Exorcising Aaron Nguyen

Between a Spock and a Hard Place (Part II)

The door to the "chess lounge" was opened for us by a Pawn.

From what I knew of him, Aaron Nguyen's best friend was an annoyingly-superior nerd with delusions of evil genius. He probably wasn't a real genius, and when you live in the South, nothing seems evil when compared to mosquitoes, so really, he's zero for two. Somehow, despite his infuriatingly pedantic attitude, he managed to be popular. Not football team popular, but a sort of nerd ambassador to the kingdom of cool people, or what I like to call an Alpha geek. Hiroki was kind of like that too—he just wasn't as annoying.

I'm sure I knew the guy's real name at one point, but nobody ever used it. Upon his ascent to Catholic school chess club captain, he'd given himself a weirdly-perfect nickname—The Bishop.

Two days after his appointment, he forced everyone in the chess club to take some sort of aptitude test and kicked out anyone who got a less-than-perfect score. The Toilet Paper ran a story on it, and I'm sorry to say we might as well have taken a bicycle pump to the kid's ego. All the kids with good grades and something to prove flocked to the chess team, and soon The Bishop was breaking hearts and padding college applications. Those that passed the test became weirdly devoted to him, and everyone around school started calling them Pawns. It wasn't The Bishop's idea, but he adopted it and so did they. Like weird little pod people.

The chess club was creepy.

The Pawn—a pretty brunette with serious under-eye bags—scanned the two of us and turned back to the room, which was a pretty wood-paneled number with South-facing windows. The bookshelves were the installation variety, sunken into the walls and reachable with those ladders that slid on tracks. Suddenly, I was irritated the chess club had somehow claimed this room for their sole use. The slanting light of sunset was perfect for reading.

"Hiroki Satou and accessory," the Pawn announced. Great, The Bishop had a fucking herald, and she was a comedian.

"I am not an accessory, miss dark circles," I said. "I'm the fucking outfit."

She rolled her eyes just as a disembodied voice full of lazy expectation called, "Enter."

I took a breath to ask if we could speak to Oz the Great and Powerful to get my friend a heart, but Hiroki's heel whacked into the steel toe of my boot. I was not to be silenced completely, though.

As we stepped past the smirking pawn, I stage-whispered, "A little tea-bagging will fix those."

Hiroki made a strangled noise, but controlled his expression much better than me. I had to bite both of my lips not to grin like the Cheshire cat at my own joke. I feel kind of bad making fun of fellow outcasts, but about the worst thing you can do to me is pretend I'm insignificant. It really pisses me off.

The smile slid from my face. I wondered if they'd pretended Amy Barnes wasn't there, ignored her until she was convinced of her own invisibility, sent her nearly crazy until she tried to kill herself just to make them pay attention. Only she'd succeeded.

Look at me.

I sobered immediately. A semicircle of Pawns shielded The Bishop from view until we were almost to the middle of the room. Hiroki stopped a few feet from the chair opposite The Bishop, who had leaned back with one ankle propped on his knee, fingers steepled under his chin in an exaggerated pose of consideration. I was not surprised at all to see a chess board on the table, the white pieces arranged on the squares in front of him.

The Bishop was, all told, actually sort of hot. He was tall and blond, and though he's worn thick-rimmed glasses since before being a hipster was cool, behind them his face was all sharp angles and gray eyes fringed in those annoyingly long lashes Mother Nature only gives to boys who can't appreciate them. He's like what you'd expect would happen if a J. Crew model got bored with his yacht, ditched the white polo and sweater for a Starfleet Uniform, and developed a melatonin deficiency. I would totally have made out with him if he hadn't been such a dick.