Perpetual Check by Rich Wallace Read Free Book Online

practice serves,
Zeke's thinking,
all those push-ups and wind sprints.
They're not a lot of help right now. Worth about as much as a misshapen M&M. “You have any idea how rare that is?” someone once asked him. “Very rare.”
    But sometimes very rare things happen.

SIX
Nobody Dances Well
    Randy keeps track of his brother's game as best he can, ascertaining that Jenna's using the same opening as before. He tries to catch Zeke's eye to make sure he's caught on, but Zeke wouldn't acknowledge Randy for a million dollars. So Randy shifts his focus back to his own match, which he senses is moving in the right direction for him.
    Lucy Ahada reminds him a lot of his girlfriend, Dina— slight build, airy demeanor, ambiguous ethnic background— so he automatically feels a sense of affection for her. She studies the board for several seconds before every move but never hesitates once she's decided what to do. She catches Randy's eye, then looks at the board again until he's responded.She always gives a slight, polite smile after Randy's move but never betrays concern or pleasure.
    She hasn't altered her strategy much from the narrow defeat she handed Randy in last month's dual match. So while she pays perhaps too much attention to bringing out her knights, Randy puts two pawns in position to limit the knights’ effectiveness in the center of the board.
    Dina went through the Catholic grade school, so Randy hadn't known her until they started high school and he sat behind her in American history. She was always turning around and rolling her eyes when the obnoxious teacher said something particularly annoying, and she seemed to enjoy Randy's made-up words. And Randy sometimes did childish things like fastening paper clips to Dina's collar or flicking tiny wads of paper onto her desk. He heard through another girl in the class that Dina wanted him to ask her out. But he was very passive about things like that. Scared, in fact.
    So Dina waited until mid-October, then turned around one afternoon and said, “There's a dance after the home coming football game on Friday.”
    “So?”
    “You planning to go?”
    “No.”
    “Well, make plans.” She gave him a very sweet smile. “How about if we go together?”
    “I don't dance very well.”
    “Nobody does.”
    So Randy warmed up to the idea and got his mom to do the driving. She liked Dina right away, especially since she's a straight-A student and babysits for three different families. Mrs. Mansfield said she had spirit and fortitude, and that it'd be great if some of that could rub off on Randy.
    Lucy's mouth is slightly open, and she's making circles on her chin with a finger. The way Randy's just positioned his queen has left her with a difficult choice—retreat with her knight and surrender a bishop, or save the bishop and lose the knight. She reluctantly moves the bishop, which Randy was hoping she would do. He takes the knight. Within three moves, he has the bishop, too.
    He takes another quick look at his brother's table and wonders if he's detecting some concern on Jenna McNulty's face. Zeke's expression is slightly smug, and Randy hopes he's smart enough not to get overconfident and blow it.
    The way Randy sees it, Zeke is probably as smart as he is but manages to get blinded by ambition too often. And his arrogance never helps. When Randy takes a hard look at himself, he realizes that a certain degree of Zeke's conceit might not be a bad addition to his own repertoire. But the volume of ego that Zeke possesses—and their father, too—generally leads to a downfall.
    Randy has figured out that he usually beats Zeke because Zeke is too stubborn to give each move the consideration it deserves. Zeke still tells himself—despite having beaten Randy only six times in their most recent one hundredmatches (twenty-nine draws)—that defeating his brother simply shouldn't take a 100 percent effort. That Zeke is superior enough that his normal game will suffice.
    Randy has