Published: 2025-10-17

Naomi was never a special person, but she wasn’t ordinary either. Now, at 25 years old, with her arms full of scars, she sat in front of the TV and everything made sense.

In elementary school, nobody wanted to play with her, not because she looked different, her curly hair and black skin mixed well with the rest of the kids of New Town Elementary school. It was her lack of social skills that made other kids repulse her. She didn’t seem interested in talking or playing and would constantly fall asleep. Eating and sleeping were, in fact, the only activities Naomi was interested in.

This changed one day when Mrs. Rodríguez taught the class how to add numbers. “One plus one equals two. Two plus two equals four.” Said Mrs. Rodríguez while writing on the chalkboard. Naomi was captivated by the new symbols.

“Now,” continued Mrs. Rodríguez, “if I have two plus three, what does it equal?”

No sooner had Mrs. Rodríguez said this than Naomi was offering an answer, “Five.”

“Very good. And what about—” “Four. Seven. Nine.” Naomi said, after looking at the rest of the math problems.

Mrs. Rodríguez was impressed. Maybe the kid was being schooled at home, maybe she was a genius. The other kids were still trying to understand why one plus one equals two.

“Did you already know how to add, Naomi?”
“No.”
“OK. How about this one?” Mrs. Rodríguez wrote a new math problem on the chalkboard, which answer was a double-digit number.

Naomi looked at the problem but said nothing, which Mrs. Rodríguez took as a sign of ignorance. “Not a genius after all.” She thought.

At that moment, another kid raised his hand. “Mrs. Rodríguez, why does one plus one equal two?” For a moment, she had forgotten there were other kids in her class.

This was one of Naomi’s most vivid memories, and now, sitting in front of the television, the memories kept coming.

By age seven, Naomi was ahead of her class, but was to remain in the same grade due to laws prohibiting accelerated education. Since she used to get bored in class, the teachers allowed her to spend the day in the library, where she would read books for later grades. Her socialization skills hadn’t improved much, though, and by now she slept and ate as much as a teenager.

Her father didn’t understand her. Her mother died during delivery; therefore, he had to raise her alone. He was barely literate; thus, he couldn’t understand his daughter's obsession with school and books. Fatherhood was a hard challenge for him, and gambling was his way of coping with it. Since nobody could take care of her, he would take her with him to poker night.

She would look at the game with disinterest until one night when she saw a booklet titled “Poker: The Complete Rule Set” in David’s home, where her father and the rest of the gang always played. After reading the small booklet, Naomi approached the table and observed her father playing; his actions were contrary to the booklet recommendation, to common sense, no wonder he always lost.

A new hand was dealt, Naomi took a look at his father’s cards, and, pulling the sleeve of his white dress shirt, told him: “Fold”. He looked at her and smiled after petting her. He raised, he lost, he laughed.

Another hand was dealt, and once again Naomi told him to fold. He raised, he lost, he wasn’t laughing anymore. A third hand was dealt; Naomi didn’t say anything. He looked at her with curious eyes and asked her, “What should daddy do?” Naomi took a quick look at his cards and said “raise”. He raised, two other players called, he won.

Bewildered by the accuracy of his daughter’s prediction, his father turned to her and asked, “How did you know?”

“I’ve already seen it.”
“Saw what?”
“Everything.”

The exchange left him with more questions than answers, but he couldn’t complain. He took the child and put her on top of his lap. “You play with the big boys now.”

That night, Naomi’s father played until he had taken the last chip from the rest of the players. It was the start of a new understanding between father and daughter.

From that day on, Naomi advised his Father during every poker night, and soon, she was the one playing while his father sat in a corner and watched.

Since they never won anymore, his friends decided they wouldn’t play with him. Poker night was moved to another time and place, and Naomi’s father was not invited to participate.

Pushed by greed and longing for the thrill of gambling, he started visiting underground rings, where people were less amicable and played for large sums of money. The first time he entered an underground ring holding his daughter’s hand, security tried to throw him out, but after seeing he had money, they left him be.

But gangsters don’t like to be toyed with, and after taking their money with the advice of a nine-year-old girl, his first time in an underground ring became his last, as one of the men shot him in the chest seven times.

At the tender age of nine years old, and not having met her mother, Naomi became an orphan.

The man on the TV still talked about the discovery of the century: “It’s the first superhuman in the history of humanity. His name is José Peralta, he was born into poverty, his mother died on delivery, then we determined it was due to the stress of giving birth to a boy with such a massive brain — we’re talking about 25% bigger than the average here — plus she was depleted of vitamins and minerals, which we believe was due to the high energy demands of the fetus.”

Naomi listened in astonishment to what came out of the television’s speakers.

“The way his brain works is by running every possible permutation in nanoseconds until finding the answer to a problem. Of course, he cannot solve any possible problem; he has to first understand the logic of the problem. If he doesn’t know how trigonometry works, then he cannot solve a trigonometry equation, but if you explain to him how to do it — just once — then he can solve an infinite problems. It’s like an eidetic memory, but better. And you know what’s the best part? If you ask him how he knew, he'd just answer ‘Je l'ai déjà vu’.”

“I’ve already seen it.” Naomi said.

THE END.