The Dream Weaver

by Reina Luz Alegre

  Eric smirked. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But Zoey noticed Aiden carefully watching Eric’s reaction and tapping his foot restlessly on the floor.

  “Don’t be jealous just because we’re great bowlers,” Aiden said, but there was no bite to his words. He looked nervous to Zoey.

  “You’re not great bowlers. You’re great cheaters!”

  More people were booing now, yelling for them to get going. Patrick still hadn’t called an official time-out, and Dylan had just started the next frame on a strike. It was Lacey’s turn next, and the Curve Breakers had to decide whether to let her bowl or go wake up Mr. Martin and accuse the Lightning Strikers of cheating.

  Zoey could tell her teammates were clamoring for justice, but she had to protect Poppy. If Eric made good on his threat, her Poppy would be in even more debt. The whole point of holding the championship at Gonzo’s was to save it, not to put Poppy’s balance sheet further in the red.

  “Give us a second,” she told Eric and Aiden, turning her back and motioning for the Curve Breakers to huddle alone for a second in their lane.

  “I can’t risk putting Poppy more in debt. I’m really sorry, guys,” she said.

  “Eric’s just bluffing. Everybody knew they were volunteering their time for free yesterday,” Tyler scoffed, but Lacey looked worried.

  “I don’t know. I think everyone should have known, but we didn’t, like, make a big announcement, ‘Hey, everyone! You’re working for free!’ And hiring a contractor can be really expensive, and Eric’s dad did get kind of aggressive when he put in the wrong sink and my parents refused to pay until he put in the right one. They worked it out eventually, but it was a headache, and my mom swore she would never hire his company again.”

  “But they’re cheating!” Isa said, looking like she wanted to burst into tears. Zoey wanted to cry too. She felt like she was selfishly forcing her friends to give in to a bully’s blackmail. They might lose the championship they’d worked so hard for. But it was her friends or Poppy. “Dreams require sacrifice,” José had said. Man, was he right, Zoey thought. It sure sucked though.

  Patrick seemed to shrink to half his height, but shuffling his feet and staring down at his broken finger, he sighed and said, “It’s only two points, guys. Poppy’s been really good to us. He gives us a huge discount every time we bowl, and we wouldn’t even be able to compete today if he hadn’t let us basically take over Gonzo’s yesterday. I don’t want him to have any trouble with that awful family.”

  “You’re right,” Tyler agreed. “Besides, we’re good enough to win this even without those two points.”

  “Yeah. How mad will they be when they can’t even beat us by cheating? You got this, Lacey,” Zoey said encouragingly.

  “Cookies,” she muttered. “I’ll show that jerk where he can go buy cookies,” Lacy said through gritted teeth.

  With his back as straight as an arrow, Patrick marched confidently over to Eric and the rest of the Lightning Strikers.

  “We’ve decided not to request a time-out to challenge technical difficulties. But if the scoreboard doesn’t count Zoey’s last spare correctly for the seventh frame, I will personally tell Mr. Martin, and everybody here, that you guys are big, stinking cheaters, even if that means forfeiting the championship,” Patrick warned.

  Eric shrugged coolly. “I still don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, but Zoey noticed Aiden slipping his phone out of his pocket and frantically tapping the screen. Hmm. Zoey bet his brother had given him an app or something to control the scorer. Unlocking her own phone, Zoey typed herself a quick reminder to tell Poppy to have the scorers fixed after the championship.

  Fueled by rage, her face pinker than Poppy’s beet juice jar, Lacey grabbed her favorite purple ball from the ball return and hurled it down the lane.

  A strike!

  The Curve Breakers were all too angry at the Lightning Strikers to cheer, offering Lacey grimly determined high-fives as she stomped back to the bench. But the audience filled in with a rousing round of applause that buoyed their spirits. Zoey glared at Eric, who looked a little shaken as he glanced up wide-eyed at the scoreboard.

  “Look at Eric’s face. He underestimated you,” Zoey said, nudging Lacey.

  “I know! That strike felt amazing! And I didn’t even remember to match the ball to my outfit today. I think that’s my first ever mismatched strike,” Lacey mused earnestly.

  Zoey giggled. Some of the tension evaporated from her back, and she let herself relax against her cold metal seat.

  “Oh look,” she said, pointing at the lane beside theirs. “Aiden’s turn.”

  Lacey stood up and edged as close as she could get away with to the Lightning Strikers.

  “Cheater!” she coughed.

  “Cheater!” coughed Tyler, standing up next to her.

  “Cheater!” coughed Zoey and Patrick, chiming in.

  All that fake coughing must have psyched Aiden out, because he rolled his first gutter ball of the game. It also woke Mr. Martin, who tottered over on his cane.

  “Are you kids feeling all right? There’s been a summer flu going around,” he asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

  Zoey cleared her throat.

  “I feel okay. My throat’s, uh, just scratchy from all that cheering,” she said quickly.

  “Yeah, we’ll drink something,” Isa said, holding up her water bottle and trying hard not to laugh.

  Smirking at how frazzled the Curve Breakers got trying to cover for taunting him, Aiden knocked over five pins on his second throw. Tyler bowled next. Nine pins. That tied the score. Though, since the Lightning Strikers had cheated, the Curve Breakers should’ve been ahead by two points, thought Zoey darkly.

  It all came down to Isa and Eric in the tenth and final frame. It was Eric’s turn first. He lumbered over to the rack between their lanes to pick up a sleek black ball that reminded Zoey of a giant Magic 8-Ball. She walked up to him.

  “I heard you delivered turkeys to families in need for Thanksgiving.”

  He glanced down at her, his eyebrows furrowing together to form one long, fuzzy pipe cleaner. “Yeah. So?”

  “So inside of this,” Zoey said, waving from his head to his toes, “there’s a person who’s not always awful. Who knows you did the wrong thing cheating, and then trying to blackmail me with my grandfather.”

  “You saying you want to go get Mr. Martin and accuse me of something?” Eric asked. Zoey could tell he was trying to sound tough, but his voice had lost its menace. He sounded nervous. Maybe even a touch guilty. His usually icy blue eyes had gone cloudy.

  “No. I’m saying if you win this, we both know you won’t really have won,” she said. “And it won’t feel good. Even if you keep putting on a show.”

  With that, Zoey spun on her heel and went back to the bench, leaving Eric to gawk after her.

  “What’d you tell Eric? He looks like you threatened to have Tyler unleash his Krav Maga skills on him again,” Isa said, glancing at Eric’s hunched shoulders as he trudged to the foul line.

  “Hey, Eric! You look like your dog just died,” Lacey teased. “Want me to bake you some cookies?” His shoulders slumped even further. She turned to Zoey. “Seriously, what’d you tell him? It’s like you deflated Frankenstein.”

  “I just gave him a little guilt trip,” Zoey said, her cheeks going rosy in both embarrassment and delight. “He deserved it!”

  “Oh, he totally deserved it,” Lacey agreed.

  They watched Eric sigh and roll a gutter ball.

  Patrick’s eyes widened. “We’ve been bowling against Eric for two years, and I’ve never seen him get a gutter ball. Wow, I guess Zoey’s our secret weapon.”

  Zoey shook her head. “The secret weapon is Eric’s own conscience. If he weren’t playing dirty, I would have never called him out on it.”

  Beside them, the Lightning Strikers shifted uneasily, and it felt like the entire bowling alley held its breath to see what Eric w
ould do next. Watching him reminded Zoey of a wounded lion, stripped of his pride.

  “Do you think he threw that gutter ball on purpose? Like, does he want to lose now because he feels too guilty?” Zoey wondered. The idea of the Lightning Strikers throwing the game at the very end was so… unsatisfying.

  “Nah, that’s not Eric’s style,” Isa said appraisingly. “I think you just killed his focus.”

  “Oh,” Zoey said, feeling simultaneously guilty and also angry at herself for feeling bad when Eric was the one who had cheated and rightfully deserved to be off his game.

  “Time out!” called Aiden. He and his teammates huddled around Eric. Zoey couldn’t hear, but she thought they were giving him a pep talk because Eric stood up straighter when he emerged for his second roll.

  Careful not to look at any of the Curve Breakers, Eric picked up his ball from the return, jogged more determinedly up the approach, and knocked over five pins.

  Six pins. We just need six pins, Zoey thought.

  Isa was up next, and she practically bowled strikes in her sleep, Zoey thought excitedly. The game was theirs.

  “Don’t get cocky,” Patrick said worriedly to Isa, who waved him off.

  “I got this,” she said, and planted a kiss on her lipstick red ball before sashaying up her imaginary red carpet to bowl what would surely be a strike.

  But just as Isa released the ball, Aiden sneezed. A huge, phlegmy, foot-stomping sneeze that reverberated in the pin-drop silence of the bowling center and sent Isa’s throw askew. Her ball landed in the gutter.

  “You did that on purpose!” she shouted, spinning around angrily to confront Aiden. The Lightning Strikers snickered. Aiden held up his hands innocently.

  “When you have to sneeze, you have to sneeze.”

  “That was obviously a fake sneeze meant to distract Isa,” Lacey accused, going nose-to-nose with Aiden.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. All that coughing earlier over on your side. I think there must be a bug going around, like Mr. Martin said.” Aiden cleared his throat, making little coughing sounds. “Yup, I’m definitely coming down with something.”

  Isa glared at him.

  “Ignore them,” Zoey said, turning her back on the Lightning Strikers. “You are the beautiful favorite for best actress at the Academy Awards, remember?”

  Isa nodded, her eyebrows furrowed with determination. She picked up the ball, and just as she was about to release it, Aiden sneezed again. Isa’s hand shook slightly as the ball flew from her fingers. It landed with an awkward thud, and rolled down the center of the lane at a snail’s pace.

  Lacey pulled at her ponytail. “Ahhh, how is this happening in slow motion?”

  Beside her, Patrick put his hands on his face and peeked out from parted fingers like he was watching the scariest part of a horror film.

  Finally, Isa’s ball reached the end of its journey, not so much crashing into as nudging seven pins out of its way.

  Seven pins!

  “We won!” Patrick hollered, dropping his hands from his face. “We won! We really won!”

  “We won!” Lacey echoed, then Zoey, Tyler, and Isa. They came together in a big, jumping, bear hug that grew bigger as their families rushed forward to pile on.

  Mr. Martin hobbled over to place a gold medal around each team member’s neck—which Isa informed Zoey contained delicious milk chocolate inside. He also announced the grand prize would be divided equally between the team members and set aside as scholarships for college. Zoey was a little bummed she couldn’t use the cash now, like she’d originally thought, but she knew José would be proud that she had earned a little something toward college. Mr. Martin handed each Curve Breaker a small metal trophy and the entire bowling alley erupted in cheers, hoots, and hollers.

  “Who are all these people?” Zoey whispered to Lacey, suddenly realizing the crowd had tripled in size.

  “The other teams’ families. Random people from the boardwalk who just wanted to see what all the fuss was about, like, why people were streaming in here by the dozen. Oh, and my mom invited a ton of people—the PTA, her book club, Pilates class, yoga class, rowing class, like, basically her whole gym, plus everyone at her office and beauty salon. Patrick’s dad invited all their cousins. Apparently, he has, like, a million cousins. Oh, and Tyler’s mom brought some of her professional bowling friends. They said they might come back to bowl for fun here once in a while.”

  Zoey grinned. Patrick grabbed the whole group into another bear hug. She’d never seen him happier. He may as well have won the state lottery.

  “Never mock my carrots again,” he told Tyler.

  Zoey swelled with pride and was glad to see some of the people heading to the arcade games and the shoe rental counter, where José was renting out shoes and balls for games. Her plan had worked! Gonzo’s was so much busier today than she’d ever seen it! She turned to find Poppy in the crowd. But he wasn’t there. Then she spotted him by the door, shaking hands and smiling at Mr. Silos. Oh no.

  16

  Zoey ran over to Poppy to try to stop him from doing anything drastic. But she was too late. Mr. Silos slipped out the door just as Zoey reached Poppy’s side.

  “Did you just agree to sell Gonzo’s?” she panted, clutching a stitch of pain in her side.

  “Yes, but not to Mr. Silos. I just told him ‘no’ for the last time.” Poppy smiled mysteriously.

  “Huh?” Zoey was confused.

  “Thanks to you, my little jefa, and to all the beautiful repairs and improvements you got your friends to make because you never, ever give up on me, I got another offer—a much better offer—from Mr. Fulco, who owns the other bowling alley across town—the one that’s going to be closed for a while because of the electrical problems. Gonzo’s will become another location under the Fulco brand, but I’m going to stay working here as the manager.”

  “But can’t you give it a few more days? To see if the buzz from today keeps bringing in a lot more business? Like, maybe we’ll still be packed tonight and all day tomorrow.…” Zoey stopped talking because Poppy was shaking his head “no.”

  The rush of being part of the winning team dissolved into the air around them. Zoey’s shoulders slumped. Who cared if Mr. Martin’s son was going to give each member of the Curve Breakers a four-hundred-dollar scholarship? Zoey had lost what really mattered. And she couldn’t even offer Poppy her share of the grand prize because it turned out the cash had to be saved for college.

  “I’m so sorry, Poppy,” she said, trying not to cry. “I wanted to save Gonzo’s for you.”

  “But you did, mija! This is the best of both worlds. I told you, I stay working for the bowling center. I just not going to have the headache of owning it anymore. And I never get this offer if not for you and your friends and José fixing all the machines and making everything so beautiful again. Maybe even more beautiful than before,” Poppy said, glancing up appreciatively at the stars Zoey and Lacey had glued to the ceiling.

  “Oh,” Zoey said, processing Poppy’s words slowly. “So, this is, um, good news? Even though you won’t own Gonzo’s anymore, and it won’t be your name on the sign?”

  “Yes, mija. Very happy. Your Poppy getting old, getting close to retirement, and I don’t need the headache of owning anymore. Now I get to keep doing the job I love, and just worry about earning a salary.”

  After a moment, Zoey nodded, remembering how Dad always said dreams needed the freedom to grow and change. Owning the bowling alley was Poppy’s original dream. And he’d done it for decades. Now that he’d entered another stage of life, it was time for the dream to change.

  “And now I will have more time to spend with you. To watch your bowling games. But didn’t you also say something about trying out for soccer in the fall?” Poppy said.

  “I did. Maybe I can do both?” Zoey said, relieved she didn’t have to worry about Mr. Silos destroying her family’s business anymore, and excited about the year ahead.

 
* * *

  That night, Zoey twirled in front of Mami’s dresser mirror. The yellow eyelet dress Lacey had lent her for the team’s celebratory dinner flared nicely. A few too many ruffles, Zoey thought, running the fingernails she’d painted lilac over the ruffled sleeves and hem. Still, Zoey twirled and realized she thought the girl twirling back in the mirror looked beautiful—because Zoey felt amazing. She had stepped outside her comfort zone and learned to bowl and made new friends. She’d won a championship and helped save an updated version of her grandfather’s dream. After accomplishing all that, Zoey knew now for sure that she could tackle her own dreams and see them through. And for once, she wasn’t worrying about whether or not she was enough—capable enough or girly enough or even Latinx enough. She wasn’t worried about Gonzo’s or her dad or even José going off to college. She was happy just being herself, here, in this moment.

  “Zo!” Zoey turned and saw José gaping at her.

  “You look—” José’s voice broke and he faltered.

  “What?” Zoey asked, concerned.

  “You just… for a second, you looked like Mami,” José said, smiling. He bit his lip and jammed his hands into his jeans pockets, leaning against the doorway.

  “Oh.” Zoey glanced down at the makeup she’d picked up that afternoon at the drugstore and then up at the mirror again, trying to see the resemblance. Dad had left twenty bucks with José to give to Zoey to buy herself a treat—anything she wanted. And she’d finally splurged on some makeup of her very own. Dark blue eyeliner to trace on both her upper and lower lash lines and peach lip gloss because it had been her mom’s favorite color to wear. She’d also taken down her ponytail, blow-dried her hair, and combed it to the side like Mami used to. But her mouth was thinner and her nose was bigger than her mother’s had been. Still, there was a resemblance to her mother that she’d never noticed before, and glimpsing it made Zoey super happy.