Free Until We End by Frankie Brown

him.
    Like I needed him to give me a psych evaluation. He wasn’t telling me anything new.
    I looked back at the board and my breath caught — my mental somersaults were paying off. I saw an opening. Well, an opening three moves down the line, but still it’d be an opening. I let my breath out as stealthily as possible and glanced up at Lu from under my eyelashes. She studied the chessboard, oblivious to me.
    Parades marched in my head, all confetti and streamers and big bands with brass tubas. I could win this.
    â€œWhat about the bishops?” I asked, desperate to keep Lu from noticing my impending victory, sure I was wearing it all over my face. My distraction worked. Lonnie giggled and Lu turned her head slowly to look at Brooks. He stared back at her.
    â€œBishops were the heads of the church. They represent faith,” Brooks said. “And love.”
    I thought saw that in her — an emptiness where faith and love once lived. And, for a second, I saw something else: mourning. I’d sacrificed my knights to protect my rooks and Lu had done the same with her bishops. So how different did that make us, really?
    â€œBullshit,” Lu said, looking from Brooks to me. “Talk about the symbolism all you want. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is the win.”
    She was right. I broke Lu’s gaze and blocked Brooks out, concentrating on lining up my trap. Every piece had to be in its perfect position. Lu couldn’t resist flaunting her queen, so I gave her the chance to use it. I moved my rook, opening the move up for her. To let her take my queen.
    It would be suicide in any other game. To do it on purpose? Unthinkable.
    I kept my face carefully blank. Her queen was in just the right place, holding the middle of the board. Mine was tucked in a corner. It would’ve been a totally believable mistake for me to make. A snap misjudgment. But I knew
exactly
what I was doing.
    Lu snatched the tip of her queen’s crown and slid it diagonally across the length of the board to take mine. I swallowed a smile. I knew I’d won.
    Brooks frowned. “Your queen,” he said, “is your most valuable and powerful piece on the board. In medieval times, a king without a queen would have no heirs, so without a queen the king’s throne had no security. Chess mirrors that. If the queen is taken, the king is defenseless.”
    I couldn’t wait to throw my win in his face. I was
not
defenseless. “Will you please just shut up, Brooks?”
    He let out his breath in a huff of exaggerated patience, like
I
was a student to be schooled. Asshat. “Each piece represents something, Cora, the queen included. The queen especially. What is your most valuable asset?”
    A mighty dragon captures my queen in its claws. My king, arms hanging limply at his sides, watches it fly away.
What is your most valuable asset?
    â€œI don’t know,” I snapped. “What’s yours?”
    Brooks smiled. “My gun, of course.”
    â€œGood luck getting it to give you any heirs,” I said.
    Lonnie burst out laughing, hands covering his mouth; even Lu cracked a smile.
    I turned back to the game and shifted my bishop one tile forward. Lu, still flush with what she thought was her victory, didn’t see it coming. “Check,” I said.
    Lu gripped the edge of the coffee table and bent to study the board for a full four minutes, just over an eternity in chess. Her eyes searched the board and I knew what she was seeing. Every move she could make to save her king ending in failure. The game lost.
    Her head snapped up. If looks could kill, I would’ve been
so
dead.
    Dad kept a full bookshelf of National Geographics at home. I’d read them all at least twice during the nine months I hadn’t left home, so I knew a thing or two about animal behavior. Lions, wolves, even bears use eye contact to assert their dominance.
    Lu didn’t break her gaze. Neither