Katherine's Trick

Katherine had a tattered glamor about her, being just a few years older than I but already divorced and lugging a toddler all over campus. Her ex-husband lived on the men's floor of my dorm, which is how we met. I didn't like Scott all that much, but Katherine and I bonded instantly over a shared love of food and books.

Katherine and Scott rarely argued. When they did, one phrase from Katherine always stopped Scott in his tracks: “Let's flip a coin to see who's right.” Scott's retreat from those words was always so fast that anyone not paying attention would miss it.

One day over good chocolate and cheap burgers, I asked Katherine why Scott, a notorious gambler, didn't want to take that challenge. She wiped her mouth and pulled a quarter from her pocket.

“It'll be heads,” she drawled as she flipped the coin. I watched the quarter spin in the air before landing – no surprise – head's up. She motioned for me to examine the coin. It was just a regular quarter.

After I accused Katherine of “having a lucky guess,” she flipped the coin ten more times, guessing the outcome correctly each time. The I took the coin, and then three other quarters I scrounged out from my backpack, and flipped them multiple times. Her guesses were correct each and every time.

“It's easier than you think,” Katherine said. “Look, I'm going to flip this quarter, right? There, it's flipped. Now, can you tell me what side was up before I flipped it? No, you can't, can you? No one ever looks at a coin before it's flipped. But if you do, and then guess that the opposite side will come up, you'll win every time. Nothing to it.”

Word count: 297