The Chess Club Cheater

Odalys had been chosen to be the arbiter of the school chess tournament, and she took the job seriously. Her task was simple: make sure every game was fair. The final round was on the last Friday of classes, in the school library, and Mr. Fairweather, the librarian, had covered the windows so the afternoon sun wouldn't shine on the boards.

By three o'clock, one player had won every single game. Kasimir was a quiet boy who usually sat at the back of the math class. Nobody remembered him winning anything before. Even more strange, a tall boy in a thick green scarf was always standing near his table, and every few minutes the boy coughed.

Odalys began to keep notes. A cough, and Kasimir moved his knight. Two coughs, and he castled. She was almost sure it was a code. Someone in the audience could be using a phone to find the best moves and passing them on. It must be the boy in the scarf, she thought. Nobody can cough that much by accident.

Before the final game, she asked Mr. Fairweather to help. "I'd like to move one of the spectators outside," she whispered, "just to be sure." The librarian raised an eyebrow, but he agreed. The boy in the scarf was taken to the corridor, where he sat with a bottle of water and a box of tissues.

Then the final began, and Odalys watched Kasimir closely. Without the coughs, he should have been lost. Instead, he played even faster. In twenty moves he trapped his opponent's queen, and the game was over. Through the glass door, Odalys could still hear the boy coughing in the corridor, sometimes three times in a row, when nobody was moving a piece at all.

At the prize ceremony she apologized to Kasimir, who just shrugged. "My cousin has had a cold all week," he said. "He only came to watch because I asked him to. I've been practicing online every night since September." Odalys handed him the trophy and tried to smile, but something was tickling her throat. Halfway through her speech, she started to cough, and twenty heads turned toward her.