Checkmate

5| The princess and the burnout

The outside of his house looks like something from a horror movie. It's not the size of his home – which is small but cozy –  or even the dying red roses around it, but the vibe. Stuck at the end of a long, leafy road, it's far enough from everything else that the place feels eerie. Far enough that when Blake turns around and inevitably kills me, no one will hear me scream.

For a good few seconds, I sit in my car with my hands on the wheel and slowly count to ten. Sure, there are several cons to being at Blake's house, like my aforementioned death or being sold to a cartel to pay off his debt, but I can't think of any that outweigh the pro, so I kill the engine, check my makeup, and get out of the car before knocking on his door.

A shadow emerges behind the frosted glass. Blake opens the door and leans on the frame, regarding me with that same half-amused, half-disgusted expression he's mastered so well. 

"Hey," I say, but my chirpy greeting is met with cold silence. I begin to wonder if he's already forgotten about our little arrangement – a drug dealer's schedule must be busy, after all – when he steps aside to let me in. But that second of silence was all it took to give me cold feet. Other than knowing he goes to my school, I know nothing about the boy standing before me, and if it weren't for these circumstances, there's no way I'd go into his house.

"Are you coming in, or are we doing this on the porch?" he asks.

My eyes roam the porch, which is weathered and in disarray. "Inside," I say, stepping forward as he closes the door behind me. The hallway is narrow, almost too narrow to fit us both, so there are about four inches between us. I hold my breath, too scared to talk or move or breathe; too scared to exist. As though he can't bear to stand this close, he turns and heads down the hall.

Following him, I say, "Aren't your parents home?"

"It's just my brother, and he's not around much."

I try not to think about my impending murder and take in the pictures of Blake and his brother as kids. The pictures seem to stop when he gets to around fifteen or so, and the rest of the wall is bare. I stop at a picture of him and his brother playing on a slide, their smiles that perfect mix of cuteness and mischief. "You guys were adorable," I say. "How old is your brother?"

"Twenty-six."

"Will he mind that I'm here?"

"He's on vacation right now, so no."

"Are you guys close?"

He gives me that look. "What is this, twenty questions?"

I fall silent as we reach a door that leads down to a basement, pausing when Blake steps inside. Definitely a horror film. Then again, if he wanted to kill me, doing it in the basement instead of the living room would hardly make a difference. The stairs creak as I follow him down to the bottom. It's large and dark but cozy in a way that I hadn't expected. Rustic bookshelves line the blue walls, and in the middle of the basement are a couple of couches, a coffee table, and a mini fridge.

Blake sinks onto one of the couches while I continue to stand. It's not that there's anything wrong with the basement, but this part of the house feels decidedly more him, as though I'm encroaching on his space. As I fiddle with the Tiffany bracelet I got for my birthday, I've never felt more out of place.

He leans forward a little and opens a box in the middle of the table. "Can you sit down? You're making me nervous."

The idea that I make him nervous is silly, but I perch myself on the sofa opposite and wait for him to speak. And wait. And wait. I run my hands back and forth across my knees, watching as he rolls what I'm certain is not a cigarette. The silence is killing me.

"Look," he says, taking pity on me, "if we're going to be spending time together, you need to learn to relax a little."

"I am relaxed." His eyes fall to my tapping foot, which immediately falls still. Playing with the end of my hair, I say, "So, it's really just you here?"

He nods, which makes me feel bad. I can't imagine living in this house alone, with no parents, no one to wake up to or say goodnight to. No one to eat with. It must be horrible.

"You can stop giving me that look." He looks up briefly, eyes dark, then returns to rolling his joint. "I don't need your sympathy."

So much for small talk. "Fine, let's just get this over with." I reach into my bag and pull out my campaign book, but he makes no effort to look over it.

Instead, he says, "I don't get it."

"Get what?"

"Why you want this. Another year, and we're out of this place. No offence, princess, but no one will care that you were Senior Class President in high school."

"I care," I say. "Making a difference is important to me."

The corner of his lip lifts. I can tell he doesn't believe me, that he thinks this is all about feeding my ego, and maybe it is. Maybe I'm just not self-aware enough to realize, but I'd like to believe it's more than that.

"Laugh all you want," I say, "but it's true."

He continues to roll his joint. "If you say so."

My skin moves and crawls as he works his way under it. "You don't like me, do you?"

"Is it that obvious?"

Hearing this shouldn't upset me, but it does. My mother would say that you can't please everyone, but if there's one thing I hate, it's knowing I'm not liked. And sure, I don't particularly like him either, but at least I'm not so open about it. "Why?"

His eyebrows hike up – he hadn't expected to be put on the spot, but he rises to the challenge anyway. "Vain, vapid, take your pick."

The vapid stings more than the vain. Maybe it's because, despite my best efforts, he's probably right. "Yeah, well, I'd rather be vapid than a loser who spends all his time getting high in his basement."

He smiles like I've surpassed his expectations. "How's that prickly thing working out for you?"

I fold my arms like a petulant child. "I'm not prickly, you just bring out the worst in me."

"Happy to be of service."

Irritated, I open the book and flick through the pages, trying to focus on my impending campaign, but the idea of him smoking makes me nervous.  "Could you maybe not do that?"

"Do what?" His eyebrows furrow as he looks at his hands, where finally, it clicks. "Oh." A hint of a smile crosses his lips. "Alright."

I expected an argument – it's his house, after all – but instead, he stops rolling and puts it away before leaning back in his seat.  Relieved, I tilt my campaign book toward him and say, "Do you want to have a look at my plans?"

He leans forward now, not to look at the book but at me. Alarm bells ring as I clench the book harder, but there's something behind the look in his eyes that I can't quite place, something not entirely unpleasant. I hold my breath as he leans in closer, certain that he's going for the kill, but in one quick move, he reaches around me and grabs his vape before putting it in his mouth.

I narrow my eyes at the smirk on his lips. "I'm paying you for this," I say. "The least you can do is show an interest. I don't exactly have long left to get the sig–" but my sentence trails off as he delves into his hoodie pocket and pulls out a scrunched-up piece of paper. In one quick move, he bounces the paper off the coffee table's edge, so it lands on my lap. Impatient, I unfold it, only to see that it's my signature sheet. "You can't just scrunch it up," I snap, "this is an important document," but as I fight to iron out the wrinkles he's made, the signatures slowly come into focus – all one hundred of them.

A/N

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