Page 62 of The Most Dangerous Games

Not long after they push their chairs back, Rupert Chadwick does the same, having just been defeated in Scrabble, despite having stayed with his opponent until Rupert had played his last letter.

Now there is just one player, there at the end of her table, hunched over as far as she can go, her nose close enough to her screen as to almost be touching it:

Hannah Wagner.

She is playing Scrabble as well.

English is her second language, of course. But with her it’s a minor point, not even worthy of discussion in any language.

The others in this room watch her, not knowing what is happening on her screen, all of them feeling the morning has turned into both an odd and gripping spectator sport.

Jack stands with Elena, Wyatt, and Alek.

“How many people do you think are rooting for her?” Jack whispers.

Alek doesn’t blink.

“I don’t care,” Alek whispers back, eyes locked on Hannah. “I just know I am.”

What none of them know, and will only find out later after Hannah shares the details of the ending to her game with Alek, is that Hannah has finally used up all her letters on her last turn. She is out of tiles.

Because she has a photographic memory, she knows how many of each letter there are in Scrabble.

She knows the distribution.

She knows what has already been played.

She knows what cannot possibly be on the rack.

Three tiles.

P. O. Q.

That’s it.

The computer would have to use all of them now, using a dangling letter somewhere, to end up with more points than Hannah.

I want to win, she’d said to Alek and Wyatt hours ago, and it is clear just watching her now how much she’d meant those particular words.

Here is her chance, a great chance, to at least win this day now that all the others have lost, even though she’s probably lost Wyatt in the process.

Because of her quiet demeanor, Hannah has always been able to hide how competitive she is at school, any school, burning to be the best. You didn’t get to MIT at sixteen without having a fire inside you.

She had looked around a few minutes before, seen that Zhi and Jian were still playing. Rupert had only been a few seats away.

All of them gone.

She watches, unable to breathe—and knowing how hard it is to use a Q in Scrabble.

The machine’s cursor moves.

Slow. Deliberate.

It places a Q. Then an O. Then a P.

It hooks them onto an existing H already on the board.

Q-O-P-H.