Queen of the Tiles Read online

  I’m only doing this for you.

  It’s Ben’s move. “EIIMNRT,” he says. Then, to me: “How’re you feeling, Najwa? You doing… okay?” His voice drips with earnest concern.

  “I’m good,” I lie.

  A split second later, I hear “INTERIM” in Emily’s crisp tones, just as Shuba says, “MINTIER.” Emily’s parents are divorced, and she inherited her English father’s accent, rather than her Ipoh-born mother’s Chinese lilt. She taps her fingers quickly on her knees; her smile is laced with anxiety. Emily never stops moving.

  “Sorry, Shubs, I think Em got that one.” Ben smiles, pushing his glasses up from where they’ve slipped down his nose. Much of what you need to know about Singapore Ben is contained in the fact that he is precisely the type of person who condenses people into single-syllable nicknames without their consent. “Nice job, Em. And I didn’t even think you were listening.” A flicker of irritation crosses Shuba’s usually impassive face.

  “I’m always listening, Benjamin,” says Emily.

  INTERIM, I think. An interval, a stopgap, this rut I’ve been stuck in ever since Trina died.

  “So what do we think?” Shuba says.

  “About what?” Emily picks absentmindedly at a scab on her elbow, and bits of skin flake away, floating slowly down to the carpet.

  “About who the next ruler will be, of course.” Shuba sits back, arms crossed. “Now that the Queen is no longer here to occupy her throne…”

  Emily glances at me, discomfort shining from every line on her furrowed brow. “Maybe we shouldn’t…”

  “Oh, Najwa doesn’t mind. Do you, Najwa? We’re just talking, that’s all.”

  “I don’t mind,” I say. I’m getting quite good at lying.

  There is a sudden buzzing. “Sorry,” Ben says apologetically as he quickly fishes his phone out of his pocket. “It’s probably just my mom.” We say nothing. Everyone knows Singapore Ben’s mom is That Tournament Parent; she comes with him to every competition, forcing him to eat, massaging his shoulders between games, making snide remarks about his competitors. She hands him strong-smelling little jars of a dark liquid labeled Essence of Chicken, which she says helps with focus and concentration. Once, in the middle of a game with me, she came right up to us and draped a sweater over his skinny shoulders. “Sorry ya,” she said, simpering at me and ignoring the pained expression on her son’s face. “So cold in here. I don’t want my Benny to get sick.”

  Emily clears her throat. “AABDNRU,” she announces, enunciating each letter like she’s a post–Henry Higgins Eliza Doolittle.

  Without missing a beat, Shuba says, “BANDURA.” They look at me as if they’re appraising a painting for sale, as if the clues to my worth are hidden somewhere on the surface of my skin. “I’m telling you now, I’m damn well going to make sure I’m in the running for that top spot,” they say, the lightness of their tone belying the whisper of steel I can hear on the edge of their words. “Not as Queen, of course. Something more gender neutral.”

  “The Monarch of the Tiles?” Ben chimes in.

  He’s rewarded with one of their expansive smiles. “Perfect.”

  “This all seems rather crass,” Emily murmurs.

  “Alright there, Miss Priss.” Shuba smirks in her direction. “As if you don’t want to win. As if that isn’t the perfect way to stick it to all the people who still think you’re out here palming tiles and peeking into bags.”

  Emily flushes a deep red. “I never did.”

  “Relax.” Shuba begins gathering up their hair, tying it back with the scrunchy around their wrist. “I didn’t say I believe the rumors. But what a perfect way to get everyone to shut up, don’t you think?”

  A BANDURA is a type of LUTE, which can either mean a musical instrument or to seal with cement and clay, like I’ve done to my own heart. Feelings, I’ve found in the past few months, are simply not worth the energy. But listening to all this now, I can feel hot flames ignite deep in the pit of my belly, reaching up to lick my chest. None of you are worthy.

  This is why I’m here. This is why I had to come. I can’t bear to see Trina’s legacy picked over like this, her memory relegated to anecdotes about the tournament’s tragic past.

  She protected me while she was alive, and now that she’s gone it’s my turn to protect her.

  “Excuse me, Miss Najwa?” I look up to see two kids standing next to me. They look like they’re about thirteen, brimming with self-importance and shining with efficiency. “We were wondering if we could talk to you.”

  “Please,” I say, “start by not calling me ‘miss.’ ”

  “Okay, Kak Najwa.”

  “AEDINOR,” Shuba says. “Who are you?” they ask the kids directly.

  The two of them tell us their names, but I just can’t hold on to this information; they keep slipping through the cracks of my brain and so in my head I christen them Tweedledee and Tweedledum and desperately hope I never say so out loud. Tweedledee has a notebook in her hand, long braids, and the familiar lilt of a Sabahan accent; Tweedledum is an Indian boy with gelled spikes in his hair, too much body spray, and a camera trained right on my face.

  “We wanted to ask you some questions, Kak Najwa,” says Tweedledee.

  “About what?” I ask. “Also, just Najwa. Please.”

  “About Trina Low,” supplies Tweedledum helpfully as Tweedledee rifles through her notebook. “Not too many,” she says cheerily. “Just… four pages or so…”

  “ANEROID,” Emily says.

  ANEROID: relating to a barometer that measures air pressure. The main symptom of a sudden drop in air pressure is dizziness, and dizzy is how I feel because even though she’s been in my head this whole time, there’s something about hearing her name spoken out loud, the way it hangs in the air, the way it creeps under my skin.

  “Trina?” It comes out as a croak, and I clear my throat. “What do you want to know about Trina? And… and why?”

  “We’re making a documentary,” Tweedledum explains. “Think along the lines of the poignancy of, like, Amy, you know, the Amy Winehouse documentary? Or, like… like…”

  “Life Itself,” says Tweedledee, her voice muffled by the sound of the pen she’s stuck in her mouth while she peers at her notes.

  “Yes! A moving portrait of the Queen of the Tiles, an ode to her memory, but also…”

  “An investigation of the chilling circumstances of her unexpected death,” Tweedledee adds, her smile just a little too jaunty for my liking.

  “CEEFIMORT,” Emily says. “And that sounds terribly… morbid and unnecessary.”

  The Tweedles just keep talking, and I’m having trouble breathing. “So we thought as her best friend…”

  “You’d have some amazing insights…”

  “We want to strike the right tone, you know, nostalgic, emotional…”

  “There’s real potential for going viral here…”

  Breathe, Najwa, breathe.

  “FOCIMETER,” Shuba says, jiggling their knees up and down, up and down.

  A focimeter is what they use to make sure you’ve got the right prescription in your glasses, so you can, you know, actually see. Which I can’t right now, because angry tears are making everything soft and fuzzy around the edges.

  I’m surrounded by vultures, picking at Trina’s remains until nothing is left.

  “Are you okay?” Tweedledee leans in to peer closely at my face. “You look kind of pale.”

  “I’m fine,” I manage to croak out. “I’m just fine.” Except I’m not, because I can feel the telltale signs: cold sweat, racing heartbeat, trouble breathing. The ants swarm until my brain is covered in them, thick and black with no way out.

  I’m about to have a panic attack.

  No, not about to have. Having. I’m having a panic attack.

  I bend low in my chair, trying my best to suck in air, trying not to drown on solid ground.

  I didn’t used to be this person. Dr. Anusya says all of it—the panic attacks, the anxiety, the weird memory gaps—they’re all “symptoms of the incident,” as if Trina’s death is a disease I just can’t shake, like a bad case of the measles. “Think of it as an amygdala hijacking,” she said in her soft, sure voice. “The amygdala is the part of the brain that responds to fear, and Trina’s death has heightened your baseline stress level so that every little thing makes your body think it has to go into full-on flight-or-fight mode.”

  “So when will it stop?” I asked her.

  “When your brain decides there’s nothing to fear,” she said, her deep voice gentle. “When it feels like it’s safe.”

  “Are you okay?” Emily’s voice is high with panic. “Do you need anything? Wait, I think I have something that can help.…” I hear the familiar rattling of pills against plastic as she rummages around her voluminous bag. Emily has great faith in the power of supplements, from curing indigestion to improving your brainpower, and is always happy to share both her knowledge and her pills. In the background, I hear Tweedledee whisper, “Make sure you get this on camera!”

  “It’s a panic attack,” a familiar voice says, and Yasmin appears, crouching by my chair, cool hands on my arm. “Can you look at me? Focus on me, Najwa.”

  I force my eyes to lock onto Yasmin’s.

  “Deep breaths.”

  I struggle with this the first couple of times, but eventually I manage. Just like I practiced in Dr. Anusya’s office: breathe in for three seconds, hold for one, breathe out for six, hold for one, and repeat at least ten times, until I wrestle back control.

  “Okay. Can you center yourself? Practice mindfulness?”

  Every time someone says this—hell, every time I have to say it—I feel like I’m laying a wreath at the rose-scented altar of Gwyneth Palt
row’s GOOP empire. But it works, as it always does. I fixate on the little things: the weight of the pink hijab on my head, the way my jeans feel on my legs, Yasmin’s cool fingers brushing against my hot skin. I think about other words for panic: alarm, confusion, consternation, dismay, dread, agitation, hysteria, horror. I think about how horror also describes things that center on or depict terrifying, macabre events, like the sudden, inexplicable death of your best friend. I twist the soft, faded yarn of the friendship bracelet around my fingers as though its pastel strands are the only things tethering my soul to my body.

  Eventually, I start feeling my body calm down. Sure, I feel like a piece of paper that someone crumpled and then dropped into a puddle: pale, damp, used. But I’m here. I’m still here.

  “Better?” Yasmin is still peering at me intently, her expression all warm concern.

  “Better,” I croak. “Thanks.”

  “No problem, lovely.”

  Yasmin straightens up and beams at everyone else. “How are you guys? Isn’t it great to be back?”

  Have you ever been to one of those kiddie parties where the adult in charge has Planned Games and Prepared Prizes and is intent on making sure Everyone Has a Good Time? Yasmin has big Children’s Birthday Party Organizer energy: fluffy hair, fluffy personality; equal parts energy and anxiety all wrapped up in an elaborate desire-to-please and topped with a big ol’ bow of cheerful. Everyone, I find, has a word that suits them perfectly, describes exactly who they are. If Yasmin were a word, she would be COMPLAISANT: eager to please, obliging. She isn’t someone I’d normally gravitate toward, but she was one of Trina’s oldest friends, one of those grew-up-together, splashed-naked-together-in-the-paddling-pool type friends that you can outgrow but never truly leave behind, so we became pals by proximity. And frankly, I’m grateful for her presence now, that comforting familiarity yet another anchor that grounds me solidly in the here and now.

  “So excited to be here,” Emily murmurs, though she keeps shooting worried glances in my direction as if I’ll evaporate at any moment.

  “Just great,” Ben says brightly. “How are you, Min?”

  “I’m about to kick all your butts,” Shuba drawls, not bothering to wait for Yasmin’s reply to Ben, or even look at any of us as they scroll through their phone, a bored look on their face.

  “Excuse me, I rather think I have a decent shot at this, really,” says Emily.

  I sit back and let their chatter wash over me. The Tweedles have melted back into the crowd. The cement blockades around my heart lie in ruins, shattered, exposing the tender flesh beneath.

  The vultures are at it again, acting as if Trina’s death was the gift they’d all been waiting for.

  There was only one Queen of the Tiles. And I’ll be damned if anyone else decides they’re going to take her place or hitch their dreams of glory to her memory. I’ll be damned if I let them use her that way.

  So I guess that means I’ll just have to win.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AMBIT

  nine points

  noun

  an area in which something acts or operates or has power or control

  The hashtag popped up right after Trina died—#TheTruthAboutTrina—along with the many, many theories, both credible and conspiracy, surrounding the circumstances of her death. And even though the police had declared no evidence of foul play, the hashtag persisted. Trina’s death was the subject of much feverish speculation. Depending on the time of day, the way the stars were aligned, whichever planet was in retrograde, the culprit could be anyone from Mark—he was a popular bet; it’s always the boyfriend, isn’t it?—to Josh, to Emily. And then, of course, the Internet favorite: me.

  I’ve seen the comments. Best friend looking kind of shady, no? Aku rasa mesti ada kaitan tu, orang pompuan kalau bab jeles ni… This girl looks like trouble. How much u wanna bet it’s the bff lmao.

  I’d never taken them seriously, but they had driven Trina’s parents to distraction. “Why are they doing this?” her mother had sobbed to me over the phone two weeks after her death. “Why can’t they just leave it alone?” There was a time when she called me every other day, sometimes to ask a question about Trina, sometimes to recall some recently unearthed memory, and sometimes to say nothing at all.

  It’s ironic, really, how much she seemed to care that Trina was dead when she cared so little when Trina was actually alive. Trina’s parents are high-powered lawyers who work in the same firm and who had wanted a child right up until she was born, at which point they realized how much work it took to raise a little girl and decided the easiest solution was to hire other people to do it instead. Not to say they weren’t nice people, but they usually operated under the assumption that if they provided ground rules, maids, chauffeurs, and enough spending money to keep a young sultan happy, this would make a decent substitute for actually being around. I’d taken plenty of rides in the sleek silver Mercedes-Benz driven by a kindly old man called Pakcik Zakaria and spent many pleasant days at their high-rise apartment being fed, watered, and generally waited on hand and foot by Maria, a gentle Filipino lady who had taken care of Trina since she was a week old. Maria kept a scrapbook in which she painstakingly pasted photos of Trina throughout the years, noting her accomplishments and milestones in barely readable cursive—first steps; first word (“bikit” for “biscuit,” her favorite snack and also the name of the fluffy white Persian cat they used to own); the date her first tooth fell out; every first day of school, from age six to sixteen. By contrast, on her fifteenth birthday last year, her mother brought home a cake that said HAPPY 14TH BIRTHDAY TRINA in bright red letters. “Aiya, I could’ve sworn…,” she began, and we had to laugh it off as one of those aww-shucks mistakes right out of American sitcoms, all while shoving forkfuls of cake into our mouths.

  Trina craved the messy, chaotic life I lived, crammed into a tiny house with my family, our neuroses forever colliding and spilling over for all to see; I yearned for her independence, her freedom, and the blissful silence of her gleaming, chrome-filled apartment. But life, like Scrabble, is like that—you get the rack you get, and you just have to figure out how to make do.

  The rumors never went away, but the fervor surrounding them did die down eventually, and the phone calls died with them. These days when Mrs. Low sees me she always looks faintly embarrassed, as if the stench of her grief still clings to her, as if she wants to forget those calls ever happened. And I get it. Sometimes, I just want to forget too.

  * * *

  It’s almost twelve p.m.

  It’s almost time to begin.

  As I walk toward table seven, there is a fluttering in my stomach, a hammering in my rib cage. I’m nervous, I realize with a shock.

  I’ve never been nervous to play Scrabble before.

  The decision to come here wasn’t one any of us had taken lightly. Mama and Papa both spent the days leading up to it saying some variation of “Are you sure?” Even Alina got in on the act as she sat cross-legged on my bed and watched me pack with my usual organized approach, which is to perform a sniff test on various pants and T-shirts and sweaters and then, in the absence of offending odors, toss them into my duffel bag.

  “Are you absolutely positive you’re ready for this, Kakak?” She rubbed her nose, an unconscious gesture she’s done ever since she was little, a habit that hints at her own discomfort. Alina and I have the same nose, a nose we got from our father: round, slightly too big for our faces, a nose that Papa says we have to grow into. It irritates my mother because in every other respect, Alina inherited her face—fine-boned, pale-skinned, full-lipped. She seems to think plunking Papa’s nose in the middle of her features sullies them somehow. She doesn’t seem to have the same qualms about me inheriting the same nose, but maybe that’s because I also took everything else from Papa: my slightly stocky build; the brown complexion my grandmother used to lovingly call hitam manis—a sweet darkness, as though that made the comparisons to Alina easier to swallow. (“Tak payah lah,” she’d say gently, trying to dissuade me from going outside to play in the sunshine with the rest of my cousins, “nanti gelap, takde orang nak kahwin awak,” as if I cared about anyone wanting to marry me, as if I wanted to get married at all.)