Immortal Game
Shea was eight years old, and she’d just won her second open tournament.
In the final round, she’d played against the twenty-two-year-old state champion, Ben Farkas.
When they sat down at the board, he gave her a kind but patronizing smile.
Being underestimated always lit a fire in her.
The game had been difficult; he’d played a Dragon Variation of the Sicilian Defense she hadn’t encountered before.
Shea loved the challenge of improvisation, but what she loved far more was seeing his disbelief when she checkmated him on the twenty-fifth move.
Eventually, he laughed a little. “How old are you?”
“Eight.”
“Damn,” he said as he shook her hand. “Good game, kid.”
The exultant feeling followed her all the way to the award ceremony.
They took photos Shea did not smile for, then handed her a commemorative glass plaque and a check for a thousand dollars.
Privately, Shea missed the trophies they handed out in scholastic tournaments, the ones only kids played in.
But nothing could compare to how she felt playing at the very edge of her abilities.
Her mind was exerted but as clear and bright as a diamond.
When the ceremony was done, Shea found Aideen waiting for her outside.
Her sister looked nice today—nicer than usual, anyway, in a pretty white sundress, a stack of charm bracelets, and a pink cross-body purse.
Everyone else seemed to think so, too. Shea caught a few people staring as they walked by.
“Hey,” Aideen said brightly.
“Hi.” Shea hesitated before asking, “Is Mom here?”
Aideen’s face fell only a little. Shea did her best to swallow her disappointment. Mom never came to anything. Still, Shea had hoped. She really had to stop doing that. It was for the best, anyway. Mom liked it better when Shea lost her games.
“You played well,” Aideen offered.
“How do you know?” Shea grumbled. She’d tried to teach Aideen how to play before, but she never showed much interest. Aideen preferred making up stories about queens and their brave knights, instead of applying them to their real, martial purpose. “You don’t even know how the knight moves.”
“Of course I do.” She paused. “That’s the little horse, right?”
Shea knew she was being teased, so she only glared at her.
“All right. How about this to make things better?” Aideen unzipped her purse and produced two crisp twenty-dollar bills. “We go celebrate without her.”
Shea’s eyes went wide. “Where’d you get that?”
Aideen only gave her a mysterious smile.
This was how they ended up in Apollo Pizza, a spot in downtown Wayfolk, where they had slices as big as your head, served on two grease-stained paper plates.
Aideen ordered one for each of them. The cheese was so bubbling hot, it burned the roof of Shea’s mouth, but she didn’t care at all.
It tasted way better than anything the two of them could scrounge together from the half-empty pantry at home.
Aideen had abandoned her pizza in favor of examining Shea’s check. Absently, she said, “A thousand dollars is a lot of money.”
Shea didn’t know what constituted a lot of money. But Aideen had opened up the gates to the adult world with a discussion of finances and invited her in. She wasn’t about to betray her own ignorance. She nodded sagely and replied, “It is.”
“Maybe it’ll help Mom with the bills.” After a moment, Aideen spoke again, quietly and fervently, as if letting a secret slip out: “But if there’s any left over, we could buy nice clothes to go to fancy parties. Or a kitten. Five kittens. What would you do with a lot of money?”
Shea considered it. “Buy a bunch of gel pens.”
Aideen looked almost disgusted. “You have no imagination. I’d go on trips. Maybe to London or Paris—or Ireland. I think I’d like to go to Ireland and marry a prince.” She rested her chin in her hands and sighed dreamily. “Do they have princes in Ireland?”
Aideen had just turned thirteen, and Shea had never understood her less.
Her sister liked pretty things and faraway places and—maybe most mystifying of all—boys.
Sometimes, Shea could understand the desire to go somewhere far, far away from here.
Home wasn’t always a nice place to be, especially when Aideen and Mom argued.
Luckily, Shea had her chessboard. When she played, everything else fell away.
It soothed her, the elegance and predictability of chess.
She liked the way it felt to work out a tricky puzzle or crack a resilient opponent.
She loved books of chess theory, where the clashes between historical grandmasters came to life before her eyes.
It was like watching a movie—but even better, even more exhilarating.
The drama, the beauty, the pure logic of those games …
There was nothing she wanted more than to create that kind of magic.
Shea took a sip of her soda. “I don’t think so. They do in Britain.”
Aideen shook her head vehemently, as though the very mention of Britain had poisoned the whole fantasy. “That’s okay. Maybe we can just go and live in an old castle. One day, anyway. We don’t have enough money yet. In the meantime, I’ll bring this to Grandpa so he can cash it for you.”
“You can have it,” Shea said. “You want it more than I do.”
“That’s nice of you, but I don’t have a bank account.
Anyway, you earned it, chess whiz. It’s yours.
” She leaned across the table and tapped the tip of Shea’s nose.
Shea scowled at her, and Aideen stuck out her tongue.
After a moment, her expression grew serious again.
“Be sure to hide your plaque when we get home, or Mom will get mad.”
“I will.”
Shea glanced over at the glass plaque, which rested on the booth beside her.
It’d been unsatisfying back in the high school gymnasium.
Here beneath the fluorescent lights, it was shiny and reflective and hers.
Bitterness welled up in her. Mom didn’t even play chess.
It wasn’t logical to be jealous. But Shea had learned that adults didn’t make sense as soon as she started beating them at chess.
If they could make such simple mistakes over the board—ones so painfully obvious to her, a child—what else were they wrong about?
“Good,” Aideen said, all businesslike now. “Finish up, and we’ll go.”
Before Shea could reply, someone said, “Aideen.”
A boy with a flannel shirt and floppy black hair approached their table. Shea had never met him before. He looked around Aideen’s age, so he must’ve been one of her classmates. Aideen shot him a radiant smile. “Ryan! What are you doing here?”
Ryan didn’t answer her immediately. He only stared at Aideen with a hollowed-out hunger that gave Shea the chills.
Now that she could see him up close, he didn’t look so good.
His hair hung limp and greasy across his forehead.
His shirt was rumpled, and his cheeks were gaunt.
Beneath the fluorescent lights, his skin had taken on a waxy pallor.
This was a dead man walking.
“I followed you.”
Aideen’s smile faded. “What? Why?”
“You’re so beautiful.” He dropped to his knees like a supplicant.
People at nearby tables had begun to stare.
“Food tastes like ashes in my mouth. Even my favorite music sounds discordant. I can’t sleep.
I can’t drink. I can’t focus. All I do is think about you.
I need you to put me out of my misery. Please. ”
Shea didn’t fully understand what he was saying, but something about his desperation unsettled her.
She’d never seen someone act like this. At the chessboard, the threats were obvious: an attack on your king, a fork on your most valuable pieces.
Shea had no idea what Ryan might do. “What is he talking about?”
“Not now,” Aideen replied, in a thin voice. “We’re going.”
Aideen was afraid, Shea realized. Afraid of him.
Shea took in his pathetic, wan face. Confusion and disgust warred within her, but she let Aideen take her hand and lead her outside.
Shea stumbled a few times as she tried to keep pace with her, but she didn’t protest—not even when she realized she’d left her plaque behind.
It had gotten dark enough for the streetlights to come on.
It was an unusually misty night; their orange light bloomed faintly through the haze.
“Wait,” Ryan called. “Wait!”
“What’s wrong with him?” Shea whispered.
“I don’t know. I don’t know,” Aideen replied. “He’s acting like he’s enchanted, but I…”
As sick as he looked, he moved quickly. In a matter of strides, he caught up with them and seized Aideen by the wrist. She whirled on him with a wild, cornered-animal gleam in her eyes.
“Ryan,” she said, as though speaking to a spooked horse. “You’re scaring me.”
“And you’re killing me.”
“Please let go.”
“I can’t.” His expression was tortured and reverential as he laid one hand on the side of Aideen’s face. “Don’t you understand what you’ve done to me? I’ll never be whole again without you.”
Aideen flinched back. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t mean to—”
He wasn’t listening. Why wasn’t he listening to her?
“Hey!” Shea shoved at him, but it was as though he was made of stone. He didn’t budge. He didn’t even seem to notice her. He only leaned closer, as if he meant to kiss Aideen.
Aideen struck him across the face. “Stop.”
Something had changed about Aideen’s voice. It sounded as though two people spoke at once—and like electricity ran through every word.
The streetlamps overhead flickered. The mist thickened around them. Ryan froze abruptly, like a puppet jerked on its strings. Slowly, Aideen extricated herself from his grasp. Still, he did not move. He was rooted in place as though she’d turned him to stone.
All her life, Shea had known there was something strange about her sister. But she’d never seen anything like this. It filled her with equal parts wonder and terror.
Aideen clapped a hand over her mouth. Tears streamed down her face, but she didn’t make a sound. She only stared at him in horror and fascination, as though she could hardly believe what she’d done. As though she wondered if she could do it again.