Second String
Three childhood friends launch a crowdfunding campaign to save their neighborhood bowling alley from a corporate buyout — and discover that going viral comes with a price they didn't budget for.
Corner Pocket has been Eddie's father's bowling alley for thirty years — worn lanes, a flickering skee-ball machine, and a neighborhood's worth of memories. Now it's on the brink of closing, and a corporate buyout is waiting in the wings.
Eddie's friends Kate and Liam talk him into a crowdfunding campaign to save it: a soft launch, a hashtag, a local news story. It works better than anyone expected — donations climb, the press shows up, and momentum builds fast. Too fast. As offers roll in with strings attached — corporate sponsorship, rebranded lanes, promises made faster than they can be kept — Eddie has to decide how much of his father's legacy he's willing to trade to save the building it lives in.
Second String is about what "saving" something actually costs, and whether community can survive the very campaign built to rescue it.