Today's OneWord: National

We became national champions that night, throwing chess sets out the windows and watching the knights collide with the castles on the way down, laughing when the queens met in midair and looked like they were kissing in the smoggy light of Los Angeles. We were done with chess after that, the plastic trophy already bent and contorted from Alan stepping on it the night before, stolen beer cans littering the floor of our hotel room as we tossed out board after board, the wooden pieces clattering to the ground below like noisy chunks of carved confetti.