The next morning, I woke up, and a smile appeared on my face. Today I was supposed to meet Lexy at her locker before school (like you didn’t know.) When I got to school, I went to her locker, but she wasn’t there yet, so I decided to write back to my brother. I had brought his letter with me so that I could write him back during study hall, but I could kill time with it now.

“Dear Todd’
Hey, we were really glad to hear from you. Maybe I’ll have to come visit you to see all the hunnies (then I can tell them what a dork you are!!) Glad to hear that all the guys are cool, and that you’re not bored. Everything’s pretty good around here. Did mom tell you about the stuff that happened with Mr. Walker?? I know you had him too, and I think you might find it interesting. Well, I’m at school, and my friends just arrived, so I’m gonna go now. Talk to you soon.
Love ya,
Jack”

I quickly put the note in my binder as Lexy walked up to me.

“What’s that?” she asked. “Finishing your homework?”

“No, a letter arrived from my brother last night, and I was writing him back.”

“Oh, that’s cool.” Just then, Jen and Gabe walked up and Jen had a weird look on her face.

“Hey guys, what’s up?” I asked them.

“Nothing much here, what’s up with you?”

“Well, we were wondering if you guys wanted to go bowling with us on Saturday,” Lexy told them.

“Ya!! That sounds fun!!” Gabe said. “I’ll be there for sure!”

“I don’t know,” Jen said. “It doesn’t seem like OUR thing, right, Lexy?”

“Come on Jen, it’ll be fun,” she replied.

“It won’t be the same without you, Jen,” Gabe added. “We could do guys against girls!”

“Yeah,” I said.

“OK, I guess,” she said, just as the warning bell rang.

“Well, we better go. We don’t want to be late for class. Bye guys,” I said and walked away.

That night, Lexy called me to talk about how we would meet for bowling.

“Jack, phone!!” my mom called up to me.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“I don’t know, a girl,” she paused and then said, “Lexy Gold?”

“I’ll get it up here!!” I said and picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Hi, Jack, it’s Lexy.”

“Hey, what’s up?”

“I was wondering where we were going to meet to go bowling tomorrow? We didn’t get a chance to talk about that today.”

“Oh, um, well, there’s an alley close to your place, we could all meet there, and then go together.”

“Ok, that sounds good. What time do you want to meet?”

“Well, open bowling starts at 3, so we could meet at 2:30. How does that sound?”

“That sounds good. I’ll call Jen and Gabe and tell them.” At that point, my mom called for me.

“Hang on a sec, Lexy,” I said, and then called to my mom. “What is it?”

“Dinner!!” she called.

“OK, be right there!!” I said and went back to my phone call. Lexy?”

“Yeah?”

“I gotta go. Ma’s calling me for dinner.”

“OK, see you tomorrow.”

“Bye, Lexy.”

I went downstairs and Ma started questioning me. “She sounded nice? Who is she?”

“Just a friend from school Ma. She was over here once for a school project, remember?”

“Oh, that’s right. Such a sweet girl. What did she call for?”

“We’re going bowling tomorrow with a couple of friends.” We went through dinner not saying much after that, and I went up to my room to get my letter to Todd. As I did, Ma came up, and asked me,

“Didn’t Gabby like to bowl a lot?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, what if she’s there?”

“I’ll ignore her.”

“Jack, I’m worried about you…I just…”

“Ma, I’m fine. I’m gonna go put this letter in the mail for Todd.”

”Oh! Um, I’ll do that, on my way to work” she said. She sounded weird about it, but I decided to ignore it. It was probably my imagination.

The next morning I woke up and decided to do my homework and get it out of the way. Ma was sleeping, so it would be nice and quiet to get it done. As I was writing a first draft for an English paper, the doorbell rang, and I went down to answer it. As I opened the door, my eyes opened wide, and I gasped. “Oh my God! I yelled.