Queen of the Tiles Read online

  “Bye,” she says.

  I slam the door shut as if closing it tight enough will trap all my fears and worries and memories in there, as if shedding them means I, too, can become a thing that endures.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ANAMNESIS

  eleven points

  noun

  ability to recall past events

  I step forward. The doors glide open. I step back. The doors glide shut.

  I do this a few more times. I know the doorman in his sleek gray uniform with the gold trim is staring at me, and he’s probably not the only one. I just can’t make my feet go any farther, can’t make them take that next step beyond the big glass doors and into my past. So I do this dance, feeling the weight of my duffel bag press against my shoulder, feeling the blast of too-cold air-conditioning brush against my face, feeling the surge of long-lost memories crash into my brain, as cars come and go and people mill past me.

  I pull up my phone and open up my DMs on Instagram.

  I don’t know if I can do this without you.

  Then I put it away again and stare at the doors before me. I’m not expecting a reply.

  Do you know what happens when there’s a sudden, unexplained death in a public space like a hotel? They call in the police, who drive up in trucks known as Black Marias even though they aren’t actually black, but a deep, dark blue. They treat it like a crime scene. By extension, therefore, they treat you like a suspect—at least, until they have no reason to. Until you give them a reason not to.

  Oh, they were very careful not to tell us that. We were fifteen-year-olds, after all. We’d just watched our friend die. We were a bunch of scared, confused minors they somehow still needed to extract information from. They tiptoed so carefully around us it was like being in the middle of a performance of Swan Lake. But we knew anyway.

  Not that I was much help. A couple of hours after it happened, a very patient young sergeant took us each into one of the hotel’s small meeting rooms. I watched familiar faces go in and out, one by one—though my brain, fueled by anxiety and running at a bazillion kilometers an hour, only really managed to register a trembling Yasmin and a stone-faced Mark—the sinking feeling in my stomach deepening with each one, waiting for that discreet tap on my shoulder, the polite request to “please follow me.”

  The room was cold. The sergeant was warm. The questions were endless: Where were you when the incident happened? Can you tell me in your own words what you saw? Were you close to the victim? Was there anything off about her leading up to the game? Was she upset? Was she agitated? Did she complain of not feeling well? I stammered and I stumbled, not understanding, not knowing what to say. It took me a while to even register that “the victim” meant Trina, and when I realized it, I started crying all over again. I was still crying when my mother burst into the room, shirt rumpled from the long drive down from Kuala Lumpur, hijab all askew. I remember taking in the sight of that hijab, the one clue to how absolutely agitated my usually poised mama was in that moment, and feeling my heart crack a little further.

  “What is the meaning of this?” my mother had said, all of five feet one point five inches and yet somehow staring down the suddenly groveling sergeant. “Why are you harassing my daughter like this?”

  “I’m just asking her some basic questions, puan.…”

  “Questions? What questions? What right do you have?” She squinted up at him and I swear I saw him go slightly gray. “She is only fifteen years old! A fifteen-year-old who has just gone through major trauma! Can you even ask a fifteen-year-old questions like this without an adult present?”

  “Oh, can puan, can,” the sergeant says quickly. “It’s perfectly legal, trust me.”

  “Trust you?” Mama folded her arms, her expression stormy. “Not bloody likely. Typical incompetence. Come, Najwa, we are going.”

  “We are not done here, puan!” the sergeant spluttered, and for a second I almost felt sorry for him. Bet he thought this would be a nice, easy gig, all done by teatime.

  “You can give her time to regain her composure, and when she has, I will bring her back and sit with her while she answers your questions.” She stared at him, daring him to disagree. “Will that do?”

  The sergeant’s shoulders sagged in defeat. “Fine, puan. That will do.”

  “Thank you.”

  She marched me out of the room then, one hand gripping my shoulder so tight that I could feel her nails digging into my flesh, just one more clue at how rattled she really was. We sat in a nearby café together in silence as she watched me swirl a spoon in a cup of vanilla ice cream until it melted entirely. When she brought me back, I’d stopped feeling the urge to cry at every mention of Trina’s name—or at least, I could hide it enough to fool the casual observer—but I could remember nothing from that day, nothing at all up until I saw my best friend’s face hit that board and felt the ground shift beneath my feet. What I got back came only weeks later, and in bits and pieces.

  And here they are, still coming one year later. It’s as if I’m following crumbs someone else has left behind for me, as if, by Hansel-and-Greteling my way through these barren woods I’ll eventually find my way home.

  I take a deep breath.

  And finally, I step inside.

  Immediately, I’m disoriented. There are simultaneously too many people in this lobby and not enough; I have all the noise-induced headaches and anxieties and none of the benefits of being able to melt into a crowd and enjoy that sweet, sweet anonymity. The local Scrabble scene is passionate but small; even after a year away, there are few faces here that I don’t recognize. Some are converged in tight little groups, catching up on whatever they’ve been doing since the last tournament. Some are with parents who take the time to help them sign in, settle in, linger over their good-byes like they’ll actually miss their kids. Some are hanging out on their own. But most are doing what they do best: playing some form of Scrabble. Around the biggest coffee table available, a few kids are huddled over a board playing Clabbers, a version of Scrabble where any string of letters is valid as long as it can be rearranged into a word. It’s not my favorite—it’s eye-wateringly confusing to look at a board and understand that ARFM is FARM and TIEX is EXIT, and it’s just more of a headache than necessary to figure out that EDLINTU is DILUENT. I wonder if any of them realizes that to CLABBER means to cover something in mud. Ironic.

  I hear Mark before I see him, hear that laugh I’ve heard so often, and I know when I turn around that his head will be thrown back, eyes squeezed shut, mouth wide open. So many people I know have timid laughs, tee-hee-hees, polite little things that don’t want to take up too much space. Mark laughs with his entire body. He laughs like he means it. It’s a sound that brings up the kind of montage of sun-washed memories you see in movies, with some kind of peppy soundtrack in the background: Trina and Mark and me, their perpetual third wheel, laughing our way through late-night McDonald’s drive-through runs, tournament downtime, marathon Lord of the Rings viewings, word study sessions. Trina’s dream Scrabble word was SYZYGY, an impossible, unplayable thing that requires you to have the Z, both Ys, and one of the two blanks. It means the perfect alignment of three celestial bodies. That’s what it felt like sometimes, with us: three totally different planets, spinning in perfect harmony at the exact same time.

  Mark laughs again and I quickly look away. The last time I saw him, his girlfriend had just died. Now I hear through the social media grapevine—I unfollowed ages ago, unable to deal with any more reminders of the way life used to be with Trina in it—that Mark’s been parading a different girl around KL every other week. Some grief, eh? The juxtaposition between the carefree guy in front of me and the tear-stained one in my memories is jarring.

  Be honest with yourself, Najwa. It’s all jarring.

  The truth is without Trina, I am untethered. We probably looked like a strange, unlikely pair to most: I am short where she was tall, plump where she was luscious and curved, quiet where she wa
s loud, sour where she was sweet. My hair, when it isn’t hidden away by my hijab, is shoulder-length and black, and that’s all you can really say for it; it doesn’t have the bounce and luster that Trina’s had. My eyes are standard-issue brown; Trina hid hers behind a series of colored lenses that she chose according to how she felt that day, like ocular mood rings. It’s not that I’m particularly ugly, I’m just ordinary. And that’s okay. I’ve never wanted to stand out.

  So I don’t begrudge anyone their skepticism; we just didn’t look right together, like Scrabble words that seem like they’re made up, that shouldn’t exist but do: APATITE, FANTOM, GREWSOME, PEEPUL. But the truth is that we fit, the way pieces of a puzzle can never be exactly alike because they’re meant to complete each other. The truth is without her here to tie me down, I feel like I may crumble and blow away, nothing but dust mites borne on the wind.

  Me: It’s been five minutes and I already have regrets.

  Alina: Stop it. Kill the ants.

  The ants aren’t real ants—they’re capital A-N-T ANTs, or automatic negative thoughts, and every once in a while, they swarm all over me, nipping away at my insides. Every time I start to spiral—I know something bad will happen, or This will never work, or I could have done more—Dr. Anusya says I’m supposed to stop myself, squash the ants, clean up my mess.

  Some times are easier than others. Some ants are bigger than others.

  The registration line is long, but it moves fairly quickly, and I only have to wait for about fifteen minutes before it’s my turn—which is good, because I can feel people starting to look my way, starting to clock my return to the scene, starting to talk. “Najwa,” I hear in low tones that I try my hardest to ignore. “That’s Najwa.”

  I sign in with a woman in an electric blue tee that clings to her body, the words DON’T PANIC! FORTY IS ONLY 11 IN SCRABBLE stretched tight and white across her boobs, “forty” spelled out in individual tiles. “Najwa… Bakri?” she says, running her finger down a long list of names. I nod. She makes a note and I hand over my permission slip, Mama’s signature with its elegant swoops and curls scrawled along the bottom, the paper rumpled and deeply creased from the many times I folded and unfolded and stuffed it back into my pocket until I finally decided that winning would be the best way—the most me way—to honor Trina’s memory. “So you know how it works, yes?” she asks, then plows on without waiting for my answer. “It’s seven games today, starting at twelve p.m., then eleven games tomorrow, then six games on Sunday. Modified Swiss draw, King of the Hill in the last rounds. That means you’ll be paired with opponents who have roughly the same ranking as you, based on your win-loss record in the tournament. First round is random; last rounds, the top-ranked players after two days will play against each other, so first against second, third against fourth, etcetera. You got all that?”

  I nod. I’m annoyed she feels the need to explain all of this. I’m not a newbie. I’m Najwa Bakri. Sure, I’ve been away for a year and my memory is a sieve, but she doesn’t know that.

  She doesn’t know I’m here to win, either. But she’ll soon find out. They all will.

  “Alrighty! Enjoy!” she says brightly, handing me a folder that includes assorted tournament info, a badge printed with my name in capital letters, and coupons for the coffeehouse just off the lobby. The tag pinned to her top says her name is HAYATI. This is also—surprise, surprise—spelled out in tiles.

  “Thanks,” I say, pinning my badge to my chest. “When will I know who my roommate is?”

  “We’ll post the list in a few minutes,” she says. “Right on those bulletin boards over there.”

  “Cool.”

  I grab my things and stand off to one side, trying to stuff my folder into my bag. I’m preoccupied, but not too preoccupied to hear my own name.

  “Isn’t that Najwa Bakri?” I hear a girl behind me whisper.

  “Yeah,” her friend says. “I can’t believe she came back.” I bow my head, pretending to be engrossed in my phone, pretending I don’t hear a word.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, with Trina gone… I mean, why would she come here after all that? And after all this time?”

  “Maybe she just wants to play again.” A pause. “She’s good. Good enough to be the new queen, even.”

  There’s a sniff. “She’s not that good.”

  I look down and realize I’m clenching my fists so hard that my nails are digging into my palms, leaving half-moon indents in the flesh. Just wait, I think. Just wait and see.

  CHAPTER THREE

  POTHER

  eleven points

  noun

  fuss or commotion

  verb

  make or be troubled or upset

  After I’m done with registration, I just stand there for a minute, uncertain of where to go. When she was alive, I was Trina’s shadow, always following behind; now that she’s gone, with nothing solid to anchor myself to, I disappear. All around me, kids are acting like kids are supposed to; the sleek, modern benches and armchairs scattered all over the lobby are full of them, talking, laughing, shrieking at the sight of friends they haven’t seen in months.

  In the absence of anywhere else to go, I slide into an empty seat next to a girl named Emily, who smiles tentatively at me. I know Emily, although to be fair, this isn’t some grand feat of memory on my part. Everyone knows Emily. Emily was caught up in a cheating scandal a couple of years ago and that’s the kind of thing that clings to you like the smell of rotten durian. You don’t mention it—or at least I don’t, I’m a good Malay girl, remember? So polite, so careful, so guarded—but you’re always a little more observant, a little more careful, when you sit down at the board with Emily.

  Across from us are—and here I crane my neck slightly to get a better look at their name tags, because I may be great with words, but names are one of those things that slip right through the cracks of my fractured memory—Shuba, who has written “(they/them)” in block letters under their name with black Sharpie, and Ben, who has “Singapore!” above his in barely legible writing. Singapore Ben is so named, as I recall, to set him apart from the lower-ranked KL Ben. Shuba has a mane of shiny dark curls, perfectly winged eyeliner, and lips painted a bright, look-at-me red that pops against their dark skin; Singapore Ben has floppy boy-band hair, skinny jeans with a discreet designer label, and too much cologne. His mother regularly drives him across the causeway for these tournaments. It’s weird to remember these random things and still not be able to tell you what I ate for breakfast two days ago.

  “Hey, Naj,” Ben says easily, nodding in my direction. The last time I saw you, I think, I beat you by 217 points. Remembering feels good. “We’re just playing Anagrams since we’ve got time before this whole thing starts. You want to join us? Seven letters and up only. What you do is, you call out the letters of a word in alphabetical order and then—”

  “I know the rules,” I interrupt. I can feel how tight my smile is, how forced. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll just hang out and watch.” If one more person acts like I can’t play anymore just because I’ve been gone for a while, I think I may scream.

  Once they get back to their game and nobody is looking at me anymore, I grab my notebook, with its worn, cracked green cover and a black pen jammed into the rose-gold spirals looping over the top, and open up a new page. The notebook is like an extension of my memory, like buying more RAM to supercharge an overworked laptop. I take it with me everywhere, making a note of anything I don’t want to forget. The last thing I want to do for this grand comeback is call attention to how broken I actually am. Carefully I write them down:

  Ben: Singaporean, mommy’s boy, overly familiar

  Shuba: they/them, wildly glamorous, says exactly what they think

  Emily: nervous, ladylike, that whole cheating thing

  Then, job done, I put it away, sit back, and breathe it in. This is what I have missed: the words, yes, but also just being around people who are as passionate
about the words as I am, who see the invisible threads on which you can hang individual letters and create magic. I wonder idly whether I should join in the game, in the name of “interacting with my peers in a healthy manner,” which is something Dr. Anusya says I should do more. It just seems like so much work.

  “My go, then,” Shuba says. “AEFLNOPT.” Their voice is raspy, low but sure, and they rattle off the sequence in alphabetical order faster than it takes most people to spell the word itself.

  There’s a pause. Then, from Ben, “PANTOFLE.”

  Shuba nods. PANTOFLE, I think. A high-heeled slipper, like the heels that were Trina’s footwear of choice. Trina loved playing Anagrams, the way she loved any game she knew she could win.

  I close my eyes. Stop it, Najwa. Kill the ants. You’re supposed to be enjoying this. I touch the friendship bracelet on my wrist, soft yarn in alternating strands of pink and purple and turquoise and teal, woven together in a delicate pattern. Trina made us each one of these at the height of the friendship bracelet craze at our school, tongue poking out of one side of her mouth as it always did when she was concentrating, her brow furrowed as she worked. “There!” she cried triumphantly when she was done, freeing the completed bracelet from where she’d kept it clamped tightly in place between the jaws of her metal pencil case. “One for you, one for me.” She tied it around my wrist, and I did the same for her. “Never take it off,” she told me seriously, clasping my hand in hers, lacing her fingers through mine. “Promise me.”

  “Promise,” I said. And true to my word, I haven’t taken it off since, except to shower. Even though nobody can see it beneath the long sleeves I always wear, the softness of the braided strings against my skin is strangely comforting, as light and warm as Trina’s touch on my arm. I tap out another DM on my phone: