“Tristan,” she says, a little calmer now, “what has gotten into you?”
There’s a tiny sliver of me that wants to tell her everything, wants to construct a model of the whole messy love triangle in front of her. She’s always been good to me, after all, and I know she loved my mother, probably more than she’ll ever be comfortable saying. But something holds me back. Maybe it’s because I can’t even begin to fathom Patrice’s thoughts on love. Her single friends are always giggling about online dating when they come over, but that’s clearly not Patrice’s style. I know surprisingly little about her personal life, even after living with her for two years. So when I sit there in bed, trying to weigh the odds of Patrice understanding young love, I come down on the side of her thinking I’m foolish. I come down on the side of her not being too excited about the idea of Izzy or, more accurately, the idea of us together.
So I decide to try a different angle.
“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing has gotten into me. And it’s not Marcus’s fault that the police are hassling him. I mean, you know how they are; they’re never going to give Marcus the benefit of the doubt.”
I can feel the angry pressure build inside her as if I’ve turned the burner higher under an already hot teakettle. Wrong move.
“I see. It’s the cops’ fault. Well, let’s lessen the chances that you cross paths with any of these bad cops. School, chess club, and then straight back here. Until further notice. Is that clear?”
“But I had nothing to do with this! I told you, I’d already left.”
“You seem to be under the impression that this is up for debate,” she says coolly. “I’m serious, Tristan. If you’re incapable of following some simple rules, we’re going to have to rethink your living here.” She doesn’t exactly slam the door on her way out of the room, but it’s something pretty close.
I fall back onto the bed, pull the sheets over my face. It’s irony, I guess, that up to now I believed grounding to be a pretty stupid punishment, especially for an introvert like me. On any given day, I’d rather be by myself with my chess books and my laptop, anyway. But this isn’t like any other day, and having Izzy down the block, barely out of reach, is going to be torturous.
I pick up my phone and see that she’s already used the number I gave her last night to text me. You are the sugar in my morning coffee. Thanks for last night.
You’re the sweet strawberry jam on my toast, I text back, wanting her to think I’m having the same sort of average, lazy Sunday that she seems to be having. I have to see her soon. I think for a few minutes and I text her again. Do you play chess?
On Monday, I race to the meeting room at the end of last period, hoping to land a conversation with Mr. K before anyone else shows up. There he is, scowling at a faulty timer that he’s trying to fix. When he sees me, his face assumes an expression that is slightly less mournful than usual.
“Trees-tahn,” he says, “there is a new Carlsen game that you are going to find verrrry interesting.”
“That’s great, Mr. K. But I was actually wondering if maybe I could help out with teaching the Novice group today.” My angle here might seem a little obvious, but it isn’t entirely out of the blue. Mr. K often gets the kids in the Advanced group to help the beginners. Even so, Mr. K looks at me like he smells a rat.
“You want to help the Novices?”
“Yeah, you know, I’ve been having trouble concentrating lately, so I thought it might help to explain moves to other people. Help me focus. You know.” None of this is entirely untrue, I tell myself. It’s not strictly true, either, but let’s not split hairs.
“Yes, if this is what you want.” Mr. K sighs. “We are needing to get ready for the first full tournament. This Yuri Zhubov at Stuyvesant is looking very good this year, you know this. But this week…” He scowls, and his eyebrows encroach farther down his face. “… is okay.”
I grab a seat while the other chess club members file in and write their names on the sign-in sheet. When Izzy walks through the door, it’s like the whole room is brighter, lighter. She’s wearing a pale gray dress, and she’s like the moon sailing across the sky as she crosses to Mr. K, tells him she’s new and that she wants to join chess club. He gestures vaguely at the sign-in sheet, housekeeping details not being one of his strong suits. And then she turns and sees me, and everything else drains from my head.
“It’s so good to see your face,” she says as she slides into the desk in front of mine. “I almost forgot what it looked like since Physics class.” I get the feeling that she says perfect things like this all the time.
The room is noisy enough to cover our conversation, and we conspire briefly about how much it sucked to see each other in class but not have an opportunity to talk. “The same way it sucks not to kiss you right now,” she says, and it’s so hard not to touch her, my whole body aching to do it, but we’re trying to keep all this on the quiet until we figure out how to handle Marcus. I texted her yesterday about the trouble with Aunt Patrice, and she wrote back that it would all turn out okay, because that was all water and we were the bridge. But today she has some new problems to add to the mix.
“I feel like people have been staring at me all day,” she says. “Marcus came up behind me while I was at my locker this morning and started kissing me on the neck. Everyone thinks I’m his new girlfriend, and suddenly I’m the hottest item of gossip in a hundred-mile radius.”
Like an old projector getting warmed up, my mind shuffles through the frame-by-frame of Marcus leaning into Izzy like he owns her, breathing in her smell before he presses his lips to her neck. And when she turns to face him, is there a trace of excitement in her face, the pleasure of being flattered? It’s hard to swallow.
“Whatever you’re thinking right now, stop it,” she says. “I know he’s your cousin and all, but if he could vanish into thin air that would be ideal.” She drops her quiet voice down another level. “There’s only one person I want. That’s the truth.”
Mr. K shushes the room, starts talking about using the bishop during the endgame. I study the dark waves of Izzy’s hair as his voice washes over me. I want to memorize every tiny part of her. I want to know her better than I know chess.
When we break into groups, Mr. K tells Pankaj and Anaïs that they’ll be helping the Novice group, too. Pankaj looks relieved, and Anaïs gives a one-shoulder shrug. I tell them that Izzy is brand-new, so I can help get her up to speed if they want to oversee the matches between the more regular crowd of beginners. Anaïs purses her lips like she’s on to me, but then she shrugs the other shoulder and sighs. “Whatever.” She’s wearing her favorite hoodie, the one that says CLARINET FOR LIFE over one breast.
“So, how much do you know about chess?” I say as I set up a board on the desk between Izzy and me.
“Mmm, the basics, I guess. My brother’s pretty good, but I stopped playing with him a long time ago because it was boring to always lose. Tristan”—she lowers her voice to a whisper again—“why is everyone staring at you? Almost like they’re afraid of you?”
“Eh,” I say, not wanting to sound like a dick. It’s hard to keep myself from smiling a tiny bit, though. “I guess because I’m pretty good.”
“Just pretty good, huh?” There’s a teasing note in her voice. She sees through my cool act. “Do we really have to play? I came to be around you, not to actually play chess.”
“I mean we’re here, right? Might as well.”
“I know. It’s just…” She shrugs and screws up her face into an expression of distaste, and I can’t tell if she’s teasing me again. “The way my brother was always studying those endless combinations of moves. So dull, like a race with no finish line.”
“Oh, no, no, no, no, no. You’re messing with me, right?”
She raises one eyebrow in response. It’s sexy, I admit. The rest of the classroom, with its voices and rhythmic slamming of chess timers, has already faded away. “Look, you can’t play chess like a computer, memorizing ev
ery move that’s out there. That’s when it really does get boring. You gotta feel the energy of the game. You gotta know the pieces like they’re living, breathing human beings.”
“But they’re chess pieces. What can you know about them besides the way they move?”
“So much. Here, hold this one.” I put a knight in her palm, close her fingers around it. “You feel it? It’s not that he moves in an L shape. He’s smart and wily and he’s always looking around the next corner. He can dodge around the enemy like no other piece can. He’s brave from the very beginning, charging out in front of the line of pawns, and even if he has to sacrifice himself eventually, he can do some serious damage to the enemy before that happens.”
“Uh-huh,” she says, sounding unconvinced. “Tell me more.”
“Well, you’ve got your queen, of course,” I say, balancing the black queen on the tips of my fingers. “She’s the most powerful piece in the game.”
“I thought that was the king.”
“Nah. The king might be the most important, but only because everyone has decided he is. Like divine birthright. But the queen is powerful because of what she can do. She’s more versatile and deadly than anyone else out there. But if she’s in the right position, she can protect a lot of pieces, too. And if she’s lost? It’s like the center has fallen out of the game. It’s like the rest of the pieces barely know what to do with themselves. They get desperate.”
“I see. So it’s like you’re telling a story every time you play.”
“Exactly. A story about life.”
“What about this one?” she says, picking up the bishop.
We keep going like this for a while and then finally get around to playing a game. Izzy plays like someone who is inexperienced but very smart. I like watching her think about what to do next—the little crease that forms between her eyebrows, the way her fingers never stop moving, drumming on the table or hovering in the air like little hummingbirds. Occasionally, Anaïs or Pankaj casts a curious look in my direction, but mostly they’re busy putting the newbies through their paces, and they actually seem to be enjoying themselves. They’re usually losing to me during chess practice, so I guess this is a little more entertaining. I’m pretty sure I even see Anaïs smiling at one of the freshmen at one point, which I hadn’t previously thought possible.
I make empty moves in order to let Izzy keep playing, to let me keep watching her, but even so, the hour passes too quickly, and as the minute hand clicks forward, I’m filled with the dread of going back to my normal existence without her.
“This was nice,” she says, leaning over the board in these final slipping moments. “Maybe I could be a chess enthusiast after all.” And then, she does it again, she reads my mind and adds, “But I still think that we should sneak out some night this week. After your aunt is asleep. After my parents are.” At the front of the room, Mr. K tells everyone to wrap things up and put the chess sets away in the big Rubbermaid containers that he lugs everywhere.
“Where would we go?” I say, and practically wince at how lame the words sound coming out of my mouth. Why would it even matter where we go? I should say yes, yes, and only yes. But she doesn’t seem to mind.
“Wherever you want to take me,” she says. “Someplace in Brooklyn that you think I should see.”
As soon as she says this, I feel in my marrow where I will take her. It’s almost like a memory of the future, it’s so clear. “Yeah, that’s exactly what we should do. Let me say goodbye to Mr. K for a second and then we can walk back to the block together.” She winks at me, those beautiful eyelashes brushing her cheek, and it’s one of those moments when our shared secret seems more exciting than scary.
“I’ll wait for you in the hallway,” she says.
Everyone else is eager to get out, get away from the school, and the classroom is empty in a few moments. Mr. K is at the desk, looking absentmindedly at the attendance sheet, which he subsequently lets fall from his fingers into the trash.
“Thanks, Mr. K,” I say. I’m afraid I’ll startle him, but he doesn’t look up. He knew I was there all along, I guess. “Today really helped with my concentration.”
He leans against the desk, his big hairy hands spread out on its surface. “Yes, yes, good. Concentration is important.” I make for the door, congratulating myself on how well this afternoon has gone. That’s when he calls my name again, and I see when I look back at him that his jaw is clenched with something that looks an awful lot like worry. “But Trees-tahn. Love, it always leads to suffering. You know this, right?”
THE QUEEN
THE HUMAN EYE HAS ONLY THREE TYPES OF COLOR-SENSING cells, but the eye of the mantis shrimp has sixteen kinds. Scientists speculate that, because of this, they can see a far wider spectrum of colors than we’ll ever be able to see, like Dorothy in Oz compared to Dorothy in Kansas. I don’t know what it’s like to be a mantis shrimp, but I feel like the closest I’ll ever come to finding out was during those first few days with Tristan, when the world around me seemed to crackle with hues I never knew existed. I looked at a blackberry the morning after the party, with its vibrant, perfect cluster of juice-filled spheres, its purples and reds and indigos, and was fairly certain I could sense the divine in it.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” I asked, holding out the berry to my mother, who was sketching a jewelry design at the kitchen counter, and she agreed, though not before looking at me with surprise. We both knew that it was the kind of thing she would say, not me.
Tristan told me he needed time, only a little time, to figure out how to tell Marcus, and since it was so important to him, I acquiesced and agreed to keep quiet. Temporarily, at least. I steered clear of Marcus—turning a cold cheek to his affectionate greetings at school, never picking up his phone calls—and when pressed, I mumbled vague statements about not wanting to be in a relationship. I remember thinking it was a little amusing, how bewildered Marcus looked by all of this. He wasn’t accustomed to being rejected. If I’d paid attention, I might have seen that I was hurting his feelings.
But I probably wouldn’t have cared, anyway. I sailed through those days not caring about anything with which I had previously been consumed—my brother or my parents or my grades or becoming a doctor or what anyone thought of me. One singular thing had replaced all of that. It was a certain brand of insanity, the kind that anyone who has ever fallen rapidly in love will recognize.
The first night we snuck out together, I was so nervous that every ordinary nighttime sound was a panic attack in miniature. The creak my foot made on one of the stairs, the louder-than-expected click of the door latch—agonies. We had agreed to meet by the playground at a little after midnight, and while I was walking there, a bird or a chipmunk rustled in a bush, startling me so much that I thought I might pee myself. But I was the first one there, and when my heart started to slow down, I realized it was nice to be out in the world when everyone else was tucked inside. It felt like the street, the whole neighborhood, belonged to me.
And then Tristan—I can see him now, the way he looked hurrying down the sidewalk toward me, with his strangely erect posture and his floppy Chuck Taylor sneakers and his face mostly hidden inside the hood of his sweatshirt. I folded myself into him, breathed in the fresh laundry scent of him. I stood there like that for a minute, holding him, and it was almost painful, not being able to experience, all at once, all the beautiful things we were going to do together. So much of life is waiting.
“You okay?” he whispered.
“Yeah.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
We walked to the nearest subway station, the C toward Manhattan. The station was nearly deserted so late at night, a homeless guy napping on the bench our only company. We walked to the other end of the platform and made out for a few minutes, the curves and crevices of his body becoming more and more familiar to me. It felt, sometimes, like we were growing together, becoming grafted like trees.
The train pulled up, and there w
as a smattering of people in the car, so we put the make-out session on pause and huddled together in one of the two-person seats at the end of the car, holding hands.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“It’s a surprise.” When I made a face, he said, “Don’t tell me you’re one of those people who hates surprises.”
“I don’t hate them. But don’t you think they’re overrated? Isn’t one of the key factors of enjoyment being able to look forward to something good?”
“But what about wondering? What about the endless possibilities?”
“Because I’d rather think about the one possibility that’s about to become an actuality.” It seemed like a perfectly reasonable request to me, but he mimed zipping his lips and throwing away the key. At the last stop in Brooklyn, we got off the train.
This was DUMBO, Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass, the neighborhood of warehouses turned art galleries. I’d been here a few times with my mom while she sought out inspiration or met with a gallery owner, but I didn’t know it well. To be honest, it had always struck me as one of those spots that was oppressively hip, all look-at-me clothes and snotty expressions, someplace I didn’t fit in, so the surprise wasn’t exactly blowing me away at this point, but I was keeping an open mind. Then Tristan seized my hand and started running, and we galloped down the sidewalk, laughing our heads off. Stupid Sound of Music–style stuff, but I still can’t think of it without smiling.
I hesitated at the entrance to the park, knowing that all of the city-owned areas were officially closed at that hour. But Tristan squeezed my hand and tugged me forward and I wasn’t about to say no. I knew of this park, one of the city’s slow projects designed to make New York warmer and cuddlier. Take down the deserted warehouses, clean the place up, put in green spaces and beer gardens and basketball courts and jungle gyms to suit the already-gentrified neighborhood.
Izzy + Tristan Page 12
