by Lisa Bunker
Funny how intense I’ve gotten about this. Yeah, of course there’s this big scary thing that I don’t want to think about, so obviously my brain appreciates the distraction, but besides that, I think I might really like writing. It’s so cool when my fingers get typing at the same speed as the thoughts forming in my head, and I like the game of finding the right word for each thought just fast enough to keep the flow going. It’s also fun to use mostly normal everyday words, and then every once in a while just for the heck of it toss in a grandiloquent one. Like that. And, here’s Bea.
Me: “Hey.”
Bea: “Hey. What are you doing?”
“Typing every word we’re saying. Zyx kinda helps me, so I can go really fast.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because, because … oh, whatever. Do it if you want.”
“OK, I will.”
“So you do that.”
“So OK, I will.”
Silence. Now she’s closing the door and sitting down with her back against it. More silence.
“What’s up, Be-have?” (That’s an old joke name, from Mom lecturing us when we were smaller.)
She’s plucking fuzz out of the carpet. “Oh, you know … this twin thing.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, y’know?”
“Uh-huh.”
“But it does explain a few things. Like when we were little, Mom was so overprotective sometimes. She would get freaky about the stupidest things—”
“Juggling chainsaws … eating fire in the living room …”
A little smile. “Running chainsaws, yeah. ‘You take the gas out of that, young lady, this instant!’”
“‘But not near the fire-eater torch lighting … thing! Far away from the fire!’”
We both laugh, but when she blinks, a tear runs down. She goes on: “It’s almost too much. Because, there you are, about to get zapped, and all of a sudden there has already been this other death in the family. This other other death in the family, ’cause, Dad. I don’t know if I can handle it.”
It takes me a second to answer, because I don’t want my voice to wobble. “Do you ever think about him?” Meaning, Dad.
She keeps her eyes down. “Sometimes, I guess. Mostly I have dreams.” She pinches her sleeve to her hand and uses it to wipe her cheeks. “It’s always something like, it turns out he’s not dead after all, he’s just been away for a long time and now he’s back, but instead of it being happy, it’s all dark and scary, because I don’t know him anymore. He’s changed. He’s a stranger with this closed-off face, but we still have to pretend to be glad that he’s back. Sucky, sucky dreams.”
I nod. Long silence.
“Felix.”
“Yeah?”
“What do you think he would have been like?”
“Ben.”
“Yeah.”
“Dunno. I guess it would depend. I can’t remember, do twins always have to look alike?”
“I don’t think so.”
“But maybe he would look like you. So, you know, tall and skinny with dark hair—”
“Like you, you mean.”
“Me, tall?”
“Looked in a mirror lately? And since we’re talking about it, gonna start shaving sometime soon? You’re starting to look kinda scraggly.”
“Scraggly?”
“Scraggly.”
“What if I like it that way?”
“Whatever.”
“OK, sure, like me then. But older. He would be sixteen, like you.”
“He was older than me, Mom said. By twelve minutes.”
“So that makes you … dun-dun-daaahh! The middle child.”
“I suppose. Whatever.” More silence. “I wonder, would we have had one of those special mystical bonds that twins are supposed to have? A psychic connection?”
“Like a threeness? You and him and the bond between you?”
That’s good for an eye-roll. “I suppose.”
“I could still put that in my paper. Can I put that in my paper? Please please please?”
“OK, I guess.”
“Thanks.”
She ponders. “You know, I’ve always had this feeling that there was something … left out, something incomplete. An empty place.”
“You’ve never said anything about it.”
“Well, I have.”
“Are you sure? Sure you’re not making it up in, whadayacall, retrospect?”
She looks hurt. “I say I felt it, and I felt it. You don’t have to be so—”
“OK, sorry.”
Loooooong silence. At last she looks up. “Felix.”
“Yeah?”
“You better survive this. I don’t think I could stand to lose another brother.” We look in each other’s eyes. Feels … feels with wheels. I start to get squirmy and look away first, and right then the computer chimes, so I click, and it’s Ms. C’s e-mail, and the first little preview bit looks good: “Felix, overall this is a remarka—”
While I was glancing, Bea got up and opened the door, and now she’s gone. What’s left is the feel of that last look still in the air.
12 Days to Go
Aaaaand, it has been another evening of chess and social awkwardness. Huzzah.
most pretty chess yet
Yeah, you liked playing against Ursula, didn’t you?
fun fun fun
Yeah. See if you can channel your glee until I catch up, will you?
…
Thank you. So, first of all, Ms. C’s e-mail last night: except for some spelling and grammar issues, she said my paper was already good. She did have some ideas about moving parts around, and maybe she was right, so I moved the parts, and I added Bea’s twin thing. Also I fiddled with the end, because I keep thinking about the me-shaped shell and not being able to tell going down inside from rising up out of, and I wanted to get it just right. And this morning when I handed it in, I found out the winners will be announced just two days before the Procedure. I hope I win, and I’m glad I’ll know, but, Mother Hubbard, what if I can’t attend the awards ceremony on account of being dead?
OK, that was supposed to be a joke, but I had to go into the bathroom for a bit.
not fun
No kidding. The waiting and not knowing part. Definitely not fun at all.
The other thing I have been working on is this question: Should I, you know, say something to Hector? About liking him? To which the answer is sdslaksdjflskjdlksfdjd or, in other words, not dealing with that right now. Not not thinking about it, but not dealing with it.
Anyway. Chess.
We had dinner early so that the visit would be after, and right after we cleared the table, the doorbell rang. Rick is not quite at the just-walk-in stage yet, and may never reach it now—but I’m getting ahead of the story again. Just tell. Yes.
So, we’re gathered in the dining room, planning ahead for computers. The whole family is there. I’m already twitching and unable to talk because Zyx is riled, so Bea gets the door, and we hear her talking and Rick’s voice answering, and then a new voice speaks, and you can tell by the rhythm of it that the speaker is from somewhere else besides the United States. Then Bea leads our visitors into the kitchen.
Chess seems to be mostly a man thing, so I guess I was expecting a more man-looking woman than Ursula Ots turns out to be. My first impression is of a lot of blond hair, not super-neatly brushed, tied back at the back of her neck. Then I think some kids at school might call her fat, but she doesn’t look like she would care what those kids think. She’s wearing jeans and a long-sleeve shirt that are both pretty tight, so you can see she is definitely woman-shaped. Her eyebrows are browner than her hair, and she has big dark eyes that look like she’s laughing even when she is being polite and serious saying hello.
Some bustling happens with Bea fetching another chair and Mom offering coffee, which Ursula accepts, and Mom going to get it and Rick setting up the
tablet and another laptop they brought. He sets up the two machines opposite each other on the table, so the people sitting at them are facing each other like over a real chessboard. I sit and twitch and wonder if I will be able to say anything. Rick introduces Ursula to me and we shake, and her hand is the same size as mine and warm and feels soft and strong at the same time. Then she sits in the chair next to me and smiles and says, “So, Felix, you play chess.”
Gah. The Story, can’t talk about Zyx, blah blah blah—but I’ve rehearsed. Also, Zyx has pulled back a bit—thanks, Zyx—
welcome understand why
… so I can talk pretty normally, and I say, “I guess, yeah. But it’s, like, a separate part of my brain or something.”
“I see. Do you understand what you are doing when you play?”
“No.” It’s such a relief to be able to say this, but at the same moment Zyx makes my whole body convulse. Ursula ignores the jolt. I like talking to her—she’s another person with the brain-eye-eye-brain thing going on. “All right, that’s fine,” she says. “Suppose we play some games?”
I guess Rick is maybe a little afraid of Ursula, because he hasn’t said anything, but he has finished setting up the computers, so now there’s a chessboard on the tablet in front of me with my Felix1 name listed as one of the players. The other player’s name is Keisrinna, which is apparently Ursula’s chess-site name. She has a GM after her name, for Grandmaster. Rick says, sounding eager to please, “I did three-minute games because of the mouse,” and I guess he means if we play one minute per player like before, Ursula will be at a disadvantage because she’s moving with a mouse, which takes a little longer than tapping the tablet. Rick also mentions that he has turned off watching for our games, so there will be nobody making comments this time. Just us, all private.
Ursula goes around the table and sits down, and Zyx flings my hands up on the tablet and moves just like that, because we’re white and have the first move. Ursula looks startled for a moment, then nods at me and says, “Good luck.” Then she moves her mouse and clicks and I see a pawn jump out to meet our pawn, and off we go.
Ursula playing chess sits hunched forward, frowning, holding still except for little movements of her eyes and head. I notice another thing: Rick showed me before how each player has a rating, a number that says how good vo is, and Ursula’s rating is higher than anyone Zyx has played before. And I guess she really is a stronger player, because for the first time Zyx actually takes a couple seconds to makes some moves take time see pretty
Uh-huh. After the first six or seven moves, Ursula starts thinking more and more, just like the other players, and the longest of Zyx’s think times not think see pretty
Well, then, the amount of time Zyx needs to bliss out on the game yes bliss yes
Gah, let me finish?
…
As I was saying, the longest amount of time Zyx needs to bliss out on any one move is still only a few seconds, and pretty soon Ursula is almost out of time. The board is covered with pieces—I can see at least three that can take other pieces, but other than that it’s a confusing mess—and Ursula says, “Resign.” She clicks with her mouse, and the message pops up: “Black resigns. Felix1 wins.” She looks at me and nods, not seeming even a little upset that she lost. “You are very quick” is all she says. And then, “Again, yes?” And we play again.
This time Ursula has the white pieces, and she makes a different first move, one of the pawns on the edge, forward just one square. She glances up as she does it, like, See what you think of this, hey?
Well, same rhythm as before. She moves we move, pause. She moves we move, pause. Ursula’s face never changes. Same slightly frowny expression, same little darts of the head. This game ends quickly because she clicks the mouse and then says, “Ah,” and Zyx instantly moves, and she looks up and says, “Yes, that was a blunder,” and she resigns again. I’m surprised—Grandmasters make mistakes? But I can’t really show it, because Zyx is working me so hard.
So then we play five or six more games, one right after another, and Zyx wins every single one of them. Everyone is quiet, watching, except Rick making noises after some of Zyx’s moves. Ursula always ends up either resigning or losing on time. It gets exciting at the ends of the time-loss games, because she can move fast when she has to, and Zyx always does, so the pieces are just flicking all over the place.
Finally there is a game that gets down to a time rush, and this time Zyx checkmates Ursula, and at last she betrays a reaction. “My God,” she says with a little laugh. “I didn’t even see it. Beautiful mate!” Her king is out in the middle of the board and only a few of our pieces are near it, but after a minute I can see that each square it can move to is covered by exactly one of ours: a couple of pawns, a knight, the bishop that did the checkmate move, our king—and the last square her king could run away to has one of her own pawns on it, blocking the way. Nowhere to run, kingy-pie. Checkmate. Cool.
Ursula sits back and stares at me, rubbing her fingers over her lips. Rick says, “Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I tell you?” Ursula nods. Then she says, “This is unschooled and unconventional chess—no knowledge of opening theory, naturally—but then there is no need, because, Felix, you are faster than any human I have ever seen, and more elegant and artistic than any computer. Also, your play appears to be entirely without error. This is truly remarkable chess. It is even miraculous chess.” She looks at Mom. “Ms. Yz,” she says, “I would have to play more games with him to feel sure of what he can do, but it is clear that Felix is a prodigy. One of the most gifted, it would not be too much to say, that the world has ever seen.” She looks at me again with a hard expression. “And, Felix, you say you cannot speak to me of what you are doing? You cannot tell me anything?”
I sit there groping for something to say, and then all of a sudden my hands, which are still on the tablet, start typing—there’s a chat window—and Zyx is answering. Vo types, “chess pretty.”
pretty pretty beautiful
Yes, you can’t seem to get over that, can you? But you had no business talking to her like that.
question mark
Gah! Because of the Story, because if the truth gets out, who knows what kind of trouble we’ll get into with the Powers?
no worries
That’s easy for you to say.
not know think same
You mean, she didn’t know it was you. She thought it was all me. But there I was, not able to talk and typing instead, and it must have seemed so bizarre … but, yeah, the whole thing was already so bizarre, a little more probably wasn’t going to hurt. I hope.
Anyway, now Ursula and Zyx have a conversation. In response to Zyx typing “chess pretty,” Ursula says (out loud, not typing back), “Yes, it is beautiful. A contest and an art form and sometimes even a medium of wit.”
“wit question mark” types Zyx, and at this point Mom makes a sound like starting to protest, but Grandy puts a hand on her arm. Grandy says to Ursula, “It’s a question.” Then vo turns to me, but I’ve never felt more strongly that someone was talking to Zyx instead of me, and says, “One way to define ‘wit’ would be, ‘joy in the play of the patterns of life.’”
“yes yes yes all joy all play beauty pretty pretty”
Ursula stares at me even harder. “So,” she says, “for you it is not about winning?”
“not win dance”
“You like the play for its own sake, then. The combinations, tactics, strategy.”
“question mark question mark question mark”
Grandy says, “Different words for the patterns the pieces make.”
“Yes, just so,” says Ursula.
“yes yes pretty patterns dance forever”
Ursula opens her mouth to speak again, but Mom gets in first. “This has gone far enough,” she says. Ursula looks at her and Mom looks back, and then the look stretches out until all of a sudden Mom’s hand jumps to her throat at the same moment that Ursula’s eyebrows and lip corne
rs twitch up, just for an instant. It happens so fast, I’m not even sure I saw it. Ursula starts doing computer-shutting-down moves with her mouse.
Rick is not ready to quit. “This is incredible,” he says, and his voice is shaking. “Absolutely incredible. We’re going to make a fortune… .” Then he tapers off, because the look on Mom’s face says she’s close to blowing her top. She doesn’t get mad often, but when she does, it can definitely be a thing. There’s this tense silence while Ursula closes her laptop and stands up. She clears her throat and smiles. “If I may say something?” she asks uber-politely.
After a second Mom does a tight little nod.
“I would only remark that I am slated to play in an exclusive online tournament next Thursday. Some of the very best players in the world will be in it. The participants have been determined, but I would be willing to communicate to the organizers that I would like to yield my place to Felix.” Silence. She adds, “It is a rare opportunity, and because of what I have seen this evening, I think Felix could place well. Even win.” She shakes her head, and for the first time I see a look like wonder on her face. “He is chess talent such as I have never seen before.”
There is a silence that starts to stretch uncomfortably, but then Grandy steps in, doing the mild slightly smiling thing vo does so well. “We’ll think about it,” vo says, and then everyone is leaving. It looks for a second like Rick is angling to stay—they came in separate cars—but then he looks at Mom’s face again and goes out with Ursula.
11 Days to Go
It’s so odd: in eleven days I might be dead, but I was still excited to wake up this morning, on account of MainahCon. I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks, even before Hector told me about Ash and about maybe being there himself, so I woke up without Mom calling me. Then I lay there for a little while in this clean dim gray light that I usually don’t wake up early enough to see. The countdown part of my brain just wanted to hide behind my chair and whimper, but another part of my brain was still like, Yay, MainahCon, and the yay part came out on top, so I decided to get up.
