, but it’s hard for me to start working again, especially because I don’t feel like studying for my vocabulary test, which is exactly why I saved it for last. But I don’t want to call Red until I’m finished with everything, so I set my alarm and force myself to practice for thirty minutes and then for another thirty minutes and another. I take a break after each alarm. Then I practice every word two more times to make sure I really have them memorized.
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