“This could be a long night,” Blaire said.
“It will be awesome,” Elise said. “When’s the last time we actually went out? You two never want to do anything.”
“We always do things,” I said.
“Things that don’t have to do with school?” Elise asked, raising one eyebrow.
“True. We should do more things that don’t have to do with school,” I said. And now that I had the funds, I realized, that was even more possible …
“Rounds?” Blaire asked.
“What?” I asked.
“Is that the right word for it? Is bowling broken into rounds?”
“Frames?” I suggested.
“No.” She tapped the steering wheel. “I think each person’s turn is called a frame. But what is the culmination of all our frames and all our turns together called?”
“Sets?” Elise said. “Or maybe quarters?”
“Quarters is a different sport.” Blaire furrowed her brow like this was the most important question on the SAT. “Maddie, look it up on your fancy new phone.”
“Look it up?”
“Yes. Hurry, before we get there.”
“Are you worried the bowling alley people are going to think we’re stupid?” I asked.
“Yes, actually.”
I laughed but knew she was serious. I got out my phone and opened the browser.
Elise put her hand over her eyes. “Your superhuge phone screen is blinding me.”
“It’s not that big,” I mumbled, searching through the list that came up with my inquiry. “It doesn’t say what a round is called.”
“Did you look up a bowling glossary?” Blaire asked.
“Yes. That’s where I am.” I scrolled down the page and read off some of the words as I went. “Anchor, Back End, Channel … Grandma’s Teeth? There’s a bowling term called Grandma’s Teeth.”
“What does it mean?” Elise asked.
“Something about the way you knock down the pins. I suddenly feel like I don’t know enough about bowling to bowl.”
“Right?” Blaire said.
“Speaking of Grandma’s teeth—”
“You honestly have a story to go along with that?” Blaire interrupted me to ask.
“Yes, I do. Zoo Seth found dentures in the petting pens one time.”
“Gross,” Elise said.
“I know.”
“Zoo Seth, huh?” Elise wiggled her eyebrows at me.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“What does what mean?”
“The eyebrow wiggle.”
“It means you like him.”
“No, I don’t,” I said, hating that I was blushing. “And even if I did, he doesn’t feel the same way.”
“Wait, so you do?” Blaire asked.
“No, there’s nothing going on!” I protested.
“But you want there to be,” Elise said.
“No, we are just zoo friends.”
“Zoo friends? That sounds like a kid’s cartoon,” Elise said. “But there better not be anything going on. I just broke up with my boyfriend for our pact. You don’t get to break the rules now.”
“I thought you broke up with him because he had a small head.”
“Well, that, too.”
“Did you find out what a round of bowling is called?” Blaire asked.
“What? Oh.” I held my phone back up and finished looking through the terms. “Nope. We need a bowling for dummies site because this only defines the we’re-expert-bowlers terms. It’ll be okay,” I added, petting Blaire’s arm. “They’ll only think we’re stupid for a second.”
Blaire laughed, which was a good sign. Sometimes comments like that made her get defensive. She pulled into the parking lot and found a space.
“How many games do you want?” the guy behind the counter asked.
Elise and I looked at each other and said, “Games!” at the exact same time. Then we cracked up.
Blaire stared at the guy. “That’s really what a round of bowling is called? A game?”
Jerry, according to his name tag, looked confused. “Yes?”
“Can we get two games?” I asked. “And then add more if we want to keep playing?”
“Sure. Or you can reserve the lane for an hour or more and play as many as you want in your time frame.”
“Yes, an hour sounds perfect. Can we do that?” I asked my friends.
They shrugged and nodded.
“We want an hour.” I looked behind me at the row of lanes and located the number on the far wall. “On lane thirteen.”
“Lucky number thirteen it is.”
Thirteen hadn’t been lucky for me, but I could still remember all the numbers that were. That ticket was burned into my memory. 2, 15, 23, 75, 33, 7. Maybe I should’ve picked one of those lanes. I felt like I owed those numbers some loyalty after all they’d done for me.
“That’ll be thirty-one dollars and sixty-seven cents,” Jerry said.
I raised my hand, “I got this.” I whipped out my credit card, the one that was going to tide me over while waiting for actual money to appear in my bank account.
“But we are supposed to take you out,” Elise said. “For your birthday.”
“You are taking me out. I’m just paying for it.”
Elise gave me a side hug. “Then we get to buy you ice cream after.”
“Deal,” I said. We each grabbed our shoes and headed for lane thirteen.
We were horrible bowlers. More than horrible. There were probably toddlers better at bowling than we were. Okay, maybe all of us weren’t horrible. Elise was doing halfway decent. She’d gotten one strike. But Blaire and I hadn’t come close. When our hour was almost up, Blaire asked, “Are we counting Elise’s strike for the one you mentioned you needed to achieve before quitting?”
“Of course we are,” I said, holding the ball up to my chin and eyeing the lane.
Elise smacked my butt. “Good luck, Batman.”
I laughed and took three steps forward, then almost tripped when I heard a laugh from somewhere to my left.
I glanced that way and saw Trina and a group of her friends putting shoes on several lanes over.
“Does this mean we’re partially cool?” Elise asked. “If we’re doing the same thing the popular girls are doing on a Saturday night?”
“That’s exactly what it means,” I said.
“I still don’t understand why it matters if we’re cool or not,” Blaire argued. “Because we are so far from cool that we shouldn’t even be considering what might help.”
I laughed and rolled my ball down the lane. It only knocked over four pins. “I think I just scored a grandma’s teeth,” I said.
Elise was holding her hands over a vent on the ball return that shot out cold air. “I think Maddie is cool now,” she said.
“I just used the words grandma’s teeth in a sentence. Pretty sure you’re wrong about that.”
“No, I mean, you have money. That adds at least a hundred points to your score.”
“A hundred?” Blaire asked. “Out of how many? I would assume a hundred is the max score. So by adding a hundred, you’re saying she was a zero before.”
I nodded with a smile. “I probably was.”
Blaire rolled her eyes.
“But even thirty million doesn’t give me the perfect score,” I whispered, picking up the ball for my second roll. This time my ball went straight into the gutter and slowly made its way down the lane before dropping down with a clunk at the end, no pins disturbed. “Zero!” I called out. “For sure.”
Elise looked casually over at the other lane. I did, too, but nobody was paying any attention to us.
“Zeroes for life,” Blaire said.
I laughed. “Let’s go get that ice cream you promised.”
“Thank goodness this game is finally over,” Blaire said.
I linked my arms with Blaire and Elise and watched the other group of girls as we walked past. They didn’t seem much different than us. Maybe we were all zeroes in our own ways. This thought made them seem more approachable. Maybe all this time I’d thought of them as above me, when really we were all pretty much the same.