“Nobody cares about pawns.”
Miles said it with the absolute confidence only a seven-year-old can bring to something completely wrong.
Arthur reached across the concrete chess table, slow the way he did everything, and lifted the white pawn he’d just captured.
“That’s why you keep losing them, Soldier.”
Miles’s whole face scrunched up like he’d bitten a lemon.
“Don’t call me Soldier.”
Arthur turned the pawn between his fingers, studying it like it was worth something. “Why not?”
“Because soldiers are pawns.”
“And?”
“They’re the weakest.”
Arthur nodded, slow and serious, like Miles had just delivered expert testimony in a courtroom.
“Only if they stay where they started, dear.”
Miles rolled his eyes so hard I could see it from my bench ten feet away.
“That doesn’t even make sense, Artie.”
“It will.”
“You’re old.”
“I’ve been informed.”
“You make everything into a lesson.”
Arthur smiled, and set the captured pawn down beside the board with all the others. “Your move, Soldier.”
Miles groaned like the world was ending.
I covered a laugh with my coffee cup and turned back to my laptop, and I didn’t think anything of it. That was the mistake I’d spend months not knowing I was making. I thought I was watching a nice old man teach my kid a board game. I thought I was ten feet away, keeping an eye on things.
I had no idea what was actually happening across that table.
Miles had been obsessed with chess since he was five.
I still don’t totally know where it came from. His father was long gone by then, off to a new city and a new life and a new phone number he didn’t give us, so it wasn’t that. It wasn’t me. I can barely remember how the horse-shaped one moves. It was just something inside Miles, some little gear that turned differently than other kids’ gears.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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