"Let me ask you something," Russ said, while Wally waited for his ball to come back. The ball return hummed and the maroon ball rose up out of the floor and knocked against the others. "Where'd you get the clown shoes? Seriously. Did you rob Bozo?"
"They're m-my dad's."
He should not have said it. He knew as soon as it was out of his mouth. You did not give Russ Kubiak anything. You gave him nothing, and you looked at the floor, and eventually he got bored.
"Your dad's," Russ said. He said it slowly, tasting it. "Your dad's dead."
Danny stopped laughing. Even Danny.
"Yeah, I know," Russ said, to Danny, as if Danny had said something. "Everybody knows. His old man croaked at the plant. So what's he doing, wearing a dead guy's shoes? That's like, sick. That's like, grave robbing."
"Russell," Mr. Pfaff said from lane eleven, where he was untangling a dispute about whether a ball that went into the next lane counted, "I can hear you."
Wally picked up the maroon ball. His hands were shaking, which made the holes feel even bigger. He looked down the lane at the ten white pins standing in their triangle, red stripes around their necks, perfectly still, perfectly patient, waiting for him to fail again. The arrows on the lane pointed at them. Everything in the building pointed at them.
He took his four steps, and he did not even get to slide. He just let go, and the ball went into the gutter at the eight-foot mark and rolled on down to the end with that long, lonely, rumbling sound, and the kids on lane eight said "Ohhhh" together like a studio audience.
Russ stood up. He came over to the foul line, very close, so close Wally could smell the Bubble Yum on his breath and the Brut aftershave he didn't need yet but wore anyway.
"You know what your problem is, Wallflower?" he said, not loud. Almost friendly. "You can't even hit one pin. Not one. Your old man could've been the Pope of bowling, and you can't even hit one lousy pin."
And then he did a thing Wally would think about for a long time afterward. He looked away for half a second, at nothing, at the scoring screen, and something went across his face that was not mean at all. It was more like a flinch. Like the words had come out of his mouth in someone else's voice and he had heard them.
Then it was gone. "Not one," he said again, and grinned.
Wally did not decide to do it. Later, when the grown-ups asked him why, he would say he didn't know, and that was true. He sat down on the floor right there at the foul line. He untied the double knot on his left shoe, the slide shoe, the good one with the leather sole, and he pulled it off his foot, toilet paper and all.
"What are you—" Russ said.