Personal headcanons for how I think a Vampires Bowling Night would go in the modern day (so 2025):
First, Cleo and Pearl are in town because they are. Why did they leave Oakhurst temporarily? I don’t know, they can leave physically, they’ve just chosen to live there, so I see no reason why in the grand span of eternity they might not take a two week vacay sometimes.
That means the folks at bowling night are: Scott, Shelby, Drift, Pearl, Cleo, and Abolish.
Why are Sausage and Apo not there? Sausage is off writing an alien romance under a new pen name because that’s what’s popular rn, and Apo uhhh. Listen I think we all have come to a silent agreement about what Apo did when Cherri died, right?
Anyways back to the fun stuff.
Cleo and Pearl are staying in the NYC crew’s apartment for a couple of weeks just to catch up and see what’s happening in the modern world (they leave Oakhurst maybe every ten years in my mind, sometimes longer) when Shelby suggests bowling night. Neither of the two of them have bowled before. Shelby is appalled by this, gathers Scott and Drift and calls up Abolish, and they all head to a bowling alley.
Abolish and Shelby start out smoking everyone, which Scott and Drift are used to at point. Abolish slightly edges out Shelby in skill, but they edge him out in terms of sheer passion. Shelby is trying to show good sportsmanship but can’t always help freaking out when they do something very cool. So she ends up doing a lot of “YEAH! *clears throat* I mean, that was fine or whatever,”. Abolish is internally very competitive but trying to pretend he isn’t so he’s got a very cool exterior. They have absolutely caught him going “Yes!” very quietly to himself. He’s also definitely the type to open a case with a customized bowling ball with the same finesse as he would open the case for a sniper rifle.
Scott does okay, he’s really just here to hang out and doesn’t get competitive the way Shelby does. When he does get a strike, Shelby and Drift both jump up and start hyping him up while he tries to act like he’s not proud but he has the smuggest grin on his face. Drift is competitive but not very good. So she’s constantly going “Aw dang it!” when she misses very badly. More than once Shelby offers to go ask to put the guards up on the gutters because Drift gets a genuinely improbable number of gutter balls, but Drift is deeply offended by this suggestion and refuses.
Pearl takes a second to learn what she’s meant to be doing (and to get used to all the music and flashing lights because she canonically gets overstimulated by lots of noise and I imagine being a half werewolf who lives isolated from civilization now makes it worse) but eventually she locks in and also starts doing incredible. She’s the one who insists they pay for like, three hours of having the lane, because after the first game she’s toe to toe with Shelby and Abolish and just as competitive as Shelby. Cleo is probably not that great and also doesn’t really enjoy it and spends most of the time chatting to Scott and having to be poked when it’s her turn. She also spends a decent portion of her night nodding at a very excited Pearl (who keeps trying to show her when she gets a strike or does something cool) while going “That’s great, Pearl, you’re doing so well.” which would sound insincere if they were saying it to anyone but Pearl.
I also think at some point in the night they all get hungry and have to very subtly buy five sodas and then pour them out and refill them with blood (Pearl and Cleo didn’t bring their own because they still carry their blood in glass bottles. Luckily, the NYC trio all started carrying water bottles with their blood which is a lot less obvious. Drift has had a Hydroflask since 2019, Shelby has an Owala, and Scott is absolutely the kind of person who bought like fifty Stanley cups you can’t tell me he isn’t)
They manage to play 3 games in their allotted time frame and I think the wins are Abolish, then Shelby, then Pearl, which is a relief because Cleo knows Pearl would have insisted they keep playing until she won a round and while they don’t necessarily need to sleep, she’s just about done with the smell of pizza, nachos, and beer that absolutely permeates every fiber of the building. I do think Abolish stays back while the other five leave to play a game by himself and manages to get a perfect game but only when no one is watching, as he is wont to do. Veylocked in, amen.