Sam rushed through the front door, just barely avoiding the phone table just beside it. His sneakers squeaked on the parquet in the process, alerting his mom in the next room over, "Sam?" She called out, "Sam honey, don't run in the house!"
"Sorry!" He shouted back, beelining for the stairs. Spring break was finally here. That meant seven amazing days of comics and MTV. As long as his old man didn't come up with busy work for him, which he didn't do much these days anyway. Fine with Sam. He hated housework.
The front of his shoe nearly caught on one of the carpeted steps, but he caught himself as he reached the top of the stairs and turned the corner to bang loudly on his brother's bedroom door, "Mike! Gimme some money, I'm good for it!" He was getting his allowance in a couple of days, but the comic he wanted wouldn't be at the store long enough to risk waiting.
His brother always rode his bike home, so he usually beat the bus by about half an hour. Sam knew he was in there.
"Mike!" Sam shouted, then lowered his voice, "Mike," he whispered, tapping his fingers on the door. "Miiiiiiiiiike!" He whined.
"Sam! Keep it down!" His mother called from downstairs. He cringed. Ok, well, his brother brought this on himself. Sam braced his shoulder just in case it was locked, and turned the doorknob to boldly invade his brother's privacy.
The plastic buckles on Sam's backpack clicked against the doorframe as he slipped into Michael's room, feet brushing softly on cheap gray carpet. The light was off.
"Sleeping again?" Sam asked, incredulous. "Man, that's all you do lately. What's going on, Mike? You on the hard stuff or something?" He flipped the lightswitch, eyes settling on his brother sprawled in his bed with his beat-up sneakers shoes still on.
Michael cracked open an eye and lifted his head, "I'm broke," his voice cracked a little as he spoke, "bum some money off the old man," he grumbled, letting his head fall back down. "Turn the light off when you leave, Sammy. Or don't. Just buzz off."
Sam let out an audible sigh, tossing his backpack to the ground and stalking towards the bed to poke Michael in the side, which only elicited a tired glare. So Sam pushed it a little further and leaned down to put both hands on his brother's chest and give him an annoying shake.
"Stop," Michael warned.
"You're gonna stay up all night again if you don't wake up, Mike. I'm doing you a favor, so do me one and give me a couple of bucks." He paused, "gross, you're all sweaty. You dive into a swamp when you got home?"
The older Emerson brother sat up, propping himself up just barely and leveling Sam with a firm look reminiscent of their dad when Nanook had an accident in the living room. That was enough to make him nervously take a step back and raise his arms in self defense before the risk of a headlock or noogy was on the table.
Sam held up his hands, "alright, ok!" He leaned down to snatch up his backpack, "I can take a hint. I'll just go pawn your cleats and we'll call it–" he was cut off when his brother grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and pulled him back with a yelp.
"Mom!" Sam shouted, trying to wrestle away and snickering when he managed to get a soft punch into Michael's side and escape from his clutches. His brother chased him downstairs and into the hall where Lucy was throwing phone books from the table by the door into a box. She looked up at them both in surprise.
"It lives!" She exclaimed, shaking her head at her older son. "I thought you were going to sleep for the whole week."
Michael rolled his eyes, leaning hard on Sam's shoulder, "nah. Just six days."
Lucy smiled softly, "listen, your father and I need to talk to you both when he gets home from work, so try to stay awake for a little bit, honey."
Sam grunted, struggling to stand straight while his huge brother weighed him down, "about what?"
"I'd rather he was here before we talk about it, Sam. Do you boys want pizza tonight?"
Oh no. Pizza. That was never a good sign. In their house, pizza was a harbinger of bad news. The last time they'd ordered pizza, Lucy lost her job at the office. Before that, Sam went to the ER with a broken arm.
"I've gotta go grab something, so I'm probably going to miss dinner," Michael told her with an apologetic smile, "sorry, mom."
Lucy frowned, "Michael, I need you home tonight."
"I'll be home, I promise. I just need to pick up my uniforms from the dry cleaners."
"You could have asked me to get them when you were at school," Lucy replied, to which he shrugged helplessly. He couldn't have known they were having bad news pizza.
"Besides," she went on, setting the box of phone books on the table beside the phone, "you may not n–" she cut herself off quickly, "ok, go get your dry cleaning, but be home fast. Don't stop anywhere else. This is important."
Sam felt like he was trapped between a battle of guilty wills. He gingerly slipped from his brother's grasp and crept towards the stairs. There had to be some change in one of Michael's gym bags or something somewhere. He had to get that comic!
He tried to hide his shaking hands as he left the house, heart hammering in his chest. Michael was good at acting, but when his little brother woke him up from his nap he'd been on the verge of screaming. After their exchange with mom, he'd had to take a cold shower to snap out of it. He was still desperately chasing the foggy haze of his dreams slipping from him again.
Someone was there. A friend? No. Something else. There was blood.
He'd scrubbed his scalp raw in the process of cleansing himself of the twisting anxiety in the pit of his stomach. The dream was gone. Again. Maybe he was under too much pressure at school. Not that he really studied much or tried that hard. No one had ever accused Michael of being the greatest student.
When he was finally outside and on his bike, Michael was a lot calmer. It was about five, so the dry cleaners would be open for another hour or so. Plenty of time, he decided, for a bit of a longer ride that day. Maybe he'd go to the mall. The guys might be there. Michael wasn't too sure he really wanted to hang out with them, though. Maybe he'd just grab a coke and window shop. If he could do that, he'd be able to stay awake until nightfall and get back on track.
His mind drifted, carrying him to the liminal space of someone who thinks they know where they're going. Before he knew it, he was driving far away from the drycleaners, or even the Metrocenter Mall, down a funny backroad he didn't even know existed. Once or twice, he thought about turning around, but he didn't. The sun was beginning to sink over the horizon, and still he rode. A needle of guilt stabbed at him. He should go home. Forget the uniforms now.
He pulled into a nearly empty parking lot at an old bowling alley alongside a group of other bikes. Nicer than his, he thought, only a little jealous. They looked familiar. Maybe he'd seen them around at some point.
Michael wasn't the biggest fan of bowling. Sam still got to keep the gutters up, little twerp. The thought brought a smirk to his lips as he walked into the building. Fan or not, he supposed he could afford one set. Take his mind off of—something. He may not really know what it was, but did it really matter? He was bothered by some phantom nightmare he couldn't catch, and he'd have to just be happy with that answer.
Inside, the place looked like it was on its last leg. Flickering lights here and there, threadbare brown carpeting at the perimeter of scratched-up wood floors and bowling lanes. For a second, he wondered if the place was closed altogether and he hadn't read the sign outside right.
At the front counter, a bored-looking girl with a fried red perm idly flipped through a magazine. At the back of the building, in the furthest lane with the worst lighting, a group of guys rough housed and chucked bowling balls down the lane like baseballs. Jesus, they were going to tear the place apart. Michael looked at the girl, surprised she was just ignoring them. Then again, what could she do?
"Hey," he greeted her, approaching the counter with a relaxed smile. The girl didn't look up, but simply pointed behind her.
"Friday night special, two games for the price of one. What size?"
"Ten," he said, a little weirded out. She sounded like a robot. Flat. Lifeless. Was the job that bad?
He counted out his very limited funds, noticing several missing quarters in his wallet and paid for the lane beside the group of guys. Apparently it was the only other one that worked. After tonight, it would probably be the only one that worked at all.
Michael made his way towards his chosen lane, debating whether he could afford a bag of chips tonight and deciding against it. Better to save his change for gas. Sam was going to get it when he got home.
When he picked his seat just beside the scoring machine, he kicked off his sneakers and began to work on slipping into the slightly-too-tight bowling shoes. All the while, the guys in the next lane over made for an interesting show. Maybe more entertaining than the game he hated but somehow decided he wanted to play alone tonight.
One of them, a blonde with long teased hair, sat at a table behind their booth, crumpling up what looked like empty sugar packets and wetting them with coke to make spitballs in a plastic straw and assault the neck of a dark-haired taller member of their group who was inspecting the balls coming out of the gutter ramp. Ball splitter? Michael wasn't sure what those things were called.
The dark-haired member of the group stalked back towards his spitball assailant and poured the drink the guy was using for ammo over his hair, eliciting a few curses from the other. This didn't seem to phase the remaining members of their group. Neither the little one with the braids and wild jacket trying to bowl with two at once, nor the spiky-haired blonde reclining on one of their two rows of seats.
Not too sure he wanted to draw their attention, Michael hid a smirk and went to go pick out a ball on one of the back racks. There weren't many to pick from. Half were too small. Kid's size. He felt eyes on his back. That only made him try to focus harder on making his choice, though it was obvious there really was only one decent ball to choose from. Nevertheless, he kept looking.
A voice snaked over his shoulder, soft and sharp at the same time, "that hard to make a choice, killer?"
Michael spun on the voice, startled, "what?" He asked, hackles rising. He was not about to get into a fight with some random biker tonight. It was the spiky-haired blonde who'd been reclining earlier.
"I said, is it that hard to make a choice?" The blonde gestured at the rack, "you look like you're having trouble. I can help," he suggested.
"Uh, I mean, yeah. No. I'm fine." Michael replied, shaking his head and snatching up the one he'd settled on without breaking eye contact. The blonde smirked, eyeing him up and down. A little too slowly, he thought. Sizing him up? Either way, the guy's look was intense. Anyone else might even say chilling.
"David," the guy volunteered, holding out a gloved hand.
David. That name. Something about it scratched at a part of his brain like the nightmares. But not in quite the same way. Inexplicably, he was struck with an almost immediate wave of grief. Michael gripped at the ball in his hands, the cool plastic bringing him back to the moment.
"Um, uh," he caught himself, "Michael."
"You should join us, Michael," David suggested.
"What?" He repeated, confused. Join them?
"For a game," David clarified, tilting his head slightly. There was an unreadable look that washed over his face and almost immediately disappeared. Excitement, maybe? "Bowling," he added.
"Right," Michael nodded a few too many times. "Sure, yeah. I'll join you. Nothing better to do." He looked around, immediately reminded of just how empty the place was. Then he met David's eyes again, and realized he really did want to play a game with these guys. They were a bit weird, yeah, but he liked them. He didn't really know why.