ISA
At 168th Street we rise from our seats. My foot is throbbing again. Merrit frowns at the effort it costs me to take the ten steps or so to the door. He swears softly as he removes his Santa hat from his pocket. He pulls it down over his wet hair.
“You hurt your ankle again, didn’t you?”
When I nod, he swears once more.
He readjusts Santa’s hat. “I’m so stupid,” he mumbles. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s OK,” I tell him.
“No. No, it’s not. I’m selfish. I didn’t think what could happen to you.” His arm comes around me and his hand grips my shoulder. “I never wanted to hurt you. Yet that’s all I seem to do.”
“That’s not true.” I almost tell him how I hurt him. By not watching out for him when I was with Alex, like I should have.
Merrit stares at his reflection in the window, hat tipping again to the side. “I’ll take you to urgent care before our session. Dr. Peterson can wait.”
“No, he can’t.” Merrit staying stable is most important. “Anyway, I know what my ankle needs. We’ve got ice and bandages at home, plus crutches.” I want to believe what I say. I don’t want to think it’s anything more than a sprain.
“OK. But we’re taking a taxi home. I can carry you up the stairs to the elevator, even.”
I’m telling him no, that I just need to lean on him, when the doors fall open.
Alex is in the doorway. His hands are clenched. The dark slash of his brow is pulled low. His body’s angled forward, his knees slightly bent, like a sprinter ready to run.
An uncomfortable prickling works up my spine.
Alex straightens when he sees me. The hard determination falls from his face. His eyes widen, catching the subway’s flickering light. His eyes round even more, confusion replaced by what I can only call horror. He stumbles back, out of our way.
He probably hasn’t checked his phone yet. He hasn’t read my message. He remembers how I ran away from him outside the Academy. How I wouldn’t tell him why I left. I’ve become a nightmare to Alex, something for him to run from.
I was holding on to Merrit pretty hard already. Now my fingers dig into his arm so much he winces. He’s looking at me and then at Alex. He saw my phone. He saw photos of me and Alex together. He isn’t stupid. Please just let him not say anything. Not now.
Merrit helps me off the train, his arm still around my shoulder. I almost jump when I see Danny on our other side, his back against one of the arches. He catches my gaze, gives a faint shake of his head. He flicks two fingers as if tossing a gum wrapper. I deserve it, the look, the dismissal, all of it.
There are too many steps to the stairs for me to count. The pain in my ankle echoes like a hammer inside my head. Three other guys are in front of us. They look through us as if we’re invisible. Their faces are drawn with the same cold intent I saw on Alex, their gazes locked on him and Danny. They’re all here together, that’s for sure.
Merrit stops when we’re only halfway to the bridge. His frown has turned thoughtful. “That’s him, isn’t it?” he asks. “That’s Alex?” Merrit snakes his arm out from under mine, and before I can tell him to wait, he’s striding back toward Alex and Danny. “I’ll talk to him for you.”
“No—Merrit!”
Two other guys come up alongside my brother. There’s a whole group of them now.
“Hey, Santa,” one of them says. He says something else I can’t hear that makes Merrit stop.
The train pulls out, sucking air with it down the tunnel. The last of the passengers are crossing to the elevators.
Danny and Alex have moved closer to each other. Alex’s gaze sweeps from my brother to me. He looks at me like he’s about to either yell or be sick.
Something’s wrong. These guys, they’re not friends of Danny and Alex’s.
Merrit turns and looks back at me. He takes in the three guys between me and the stairs, not that I could climb them by myself. His Santa hat has fallen over one of his eyebrows. He doesn’t fix it. He just moves his head, surveying the platform, taking all of us in.
“Who’s this?”
I stiffen as one of the guys behind me drapes a hand across my back.
“She yours?”
I don’t know who he’s speaking to. The whiplash from my emotions—my relief from talking to Merrit, my shame at seeing Alex, and now my fear that something is very, very wrong—makes me dizzy. I feel like I might be sick too.
Danny puts out his hand, low, as if to block Alex or steady him somehow. Merrit raises his hand into the air, like the first-row, straight-A student he is. He doesn’t wait to be called on. He shouts out, “She’s mine. That’s my sister. Though the implication that she’s an object to be possessed by another person is not just anachronistic but also rather discourteous, to her mostly, but also to me.” He steps from between the two guys as casually as if he knows them from school. One takes hold of his elbow, but Merrit shrugs it off like a suggestion he’s not going to even consider. “I also object to the nature of this encounter. I mean, what is this? A game of urban chess?” Merrit’s voice speeds over the words. His eyes take on the fevered glow I dread. The one that tells me he believes he can fix this. He believes he can fix anything the world throws at him.
“Who is this guy?” one of them asks. “What’s he talking about?”
“Pero ese tipo está loco,” another adds. They move closer to Merrit, away from me.
It’s getting harder to breathe. The air seems too thin. I tell them quickly in Spanish that Merrit’s not well. That he doesn’t know what he’s saying. I don’t look at Alex as I say this.
Merrit frowns just a bit. He doesn’t stop or acknowledge me or my claim. He says the next line in perfect Castellano, accentuating the accent from Madrid where he spent a summer, so different from the DR or Cuba.
“What? You guys’ve never heard of human chess? She is the queen.” He gestures at me. “I presume he is the king.” Merrit points at Alex and then at Danny. “That would make you the knight. But what would that make me?”
Four guys are closing in on Merrit. My brother’s eyes are bulging out at me. He’s telling me to move, to run, to get out of here. He’s telling me he’s acting this way on purpose, to confuse them. Only I can’t run. Not with my foot.
“What did he just say? And what did you say, before?” The guy beside me jerks my arm. I fall onto my ankle and gasp. I gasp again because a knife is tucked into the waist of his pants. I tell him, in English, what we said, gritting through the pain in my leg and the alarm speeding through me. They’re going to hurt us. All of us. Alex and Danny too.
Merrit races ahead, switching out of Spanish. He doesn’t read the warning in my face. “I’ve thought about it and a bishop appeals most to me. Straight lines are really not my thing.” Merrit dashes across the concrete, cutting geometric shapes over the platform. The two guys jump forward to grab him. Merrit switches direction and comes toward me.
“The rest of you are pawns!” he shouts. “And in case you don’t understand the game, this label is purposeful and it is my intention to offend.” He grins almost maliciously as he nears. “Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas!” Merrit slams his Santa hat onto the head of the guy beside me, covering his eyes. The guy slaps it away. But Merrit’s already between us. He nudges me back even as he cackles. His laugh grows louder as another train approaches. “Check,” Merrit says, triumphant. There will be more people around us soon. People means safety.
The guy throws off the Santa hat. He grabs Merrit’s wrist. A blade winks in his hand.
My heart stumbles as time seems to slow.
Merrit whips his arm around, dragging the guy with him. He uses the momentum of the spin to swing the guy with the knife away from me. Only the guy doesn’t let go. The guy sprawls toward the platform edge, still holding on to Merrit. They both go over. They fall onto the tracks.
I scream.