Chapter 12: ch.12 [The Alien?]

The apartment had been put in order overnight.

Seth stood in the hallway in yesterday’s socks and understood it before he understood anything else.

Her shoes by the door.

Heel to heel.

Toes squared to the seam in the floorboard.

Three cups on the counter, handles all pointing the same way, like they had been told.

Towels in the bathroom, folded in thirds.

A pen on the kitchen table, beside the notepad.

Capped.

He did not know how long that had taken her.

Under the tiny crowned queen on the fridge, a note.

Out early. Eat something. - A.

He read it twice.

Gus used to say eat something like an order.

Mom... well she had never said it at all.

He looked for the knock in the handwriting.

The two soft knuckles.

The wall.

It was not there.

Two knocks in the dark, and then a note about breakfast.

He folded the paper once.

Not in thirds.

He wasn’t brave enough for thirds.

His phone sat next to the cup he hadn’t used.

He opened the banking app.

Section 15 was in there, ten percent, no interest.

The most polite debt in the world.

$2,000.00.

His thumb hovered.

She had written please. One time.

It had cost her something he couldn’t measure, and he didn’t know any other way to answer it.

He pressed.

Transfer complete.

Then the message thread. Her last text.

Nothing above it but the tuition line and the freezer.

He typed.

Sent. Please don’t ask again.

After a thought he deleted the please.

He typed it back in.

Send.

Three dots appeared under his message.

They stayed.

They went away.

He put the phone face down on the table.

next to the capped pen, and ate a piece of toast.

He stood up.

because that was the only part of the note he knew how to obey.

? ? ?

By the time the street sweepers came, Astrid Lind had walked to the river and back and still had not decided what she was.

Why did I do that?

Two knuckles. On a door that was not hers.

She had not chosen it.

Her hand had simply gone, the way it goes to a piece it already knows it is going to move.

Am I losing my mind.

She sat on a bench facing the water and took her own pulse out of habit.

Two fingers. Wrist.

She stopped counting before the number could finish.

She had stood at a wall for a long time.

She had listened to a boy trying to be quiet.

And what she had felt was not pity, which she could have filed, or duty, which she could have signed.

It was closer than that.

She had never stood that near to anyone with nothing to win.

Imagine if Ingrid finds out.

Ingrid.

Who had once diagnosed a stress fracture in Astrid’s posture from a single photograph.

Ingrid, the one who would not say a word.

Ingrid, who would simply walk into the bathroom, see the towels in thirds, and read them like a ledger.

Astrid took a pen from her coat.

She had capped it that morning.

Once.

Perfectly.

A small miracle, and no one to witness it.

She uncapped it now, to write nothing, and tried to put the cap back on.

It missed.

It missed again.

She held both halves in her hand and looked at the river for some time.

Then she put them in her pocket.

Fourteen identical coats, and not one pocket with an answer in it.

? ? ?

She came home when the light had already gone orange on the wall.

"Good evening, Seth."

Seth stopped with a dish towel halfway to his shoulder.

"Good evening."

She stood at a distance she had clearly measured.

Her eyes landed on a point just over his left shoulder.

With six centimeters between them, it was a point she had to work to find.

"The lesson resumes at six tomorrow."

"Okay."

"Yes," she said. "Okay."

She went to her room.

The door closed. Quietly.

Correctly.

A line of light appeared along the floor at the end of the hall.

The lamp.

He looked at it for a while.

He did not knock.

Not yet.

***

Sleep wasn’t coming.

He lay on top of the blanket with the phone an inch from his face, scrolling through videos he wasn’t watching.

Opening theory.

Opening theory.

A man shouting about a bishop.

Then a thumbnail stopped his thumb.

A young blond man sat on a throne.

Around him, blue aliens bowed and praised him with their tiny hands up.

Brilliant-move symbols floated through the air like glittering fish.

Behind it all, a chessboard hung in the sky, for no reason.

7 REASONS WHY YOU SHOULD PLAY THE ALIEN GAMBIT!!

By WitheredAlien.

It was ridiculous.

It was also glorious.

That was exactly why he clicked.

The man on the screen was already yelling.

He had a headset on crooked, eyes too wide.

And the energy of someone who had been awake for three days and found it funny.

"REASON ONE! Your opponent will not be prepared!"

"Reason two! Your opponent will not be prepared!"

"Reason three! See reason one, but LOUDER!"

Seth pressed his lips together.

The board appeared on screen.

A familiar road. Pawn here, pawn there.

the Caro-Kann, solid as a wall.

"They think they’re safe," the man whispered.

"They think this is a quiet game. And then!"

A knight jumped.

"Ng5!"

Another jump.

The knight landed on f7, right next to the black king, with a click so loud the video had added a sound effect on top of it.

"BRILLIANTTTT!"

The man tore off his headset and stood on his chair.

"THE DESTROYER OF CARO-KANN! THIS IS MY LEGACY!"

Seth laughed.

It came out the way it always did when he was nervous.

High.

Startled.

A goose that had been caught.

He clapped a hand over his mouth.

The wall was right there.

The wall had heard the worst of him, the night before. Pillow, breath, the sounds a person makes when he is trying not to make any.

It could have this one too.

He turned the volume down and watched the sacrifice again.

And again.

The explanation was almost unfair in how simple it was.

The knight didn’t threaten anything but the fork.

It just ripped the house open.

The black king, who had been sleeping, was suddenly standing in the street in his socks.

And if his owner panicked, there was nowhere good to run.

If your opponent panics.

Seth stared at the ceiling.

He had been the one panicking his entire life.

Every person who had ever beaten him had done it quietly. Politely. Like a hand closing a door.

This man was winning at the top of his lungs.

I didn’t know chess could be loud... again.

He sat up.

He took the folding board from the shelf and set it on the bed, and the pieces in their old places.

Pawn.

Pawn.

Knight.

He looked at the knight on g5 until it stopped being wood.

It wanted to jump.

It wanted it so badly his own hand twitched.

The window went from black to gray without asking.

Down the hall, the light under her door never changed.

He put the knight down on f7 one last time and listened to the click.

His heart answered.

***

At six, he was already sitting.

The board was on the low table.

His chair, the one with the dent in it now.

Hers across from him.

The bottle-cap queen warm in his pocket.

warmer than it should have been.

Her footsteps came down the hall. Measured. No rush.

"Good morning."

"Good morning." His ears were already red.

"Can I play white?"

Her eyebrow moved a quarter of a centimeter.

"You only have one opening." she said.

"And it is a defense."

"I know."

She looked at him. Then at the board.

Then, briefly, nowhere.

"Very well."

She sat.

He pushed the king’s pawn forward.

Click.

She answered at once with the c-pawn.

The Caro-Kann.

A wall with a small door in it.

A position built so that nothing would happen.

She had chosen it the way she had chosen the order of the cups.

She wants a quiet game, he thought.

Okay.

Pawn to d4.

Her pawn met it.

Knight.

She took.

He took back.

Her knight came out to f6, polite and correct.

and the room felt exactly like every game he had ever lost.

Familiar.

Soft.

A road everyone had already walked.

His hand went to his pocket.

Warm.

He picked up the knight.

He looked at it.

Not Wood.

It was Glass this time.

And then, underneath it, the other thing.

It wanted to go forward.

It wanted to be thrown.

He set it down on g5.

Astrid’s reply was quick.

Tidy.

The answer you give to a question you have heard before.

A small pawn step, to make room for her king to breathe.

Seth’s pulse knocked.

Once.

Twice.

His hand went back to the knight.

He did not decide.

Click.

The knight landed on f7.

Nothing happened.

For one breath, nothing at all.

Then the board turned its head.

He felt it.

Every piece.

The black king, suddenly exposed.

Wanting to take the knight and wanting not to.

The queen behind him, wanting to run.

The bishop that had been asleep in its corner.

Now awake and furious.

Everything on the board wanted something.

And all of it was loud.

BRILLIANTTTT.

Somewhere in his skull, a blond man on a throne screamed it.

Seth bit the inside of his cheek.

Across the table, Astrid did not gasp.

She had never gasped.

She went still the way a lake does.

Not all at once.

From the edges in, until the surface had no opinion at all.

Her fingers hovered above her king.

They did not land.

The room held its breath, and so did he.

Then she took the knight.

Because of course she took the knight.

And he brought his queen out into the open like someone kicking a door off its hinges.

The king, standing in the street in his socks, had nowhere that was not worse.

Seth’s heart was hitting his ribs.

Two knocks. Two knocks. Two knocks.

Gray light crept across the table, across the board.

Across the long pale hand that still had not moved.

She was not looking at the sacrifice anymore.

She was looking at the position as if it were a sentence in a language she had thought only she spoke.

A long time passed.

Then she lifted her eyes. Not to the board.

To him.

Red.

Steady.

Not the voice she used for cameras, Ingrid, or the world.

The other one. Quiet. Sharp.

"Where did you learn that?"