Izzy + Tristan

by Shannon Dunlap

  Don’t bother telling me that the conversation wasn’t really about Jonathan Edwards. Trust me, I knew even while it was happening that I was behaving like an arsonist holding a match, eager and terrified to watch it all burn. That’s what made it so horrifying.

  THE KNIGHT

  SOMETIMES I IMAGINE THAT WHEN WE DIE, ON OUR way to whatever the next realm may be, we’re forced to walk down a corridor of giant framed paintings of our most regrettable moments. That time in fifth grade when I told Benji that I’d sprouted pubic hair and this jerk named Curtis overheard and turned my words into a catchy jingle—that one’s framed and hanging in a place of honor. The time that I promised our neighbor in Atlanta that I’d feed his fish while he was out of town and then I forgot and two of them died—that one’s there, too.

  But I’m definitely saving a nice frame for the time I thought it was a good idea to get in a pissing match with the girl of my dreams about something as stupid as early American literature. There’s something very wrong in me that needs to prove how right I am at every single moment. A part of me that needs to show everyone in the room how smart I am, even when the subject is as inconsequential as a Puritan with a bad attitude. Even when the person I’m arguing with is far more consequential than my idiotic desire to impress. Even when I know (of course I know) that what we’re really talking about is me and her and the space between us. So there it goes, up on the wall in the cringe gallery.

  The truth is, I can’t shake the feeling that maybe Izzy would be better off if she’d never met me at all. So I’ve resolved to keep to the shadows. I can do it: admire her from afar or maybe even melt out of her life forever.

  Marcus, of course, has other ideas. When I sit down at the lunch table, he and the goons are grinning at me in a strange way, as though they stopped talking about me only when I was a few feet away. Frodo has a crust of something rimming one of his nostrils, and some valve deep inside me draws tight with disgust, but I nod a greeting to them. Pizza today, because it’s Friday. Try to concentrate on that.

  “Hey, T,” Marcus says. “We were talking about R. J.’s party.”

  R. J.’s party is epic, so monumental that it has gone through multiple epochs, different geologic strata of party insanity, or so the lore goes. Its origins stretch back to the days when his older sisters, the most popular girls at our school at the time, started throwing ragers when their parents went on their yearly visit to an elderly grandmother in Jamaica and left their party-loving offspring home alone. That was over a decade ago, though, and ever since I arrived in Brooklyn, it’s been R. J.’s party. Because he is the baby of the family and because he’s a senior this year, this might be the final hurrah. No one would be stupid enough to miss it. And R. J. has already announced this year’s theme: A Space Odyssey, complete with a dark room he is calling the Final Frontier, where surely dozens of my classmates are going to get lucky.

  “Place is gonna be lit,” K-Dawg says, half in his own world, as always.

  I nod. “Cool.” Pepperoni. Chewing. Think not of her.

  “So tomorrow I need you to come over to Izzy’s house with me,” Marcus says. “Tell her about the party and get her to come with us. I can take care of it from there.”

  The briefest consideration of Marcus and Izzy in the Final Frontier together is enough to make me feel violently ill. Once he’s embarked upon a plan, though, there’s no diverting him. Besides, it’s impossible to envision a world in which girls, or even one particular girl, would prefer me to Marcus. It’s never happened before, and there’s no reason to hope that Izzy will be any different, particularly after the scene this morning. And so I’m pinned. Time to walk away from the game.

  “Marcus, I think you have the wrong idea. Izzy’s not my friend. She doesn’t even like me.” Frodo snickers, and I look over at him, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Yeah, but you know her better than any of us, right?” Marcus says, thumping me once on the shoulder. The grease of the industrial pizza has coated my mouth in a terrible way, and I wish I could gag it all back up. Hanging out around Marcus might be the best weight-loss plan a person could find. I put the slice carefully back down on my tray as he goes on. “I think she might recognize my name from around school.…”

  “Course she will,” Tyrone says too quickly. Faithful lapdog. Marcus shoots him a look and he heels.

  “As I was saying, I think she’ll know who I am, but maybe you could put in a good word for me in advance. And I think I’ll send her a little something tomorrow morning, just in case. Roses, maybe? You think she’ll like roses?”

  “All girls like roses,” Tyrone supplies. “This one time I sent carnations to Roxanne on Valentine’s Day and—”

  “I want to know what T thinks,” Marcus says, looking at me hard.

  “Sure, roses,” I say. Marcus nods and the table relaxes a little. K-Dawg starts to show us some stupid video of a dog dressed up as a spider, but then something occurs to me and I interrupt.

  “You know, I have an idea. I heard her saying in AP Lit class that she likes Anne Bradstreet.” Blank stares all around. Whatever. “I can help you find a book of her poems to give to Izzy instead of roses. It will be more meaningful.” This is my attempt at a classic fork, a move with two different purposes. For one, it will convince Marcus that I’m trying to be truly helpful. But also, Izzy’s too smart not to figure out who the book is really from, and even though I resolved two periods ago to leave her alone forever, you have to play the setup that’s in front of you. Besides, I like the idea of giving her something to make up for this morning’s argument. It’s risky, and it could most certainly backfire, but it’s the best thing I can come up with on the fly.

  “All right, T,” Marcus says, nodding thoughtfully. “We’ll do what you think is best. We can get the book on the way to the park this afternoon. I set up a couple matches for you.”

  The bell rings, and they gather up their things. Frodo leans down to speak into my ear, his dirty nose a hairbreadth from my cheek. “Don’t worry, man. Ain’t nothing wrong with sloppy seconds.”

  I hate myself for not spitting on him for uttering such filth. I can’t stand the idea of facing Izzy in Physics class, not today, so I decide to ditch the last two periods, something I’ve never done before, even though I’ll have to come back here to meet up with Marcus at the park anyway. As I slip out the side door of the school, I pray to Anne Bradstreet or whoever is listening that Frodo should undergo a freak accident and slice his nose clean off his ugly face.

  Competition chess, in direct opposition to a pickup game in a park, is not much of a spectator sport. There’s a lot of sitting around, waiting for match pairings to be posted, while seventh-grade boys from the middle school division run around making fart jokes. The matches themselves are usually quiet except for the heavy breathing of the worried near-losers and the occasional frowned-upon exclamation. Unless it’s an exhibition match, parents are shut out of the room to fret in the hallway. You’re rarely aware of how your teammates are doing until it’s all over, because you’re too busy with your own game.

  Patrice hates going to chess tournaments. She’s never admitted this to my face, but she’ll think up any possible reason to wriggle out of them. I can’t blame her; I know that watching other people play a game you don’t care about isn’t anyone’s definition of an exciting time. Even so, I usually get a dark twist of satisfaction whenever the otherwise play-by-the-rules Patrice comes up with a lame excuse, and I’m not surprised when I find a note on the kitchen counter Saturday morning explaining that she needs to winterize some of the beds in the Green Thumb garden around the corner. I grab one of the bran muffins she left for me (there’s a little note on the Tupperware container that reads “Bra(i)n Food!”—which lets me know she’s feeling plenty guilty for skipping the competition) and head for the subway.

  Arriving at Westcroft feels less like entering a high school and more like going to church. It’s not only the Gothic architecture or the hallo
wed history of the place as a parochial school; it’s also the weightiness that falls upon you when you enter the house of geniuses. Rich geniuses. I’ve been here before, so I try to play it cool this time and breeze right past the middle schoolers from Sagan who are gaping at the soaring ceilings and stained glass windows. Money doesn’t make you good at chess, I remind myself. It only makes you rich.

  I find Mr. K in the dining hall, and he seems more than willing to forgive my distractedness yesterday if I’ll present a couple easy wins to him today. He’s wearing what Anaïs and I call his lucky sweater, which is a cardigan that has a little more blue in it than his everyday gray cardigans. Pankaj is already here, and so is a nervous-looking kid named Arthur who has been called upon to fill out our four-person varsity lineup today. He shakes my hand as though we’ve both been cast in the same film but I’m the headlining star. I sit down with them and put on my headphones while the rest of the team trickles in; it’s an attempt to look like I’m listening to music to put me in the competitive zone, but really, it’s only because I don’t want to talk to anyone. I’d rather be alone and dwell upon that moment in the playground when I first met Izzy, when everything between us was new and perfect. I try to hold that feeling in my mind, even through Mr. K’s disjointed pep talk.

  We’ll each play two matches this morning. First up for me is Isadora Desmains. Of course: Dorie. It’s a sign of how preoccupied I was yesterday that I didn’t recognize her full name. I haven’t played her for almost two years, but she’s notorious in our small circles. She wears fairy wings and fuzzy duck slippers and sparkly fingerless gloves as accents to the stuffy Westcroft uniform. She has a pet guinea pig named Mike Huckabee that she occasionally brings with her to tournaments. That’s strictly forbidden, of course, but she got him registered as a service animal and lobbied the United States Chess Federation on his behalf, and they begrudgingly allow him to wait in his cage with the parents and other would-be spectators. She carries a thermos of Fruity Pebbles soaked in milk in her backpack and slugs it down like it’s coffee throughout the day. She only weighs about a hundred pounds, but just when it starts to feel like there’s a ten-year-old with Fruity Pebbles on her breath sitting across the table from you, she starts quoting Nietzsche. In short, Dorie’s a fun weirdo, the kind you run into every once in a while in the chess world. She’s not really my type, but I’ve known plenty of nerds with massive crushes on her, including Pankaj, who stares at our table longingly when I shake Dorie’s hand.

  “Sacré bleu,” Dorie says to me. “Up against the great and mighty Tristan. I must be fortune’s foe.” She gives me a wink.

  “Hey, Dorie,” I say. “How’s Mike Huckabee?”

  “A touch of the scurvy, but he’s convalescing in my room. Thanks for asking.”

  A moderator announces the start of game play, and we get down to it. Dorie’s very good, and she plays creatively, not afraid to take risks and bend rules when it suits her. Even so, she gets in trouble with her rooks early and can never come back from the material disadvantage. I win without much trouble, and we wander out to the hall to pass time until the first round is over.

  “What I don’t get,” Dorie says, “is why you’re not playing for Westcroft yet. Ippolito is salivating to coach you. He’d probably commit hara-kiri in front of the administration if they refused to give you a tuition scholarship. So what gives?”

  I shrug. Dorie’s not that far off, to be honest. Westcroft tried to recruit me near the end of my freshman year, but that was when I was finally feeling like I fit in at Sagan. Living in Brooklyn with Patrice was still new then and a welcome change; moving out so quickly would have made me seem ungrateful. And even though Mr. K is old and a little depressing sometimes, he’s a good coach. I didn’t want to betray him. Today, though, I can’t help but dwell on that unaccepted offer. I let myself imagine an alternative life for a moment: no more gauging Marcus’s moods, no more taking up space in Patrice’s apartment, no more fighting with the girl of my dreams about eighteenth-century poetry.

  “Fine,” Dorie says, blowing a strand of her pink bangs out of her eyes. “Leave me to languish with Eamon and his sophomoric observations. Seriously, though. You should think about it.” She kisses me on the cheek, her lips sticky with gloss or Fruity Pebble glaze, and then dances off down the hallway to music that no one else can hear.

  In the next round, I’m paired with Ronald Santos, the star of the Westcroft team. He’s tough, and I feel like we might end up with a draw, but I finally pull out a win with a sweet ending I remember from a famous Andersson versus Stean match. Anaïs, Pankaj, and Arthur all win their matches. It’s a slaughter. Mr. K looks as happy as I’ve ever seen him, one whole side of his mouth drawn up into a smile.

  THE ROOK

  I GO OVER TO IZZY’S HOUSE ON SATURDAY AFTERNOON. We’re supposed to be doing Physics homework, but mostly I’m here to read tarot for her. I know she doesn’t believe in it, not yet, but when she sees how eerily accurate I am, she’ll change her mind. Plus, her mom is one of those cool moms, and I’d rather not be around my parents and Hector right now, who have all been acting nervous and twitted up after the incident at the park, even though Hector was never formally charged with anything. Mai and Pai, they’re old-school, and they never consider the possibility that the authorities might sometimes treat guys like my brother unfairly.

  Izzy’s house is the kind of nice that says serious money, which surprises me a little, since she’s always so friendly and wearing those kind of boring clothes that she wears, and I feel shy while I stand there on the porch waiting. When she answers the door, I have to play it cool and not exclaim over every little thing, like the beautiful statues and vases and stuff that are sitting around on the bookshelves like someone just forgot them there, or the rack for vinyl records that looks like a piece of art itself, or the tapestries that her family probably brought back from far-flung vacations. It’s so quiet inside that it feels like a tomb, though, and that helps me be a little less jealous of the sweet television in the living room.

  “Where is everybody?” I ask.

  “Um, my dad’s at work, I guess,” she says, doing a dramatic backward flop onto the overstuffed couch. “And my mom took my brother to an appointment.”

  “I didn’t even know you had a brother.”

  “I do. A twin brother, actually.”

  “Whoa! That’s so cool. Your star sign is Gemini and you’re a real live twin? That has to be lucky.”

  Izzy snorts. “That’s me. Lucky, lucky, lucky.”

  “Wait, so if you have a twin brother, why isn’t he ever in school?”

  Izzy curls herself into a ball, tucks herself into one corner of the couch. It looks like her big house is trying to swallow her. “It’s complicated,” she says. “He was supposed to be there, but now he has doctor appointments every day, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen.”

  “He’s sick?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “I guess he is.”

  She doesn’t seem to want to talk about it, so I sit down cross-legged on the lush rug and pull a tarot deck out of my bag. It’s my favorite, an old Rider-Waite deck that Hector found for me at a secondhand store for Christmas one year, soft and worn around the edges. “Maybe these will give you guidance about your brother.”

  Izzy plays along, mostly, though she gets up to get us some snacks while I’m laying out the cards on the living room carpet, so I can tell she’s not concentrating all that hard on the questions she’s supposed to be putting to the universe. The result is a chaotic mess of strong cards.

  “Wow,” I say. “There’s a lot going on here. There are the Lovers, right next to the Wheel of Fortune, but there’s also the Queen of Swords, which means sorrow and self-protection. And the Hanged Man, which is not always as bad as it sounds. I don’t know, maybe that represents your brother? Lots of contradictions going on here. Way more powerful cards than in a typical layout. So, like, maybe you’ll have to make some important decisions soon? And he
re’s the Knight of Cups, but it’s reversed, which can mean recklessness or trickery.” I’m entirely absorbed in trying to sort through it all, so when Izzy speaks, it catches me off guard.

  “Hey, Brianna,” she says, “do you know anyone named Marcus?”

  I snap to attention. Izzy still has that same sad, faraway look, so I don’t think she’s messing with me. “I might know a Marcus. Why are you asking?”

  “It was the weirdest thing,” she says. She picks up a book lying on the coffee table and tosses it to me, and I’m trying to be calm about the whole thing, but when I see his name written inside the front cover, I run cold so fast that I almost get a brain freeze. It’s definitely him. I recognize his handwriting. Roses are red, violets are blue. You’re so fine that I want to get to know you. From: Marcus

  “Where did you get this?” I ask, a little too sharp, because she looks at me funny before she answers.

  “Someone slipped it through the mail slot this morning. But I’ve never even spoken to this Marcus guy.”

  “That’s weird,” I say.

  “Is he nice?” Izzy asks.

  “He’s…” Beautiful. Perfect. The love of my life, even if he doesn’t know it yet, my brain supplies in an unhelpful way. “He’s cool. He’s like one of those really cool guys at school who everyone knows. Or at least knows about.”

  “Huh,” Izzy says. Her forehead is furrowed in concentration. I try to assess what Marcus would have seen in her to make this very un-Marcus-like gesture. She’s pretty, in a low-key way: skinny, with lots of silky white-girl hair, and she smells nice, kind of powdery and flowery, like what I imagine the fairy godmother in Cinderella would smell like, but are those things that Marcus would go for? It’s hard for me to believe.