He passed to me, his face an unreadable mask. This was it. My last stand. I looked down at the board, looked at the card I’d drawn to start my turn. He was either going to hate me or love me, no middle ground.
“Unblockable Quest.” I moved to attack, knowing I’d just rendered his card and board state worthless for the turn.
He blinked, then blinked again. His sturdy fingers, the ones I loved so much, came to his collection of scrolls. Crap. He’d left one unused. And I hadn’t picked up on it. Still, what could he do with a single scroll? Nothing good was that cheap.
“Library Fire.”
It was an old card, an instant board wipe that almost no one played because it resulted in him sacrificing his own board in order to burn mine away, and I waited to see if the judge would allow it. The judge nodded. It was a reckless, brilliant play.
Both my giant ogre and his Transforming Scroll Scribe went in the trash heap. I could no longer attack to win, but he’d just sacrificed his best card. How did he plan to rebuild? Did he plan to rebuild? As the turn passed to him, I waited.
He put out two Frog Archers. Little soldiers. Little, cheap soldiers with lethal arrows. The judge looked at me, waiting to see if I was going to counter before he attacked with them. I studied my cards, not believing what I was seeing. I had no answer. None.
He’d won.
“Good game.” I stuck out my hand. I tried not to grin, but I was simply so stupidly proud of him. But weirdly, he didn’t smile back. In fact, he kept right on scowling as we packed up. I couldn’t say anything with the cameras still rolling, so I tried to hurry. He beat me to it, though, throwing his stuff in his bag instead of worrying about what went in each slot like me, stomping off while I was still zipping up.
“Conrad!” I rushed after him, catching up to him by the judges’ tables. “What’s wrong?”
“Not here,” he growled, steering me away from the tournament space altogether, not stopping until we were down a small side hallway, one that housed shuttered meeting rooms.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again. “You won!”
“I know.” His eyes, always so free and friendly, spit sparks, his mouth as lethal-looking as those frog arrows. “You threw the game.”
“What?” I had to take a literal step back. In all my calculations about the right course of action, I’d never considered him not believing that I’d played fair, him doubting me that much. And it hurt. “I did not. You won. Fair and square.”
He shook his head. “You knew I had the Transforming Scroll Scribe. And you had an answer to the Frog Archers. I just know it.”
“No! You can look at the stream later. I had no answer. You were just that good.”
Making a scoffing noise, he paced away from me. Back down the hall, I could hear the crowd around the monitors murmuring as the second semifinal started. “You always win. Always. I’ve never seen you lose with that deck.”
“Well, congrats. You did it. And not simply because you had the scroll scribe. You played brilliantly. You deserved to win.”
Turning on his heel, he stared me down for what felt like an eternity. I tried not to squirm, not sure what else I could say.
“I heard you. On the phone with your mom. You said you weren’t sure you wanted to win. Which was stupid, but I still tried to hope that you wouldn’t throw the match. Except you did.” He had the sort of “gotcha” tone of a prosecutor cross-examining a witness.
“I meant what I said to her—I wasn’t sure that I wanted to win. But I still tried to beat you. Tried to play my best game.” I willed him to understand, but he simply shook his head.
“Why? Why not just throw it? If you didn’t want to win, I mean?”
“Because I wanted to make you proud,” I whispered, watching as his eyes went wide and some of the tension left his body. He didn’t say anything, so I continued, “I promised you I wouldn’t throw the match. I don’t know how to make you believe me, but I didn’t. And I had a plan. A strategy. If I won, I’d take care of you.”
“You’d take care of me?” He looked so utterly horrified that I regretted the words instantly. “What? Like out of pity? Poor Conrad, folks disowned him, can’t keep a job, but at least he’s cute and good in bed.”
My skin stung like I’d been slapped. “I don’t pity you. And this is not just about…the physical.”
“What is it then?”
That same feeling from that morning returned, the dread of knowing that the wrong word could ruin everything. But I also knew all the way down to my neurons that I owed him my truth. And maybe I didn’t have the right words, the pretty words, but at least I had that.