Queen Sacrifice

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School was an uneventful affair, although Isaac spent more time trying to work Emma’s strangle puzzle than on his education. As the hours went by, he became more and more frustrated with his lack of progress; at lunch, he tried to beg Emma to give him some clues, but she simply laughed him away. She appeared to be in a better mood than yesterday; Emma and Martha were somehow once again on good terms, despite Sarah still being aloof from her former bestie. By the time school finished at three in the afternoon, Isaac’s plight to find a solution to the paper’s mess of letters and numbers seemed a lost and hopeless cause. With an aura of despair, he resolved to spend the last hour he had in the library.

The library was crammed like a sardine can; the entire school had final exams in some form, but despite the massive number of teenagers, the noise was kept to a low buzz. Ordinarily, Isaac wouldn’t have bothered to be here, he disliked crowded spaces, but he had just one more hour until he failed Emma’s challenge, and he couldn’t waste time going home.

Looking around for an empty seat, Isaac drew up blank. Everywhere was taken, apart from one place. Unfortunately, it was next to one of the handful of people in this school who may genuinely despise him. Ben.

Prior to the last catastrophic DnD session, Ben and he had been getter closer in terms of their friendship. As it turned out, Ben was a decent conservation and quite fun to be around; he, Mike and Isaac were on the verge of forming a close trio before Emma blew it up in spectacular fashion. Since then, Ben and Mike had given nothing to Isaac except a cold shoulder, ignoring his texts entirely and refusing to even meet his eyes in the corridors.

However, with nowhere else to go, Isaac figured that Ben would just have to suck up being next to him for a few minutes until somewhere else became available. It wasn’t like he was forcing the shorter boy to talk to him. As Isaac sat down, Ben gave him a glare furious enough to make flowers wilt, but Isaac pretended not to notice the incorrigible exfriend.

For another half-hour, Isaac sat with the sequence stumped. Nothing seemed to work, every encoding algorithm that he knew of churned out nonsense. The passage at the top of the page similarly offered Isaac no clues to go after. All that was left to do was stare blankly at the paper while the time to his downfall slowly dripped past him like honey from a jar.

“I didn’t know you played chess.” Ben’s small comment threw Isaac through a loop, as he tried to process what the hell the boy was on about.

“What?”

“You’re holding the notation to a chess game. I said that I didn’t know you played chess.” Ben replied nonchalantly.

“What do you mean it’s the notation for a chess game?” Isaac’s brain was beginning to churn once more, his voice tinged with desperation for more information.

“Did you not know what it was? It’s how you write down a game of chess, look, it starts with white playing pawn to e5, then black plays pawn to e4, then white moves his knight to f3, and so on.”

With that, the quiet young man turned away, perhaps remembering that he and Isaac were currently supposed to not be on good terms. While he had only half an hour to text Emma the answer, deep down he knew that he had to do something first.

“Thanks, Ben. Listen, I didn’t know that DnD was going to go the way it went. I’m truly sorry, you should never have been dragged into it like that. I know we are probably done as friends, but just know that I wish what happened never occurred, and that you and I got to hang out more before it did.”

Ben made no indication that he had even registered Isaac.

Isaac had found himself apologising over and over to various people as he and Emma drew deeper into their perverted desires; what is it really a mistake on their part, or was the horrific consequence of the nature of their love that others around them would be hurt? As both he and Emma were discovering, humiliation was just as much a social experience as it was a personal one; when they drowned, it seemed as if they were dragging others down with them.

Eventually, he discovered that the chess game in the notation was one of the most famous ever created, won by Paul Morphy as white against the Duke of Brunswick and a French aristocrat who jointly played as black in 1858. However, the final four moves of the game were missing from Emma’s note. To secure checkmate, Morphy had sacrificed his queen, something not included in her notation. Is this something Emma wanted him to notice?

Just as he finished that thought, Emma texted him. Glancing gingerly at the time, Isaac saw it was four o’clock. Either he answers her correctly in this moment, or he loses the game.

What did you learn today, Isaac?

For a while, he let the text remain unopened on his phone’s home screen, his breaths hoarse with stress and heart’s valves like a set of pistons in his chest, hearing nothing but the constant dull thump from their straining. Fingers shaking with dread, he typed his answer.

To win the game, another man must have my queen.

It was corny, but Isaac was no poet. A minute passed without response, maybe she just wanted the moves? Then another minute. And another. The entire time, his body felt ready to shut down, sweat brimmed on his forehead in pools and made slow rivers down his paralysed face, whilst his arms shook with the weight of his phone held up to his straining eyes. He could not lose the game. He could not lose her. He had done too much, sacrificed too much of himself.

Congratulations, your reward will be ready at midnight.

The suspense was broken by her response. His raven-haired girlfriend was cryptic as ever, but the meaning of it made him want to jump and down with joy. He had passed.

It was at this moment, that Ben decided to give Isaac one last chance.

“I’ll start talking to you again on one condition.”

“Name it.” There was no hesitation within him; he would do anything to make things up to his friend.

“You have to help me get Martha as my date to the prom.” Ben quivered as he spoke, his tone hushed so as not to garner the embarrassing attention of any eavesdroppers.

“Deal. And thanks, man. I know what happened was fucked up, and I swear Emma and I will never drag you into anything like that ever again.”

Ben nodded, and with that, the tension that had suspended their conversation snapped like a rubber band, letting them fall into relief with their rekindled friendship. Isaac had no idea what Emma had in store for him at midnight, but so far, today had been a good day.