It was inevitable, I suppose. Silly to think my new friends would never find out. All the girls at school are crazy about bowling. There isn’t much else to do in this small town we’d moved to after Dad died. They kept inviting me, even after I’d turned them down countless times. I always had a good excuse - at first, I had to “fix up” my room on weekends, or had extra homework to catch up on after school. I binge-watched Harry Potter movies in my darkest hours when sleep walked off without me and went looking for my Dad. The idea of Magic smooths my bumpy reality. Then, I did all the other things there were to do with my sister, Laura. It took about a week before I was bored to tears with the Arcade at the “mall” - three abandoned chain stores and an nearly-empty JC Penney. We worked through the 3 flavors at the sorry-looking Baskin Robbins in an afternoon - the 1 fell off their sign years ago and they had decided to go with it. For a week we haunted the mini golf place that only had 6 balls, all the same color, so you had to share with your party and the party ahead of you. Most players brought their own. There was no movie theater. Still, I resisted the frequent bowling invitations, until I couldn’t anymore. Laura, gracious through my increasingly frantic attempts at avoidance, finally broke.

“Jenny, enough. It’s time to grow up. It didn’t matter before. You could avoid them no problem. But here, Jeez, Jenny, bowling is, like, a profession to aspire to. You don’t have to love it, but you have to at least look at it.”

She’s right, I only have two choices: Be alone or go bowling with my friends. I haven’t been near a bowling alley since I was 6. If I don’t get over this phobia now, I’ll never be able to go near one for the rest of my life, I thought. Sigh. Dad loved bowling.

“Jenny, we’re going bowling next Saturday! Wanna come with us?”

“Let me check - Saturday? Um…” I pretend to look at the calendar on my phone. “Aw, I can’t. I have to get new glasses.”

“Again?!”

I steeled myself. Here goes…”Oh, hey, I was looking at the wrong Saturday. Next NEXT Saturday is my glasses. Haha, boy, I really do need new glasses, though, looking at the wrong …” I trailed off. “OK.” I said in a small voice. “”I can go.”

“Alright!” Carolina pumped her fist in the air. “It’ll be a blast! I don’t guess you have your own ball?”

I waved my hands in front of me. Just the thought of a bowling ball in my own home made my heart race. “No!” I said quickly. “I’ll rent one.”

Despite my fervent prayers, Saturday morning arrived with no complications. I nearly went home twice, got all the way up to the heavy double doors and turned around, fled back to the safety of my car, where I hyperventilated then gave myself a pep talk. And argued with myself.

“Silly, bowling balls are not going to hurt you. Look at all these happy people coming out. They don’t look scared, or hurt.”

“Dummy, you saw it with your own eyes! That man…”

“Dad explained it, remember? It was a gas leak. That poor man, he was just unlucky, in the wrong place. It could never in a million years happen again.”

That awful night, so long ago, is knotted up in my memories of Dad. Driving home from Grandma’s house late one Saturday night, we were at the red light across the highway from the darkened Starlight Bowl. Mom and Laura were sound asleep in the backseat. I’m a night owl like Dad. It was a treat to sit in Mom’s seat up front. Sleepy, sitting in companionable silence, we were jolted by a violent explosion from the low cinder block building. Flames shot into the sky, higher than I could see from my seat, and the car shook from the blast. As I watched in horror, a man who had been stumbling, drunk, down the street in front of the building had been hit by flying debris. Dad tried to turn my head away, but I saw the bowling ball, as if shot from a cannon, split his head in two. I wailed and wailed. It had taken months of therapy to get the image out of my mind, and years before I could tuck the memory away where it didn’t bother me every day. I had worked hard toward this day, then avoided it for long enough. Time to confront the demon.

I paused at the doors, girded my loins, lifted my chin and walked into the bowling alley where my friends were waiting.