It was his turn. He looked his opponent in the eyes, looked at the cards on the floor in front of him. The pairs that had been laid down already gave him information his six-year-old mind didn't yet know how to use.
I know a ways out of this, he thought.
"I have to go to the bathroom."
The boy got up and walked around the small circle. The rest of them thought nothing of it. Surely, he was just planning to use the tiny toilet, just like he said. Surely nothing more than that.
He stopped and stood behind his opponent and looked at his hand. He was quickly found out.
"Teacher, teacher, he's cheating!"
Why did I do that, the boy thought, sitting at the Red Square table with his head down. It was a question he would ask himself for the next twenty years, and still have no answer to. Why, at six, he wouldn't just take a guess, why he wanted so desperately to win that one game. Why he couldn't sit there with kids he normally didn't sit with, and wouldn't sit with when he was older, and lose that game.
It was a question he would ask himself for the next twenty years. For that game, that girl, for today, but hopefully not for tomorrow.
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