The Slut's Guide to Chess

chapter 9

I furrowed my eyebrows in concentration while knitting the soft wool into socks before me. I had let everything else fizzle into the background and allowed all my energy to be poured into the work.

"Zora," Aleena called loudly. The static in my mind had grown so thick that they barricaded like cotton balls, stuffing my head with nothing but nonsense.

I hummed in response, not allowing my mind to drift too far away from the sock otherwise it wouldn't get it finished.

"Will you be going to sixth form or college?" She asked gently from her place on the old wooden table. With her French homework sprawled out in front of her, the sound of the legs of the table as they squeaked from movement harmonised with the soft pitter-patter of rain against the common room window.

We were alone in here and that left the couch all to myself. I happily laid on my back, knitting into the air as the soft sound of jazz music floated around the room from the CD Aleena had put into the player. Jazz was an odd passion of ours.

It had been two days since I last saw Arwyn and my mind crunched from embarrassment. After my outburst, we'd returned back to the school in uncomfortable silence. He hadn't even shown me a chessboard.

"I don't know yet," I answered her question, watching curiously as my sock came together loosely. "I don't like thinking too far ahead. I know I'll do my A-levels and then...I don't know. I don't want to get a job to be honest. I don't know anyone who likes their jobs. My worst nightmare is doing the same thing every day, I can't do a 9 to 5, Aleena. I'll go insane. I'd like to travel, though. That sounds fun."

The soothing sounds of jazz bounced against the furniture and trotted across the floor. It made the room, with its echoing stone walls, chiselled fireplace and dramatic windows, seem smaller and cosier. The dark colours of the old school almost fizzled out when Aleena and I walked through with our bright clothes and bouncing jazz. She made things easier for me to breathe.

I talked to a lot of people in school, hung out with different types of groups and made surface friends with all sorts of people around. I listened to pop music with my drama friends, and rock with the cooking club, but jazz was for Aleena and she was my constant. I spent every day with her, either talking or texting. Sometimes I thought that perhaps I relied on Aleena too much - that maybe it wasn't healthy for your whole mental health to rest on one person's shoulders.

When Aleena had taken a week off sick a few months ago, I felt like a lost sailor amidst tumultuous waves. I didn't realise how much I followed her around like a puppy until she wasn't there to follow anymore. I sat with a new group every day at dinner and felt that everybody was there to talk to Zora but a version of her that wasn't me. A version of myself that listened and made jokes and talked but about anything that wasn't personal. Like I was a doll being passed around the party.

Maybe that was why I was so enthusiastic when Griffin liked me. When he listened to me talk and called me pretty. When he told me things and I told him things, too. When he seemed to like this version of Zora that was so true to myself that I felt special and lucky and vulnerable. I just wanted to be loved and wanted and not left behind. I hadn't seen that version of myself in a while since he hurt me, though.

"This is our last official year," Aleena said, and I saw her figure deflate in my peripheral. "It's weird that we're being split up so soon, I never thought the day would come. I suppose I've become sort of dependant on you."

Her words made my chest warm with relief. It was nice to know Aleena relied on me just as much as I did her. The future scared me beyond what I could comprehend and because of that, I often didn't think about it. I didn't really want to leave Blackwell with its stone paths that I knew inside out. I couldn't part with the classrooms where I stressed about my exams, laughed with friends, learnt new things and forgot the next day. The teacher's faces, whom I had grown accustomed and comfortable with, would be just a memory soon and that scared me a lot.