Check mate

Despite being a childhood math prodigy, I just couldn't get my 8th grade head around 10th grade-level truth tables, so my teacher offered to give me some extra help after school. M&M had some stuff to take care of, which probably involved boys, so she said she'd swing by after my lesson and pick me up so we could head back to her house to eat all the junk food, giggle over her mother's vibrator, watch Bob Ross paint and prank call people. It's pretty much what we did every day. Ah, the joys of being latch-key kids.

One frustrating truth tables lesson later, some familiar faces started trickling into the room, followed by M&M.

"What's going on?" she asked, looking first at me and then at my math teacher. He explained that it was the Chess Club.

Now, M&M and I loved chess. She had taught me to play, and it was what we did if we'd managed to complete all the aforementioned activities before her mother arrived home from work. My teacher could see us pondering this.

"Do you want to stay?" he asked us.

"Okay," I said, "but just so we're clear, [M&M] and I are not joining the Chess Club."

We couldn't join the Chess Club, you see. The summer after 7th grade, we had, along with Mrs. F, realized we were on the nerd path. The braces were finally off, our mothers were no longer picking out our clothes, and more than anything, we wanted boys to like us. Extreme measures had to be taken. We fashioned a look that was one part Kelly Bundy and two parts heavy metal video groupie. Yes, there's a difference. When we came back to school in September, things were different. We landed our first boyfriends. We got invited to parties. The Chess Club would have put all that in jeopardy. It doesn't matter how big your hair is or how much black eyeliner, carefully melted with a cigarette lighter first, you apply. The Chess Club is still the Chess Club.

So we didn't join the Chess Club every week for the entire school year. We even didn't join the Chess Club once I'd mastered truth tables and had no reason to stay after school anymore. The little nerd boys loved having us, and we loved trouncing them in the game. Then one day, a photographer showed up.

"Everyone get together so we can take the yearbook photo!" my teacher cheerfully announced. The little nerd boys got up. M&M and I didn't. He looked at us. I shrugged.

"Oh right," he said, smirking. "Jessica and [M&M] aren't in the Chess Club."

You can imagine my shock and horror, then, when my date last night, who claimed to be a terrible chess player, beat me senseless. In my defense, my queen had been lost and replaced with a rook in a scarf, so I kept forgetting she was a queen. But still. I mean, I was in the Chess Club, for fuck's sake.