Even when the day’s classes were over, students at Marbrose Catholic weren’t free yet. Everyone—and that included Fern Kubelsky, much to her chagrin—was required to take part in at least two afterschool clubs or sports teams, which met fifteen minutes after the last bell rang at 3:25.
Soccer and lacrosse were the school’s two strongest teams, both for the boys and the girls, and Fern had precisely no interest in either. Really, she wanted to avoid sports if she possibly could, which was why she signed up for jazz orchestra and chess. Fern could play the trombone passably well, so she wasn’t too concerned on that score. As for chess—she knew the rules, and a few basic strategies, but she wasn’t expecting to win the team any trophies in the immediate future. The jazz orchestra would meet for the first time on Thursday, so Fern’s first extracurricular was chess.
The chess club was supervised by Olive Spiegelman, the young woman who ran the writing center. It met in an upstairs room in Aquinas Hall—wood-panelled and comfortable, with several shelves full of dusty books and some sofas of dark leather where students who weren’t competing could lounge and talk. Fern had a little trouble finding the obscure room, so she was nearly the last one to arrive.
“Not much experience?” said Miss Spiegelman after Fern introduced herself. “Not a problem. You’re a Rothko Scholar—I’m sure you’ll pick it up quickly enough. I’ll find someone who’s a little more advanced—that’ll give me a better feel for where you are. Just sit down right there—that’s right—and give me just a moment.”
There were maybe 15 students in all in the chess club—many of them upperclassmen who, like her, appeared to be avoiding a fall sport. They were a somewhat awkward and nerdy lot, overall, and Fern hoped she’d find a few kindred spirits. She watched as Miss Spiegelman flitted around the room, wondering who she’d be up against. She was just planning how she’d introduce herself when—to Fern’s utter mortification—Dean Calvert sat down in the chair opposite her.
“Dean says he knows a fair bit about chess,” said Miss Spiegelman. “So, I hope you’re up for a challenge, Fern. I’ll be wandering from game to game, so don’t be surprised if I look over your shoulder. Got to get a good idea of how much you know.”
Fern nodded, but found it difficult to speak. Dean said nothing but a mumbled “hi” and his eyes immediately fell on the chess board. His were the black pieces, and Fern’s were the white. Fern hesitated, swallowed, then moved one of her pawns.
For all she’d wanted to talk to Dean, Fern couldn’t bring herself to make conversation as they moved their pieces across the board. It wasn’t just that she was afraid she would make a fool of herself—Dean had a forbidding aura about him, as though to venture an idle remark to him would be a violation. He studied the board with a cold intensity, his hands folded in his lap and his eyes flickering across the board, like he was imagining the possible outcomes of each move. Fern was painfully aware of just how close their feet were under the table, and how she had started to sweat as soon as he’d sat down. She tried to focus on the game, but thoughts of the mysterious boy across from her kept crowding possible strategies and moves out of her mind.
“You are terrible at chess,” said Dean after about five minutes of silence.
Fern looked up at him in surprise. She had been starting to wonder whether he ever talked to anyone, and she certainly hadn’t inspected his first words to her to be an insult.
“I’m more of an art person,” said Fern, coloring slightly. “I chose chess because I didn’t want to have to play sports.”
“Because you don’t like competition?” asked Dean, moving his knight into position to take Fern’s queen. “Or are you just lazy?”
“I’m not lazy,” Fern shot back. “And I’m not against competition. I just know sports tend to suck up your entire life. What sports do you do, anyways?”
“None,” said Dean. “And that move will put your king in check. It’s not legal.”
“So what’s your excuse?” said Fern, returning her queen to its original place and replotting her entire strategy.
“I’m not a team player,” said Dean. “I work better alone.”
“Then we have that in common,” said Fern, moving her queen over one space. “I’ve never had many friends.”
“That’s not surprising,” said Dean, moving his bishop diagonally two spaces. “Checkmate.”
“What?” Fern exclaimed. “How is that…”
She studied the board carefully, frowning all the while.
“It is checkmate,” she mumbled. She slumped back in her seat, embarrassed at having lost her first game against Dean so spectacularly. At least he wasn’t gloating. He merely seemed bored.
“That was a good strategy, Dean,” said Miss Spiegelman, passing by to glance at their game. “Careful not to walk right into it like that, Fern. Try another game. Let’s see if you can anticipate him this time around.”
Fern and Dean returned the pieces to their original places. A few older students, apparently having heard from Miss Spiegelmen that one of the new Rothko Scholars actually knew what he was doing, had strolled over to watch their second game.
“So,” said Fern as she plotted her opening move. “How did you get so good at chess?”
“Chess is easy,” said Dean. “There are a limited number of possible moves and even fewer optimal strategies. That’s why even computers can do it.”
“But you’re not a computer.”
“No, but I always have a strategy. People who don’t have a strategy are asking for trouble.”
“You mean in chess?”
Dean shook his head.
“How would you get out of this building if there was a fire?” he said as she made her first move.
“What? I suppose I would follow the emergency exit signs. I assume the older students—.”
“That’s not a strategy,” said Dean, nudging his pawn forward. “This room has only one door, and it leads to a narrow hallway you have to follow to get to the stairs. If the fire was there, in the hallway, your plan wouldn’t work. So you need a backup. Those windows—.”
He jerked his head backwards.
“—are unlocked, and if you land in the bushes, it’s a safe drop. If the windows were locked and the fire was in the doorway—.”
“How would that happen?” said Fern impatiently.
“—that trapdoor in the ceiling leads up into the attic, and you could get up onto the roof from there.”
“Which is all assuming that, somehow, we can’t just make an orderly evacuation like normal people.”
The older students who were watching their game chuckled. Dean’s eyes met hers, and she thought she saw a slight flicker of anger.
“That’s why you’ll never be good at chess,” he said.
Fern must have looked rather flustered when she returned from chess club to change before dinner, because Vipsania sat up in her bunk, set aside the game she’d been playing on her DS, and fixed her dark, playful eyes on Fern.
“How was it?” asked her roommate.
“How was what?” said Fern, a little impatiently.
“Chess, Fernie. I heard you and Dean were in the same club.”
“Coincidence,” said Fern, setting down her backpack and setting out her homework for the evening on her study desk.
“And I guess you must’ve talked, huh? Either that or made sweet love. You’re flushed, Fernie.”
“We played chess,” said Fern. “And I lost. Three times.”
Vipsania studied Fern closely.
“God, you must really be into him. You’d think chess was a bedroom activity, the way you look.”
“I look normal,” said Fern, glancing at her reflection in the full-length mirror and brushing a few strands of black hair out of her face. “Where were you, anyways? Didn’t you have a club?”
“Jiu-jitsu,” said Vipsania. “It doesn’t start until next week. Going back to chess…”
“Let’s not,” said Fern.
Vipsania snickered and picked up her DS, but apparently she wasn’t done.
“Mrs. Fern Calvert,” said Vipsania whimsically. “Her classmates at Catholic school thought she was plain and bookish, but now she’s the talk of the town.”
Fern didn’t say anything, but only because she was convinced that anything she said would only become further ammunition for Vipsania’s flight of fancy.
“Outwardly, she was a demure, humble Catholic wife, but as her eleven children demonstrate, in the bedroom—.”
“I’m going to dinner,” said Fern, snatching up her blazer. “See you later.”
At that moment, Fern would have actually been perfectly content to never see Vipsania Montagnese again, but she knew that wasn’t likely. Fern didn’t end up going straight to dinner. Instead, she walked a loop around the entire campus, trying to get Dean Calvert out of her mind. She’d finally gotten her wish, after all. She’d met him, and talked to him, and he turned out to be rude, arrogant, dismissive, and defensive. He seemed to hold everyone other than himself in contempt, and he was so conceited that he couldn’t even take a joke. There was nothing in his personality to recommend him, and everything against him.
So why couldn’t she get him out of her head? Fern had always prided herself on not judging people by their looks. The heart was what mattered, and Dean Calvert’s heart seemed to be full of nothing but anger and bitterness. Fern thought back to what Vipsania had told her about what happened to Dean’s parents. Though nothing could ever excuse evil, there was a place for mercy instead of judgment.
“He’s not worth falling in love with,” Fern told herself staunchly, “but I shouldn’t push him away. He needs kindness.”
It was a rationalization, and Fern knew it. She sat down on a bench in Fausta Commons—the same bench where she and Vipsania had sat the day before—and studied the skyline of the Deco District, which was bathed in the fiery light of the setting sun. This place wasn’t good for Dean—it couldn’t be. Too many memories. Too many expectations. And always—Fern craned her neck so she could see Calvert Tower—the place where his parents had died, looming over him. She could help him. She would work her way past his defenses.
Fern was so caught up in her thoughts that she didn’t notice the figure of the young man that was working his way along the nearby flower bed until he was right beside her.
“Oh, excuse me,” said Fern, getting up to move.
“Don’t mind me,” he said. He had a surprisingly deep voice for someone who looked like he was just a little older than she was. She thought he looked like one of those men on the ads for Arrow Collars, only dressed like a gardener instead of a man about town. He was, in other words, handsome—in a clean-cut, masculine way.
“I don’t want to get in your way,” said Fern.
“You’re fine where you are,” said the boy. “I was just going to weed these beds before the sun gets too low.”
He reached around the bench and began tearing up ragged green stalks with his trowel. Fern watched him for a while, but feeling that this could be construed as voyeuristic, she decided she needed to make polite conversation.
“What class are you in?”
The boy looked confused for a moment. Then his face broke into a smile that was somehow both winsome and insincere.
“I don’t go here,” he said. “I just work the grounds in the afternoon. My name’s Declan. Declan Lovejoy.”
“I’m Fern Kubelsky. I thought the nuns took care of the school grounds.”
“They do. I live with them. Out at the Orphanage in West Marbrose.”
“You’re an orphan?”
Fern realized at once that it was a rather insensitive way of phrasing the question, but Declan didn’t seem to be offended.
“Not exactly. My mother left me with the nuns just after I was born. It adds up to the same thing.”
He went back to yanking weeds out of the flower bed, and Fern pretended to be lost in thought.
“Do you spend a lot of time at the school?” she asked.
“Just a couple hours in the afternoon,” said Declan. “And you can usually find me here on the weekends—if there isn’t a fight or a race.”
He recognized the confusion on her face.
“You from out of town?”
“Bancroft,” said Fern reluctantly.
“Well, you should know there are only two things that really matter in Marbrose—boxing and the horses. That’s where the money is, that’s where you can make it big—if you’re lucky.”
“I try not to rely on luck,” said Fern.
“Well, some of us don’t have much of a choice.”
He hoisted the bucket of pulled weeds over his shoulder.
“See you around, Fern.”
“Goodbye, Declan,” said Fern. She wondered for a moment if she had offended him, but there was nothing in his face to hint that he was annoyed with her. Her eyes followed him as he strolled off towards the convent, whistling a jaunty vaudeville tune. The sun was definitely setting, and there were just minutes before dinner closed. Meeting Declan had done one thing—it had driven Dean Calvert from her mind.
Now if only it could stay that way.