These Games We Play

Chapter Thirteen:The bowling ally

There really was a bowling alley. In my house. There was a bowling alley in my house. As promised, there were "only" four lanes, but otherwise, it had everything you'd expect a bowling alley to have. There was a ball return. Pin-setters on each lane. A touch screen to set up the games, and fifty-five-inch monitors overhead to keep track of the score. Emblazoned on all of it -the balls, the lanes, the touch screen, the monitors-was an elaborate letter H.

A clear reminder that I did in fact not belong here. I ignored it and instead I focused on choosing the right ball. The right shoes-because there were at least forty pairs of bowling shoes on a rack to the side. Who needs forty pairs of bowling shoes? Rich people with a bowling ally in their house or well my house that's who.

Tapping my finger against the touch screen, I entered my initials. EKR. An instant later, a welcome flashed across the monitor.

WELCOME TO HAWTHORNE HOUSE, EVANEGLINE KIMBERLY RADWAYS!

I felt sick looking at it. I doubted that anyone had spent the past couple of days programming my name into the bowling ally. I couldn't help but wonder what Tobias Hawthorne had been up to. I pushed down the urge to shiver. At the end of the second lane, pins were waiting for me. When I looked at the screen again the letters flashed until only about 16 of the letters in my name were left. Turning away I did a double take and all of them were back again. A trick of the light.

I picked up my ball-ten pounds, with a silver H on a dark green background. Back home, the bowling alley had offered ninety-nine-cent bowling once a month. My mum and I had gone, every time. It was a just thing. I hadn't gone since she died. It felt wrong. Playing now felt wrong.

"I think I made it mum," I whispered to myself. It felt stupid saying it out loud. But ever since she died, I'd been doing it muttering to the world just in case she was listening. I wished that she were here, and then I wondered: If she were alive, would I even be here? I wasn't a Hawthorne. Unless the old man had chosen me randomly, unless I had somehow done something to catch his attention, his decision to leave everything to me had to have something to do with her. If she'd been alive, would you have left the money to her?

I wanted to know so badly why I was here. What I had done to get the money I wanted to know why Tobias Hawthorne was sorry. Did you do something to her? Not do something to her-or for her? I have a secret.... I heard my mum saying. I sat down on one of the chairs. I didn't feel like playing now. All I felt like right now was my mother. I just wanted her back.

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I played. I played five games before I left. I think I was crying for half of them. I was still good at bowling as it turns out. I managed to knock down most of the pins. If mum had been here she would have mocked me for when I missed because I couldn't see. I couldn't see because of tears. I ended up wandering around trying to find the gym. I was wearing my new glasses since I wanted to try them out and contacts were no good when you needed to cry. I learnt that hard way.

Athletic complex might have been a more accurate term for what I found where the gym was meant to be. I stepped out onto the basketball court. The room jutted out in an L shape, with two weight benches and a half dozen workout machines in the smaller part of the L. There was a door on the back wall.

Curiosity getting the better of me I opened it. inside was a rock-climbing wall stretched out two stories overhead. A figure grappled with a near-vertical section on the wall, at least twenty feet up, with no harness. Jameson. He must have sensed me somehow.

"Ever climbed one of these before?" he called down I thought of Grayson's warning. Then I thought against since I didn't care what Grayson Hawthrone had to say.