"Well, it's a quarter after six now," I said. "Are you starting to believe in anything yet?" There were toast crumbs all over my pocket chess set, where I was trying to disgordianize my latest defeat. I brushed them off idly while she sipped an answer from her weak tea.

"I believe I'll sleep all day." My sister slept a lot that summer. She was seventeen, I was fifteen. She had long dark hair, like my mom, and freckles that made her seem younger. Those she got from dad, with her brown eyes. I called her eyes beautiful because I rarely saw them- she'd never look at you, even if the conversation was intense. She had a wide mouth. "A model's mouth!" my cousin from New Jersey always said, with that fucked-up accent of his. He was seventeen, too, and visiting for the summer while uncle Stirling his dad underwent a series of operations. I never figured out what he meant by a model's mouth; but it was easy to see he wanted her.

The days went something like this: six o'clock, stumble into the kitchen for toast and coffee. Talk to Lisa if she was hungover- pickled or not, she was always up before me. Six thirty, bathe and study the board until nine, then off to the chess club to get my ass whipped by the national and international masters that occasionally visited. I'd come home for lunch- usually Jerry would be up by then, ignoring Lisa. "Hey, Egghead, how's the wood?" he would invariably say. Everybody in my immediate family agreed that my cousin was a necessary evil- if uncle Stirling money didn't pay for a good enough surgeon this time, he might decide to treat his little brother real nice.

Chess is Psychology. I was rated 1950, but everyone knows good players play 300 points above their rating- so essentially I was a master. And I had beaten exactly three national masters. The first one was an old man from Northern California. When he saw that I was so young he decided to play off my youth. He opened with a seemingly lazy variation of the Sicilian defense, trying to guile me into a complicated but exciting open game. So I played the psychology right back by maneuvering as if I was eagerly attacking his king, while in reality I was planning to raze his queenside. He never saw it coming. I routed him in 25 moves.

After the club closed I'd come home for dinner. Jerry rarely stayed in- he sometimes took Lisa with him. I asked mom one night over pork-chops why Jerry let his dad send him down here if he didn't like it so much. My head was buzzing from an intense five hour session with the King's gambit- you'd be amazed at how few masters actually understand all of its nuances. I was cooking up a variation for the weekend tournament. In other words, I had a lot on my mind and was just making small talk, and I was totally unprepared for mom's answer. "Actually, it was Jerry's idea."I was trying to study the queen's indian after dinner but I couldn't concentrate, so I went to Lisa's room to see if she knew Jerry was here out of desire not duty. She was dead to the world- I even risked a poke in her ribs; her breathing didn't even change. She didn't look very good. Her skin was pale, there were circle under her eyes, her hair was stringy, and she was skinny as a rail. But her nose wasn't raw, her arms didn't have any tracks- if she was doing drugs, she wasn't doing any of the hard ones.

Chess is a sport. Over the weekend, including Friday and Monday, I had to play ten games for the tournament. Each move is a swing of the bat, a throw-in from the sidelines, another down. And it isn't over until the last game is played by the last two bleeding raw men. It's a team sport and it's not a team sport- it's you the individual against everyone else. After my fourth game Saturday afternoon, I had two and a half points. But going into the fifth game that night, I felt pretty confident- I was to be white and my king's gambit variation was setting up a quick but solid middle game. Jeffrey Dawson also had two and a half, so he was to be my opponent. He's rated 2150, but I've beaten him before. The game went rather well- he didn't completely crumble under my variation, but as the hazy fog that shrouds the division between middle game and end game slowly lifted, I was up a pawn with plenty of time on my clock to push it. Jeffrey usually keeps his elbows on the table with his hands in his hair, pulling on the roots and stretching his face. When he's losing (and he knows it) he'll sometimes not write down his moves for three or four turns. As I reached for my bishop, my cuff hit my forward pawn and knocked it over. My arm froze. and Jeffrey stared at me, pulling his head off of his hands. "Touch-move," he said, referring to the #1 rule of chess. But it was my cuff, not my hand, I grabbed the bishop, moved it where I wanted it to go, righted my pawn, and wrote my move down. Jeffrey stopped our clocks. "I'm getting the T.D."

Now, you must understand that moving that pawn would be fatal to my victory. I stared at the board, trying to see if I could get something out of the premature push. It was no good. He skewers my bishop, leaving the pawn dangling, then scoops it up. I sweated.

The T.D. and Jeffrey returned, the one frowning, the other grinning like the motherfucker he was. The T.D. put the question to me. "Eddie, did you touch the pawn?"

"I shook my head solemnly- if I got too excited he might think I was lying. "No, my cuff hit it as I was reaching for my bishop."

He looked at Jeffrey. "That true?" Most of the other players were looking at us now.

Jeffrey said, "The pawn fell over- I didn't see what did it, but it was definitely before he touched his bishop."

Sanders looked at the board, then at me. "Eddie, I'm going to have to go with Jeffrey on this." He put my bishop back where it had been, pushed the pawn, and started Jeffrey's clock.

Anybody who watches NBA ball on TV knows what it's like when a ref starts making bad calls. Things get rough. I couldn't hit Jeffrey, but I could slam my pieces down and slap my clock. I didn't give him any time to think- we were in a rudimentary ending, now, with rooks and opposite-colored bishops. He asked for a draw three times, but I made him go the whole seventy moves, and after the game I made damn sure he had every hundred and thirteen of them written down.

That's why I got home late- the time control didn't have a sudden death until the last day. I walked into the house, pissed as hell. That's when I saw Lisa come out of Jerry's room, wearing nothing but a shirt. She flushed when she saw me, holding up a book. "I was just borrowing this from Jerry," she said, weakly.

"Who gives a fuck?" I replied, brushing past her, going into my room and slamming the door. Lying naked in my bed, trying to breathe myself to sleep, I realized the shirt Lisa had been wearing was Jerry's, the one I'd given him for his birthday a few weeks before.

I tried to rally myself after the draw with Jeffrey but I only managed 3 and half more points. Good enough to win the under 2000 prize, but only fourth overall. Never mind that Jeffrey took eighth- I was pissed. I missed the money by half a point. Victor Tunny had seven points- if I had beaten Jeffrey, I might have played Victor, a 2033 player, and maybe would have taken one of those points away, Maybe not. My point is that I didn't even get the chance.

I brought the game score into Sander's office at the club. "Look at this- you know I had no intention of touching that pawn, A D player wouldn't even touch that pawn."

He looked up at me from his desk. "I know that, Eddie. But there's something you're going to have to learn, and that's that chess ain't nice. In a few years you're going to be playing national tournaments, maybe even international if you keep progressing.

"They wouldn't make a call like that."

"Yes they would, Eddie, I've seen it happen. And I'm telling you, they play for blood out there. Either you figure that out now when it's seventy-five bucks and a few weeks preparation on the line, or later when its 2000 bucks and three months. He picked up the tournament score, looked at it, and said, "You drew two others and lost two, one of those to an 1863. Go study those and quit feeling sorry for yourself."

I was more pissed-off when I left his office than before, and I felt like crying. This was complete bullshit. Chess for blood? What was that- wasn't it a title of one of Kasparov's books? What a fuck head. I went back home. Fuck chess, fuck Sanders. And fuck Jerry too- when I pedaled into the driveway, Jerry was driving out, and he gave me the thumbs-up sign. Whatever. I went inside, and stomped around the living room awhile, looking for something to do. Finally I decided I was thirsty, so I stomped into the kitchen and opened the door of the refrigerator. The three cokes I had left from the case were gone. Our house policy, our fucking house policy was that I get half, and Lisa gets half. She'd already had her half. Goddamnit. I stomped to her room.

Her door was open a crack, and inside it was dark as a tomb. She was asleep on her side, wearing just a t-shirt, and as I walked over to her lamp to turn it on and really wake her up, she rolled over onto her stomach, causing the shirt to ride up, exposing her backside.

I froze. Everything drained away, the chess, the touch-move rule, stupid Jerry. My head felt light, my breath shallow but sharp, like I was breathing tiny needles. I could see the hairs on my sister's ass from the hallway light, tiny little blond hairs. I tried not to move, not let my heart beat at all, and it almost stopped altogether when she moved again, spreading her legs just enough so that I could see what was between them. I'd seen it in magazines, plenty of times, in almost this exact same position in fact. Sure, I'd done what any other fifteen year old boy does when he has such magazines in his possession. And I'd fantasized about touching that skin, running my hands around on it softly, moving down to that warm-hot center, moist.

Her skin was smoother and softer than I expected, and my knees were weak as I gently ran my fingers from her thighs up to her back and down again. She stirred as I did so, but instead of making me scared, I grew bolder, and let my finger wander down to where the hair was thickest, and I felt the oily wetness down there.

"Mmmm, Jerry, Eddie might be home soon," she said, and the the sound of her voice competed the engineering job that her butt had started, in my pants.

I pulled my hand away, and it was like the whole summer opened up in front of me. Sometimes in a chess game, and more and more lately, as I entered the third hour, the fatigue would melt away and every piece stood out as an individual entity, more sharp and alive and real than anything else I've ever experienced. I could see in the position of the board every possible position available, knew with the white-hot center of my brain on fire that I controlled reality here, and the right moves were as obvious as the nose on my face. And it was like that now. I breathed slow, my heart beat as quietly as possible, and I knew exactly what had been going on, and what I was going to do.

Chess is for blood, I realized. It's about taking down your opponent, pulling his heart out of his chest, and eating it. It wasn't a game, like I'd been playing, an exercise, a contest of ideals or morals. It was a merging of wills, until one succumbed to the other and vanished. I said, "Eddie's home now."

She jumped up and onto her back, and pushed her self against her headboard. "What the fuck are you-"

"Shut up." I said, and sniffed my fingers. They had no smell at all. "He forced himself on you the first time, didn't he?"

I could see her nipples through her shirt, as she tried to pull it down to cover her self in front. She blushed, hard, and for the first time ever, looked straight at me. "What are you talking about?" Her voice was almost a whisper.

I just stared back at her. "Next time he comes in here, or calls you to his room, tell him I know. Tell him found out."

"He won't care, Eddie. And it doesn't matter, anyway. I kind of-" she looked away again. "It's not so bad. I mean, sometimes it's my idea."

"Is it fun?" I asked.

"When he has peach schnapps, or a a bottle of tequila, yeah, sort of."

"Do you want it to stop?"

I thought she would start to cry, but she didn't. She just blushed again. "I guess so."

After dinner that night, I challenged Jerry to game of chess. "No way, man, I ain't in your league."

"Well here's the thing, Jer," I said, pulling out the pieces. "I lost a few games last weekend because I assumed my opponents would do the right thing, not the wrong thing. You know? I need to prepare for the unexpected.

He smiled. "Actually, kid, me and Lis were gonna go to the mall and see a-"

I set my jaw. "One game, and I wont ask mom to get you to take me with you.

He smirked. "Sure alright."

He knew a few things about chess, since it was a family thing, sort of. We played through a standard Ruy Lopez. "Y'ever bet on chess, Jerry?"

"Nah. I'm not that good."

"Kind of makes you wonder, huh? I mean, people only bet when they think they're gonna win. The only way I could get you to bet on a game is if you thought you could beat me, right?"

He nodded his head, holding his bishop between two fingers. We don't play touch-move in this house. "Makes sense."

"Or, if the only way you could get what you wanted was from a bet, right?"

"Yeah," he placed his bishop down. "I think I forked your rooks there."

I pointed at one of my knights. "Nah, if you do that it's mate in five, see?"

He grinned. "Woops."

I shrugged. "You're still cool." I looked at the board for a while. "It's actually pretty even right now. Want to make a bet on this game?"

"Like I said, man, I'm not really-"

I leaned over and as hard as I good, smashed him in the face with my fist.

He fell back, surprised. "What the fuck's wrong with-" he started to get up, blood on his nose.

"If I win this game, Jerry, you stop fucking my sister. How about that?"

He froze in place. "How about I kick your ass and keep fucking her anyway?" he voice was low, almost evil.

"Get out of my house right now." My mom stood behind him, her hands at her sides, all the blood drained out of her face. He looked at her, started to say something, and she flew at him, screaming.

He took a few good smacks before he wised up and ran out, through the kitchen. The door slammed, and we could hear his car start up and peel pout.

Lisa ran away from home a little while later, but returned before school started. She swears she didn't go to New Jersey and see Jerry. While she was gone, I didn't score more than two points in any of the club tournaments, but even Sanders told me I was ready for some real chess. When Lisa came back, I took a break from it all, got into some sports, managed to get better than a C in a few classes, then started back at the club again. I just can't stay away, and really don't want to. Lisa is still kind of listless and mopey, but last week I gave her the trophy for first place in the club's yearly invitational, and she was genuinely excited about it.