The classroom in the morning smelled of coffee from the teachers' lounge and the wet wool of coats that had walked through rain, and Tara took her seat by the window and opened her notebook and began, as she always began, to draw a small grid in the margin and fill it with pieces.
The girl in front of her turned around.
"Tara, listen, I was going to ask, are you doing the group project with anyone, because Mara said that you don't usually do group projects but I thought maybe this time you might, since it's only three people in the group and it's not really that much work, and honestly I just don't want to get stuck with Bogdan because, and I'm not exaggerating here, Bogdan has literally never opened a book in his life, I'm pretty sure he eats them, I'm pretty sure that's why his teeth are like that…"
Tara looked at her.
[Her name is Ivana. Her teeth are also like that, in their own way, but she does not know it. None of her friends would ever say such a thing to her face. No matter how ugly a girl is, the others will always compliment them]
"I'd rather do it alone," Tara said.
She said it in a voice that was not unkind, exactly.
Ivana blinked.
"Right. Right, no, of course, sorry, I just thought I'd ask, because, you know, sometimes people change, and I just thought…"
"You're expecting me to change in a matter of months," Tara said. "Can't you understand that it takes time for people to change? And for someone like me, where nothing interesting happens in my life, it's impossible."
Ivana stared at her.
Then Ivana turned around and did not speak to her again for the rest of the lesson, which was, Tara thought, the best possible outcome of the conversation, and worth, by a comfortable margin, the small uncomfortable feeling that had settled briefly in her chest while she was speaking.
She moved a pawn in the margin of her notebook.
At the end of the lesson the teacher passed back the essays from the previous week, and Tara's came back with thoughtful as always, Tara written in red pen at the top, and she folded it in half without reading the comments and put it in her bag.
The boy across the aisle leaned over.
"Hey. Hey, Tara. What did you get."
She did not look at him.
"An A."
"Yeah but what did he write."
"He wrote thoughtful as always, Tara, because that is the only thing he knows how to write. He has written it on every essay I have submitted to him for the last two years, and he will continue to write it on every essay I submit to him for the rest of the year, and then he will soon retire, and write a memoir, and in the memoir he will mention me as one of his most thoughtful students, and he will not remember a single specific thing about me, because he never bothered to learn anything about me."
The boy stared at her.
"…okay. Okay, sorry I asked."
He turned back to his own desk.
She closed her notebook.
[[I don't understand why everyone seems to get turned off by me]
[Perhaps our gap in intelligence is too high? Not that it matters to me. I prefer being alone]
She skipped lunch. She often skipped lunch. She walked instead through the corridors of the school, which were nearly empty during the lunch hour, and which had the particular muted quality of all corridors during lunch hours, the quality of a building taking a breath between sentences.
She passed the music room, where a girl was playing something slow on a piano.
She passed the art room, where a teacher was sitting alone eating a sandwich.
She passed the common room, where a small group of students were sitting on the worn-out sofas, and one of them, she noticed, was bent over a small folding chess set, frowning at it.
She stopped walking.
[A chess set in the common room. I have never seen a chess set in the common room. The common room is usually where the normies would be, doing nothing productive and resting even though they have done nothing]
She looked through the doorway.
The boy with the chess set was someone she vaguely recognized, which was to say she had seen his face for three years and could not have told you his name under threat of physical violence.
He was staring down at a cheap, plastic set of pieces with an expression of complete, unblinking neutrality that made him look like a poorly constructed mannequin.
He was tall and thin and had the slightly rumpled look of a boy who had been dressed by no one in particular, and he was studying the board with an expression of complete concentration.
The other students on the sofas were ignoring him.
He was ignoring them back.
[He is playing by himself in front of other people. What kind of person doesn't have the decency to hide his hobbies in front of other people? Even I play alone. This is practically public indecency, no difference from taking my shirt off right here. D-doesn't he find this shameful?]
She watched him move a piece.
She watched him move another.
She watched him sit back and stare at the board with the same surgical expression, and she felt, for the first time in a very long time, a small specific curiosity, the kind of curiosity that did not announce itself loudly but simply, quietly, refused to go away.
She walked into the common room.
He did not look up when she sat down across from him.
He did not look up when she set her bag on the floor.
He did not look up, in fact, until she had been sitting across from him for nearly a full minute, at which point he raised his eyes slowly, the way a person raises their eyes from a book, and looked at her without any expression at all.
"You're in my class," he said. "Aren't you."
His voice was flat. Not unfriendly. Just flat, like a road that had been graded so thoroughly there was no longer any suggestion of hills.
"Yes."
"You're the one in the paper."
"Yes."
"Okay."
He went back to looking at the board.
She watched him move another piece.
"How long have you been playing," she said.
He did not look up.
"Three months."
[Three months.]
"Three months."
"Yes."
"You have been playing chess for three months."
"That is what I said."
[Three months? This absolute nobody dares to sit in my presence and speak of a three-month hobby as if it gives him the right to touch the grid that I have sacrificed my entire childhood, my sanity, and my relationships to conquer?]
"Why."
He looked up.
"Why what."
"Why did you start playing."
He thought about it. He thought about it longer than the question warranted, and he thought about it with the same surgical expression he had used on the board.
"I saw a book about it in a shop," he said, finally. "I bought the book."
"That is not why."
"You did not ask why. You asked why I started. I started because I saw the book. That is the answer to the question you asked."
She sat back.
"So tell me, why?"
"Nothing ever seems to interest me, no matter what I do, I always seem to never have a challenge. But a game like this…"
[I am a genius, I'll humble him]
{I should show him what it feels like to lose.]
"Do you want to play," she said.
He looked at her.
"Against you."
"Against me."
"You are in the paper."
"Yes."
"For chess."
"Yes."
"This seems like a stupid idea for me."
"It is a stupid idea for you."
"Then why are you asking."
"Because I am curious."
He thought about this also. He did not, Tara noticed, perform thinking the way other people performed it, with little frowns and small head tilts and the occasional thoughtful hum.
He simply went still, in the way a screen went still when the program behind it was working very hard, and then, after a measured pause, he spoke.
"Okay," he said. "I will play you."