Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit by Paula Danziger Read Free Book Online Page B

not for treasure.
    I, Amber Brown, am on a search for the perfect bowling ball. One that will help me beat my mom and Max, her friend.
    I search.
    Some holes are too far apart. Some are too close. Some balls weigh a ton. Some are an ugly color.
    It is not an easy search, especially since my hair keeps falling in front of my eyes.
    It’s not easy to give up wearing twoponytails and try to let my hair grow to be the same length.
    I blow up at my hair. It goes up, and then falls down in front of my eyes again.
    Finally, I find a bowling ball. My fingers don’t get caught. It’s not too heavy. It matches what I’m wearing.
    I just wish that they made glitter bowling balls.
    I rush back to our lane and begin.

    I aim the ball down the middle, but it goes into the gutter.
    Personally, I think that there’s a magnet in my bowling ball, and one in each gutter.
    “Better luck next time,” Max says.
    I sit down on the bench and sigh.
    My mother picks up her bowling ball, aims, and throws.
    There’s no magnet in her ball.
    It goes right down the center and hits the pin in the middle.
    The bowling pins on each side are left standing.
    “Split,” Max says.
    “Are you offering us a banana split?” I ask.
    He crosses his eyes at me.
    I know what a split is . . . that’s what my mother has just gotten . . . . pins separated, with a hole in between them.
    Max has also taught me other bowling words:
    Strike
—when all the pins go down with the first ball
    I want to know why I, Amber Brown, get strikes only in baseball . . . not in bowling.
    Spare
—when you get all ten pins down with two balls
    Turkey
—three strikes in a row
    I want to know why I, Amber Brown, bowl three times in a row, get low scores, and feel like a real turkey.
    300
—a perfect score
    I, Amber Brown, got a 42 in our first game—an imperfect score.
    Max bowls.
    He gets a strike.
    When he sits down on the bench, my mother gives him a kiss.
    I think that’s why he’s been getting so many strikes, so that he gets kisses from my mother.
    It’s weird for me to see my mother kiss Max. I know she’s divorced. I know that she and Max are going out . . . but it’s still a little strange to see my mother and Max kissing.
    I look away from them and watch the people in the next lane.
    The little girl in that lane has forgotten to take her fingers out of the ball and she’s now lying on the floor, crying, with the ball still on her hand.

    When it’s my turn, Max joins me on the lane and shows me, again, how to hold the ball, how to “approach,” and how to throw.
    This time my bowling ball doesn’t bounce down the lane . . . . and six pins fall.
    Max and I give each other high fives.
    I get one more pin on my second ball, which touches the pin just before it drops into the gutter.
    My mother gets four pins down.
    Max only gets a spare next time he’s up.
    My mother gives him a kiss anyway because she says she has kisses to spare.
    I don’t remember my parents kissing each other very much at the end of the time they were married.
    I actually like Max. I tried not to, but I do.
    It’s very confusing.
    Half the time, I’m really glad that Max is in our lives, and the other half, I keephoping that my mom and dad will get back together again.
    The chance of my parents getting back together again is about as likely as my bowling a 300.
    Part of me keeps hoping, though.
    While I wait for my turn to bowl again, I look at people and try to guess their shoe sizes.
    Then I look at the backs of their shoes, and if they’re wearing rentals, I can see what sizes the shoes are.
    I, Amber Brown, have no trouble making up games.
    Some of the people have their own shoes, so there are no numbers on the backs.
    Next, I start to think about what kinds of bowling shoes some of my favorite book characters would wear.
    Dorothy, in
The Wizard of Oz
, would definitely wear red glitter bowling shoes.

    I think about my favorite character when I was little,