Ally likes to play
a game she cannot sway
in her favor, add some flavor,
’til she loses it forever.

---

Allison was born a winner. Straight As through high school, two golds and one silver in swimming, and a piano teaching certificate at fifteen. She never added a wrinkle to her parents’ eyebrows. The principal personally asked her to join the pre-med focal study group. She was voted 78% in the class rep election (a record-breaking voter turnout rate of 21%). She was born to break the game.

To Allison, everything was a game. Keeping a streak of high scores meant keeping learning on the toilet and revising before bedtime. Hitting that buzzer before any other swimmer meant hitting the pool at 6 am every day. That scholarship interview was almost too easy as if she hadn’t woven a mind map of 25 nodes correlating altogether the interviewers’ backgrounds, her academic strengths, and competitors’ blindspots. If everything was a game, there would be rules to follow. Be they obscure or ostensible, all Allison had to do was figure out what they were. And she always did.

Well, at least, that was what she thought before Eliza left the other side of the bed that night. The night was stealthy, stealing away her capability to vocalize when Eliza slid away from the sheets. She thought she played the game superbly. Caring, understanding, and reassuring in every way. Effortlessly funny, genuinely smiling, and bringing the right gifts whenever she needed to feel okay. All the steps should’ve led Eliza right into Allison’s embrace. Instead, the temperature dropped lower, she could feel it draining from her blood. Something went missing, something was losing. What did she do, was she not good enough? Did she not crack the rules, did she botch? Eliza’s lips were twitching, was she telling her the cheat codes? Allison’s vision blurred, but she desperately needed to see.

Something was losing. Oh no, Allison was losing.