I hated my job at the bowling alley more than usual that day. The Maximum Lilac deodorizer had run dry. I was too busy renting out shoes to slap an out-of-order sign on Mission Impossible, which left me with a list of token refunds a mile long. My period was nine days late.
Some adults nearby were talking about the war in Ukraine while their children tried to bowl with two hands.
“Five bucks a gallon,” this bald dad guy said, then slugged beer. “And it’s not even our situation.”
They were as dumb as I was about world affairs. Did any single Texan actually understand what was happening over there or for what reason? But despite the fact I’d just changed my minor from poli-sci to dance, the bombings had found their way into my dreams.
A pregnant mom mentioned how she’d read that another pregnant mom over there had delivered and lost her baby and then died herself. She brought it up when there was a lull, the only sound their kids’ bowling balls tanking in the gutter or cracking a couple of pins. No one responded, creating another lull.
“Sure you don’t want gutter bumpers?” I called to the parents.
One kid made a random strike, and the adults and children cheered loudly, which I thought was a bit over the top.
“Let ’em go wild, it’s healthy,” said a man in a tight Under Armour T-shirt.
I reminded myself that there was still time if I needed to terminate. I had the number and address for the place in Fort Worth. I could drive there on my day off. But I had better pee on a stick tonight.
I jotted the word broken on the back of a snack-bar menu and stuck it to Mission Impossible with a band-aid from the first-aid kit.
“No, it’s literally broken?” asked a pre-teen girl with a French braid.
“Yes.”
“Shit,” she said.
A round of clanking artillery fire gave us both a start.
“Awesome!” she said.
Mission Impossible had randomly begun working.
She yanked off my sign and started playing.
Blood rushed into my underwear—no mistake—and I dashed to the bathroom for a tampon. I was so relieved I blew myself a kiss in the wide mirror it was my job to clean. I kicked one leg up high to see if I could reach the towel dispenser, which I did.
After I got back to my station, the pregnant woman came to return her kid’s shoes.
I said to her, “I read that, too, about the lady and her baby.”
“Aren’t you dear,” she said. I think that’s what she said.
She thanked me for the coupon I gave everyone for five-off the arcade, and we looked at each other. The woman’s son galloped over and took hold of her stomach.
“Go on and play your games for a few,” she said to him sweetly. “But when I say you’re done, I need you to be through.”
“Fine,” he said.
“Yes, ma’am,” she corrected, but he was gone.
“Kids,” she said to me.
“Kids,” I said like I knew what we meant.
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A native Texan, Betsy Boyd is a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers and the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. Her fiction has been published in Kenyon Review, StoryQuarterly, Shenan