Read The Queen's Gambit for Free Online Page B

an hour and a half, she had beaten them all without a single false or wasted move.
    She stopped and looked around her. Captured pieces sat in clusters beside each board. A few students were staring at her, but most avoided her eyes. There was scattered applause. She felt her cheeks flush; something in her reached out desperately toward the boards, the dead positions on them. There was nothing left there now. She was just a little girl again, without power.
    Mr. Ganz presented her with a two-pound box of Whitman’s chocolates and took her out to the car. Shirley got in without a word, careful not to touch against Beth in the back seat. They drove in silence back to the Methuen Home.
    Five o’clock study hall was intolerable. She tried playing chess in her mind, but it seemed for once pale and meaningless after the afternoon at the high school. She tried reading Geography, since there was a test the next day, but the big book was practically all pictures, and the pictures meant little to her. Jolene was not in the room, and she was desperate to see Jolene, to see if there were any more pills. Every now and then she touched her blouse pocket with the palm of her hand in a kind of superstitious hope that she would feel the little hard surface of a pill. But there was nothing there.
    Jolene was at supper, eating her Italian spaghetti, when Beth came in and picked up her tray. She went over to Jolene’s table before getting her food. There was another black girl with her. Samantha, a new one. Jolene and she were talking.
    Beth walked straight up to them and said to Jolene, “Have you got any more?”
    Jolene frowned and shook her head. Then she said, “How was the exhibit? You do okay?”
    “Okay,” Beth said. “Haven’t you got just one?”
    “Honey,” Jolene said, turning away, “I don’t want to hear about it.”
    ***
    The Saturday afternoon movie in the library was
The Robe
. It had Victor Mature in it and was spiritual; all the staff was there, sitting attentive in a special row of chairs at the back, near the shuddering projector. Beth kept her eyes nearly shut during the first half-hour; they were red and sore. She had not slept at all on Thursday night and had dozed off for only an hour or so Friday. Her stomach was knotted, and there was the vinegar taste in her throat. She slouched in her folding chair with her hand in her skirt pocket, feeling the screwdriver she had put there in the morning. Walking into the boys’ woodworking shop after breakfast, she took it from a bench. No one saw her do it. Now she squeezed it in her hand until her fingers hurt, took a deep breath, stood up and edged her way to the door. Mr. Fergussen was sitting there, proctoring.
    “Bathroom,” Beth whispered.
    Mr. Fergussen nodded, his eyes on Victor Mature, bare-chested in the arena.
    She walked purposively down the narrow hallway, over the wavy places in the faded linoleum, past the girls’ room and down to the Multi-Purpose Room, with its
Christian Endeavour
magazines and
Reader’s Digest
Condensed Books and, against the far wall, the padlocked window that said PHARMACY .
    There were some small wooden stools in the room; she picked up one of them. There was no one around. She could hear gladiatorial shouts from the movie in the library but nothing else except her footsteps. They sounded very loud.
    She set the stool in front of the window and climbed onto it. This put her face on a level with the hasp and padlock, at the top. The window itself, made of frosted glass with chicken wire in it, was framed in wood. The wood had been thickly painted with white enamel. Beth examined the screws that held the painted hasp. There was paint in their slots. She frowned, and her heart began to beat faster.
    During the rare times when Daddy had been home, and sober, he had liked to do little jobs around the house. The house was an old one, in a poorer part of town, and there was heavy paint on the woodwork. Beth, five and six years old,