The Prince (Masterpiece Duet 0.5)

Most nights Daddy plays at The Cellar, a bar underneath an old hotel, the wooden wine racks still standing. In the back corner there’s a table covered with fraying green fabric, its surface marked with burns and sticky blackness from a lifetime of games. The chairs around the table don’t match—some of them stained cloth, others brown leather with stuffing poked out.

The chair I like best is cream-colored with drawings in blue—a boy chasing a puppy, a pie on a picnic table. It’s like someone’s happy childhood, wholesome and innocent.

On that particular night we get there early enough that the chair I want is empty. I tuck my feet underneath me and read a book, pressing my face into the pages, blocking out the voices and the smoke.

I’m deep in the world of fairies and dragons when I hear the clatter of poker chips. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Daddy tense up as he shoves most of his small stack into the center of the table.

I count up the colors. One hundred and fifty dollars in red, white, black, and blue.

My chest feels tight when I think about him losing that money. I’m so tired of being hungry. So tired of being scared.

From over his shoulder I can see his cards. A seven of hearts and a three of clubs. What could he be making with those? The other man left in the game has an ace and a jack of spades on the table. That could easily be a straight or a flush. Maybe even a straight flush.

Maybe even a royal flush.

It’s wild to even bid against that. Daddy gets more reckless as the night rolls on, as the glasses of whiskey drain away. It’s a sign that he’s not completely drunk, that he’s kept something back for the bus fare.

Even so, that’s a lot of money in the pot.

He lifts the corner of his new cards. A single pair.

It’s not very strong, and when the man across from us raises the bet, I can see that Daddy’s ready to fold. It could buy so much food. And it’s all we have left. The pot in the center? Almost a thousand dollars in clay. We could eat for weeks. Months.

If he wins.

I tug on Daddy’s arm. He mumbles something, not paying attention. None of the other men pay me any attention. Maybe they think I want money for the soda machine.

My heart squeezes.

“He doesn’t have it,” I whisper in Daddy’s ear.

Most of the spades have been played in previous games. The only ones in this hand are the nine and six. Those are in the hands that folded. A straight is more possible. There are a lot of cards that can make that happen underneath, but the odds are with us.

And anyone would use such a strong initial showing to bluff.

He pauses, his hand clenched around the last chip.

We’ll be walking home if I’m wrong about this. I might be no better than him.

Daddy throws the chip into the pot.

I can see the flicker of anger in the other man’s eyes. Sweet relief lets me breathe again. The cards flip over, revealing a hand with absolutely nothing—the perfect bluff.

Our pair of sevens wins the largest pot Daddy’s brought home in ages.

The good thing about that night is that I could make deals with Daddy after that. I’ll only help you win if you leave money for the gas bill. The bad thing is it only encouraged him to play deeper and harder, losing himself in the game.

We came up with signals that I would use during the game, never leaving my seat so that no one would suspect. There are higher stakes games that I’m not allowed into, being a kid. Daddy loses more money there. He enjoys them more. That always seemed strange to me.

It’s almost like he likes to lose, the same way that Mama did.

Is he going to leave the way she did?

That was before I met the wild boy by the lake.

Before I wondered if I share the same weakness, because I’m sitting in the trailer with almost a hundred dollars that isn’t mine. That boy doesn’t know which trailer I’m in but it would be easy enough to ask around and find out which trailer has a little girl. Daddy isn’t even here to protect me. I told him that, didn’t I?

“And you’re supposed to be smart,” I say under my breath.

What would my life be like if I hadn’t told Daddy about counting cards? Or if my brain were different, if I couldn’t count them so easy?

I put the money under my pillow. It’s not like I can spend it right now anyway. Leaving the trailer at night is a bad idea, especially with a strong boy who has a right to be angry with me roaming around.

If I had only stayed there I might have eaten last night.

I could eat right now if I open a can of soup.

Instead I pull out the heavy volume of Trigonometry Proofs. I feel bad for pretending to be dumb when the man asked me questions, especially after Mrs. Keller went through so much trouble. I know I’m supposed to trust grownups, but I don’t trust him.

I lose myself in Pythagorean identities and inverse trig functions.

This is where things make sense. There’s no such thing as hunger when I’m solving proofs, no such thing as darkness. No way to fall into the water while turning pages and twisting equations in my head.

*

When I wake up the moon peeks between the plastic slats at my window, the quiet creak of the trailer the only sound. But I know something’s different. The air feels different.

Someone is here.

My chest feels full with relief and a stupid kind of happiness, before I realize it can’t be Daddy. He would never be so quiet, especially coming from a two-week bender. He would crash into the counters, bang his head on the doorframe, and swear in loud whispers before finally falling asleep with snores that rattle the walls.

A burglar? We don’t have much of anything to steal, but people get dumb when they’re desperate. Maybe Mr. Romero told someone I had a hundred dollars.

Or maybe it’s Mr. Romero himself, come to my trailer since I won’t come to his. My heart beats wild and loud, banging against my ribs like it’s trying to break out.

“Trigonometry,” says a voice in the darkness.

For a half second I think it’s the man from school. The one who’s tall and dark, his voice too smooth and his smile too cold to be trusted. Jonathan Scott. The terror that rises up in me is bigger and sharper than when I thought it was a burglar, or even Mr. Romero in my trailer. The very worst threat. The same as drowning, my very own nightmare.

And then my sleepy mind registers something about the voice. It’s not deep.

“What’s a little kid doing with a trigonometry book?”

I sit up in bed. My gaze moves over the shadows in the room until I find him against the wall, his shadow thumbing through my textbook. “Don’t touch that.”

He flips the book open to a page, pale white from the moonlight through the blinds. “To prove an identity, you have to use logical steps to show that one side of the equation can be transformed into the other side of the equation. You know what that means, Penny?”

I’m supposed to feel bad for stealing his money, and I do, but right now I’m mad. Mad that he wasn’t there and mad that he suddenly appeared. Mad that he scared me.

“Yeah, I know what it means. Probably more than you.”

His laugh sounds so much like the man from school that I narrow my eyes, looking at the way he holds his head, the way his shoulders are set, the way he carries himself. Same, same, same. “You some kind of baby genius?”

“I’m not a baby.”