He’d take his first break at lunch when his dad started grilling in the bowling center’s kitchen. Miles imagined spending the whole day bowling. “They should cancel school today and give us one more day of winter vacation.” “Told you,” Randall said, stamping his brand-new sneakers, even though there wasn’t any snow on the ground. “It’s fr-fr-freezing! Feels like the temperature dropped twenty degrees since I got here.”

Miles went outside in his socks to quickly wipe the smudges off the glass, then darted back in, shivering again.

“Why’d you have to slobber all over the door? You know I have to clean that.” “It’s not that cold.” Miles reached behind the counter and grabbed Windex and a rag. “My eyeballs were turning into ice cubes out there.” “Why didn’t you open up sooner?” Randall blinked, blinked, blinked. He’d tried to make Randall call him by his first name, but there were five other Mileses in their grade, so Randall insisted on “Spagoski” for specificity. Miles unlocked the automatic doors for his best friend to slip through. Backpack slung over one shoulder, face pressed against the glass where the painted words read “No gum allowed in this building,” Randall made smudges with his mouth and pounded the door with a gloved fist. “Hey, Spagoski!” Randall Fleming yelled through the thick glass doors, startling Miles. He loved his family’s bowling center first thing in the morning, before his dad put the oldies rock station on to play through the crackly speaker system, before pins crashed on lanes 1 through 48, before video games near the snack counter beeped and blinked and beckoned. Miles relaxed, as much as someone like him could relax, onto a stool behind the front counter and kicked off his worn sneakers. Miles Spagoski jogged the four blocks to his family’s bowling center, shivering and imagining ways he might die-a frozen tree limb could crack off and land on his head, a distracted driver fiddling with a car’s heating controls could swerve onto the sidewalk and plow him flat, or, if he was outside long enough, plain old hypothermia could be the end of his short, sad story.īut the moment Miles entered Buckington Bowl, his worries melted away like snowflakes on a warm palm.

In your shoes donna gephart