Deep Bass, Dark Horse, or…

Compared with the last time he saw her, the girl was dressed far more modestly—though no less garishly. The mid-winter warmness of last weekend had given way to a deep chill, which meant bulky jackets and layers of form-obscuring pants. Big puffy clothes, naturally, meant the perfect opportunity to pile on the corny snowflake earrings and faux-fur-lined hiking boots. If it weren’t for her unseasonable tan and those sky-blue eyes peeking out from beneath her dripping crown of blonde hair, he might not have even recognized her.

The same could be said for the girl, as she walked past him a whole three times before whirling around on her heels and staring at him. He was slouched over by the jeweler’s glass storefront like a deflated lion. Given his plain face and his lankiness, she couldn’t blame herself for mistaking him for one of the mannequins peeking over the boy’s shoulder. He acknowledged her presence with a nod. Which was fitting for someone dressed with a level of callous, masculine disregard for the weather that screamed he never had a mother force a scarf onto him.

“Hey,” he said, straightening himself out.

She looked a bit surprised, as if he’d just appeared out of thin air. “Oh. It’s you.”

“Who was it supposed to be?”

“Idunno. Someone that doesn’t look like they’re dressed to root through my recycling bins for empty bottles.”

“Big words for someone who looks like they’re going to their third philosophy lecture for the day. In French.”

Anne-Marie smirked at the refreshing edge to the conversation, pausing to thumb some hair away from her face before responding:

“You’re in first period global with me, aren’t you? How is this only the second time we’re talking?”

Ogden’s shoulders relaxed, and he closed his eyes with the satisfied smile of a practiced zen master.

She grimaced. “What are you doing?”

“Expressing gratitude to the universe,” he said, and opened his suddenly unamused eyes, “Being forgettable is a lot less painful than being ignored.”

“Well.” Anne-Marie chuckled. “Don’t express gratitude quite yet. Better save it for after the ride.”

“Ride?”

The boy piqued a brow, craning his neck as the girl led him around the street corner. What waited for them there blotted out the sun.

Two and a half tons of Mexican steel and American ingenuity were parked with two chrome-rimmed wheels up on the curb. The gleaming black truck was an imposing steed, made even more formidable by the hulking mass of testosterone and ginger afro squeezed into the driver’s seat. He had this look of determination on him, like you couldn’t tell if he was staring at you or through you, that frankly loosened Ogden’s colon.

“I get it now.” Ogden’s voice cracked. “Th-that’s your boyfriend, right?”

“Oh no,” Anne-Marie keeled over, wheezing in laughter. “Holy shit. Oh god, no. That’s just Brian.”

“Brian,” Ogden parroted, limply.

The hunk in question kept watching them from behind the windshield. Even as they drew closer, his gaze was unflinching. Anne-Marie coaxed Ogden up and into the backseat with her before slamming the door shut with the ominous clamor of a bank vault at closing time. It was only when the two of them were within range to smell his body spray that Brian suddenly lurched into motion.

“Sup, A-dog,” he said, scratching his head.

Face to face with the guy, Ogden felt like he’d gotten locked in a plane bathroom with Mike Tyson. Except weirdly enough, it was Brian that had one ear that looked chewed up.

“Sup, Brian,” Anne-Marie replied. “This is Ogden.”

Ogden spoke through a clenched smile. “Sup, B-dog.”

“Yooo!” Brian yelled, “Howd’you know? That’s exactly what the bros call me, Og-dog!”

With his hands to his ears, Ogden offered a nod and a smile. “It just seems right.”

Anne-Marie seemed unfazed. “So, I was thinkin’. Have either of you guys been bowling since you were, like, ten?”

“Bowling,” Ogden said, looking as dazed as if he’d just been punched in the face.

Anne-Marie nodded in reply, looking very much like she had someone she’d been wanting to punch in the face.

“Yoo, I love bowing!” Brian hollered, like the type of guy who probably wouldn’t notice if he got punched in the face.

Anne-Marie put on a winning smile. “Bowling it is then.”

“You like roll, Og-dog?” Brian asked, turning back to the steering wheel.

Ogden combed through his memory banks of all the times his dad whipped out his vinyl rock collection. Anne-Marie kept smiling, popping earbuds into her ears with an expectant look.

“Uh, sure,” Ogden said.

“Sick, sick,” Brian replied, before slapping a thick palm onto the dashboard electronics.

The car’s black-leather interior started rattling, escalating from a magnitude one to a magnitude eight in ten seconds of gut-loosening bass. Ogden scrambled to rip a pair of bulky headphones out of his fanny-pack and slap them over his ears. As the car was drowned in percussive bursts of trap drums, Anne-Marie tapped him on the shoulder. He turned to her with a mortified expression, expecting to find some empathetic commiseration. Instead, she seemed more preoccupied with leering mirthfully at the fact that he brought a fanny-pack.

“Bad habit!” Ogden yelled, over the droning rap lyrics.

“Nah, bro!” Brian replied, somehow no less quiet through noise-cancelling mode. “It’s Lil’ S1st3r Fistaz!”

Anne-Marie smirked, clearly taking pleasure in all this as if it was some kind of torturous initiation ritual. But the girl was a kind demoness at heart. So she reached over to tap Brian on the shoulder and indicate that she called dibs on the next song. Ogden couldn’t tell if the square-chinned goliath nodded in reply or was just headbanging, but the car roared out into the road regardless.

“Don’t worry,” Anne-Marie texted over snap. “I put on a pretty chill album after this.”

But the music was like a snowplow in his head, and all Ogden could do was stare at her with a lame, pained smile until it was nothing more than tinnitus echoes. It took an extra minute for him to even discern the guitar and banjo of the next track.

“Is that Dolly Parton?” he sputtered.

“What?” Anne-Marie asked. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those ‘I listen to everything except for rap and country people’.”

“I-” Ogden paused, before noticing her shit-eating grin. “Can’t tell if you’re messing with me or not.”

“Right?” she whispered, leaning over to cackle in his ear, “Isn’t it the best?”

The boy went deadpan. “Since sliced bread.”

And she laughed.

“You’re a strange one, miss Annie-May, I tell you hwat,” Ogden said, putting on his best cowboy impression.

Anne-Marie looked genuinely offended. Either that, or like her entire spine had turned to ice. With murderous eyes and a flat tone, she commanded:

“Don’t call me that.”

Ogden straightened up out of habit. “Yes ma’am.”

“The obedience really does it for me, y’know,” she replied.

“Sorry, I left my leash at home.”

“All good. There’s gotta be a muzzle in the glove compartment. Right, B-dog?”

Brian barks out a “Huh?!”, more like he was hard of hearing than hard from hearing.

“Anyways,” Anne-Marie said, “You’d better be as good at bowling as you are at yapping.”

“The last time I went bowling, my mom got into a fist-fight with the shoe guy. I think she was PMS’ing because he reminded her of my dad.”

Anne-Marie pinched Ogden’s shoulder, and he yowled like a cartoon coyote falling off a cliff.

“What was that for?!”

“Stress relief.”

His voice ascends like an air raid siren. “Do I look stressed to you?”

“Not any more than a cat on a highway,” Comes the bomb. “Besides, you have to prove yourself.”

“To you? Or to that lump of muscle?”

Brian was humming along to the radio, either unaware or incomprehensive about the conversation taking place in the backseat.

“Either or. Besides, don’t you want to feel like a big, strong man?”

“Ah, but of course,” Ogden replies, waving a limp palm, “It’s a real close contest between me and the wild, hormonal beast I’m up against.”

Anne-Marie’s eyes lowered. “You better still be talking about Brian.”

“Yo guys, check out that guy’s Cadillac,” Brian shouted as he hit the horn. “It looks like a girl car!”

The bright pink four-door he was chuckling at sat on the sidewalk, propped up on four cinderblocks and missing everything short of its axles. The hoodie-obscured person standing beside it leapt into the air involuntarily before scuttling around to hide on the other side of the vehicle. The two backseat passengers had the slightest feeling that it wasn’t their car.

Ogden glanced around through the windows, availing himself of omnipresent row houses that looked more bombed-out than abandoned. Old men and young men alike sat on their stoops taking sips from paper bags. Every other window was either boarded up or taped up, and suffice it to say this wasn’t exactly twister country. To top it all off, there was perhaps one singular fire hydrant that hadn’t had its top valve pried off.

“What neighborhood are we even in?” Ogden asked.

“Don’t be such a worry-wart,” Anne-Marie replied. “The bowling alley’s nearby.”

True to form, the bowling alley appeared around the bend between a bumfight and an impromptu street rave, looking like a shoebox with a punched-in cover. Only two of the five silhouetted bowling pins remained on the marquis, and the circular rim where the perforated ball should have been simply bore a graffiti of some random phone number. The entrance to the place was miraculously intact, tacky wood panels and floral designs and all, but there weren’t any lights on inside. Its dormant neon name-plate was missing most of the letters, reducing, “King’s Royal Lanes” to, “Ki Ro Lane”.

“Uhh…” Ogden remarked, not even absorbing the fact that they had already parked in the incredibly shady alley right behind the establishment.

“You remember how to do it, right, B-dog?” Anne-Marie asked.

She motioned towards the inconspicuous steel-blue door crammed into the putridly brown brick wall before them.

Brian nodded and rolled up his sleeve, taking an extra second to admire his own bicep. Then he charged. His meaty shoulder plowed into the handle-side of the door with a resounding bang. Pressing his body even further into the frame, there was a sickening peal of metal as the lock unlatched and the door came flying open.

Ogden followed the other two into the dark, cavernous chamber ahead with the gusto of an untrusting, but nonetheless starving puppy. He stopped at the rim of the outdoor light as Anne-Marie stride off into the shadow. A few seconds later, there was a bone-crunching plastic click, and the room was flooded with a sickly, yellow light.

The first thing he saw when he rubbed his eyes free of the blindness was Anne-Marie standing there with her arms propped up on her hips and a bowling ball in each hand.

“Loser buys the winner snacks.”