You Win Some

Reese loved board games more than almost anything. More than pizza Fridays, more than snow days, more than finding a perfectly smooth rock at the creek. He loved the sound of dice tumbling across the table, the satisfying click of moving a game piece forward, and most of all — most of all — he loved winning.

And the thing was, Reese was good at board games. He could plan three moves ahead in checkers. He knew exactly when to buy the best properties in Monopoly. He remembered which cards had already been flipped in Memory. Reese won a lot, and winning felt like fireworks going off inside his chest.

But today was not a winning day.

Today, Reese was sitting at the kitchen table across from his older cousin, Mabel, and they were playing Mabel's favorite game — a tricky one called Kingdom Quest where you had to collect magic crystals and be the first to reach the Dragon's Tower.

Reese had never played before, but that didn't worry him. He was Reese. He'd figure it out.

Except Mabel kept drawing the good cards. She kept landing on crystal spaces. She kept getting to skip ahead while Reese got stuck in the Foggy Swamp — three times in a row.

"Foggy Swamp AGAIN?" Reese groaned.

"Yep," said Mabel, not even looking up. She moved her piece — a little silver dragon — two more spaces toward the tower. "Ooh, another crystal. That makes five."

Reese stared at his own piece — a little silver knight — sitting sadly in the swamp. He had one crystal. ONE.

His neck felt hot. His fingers started to squeeze the edge of the table.

"Your turn," Mabel said cheerfully.

Reese drew a card. It said: Go back three spaces.

And something inside Reese just — snapped.

He slammed both hands on the board. The crystals flew. The cards scattered. The little silver dragon and the little silver knight went tumbling off the table and pinged across the kitchen floor. The board folded and crumpled and landed upside down on Mabel's lap.

The room went very, very quiet.

Mabel stared at the mess. Then she stared at Reese.

"Wow," she said. Just that. Just wow.

And then she got up, picked up her silver dragon from under the refrigerator, and walked out of the kitchen without another word.

Reese sat there. His heart was hammering. The fireworks inside his chest weren't the good kind anymore — they were the kind that fizzle and spark and leave a bad smell in the air.

He looked at the scattered cards on the floor. The crumpled board. A little blue crystal had rolled all the way to the doorway.

His mom appeared in that doorway, holding the crystal between two fingers. She didn't yell. She didn't even look angry, exactly. She looked like she was waiting.

"I lost," Reese muttered.

"Mmm," said his mom. She set the crystal on the table. "Kitchen needs cleaning up."

Then she left too.

So now Reese was alone with a wrecked game and a heavy feeling sitting right on top of his stomach like a brick.

He didn't move for a minute. Then two minutes. He thought about just going to his room, closing the door, and forgetting the whole thing ever happened.

But the game pieces were still on the floor. And the brick on his stomach wasn't going anywhere.

Reese slid off his chair and got on his hands and knees. He picked up one card. Then another. He found the silver knight under the table and held it in his palm. It was so small. He'd been so angry at this tiny little thing.

He crawled around gathering crystals — red, blue, green, purple. He found one behind the trash can. He stacked the cards and straightened them, tapping them on the table the way his dad straightened a deck of playing cards. He unfolded the board and pressed it flat, smoothing out the crease where it had bent.

There was a small tear in the corner. Right through the picture of the Dragon's Tower.

Reese's stomach flipped. That wasn't his game. That was Mabel's game. Her favorite game.

He went to the junk drawer and found a piece of tape. He carefully pressed it over the tear, lining it up as best he could. You could still see it if you looked close, but the tower was back together.

He put everything back in the box — board, cards, crystals, dice, the two silver pieces — and closed the lid.

Then he carried the box down the hall to the living room, where Mabel was sitting on the couch reading a book. She didn't look up when he came in, but he could tell she knew he was there because she turned the page a little too hard.

"I fixed it," Reese said. "I mean — I put it all back. There's a small rip in the corner. I taped it."

Mabel turned another page.

"I'm sorry I flipped the board," Reese said. The words felt like swallowing something dry, but he got them out. "That was — I shouldn't have done that."

Mabel finally looked at him. She had an expression like she was deciding something.

"That game was a birthday present," she said. "From Grandma."

The brick on Reese's stomach doubled in size.

"I know I can't un-rip it," he said quietly. "But I really am sorry."

Mabel looked at him for a long time. Then she scooted over on the couch and made a space.

Reese sat down. They were quiet for a moment.

"You know," Mabel said, "you're not that fun to play with."

"Yeah," Reese said, because right now that felt true.

"You're all fun and excited when you're winning, but the second things go bad, you get all huffy, and then —" She made an exploding motion with her hands. "Board flip."

Reese pulled at a thread on the couch cushion. "I just really don't like losing."

"Nobody likes losing, Reese. You think I like losing? Last week Marcus beat me at Kingdom Quest by ONE crystal, and I wanted to scream."

"Did you scream?"

"No. I said 'good game' and then I went to my room and squeezed my pillow really hard and whispered all the mean things I wanted to say into it."

Reese almost laughed. "You whispered mean things into a pillow?"

"I called that pillow some terrible names," Mabel said, and now she was almost smiling. "But then I was done. And the game was still in one piece. And Marcus still wanted to play with me the next day."

Reese looked at the game box on the coffee table. "Would you still want to play with me?"

Mabel tapped her fingers on her book. "Ask me tomorrow. I'm still a little mad."

"Okay," Reese said, and that felt fair.

He got up to leave, then stopped. "Mabel? If we play again, will you teach me the strategy? Because I think the Foggy Swamp might actually be the worst place ever invented."

Mabel snorted. "Oh, it absolutely is. There's a trick to avoiding it, though. You have to save your Skip cards for that whole middle section."

"You could have told me that BEFORE!"

"You didn't ask! You just sat down all confident like, I'm Reese, I'm amazing at games —"

"I do NOT sound like that."

"You absolutely sound like that."

Reese laughed — a real laugh — and Mabel laughed too, and the brick on his stomach finally started to shrink. It didn't disappear completely. He had a feeling it might sit there for a little while, especially every time he noticed that piece of tape on the corner of the board.

But that was okay. Some feelings take their time.

The next afternoon, Reese found Mabel in the kitchen, already setting up the game. She'd put his silver knight on the starting square.

"Ready to lose again?" she asked.

"Ready to play again," Reese said.

And he sat down, and he rolled the dice, and whatever happened next — happened next.