Just Past Oysterville: Shoalwater Book One by Perry P. Perkins Page A

would jerk his eyes quickly back to the road if she
caught his gaze.
    Jack had told Cassie that he’d never married
and had no children.
    She wondered if he regretted this when he
looked at her and she felt bad, thinking that she might be causing
him pain. He seemed like a nice enough guy, even though he tended
to lapse into long, quiet, moody spells.
    In just their day and a half together, Cassie had learned to
recognize this look as it came, periodically, to Jack's face. His
jaw would become tight and his perpetual scowl would deepen, in a
subconscious reaction to his thoughts.
    She had never met anyone like Jack Leland,
and found he was an enigma. For someone who could laugh so easily,
his moments of humor came like far-flung oasis in a desert of
gloom.
    It was as though the moment he finished
laughing, a door slammed shut in his heart. Cassie thought about
this as they walked back down the boardwalk.
    Just before they reached the van, a flashing
neon sign caught Jack's eye.
    "You ever do any bowling?" he asked.
    "The first and last time I went bowling,"
Cassie answered, grinning, "was at Megan Wilkinson's eighth
birthday party. I broke a bone in my ankle with a bowling ball, and
had to go to the hospital before they cut the cake!"
    Jack stared at her for a moment, shaking his
head.
    "Surely," he said, his voice dripping
incredulity, "you're not going to give in to that kind of defeat,
are you?"
    "You want to go bowling?" she asked.
    "Did you have a previous commitment?"
    "Well no," she replied, "I just...okay,
let's go bowling!"
    The bright-lit sign for Pismo Bowl led them
just past the pier to the bowling alley. Walking through the double
glass doors, Cassie felt her skin prickle in the cool,
air-conditioned room. They passed the pro-shop, which was closed,
and walked up to the counter. Behind her, Cassie could hear the low
rumble of balls rolling along the polished lanes, the crash of
pins, and the murmur of the players.
    From somewhere off to her left came the
electronic chatter of video games. The attendant, a bored teenager
with long hair and bad skin, handed them their shoes and a
transparent scorecard, then directed them down the concourse to
lane twenty-two. Stepping down into the settee area, they searched
the racks of scuffed house balls until each had found one that fit.
Cassie's first roll hit the left gutter about halfway down the
lane, as did the second ball, and the third.
    "You're hooking!" Jack called from the
plastic bench, his two strikes marked clearly on the overhead.
    "I beg your pardon?” Cassie asked, frowning
at the far-off pins, as she waited at the ball return.
    "Hooking! Hooking!" Jack repeated, "You're
hooking your arm before you release the ball. You want your hand to
come straight up past your ear once you let go!"
    Cassie hefted her bowling ball, lining up
her sights with the arrows halfway down the lane, as Jack had shown
her. She took three quick, mincing steps, allowing the ball to drop
from its rest against her chest and swing down past her hip. As she
released the ball, her right hand swung up and past her right ear
and she watched, amazed, as the ball rolled rapidly down the
polished lane and struck the pins. With a resounding crash, all the
pins scattered, save one. The pin in the far right corner spun
drunkenly before righting itself in the middle of the lane. Cassie
spun, her arms raised in victory.
    "You were robbed!” Jack roared. Cassie
laughed.
    For the next hour and a half, Cassie worked
on her form, under Jack's freely offered tutelage, and brought her
overall score up to a record-breaking sixty-seven.
    "Well," she said in her own defense, "It's
record-breaking for me; my last score was zero, and a broken
ankle!"
    Jack's own tally hovered in the mid
two-hundreds, causing him finally to admit, somewhat sheepishly,
that he had bowled with a league every week for the last decade.
Cassie decried this as a set-up and insisted that Jack pay penance
at the ice-cream shop next