The Girl He Used to Know(4)

“Welcome, everyone. New members, please introduce yourselves. Pizza at Uno afterward if anyone’s interested.” Eric turned back to Jonathan and then pointed toward me. The gesture filled me with dread, and I froze.

I almost always played with Eric, for two reasons: One, we’d joined the chess club on the same day our freshman year and as the two newest members, it made sense for us to partner up for our first game, and two, no one else ever wanted to play with me. If Eric and I finished our game quickly, he moved on to play with someone else and I went home. I liked playing with Eric. He was kind, but that never stopped him from playing his hardest. If I beat him, I knew I’d earned it, because he spared me no handicap. But now that Eric had been elected president and spent some of the meeting answering questions or handling other administrative functions, he wasn’t always available to play with me.

My stomach churned as Jonathan walked toward me, and I calmed myself by flicking my fingers under the table as if I were trying to remove something unpleasant from the tips. When I was a child, I would rock and hum, but as I got older, I learned to keep my self-soothing methods hidden. I nodded my acknowledgment of his presence when he sat down across from me.

“Eric thought we could partner tonight. I’m Jonathan Hoffman.”

His jaw was square and his eyes were bright blue. His short dark hair looked shiny, and I wondered if it would feel soft and silky under my fingertips. He smelled faintly of chlorine, and while I hated most smells, for some reason that one didn’t bother me.

“Annika Rose,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

“Monica?”

I shook my head. “No M.” The confusion surrounding my name had been a constant my whole life. In seventh grade, a particularly vile girl named Maria had shoved my head into a locker. “A weird name for a weird girl,” she’d hissed, sending me fleeing in tears to the nurse’s office.

“Annika,” Jonathan said, as if he were trying it on. “Cool. Let’s play.”

Eric and I alternated who played white and therefore took turns enjoying the slight advantage that came with it, and if we’d played together that night it would have been his turn. But since I’d been paired unexpectedly with Jonathan, the pieces in front of him were white and he went first.

His opening sequence displayed his affinity for the moves of World Champion Anatoly Karpov. Once I identified his strategy, I chose my defense accordingly and immersed myself in the game, the sounds and smells of the food court fading away along with my nervousness. I no longer heard snippets of the students’ conversations as they ate their burgers and fries, or the sizzle of the wok from a fresh batch of chicken fried rice. I didn’t smell the pepperoni pizza hot out of the oven. I played ruthlessly from the start, because every game I played was a game I played to win, but I also took my time and concentrated on my next move. Neither Jonathan nor I spoke.

The game of chess is largely silent, but to me there is great beauty in the lack of sound.

“Checkmate,” I said.

There was a long pause and then he said, “Good game.” He looked around, but only a few of our members remained. Everyone else had left for dinner while we were still playing.

“You too,” I replied, because the victory had been as hard won as any I’d earned from Eric.

“You going out for pizza and beer?”

I stood up, grabbed my backpack, and said, “No. I’m going home.”



* * *



The lingering smell of sandalwood incense and Lysol greeted me when I opened the door of the campus apartment Janice and I had lived in for the past two years. The incense was to cover up the faint scent of pot that always clung to her boyfriend’s clothes. Janice would never have allowed Joe to get stoned in our apartment, and she couldn’t detect the smell on him herself. But I had a very sensitive nose and I knew what it was the moment she introduced us. Janice understood that the memories it triggered were something I simply couldn’t handle.

The Lysol was to counteract the aftereffects of whatever Jan cooked for Joe. She loved to experiment with recipes and spent hours in the kitchen. Her palate ran toward the gourmet side of things, while mine aligned more closely with the dietary habits of a six-year-old. More than once, I’d seen Joe staring at the grilled cheese or chicken nuggets on my plate while Janice stirred something complicated on the stove. I appreciated her willingness to keep the smells in our apartment to a minimum, but didn’t have the heart to tell her that the Lysol and incense only added two of them to the mix. And because I wasn’t the easiest person to live with, I never would.

“How was chess club?” Janice asked when I came in, threw my backpack on the floor, and flopped onto the couch. It would take hours for me to fully unwind, but being home allowed me to relax slightly and my breathing to grow deeper.

“Horrible. There was a new member, and I had to play with him.”

“Was he good-looking?”

“I’m super exhausted.”

She sat down next to me. “What’s his name?”

“Jonathan.” I kicked off my shoes. “I’m so mad at Eric. He knows we always play together.”

“Who won?”

“What? Oh. I did.”

Janice laughed. “How’d that go over?”

“The same way it always does.”