“Huh?” I looked up. A small smile tugged at his lips.
“I asked which ball you wanted.”
“Oh, yeah, I was examining them.” I tapped my finger against my lips.
“Really? That’s what you were examining, huh?”
I smiled and shrugged a shoulder. “Well, sorta. I can’t help it that your built like a Greek god. I get distracted. It’s not my fault.”
Chay laughed before he bent down and kissed me hard on the mouth. He lifted his head, looking me in the eyes. “If I’m a Greek god, then you’re a goddess. You’re beautiful.”
I gave him a quick kiss. “The purple one.”
“One what?”
“Bowling ball.” I laughed. “Now who’s distracted?”
“Come on, you two! Let’s play,” Muriel called.
“Guys against the girls, hey Drew?” Chay fist bumped Drew.
Drew laughed. “You know it.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll let you have ten freebie points just so you aren’t too embarrassed when we slaughter you.” I slipped on the absolutely ugliest pair of puke brown bowling shoes.
Ugh, who knows what’s growing in these things. I should have worn two pairs of socks to protect my feet from the fungus in the shoes. They even smell funky.
“Oooh, big talk over there.” Chay rolled our bowling balls on the ball return.
Muriel entered our names into the computerized scoreboard. She looked at me and rolled her eyes. “Okay, Milayna, you’re up first.”
“Me?”
Ick, I hate going first.
“Come on, Milayna. Show us your skills!” Drew called.
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. I walked up to the lane, lugging my purple bowling ball. I heard Chay chuckle behind me.
Okay, I just need to keep it out of the gutter. Why is my stomach fluttering? It’s just a stupid game. Just throw the ball already. Aim and roll the ball. Oh, and hit some pins. Please, please, please, hit some pins.
I pulled the ball up to my chin, aimed it—sort of—swung my arm back and then quickly forward toward the pins. The ball flew down the super glossy aisle, spinning toward the ten pins at the end. It stayed on course and away from the gutter. Twisting my fingers, I waited to see what I’d get, completely amazed when I hit a strike. I stood there with my mouth open for a beat before I put my game face on and strutted back to my seat, blowing a kiss to Chay as I walked by.
“You just got lucky.”
I shrugged a shoulder. “We’ll see.”
We were about halfway into our game. We were having fun talking trash to each other, and Muriel and I were actually winning—barely. It was the most fun I’d had in weeks. But then, my stomach cramped so bad I doubled over and dropped my ball. It rolled over into the lane next to us. Of course, the vision had to happen when it was my turn to bowl and I was standing up at the lane where everyone could see me spaz out.
Drew got my ball and apologized to the people bowling next to us while Chay rushed to me and helped me back to the benches. I sat down bent over, my chest to my knees and my arms wrapped around them. Gritting my teeth against the pain, I tried hard not to cry out and draw even more attention to myself. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I clenched my jaw so tightly it felt like someone had wired it shut.
“What do you need?” Chay asked.
I shook my head. There was no way I could speak. My head started to pound. My vision bounced in time to the beats. The people in the bowling alley looked like they were on a trampoline, bouncing up and down, up and down. I closed my eyes and laid my cheek against my knees.
“Do you see anything?” Chay’s voice sounded so loud, like he was screaming in my ear. All the sounds in the bowling alley were amplified and reverberated through my head, causing stabbing pain as they bombarded my brain, crashing from one side to the other.
“No,” I moaned.
A flash of the pin mechanism darted before my eyes. I heard the sound of it clicking and the metal screeching as it lifted the pins for the sweeper to move beneath it.
Another image flashed through my brain. The pins dropping into their slots before the arms lowered them down to the aisle. The machine clanged and creaked when the pins fell into position; the metal shimmied as it lowered to the aisle and dropped the pins onto the wooden floor before slowly rising.
I could see down the aisle like I was looking at it from where the pins sat. I saw Muriel and Drew sitting on the benches talking. Muriel giggled at something Drew said. He leaned over and kissed her. Chay rolled his eyes and turned to look at the bowling balls. I wasn’t there.
I turned and saw a small hallway behind the lanes and the machinery that moved and set-up the pins. There was a man in gray overalls working on the machines.