Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit (10 page)

I aim the ball down the middle, but it goes into the gutter.

Personally, I think that there’s a magnet in my bowling ball, and one in each gutter.

“Better luck next time,” Max says.

I sit down on the bench and sigh.

My mother picks up her bowling ball, aims, and throws.

There’s no magnet in her ball.

It goes right down the center and hits the pin in the middle.

The bowling pins on each side are left standing.

“Split,” Max says.

“Are you offering us a banana split?” I ask.

He crosses his eyes at me.

I know what a split is . . . that’s what my mother has just gotten . . . . pins separated, with a hole in between them.

Max has also taught me other bowling words:

Strike
—when all the pins go down with the first ball

I want to know why I, Amber Brown, get strikes only in baseball . . . not in bowling.

Spare
—when you get all ten pins down with two balls

Turkey
—three strikes in a row

I want to know why I, Amber Brown, bowl three times in a row, get low scores, and feel like a real turkey.

300
—a perfect score

I, Amber Brown, got a 42 in our first game—an imperfect score.

Max bowls.

He gets a strike.

When he sits down on the bench, my mother gives him a kiss.

I think that’s why he’s been getting so many strikes, so that he gets kisses from my mother.

It’s weird for me to see my mother kiss Max. I know she’s divorced. I know that she and Max are going out . . . but it’s still a little strange to see my mother and Max kissing.

I look away from them and watch the people in the next lane.

The little girl in that lane has forgotten to take her fingers out of the ball and she’s now lying on the floor, crying, with the ball still on her hand.

When it’s my turn, Max joins me on the lane and shows me, again, how to hold the ball, how to “approach,” and how to throw.

This time my bowling ball doesn’t bounce down the lane . . . . and six pins fall.

Max and I give each other high fives.

I get one more pin on my second ball, which touches the pin just before it drops into the gutter.

My mother gets four pins down.

Max only gets a spare next time he’s up.

My mother gives him a kiss anyway because she says she has kisses to spare.

I don’t remember my parents kissing each other very much at the end of the time they were married.

I actually like Max. I tried not to, but I do.

It’s very confusing.

Half the time, I’m really glad that Max is in our lives, and the other half, I keep
hoping that my mom and dad will get back together again.

The chance of my parents getting back together again is about as likely as my bowling a 300.

Part of me keeps hoping, though.

While I wait for my turn to bowl again, I look at people and try to guess their shoe sizes.

Then I look at the backs of their shoes, and if they’re wearing rentals, I can see what sizes the shoes are.

I, Amber Brown, have no trouble making up games.

Some of the people have their own shoes, so there are no numbers on the backs.

Next, I start to think about what kinds of bowling shoes some of my favorite book characters would wear.

Dorothy, in
The Wizard of Oz
, would definitely wear red glitter bowling shoes.

I think about my favorite character when I was little, the Little Engine That Could. I wonder if engines wear shoes. Maybe if they’re little, they wear training shoes.

My aunt Pam told me that in England, they call sneakers “trainers,” so maybe that’s what he would wear.

“Amber, it’s your turn,” my mother reminds me.

Gutter balls again.

“It’s only a game,” Max says.

When Max says that, I think of my father.

When I was little and my dad and I used
to play Chutes and Ladders and I’d lose and get upset, that’s what he used to say: “It’s only a game.”

I used to wonder why he wouldn’t just let me win if it was only a game.

My father . . . . . . I hardly ever see him now that he’s living in Paris, France.

We talk every week, but that’s not the same as seeing him.

I’m not even sure that I can see him in my brain anymore. I have to look at pictures of my dad to remember what he looks like.

I saw him during summer vacation, when my aunt Pam took me to London. My dad came to visit.

That was in August.

In September, I met Max.

Now it’s October, and it’s kind of weird.

I feel like I’m beginning to know Max better than my own father.

Next time my father calls, I’m going to beg him to move back.

Amber can’t wait to be Best Child when her mom and Max get married, but planning a wedding comes with lots of headaches. Amber can’t find the right dress, her dad keeps making mean cracks about Max, and everyone is going crazy over how much things cost. Her mother even suggests they go to city hall and skip the party altogether!

Justin and his family are supposed to come for the wedding, and Amber has been looking forward to that for months. Adults sure can be a lot of work, but if Amber can make this wedding work, it will all be worth it.

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Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit

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