“Sure.”
She looked like she had more thoughts on the topic, but I didn’t want to hear them, so I kissed her fast on the cheek and ran out the door. Kyle was sitting in the driveway in an old Subaru wagon, obviously a parental hand-me-down. For some reason, I just assumed he’d have one of those big, aggressively new SUVs.
But I didn’t have time to ponder the significance of my preconceived notions of Kyle’s car; I had to focus all my energy on looking natural, normal, like a girl who makes last-minute plans with ridiculously attractive, a-little-bit-famous senior guys all the time.
Obviously not an easy job for a weirdo like me.
chapter thirty-four
KYLE
SATURDAY, 11:33 A.M.
Rachel slid into the front seat, smiling slightly, like she had a secret.
That’s when I remembered we didn’t know each other at all. Forget what she was thinking now, what did she think about ever?
Oh jeez, this had been a terrible idea.
“So . . . what do you wanna do?” I asked.
“Right now? Get out of my driveway.” She stared through the windshield at her front door. I glanced over; you could see the outline of someone behind the pebbled glass panel on the right.
“Good place to start.” I pulled out and arbitrarily turned left at the bottom. “What’s next?” I smiled, so she wouldn’t know how awkward I suddenly felt. What were we going to do? What did girls like Rachel do? I really hoped she wouldn’t suggest some art film or poetry reading. Poetry reading: impossible to pretend to like.
“I don’t know. I figured you had a plan.”
“That’s where you vastly overestimated me.” I smiled widely, but I felt like an idiot. I should have had a plan. Why didn’t I have any plan?
“I mean, we could always go bowling,” Rachel said.
“Bowling? Where would you even go, Funtown?” I was pretty sure Rachel wasn’t serious about going to the kiddie birthday party spot. It was mostly an arcade, with a couple lanes of bumper bowling in back and a climbing wall that dominated the entire center of the building. Emma’s brother, Nathan, had his birthday there last year. She and I were the oldest non-parent people in the room.
Rachel twisted her mouth up in a half smile. It made a little dimple pop out in just her left cheek. I’d never noticed it before. I almost reached over to poke my finger into it—would it feel different? Softer?—then remembered not to be a psycho.
“You know there are other bowling alleys in the world, right?”
“I mean . . .” I looked over. She was clearly trying to repress a laugh. I felt myself smile back. “Yes. Obviously I know that. I just don’t know where any of them are. No one I know goes bowling.”
“That’s why bowling’s so awesome,” she said, looking out the window. “Get onto 169, I’ll show you how to get to a real bowling alley. One without a giant cat mascot walking around, making children cry.”
I worked my way to the highway, glancing at Rachel every few seconds. She was staring out the front window with the same half smile on her lips.
I still didn’t know what private joke or secret she was holding on to, but I wanted to find out.
“I probably didn’t explain this the first time. You actually want to avoid the gutters,” Rachel said from behind me.
My ball rolled past the untouched pins. It was the third frame in a row where I’d hit nothing.
Sucking this bad at bowling: not reducing my antsiness. Usually I was good at new games, but I couldn’t figure out how to get the flipping ball to stay in the middle. A couple times I’d randomly hit a few pins. One frame I even got a strike. But the next turn, I somehow overcompensated and the ball went straight into the left gutter.
I looked around the bowling alley. Maybe the atmosphere was making it harder for me to be good. The entire building was basically one big box that they’d forgotten to cut windows into. There were carpets everywhere. Threadbare, nasty-looking ones with blackened gum ground into them near the check-in desk and weird, nubbly brown ones climbing the walls by the lanes. They’d carpeted the walls. The screens hanging over each lane looked like computers in old movies, pixelated and out of focus and only in one color: neon blue. And everything else was dark. Ugly burgundy shelves for the balls. Brownish chairs turned grimy by years of butts. Two or three sad middle-aged men sucking the light out of the room a few lanes down.
This place: depression in a box. A concrete box.
I forced a smile. It was bad enough sucking, I didn’t want Rachel to think I cared.
“It’s all part of my master plan.” I turned. She was standing behind me, hands on her hips.
“Really.” She raised an eyebrow.