The Outside Groove (18 page)

Mr. Blodgett watched with a blank expression as I rolled through the pit gate in the wrecker with Jim. I nodded and waved, but the man just kept staring. The Sharks were right behind me in Bernie's battered Toyota, and I could see Mr. Blodgett stare at them too as they passed. He checked his clipboard then watched me some more.

We found a pit about midway down the row. I wasn't even parked before I saw the other drivers pointing in my direction, some of them laughing. One crewmember waved a yellow shop rag at me—caution. I climbed out of the truck and met the Sharks at my pit.

“It's like a bad girl's Christmas,” Bernie said, tightening the G
O
C
ASEY
G
O
R
ACING
T-shirt knot above her midriff and glancing down pit row.

Tammy fanned herself with her notebook. “It's a frickin' boyfriend store.”

The moment Jim had Theo unloaded, though, the Sharks were all business. T.T. had some tire-pressure numbers in her notes from Uncle Harvey, and Jim and Tammy had been given instructions for adjusting something called the sway bar, which was supposed to improve my cornering. There wasn't a whole lot for me to do besides try to ignore the racers who alternately sneered at me and scoped out the Sharks. The guys passed by slowly, casually, chests thrust out in their firesuits like superheroes arriving to save the day. When I saw Wade and his crew coming, Fletcher by his side, I walked down to my car, pulled out the steering wheel, and sat inside, out of view. I looked in my rearview mirror as they passed. Fletcher seemed to glance in my direction from behind his sunglasses. Wade said something that made Lonnie crack up.

I started shaking lightly. I hadn't eaten anything for breakfast, and I was regretting it. “Hey, Bernie,” I said, leaning out the window. “You guys have anything to eat?”

She walked up to her car and returned with half an egg-salad sandwich and an orange. I took the orange. Checking to make sure that Wade, Fletcher, and Lonnie were gone, I climbed out the window and sat on the door, my feet resting on the front seat. I leaned on the roof.

“Hey, there's Casey ‘the Lady' LaPlante,” Bean said over the track loudspeakers. “Seems our vixen in car six'en has come back to run those laps she didn't get a chance to finish a few weeks ago. Welcome back, Casey.”

I began to slide back into the car, but Jim popped up from underneath the hood and glared at me. “Don't move a muscle,” he said.

I froze.

“Wave to the crowd,” he added. “Do it.”

I waved, my face firing up with blood. No one in the grandstands cheered, but Bean didn't make a snappy comeback either. “Thanks, Jim,” I said.

He and Tammy kept clanging away.

 

The Sharks stood at attention as I rolled back into the pits after my practice laps. “How's it feel?” Tammy said as I handed her my helmet through the window. I popped off the steering wheel and handed it to Bernie.

“Feels great,” I said as I climbed out.

And Theo did feel great. For a car that had won a streetstock feature a county away the day before, he was as quick as a kitten—but with serious claws. “I have no idea what you guys did,” I added, “but this ride is definitely dialed in for cornering this track. So, where are we on track intel?”

Bernie laughed a husky laugh. “We got the goods.”

I leaned against Theo and stretched my legs as the Sharks brought me up to speed on the day's field. T.T. seemed a bit quieter than usual, kind of staring off toward Jim from time to time, occasionally glancing down pit row. She left Tammy and Bernie to lay out my strategy.

Larry Greer had the ride to watch in his coffee-colored Chevy, car 44, cosponsored by B
RIDGE
S
TREET
S
NACK
B
AR
and V
ALLEY
A
SSEMBLY OF
G
OD
C
HURCH
. Larry had a big orange cross on his hood, which, in my opinion, didn't look good against the brown. Dale Scott was also rumored to be a threat. He'd been getting a good setup from Wade's crew, so the F
UN
P
ARK
car 07 was going to be a mover. Kirby Mungeon in his F
RENCHIE
'
S
F
IREWORKS
number 49 little-laughing-Martian-guys truck was a ride I just shouldn't trust. I tried to take it all in, but there wasn't much room in my head for anything besides the simmering rage over my prom “date.” Sharing the whole tragic tale with the Sharks back at Uncle Harvey's had helped a little, even though it brought out a few tears.

Tammy had said that Fletcher's pretending to want to take me to the prom, when he was really doing it because Wade told him to, was “a dead-cold move,” which I gathered was Byam slang for mean. Sitting around waiting for the Warrior feature, I could feel plenty of surplus fury still coursing through my veins. The orange stirred the acid in my stomach, and it fit my mood perfectly.

When I heard the loudspeakers click on, every muscle in my body tensed. “All drivers to the turn-one bleachers for a drivers' meeting,” Bean said. “Drivers, report to the bleachers at this time, please.”

I can't honestly say I remember a single word of my second Demon's Run drivers' meeting. I sat on the bottom bench again, right in front of Mr. Blodgett, and every laugh, every snicker, every snippet of conversation seemed directed at me. I was probably being paranoid, since, if I was a joke to those guys, I was a joke they'd heard before. Still, just having to sit around for the fifteen minutes it took Mr. Blodgett to berate us reduced my self-esteem to roadkill being run over by a line of thirty cars. Every once in a while, Mr. Blodgett would look directly at me, and my pulse would start pounding so loudly in my ears that I could barely hear him.

The second he was finished with his lecture, I got up and left the bleachers. I walked quickly back to my pit, fighting the urge to run. I didn't want to look scared, and I wasn't certain that, if I started running, I wouldn't just keep on going all the way home.

About ten minutes later, Bean called the Road Warriors to the course.

Tammy flipped me the Byam grip, and I felt a tingle in my arms and legs. I glanced back at Jim, who was reading his GED booklet on the flatbed. He gave me a thumbs-up.

“Tell you what,” Bernie said, gazing down pit row. “These boys are cute and all. But out there”—she pointed toward the track—“they can't wash your lingerie. I hope you know that.”

Tammy handed me my helmet.

I pulled it on, but as soon as I'd secured the chinstrap, T.T.'s right hand swung up and whacked the side so hard that my ears rang. I stumbled back a step as she leaned right into my face.

“No man has the right to treat you that way,” she growled.

Bernie pulled T.T. back but only so she could smack me in the butt hard enough to sting. “Git 'er done,” she hissed.

I vaulted in through the window and pounded that steering wheel on like a judge demanding order in the court.

***

The Demon's Run handicapping formula sent me out onto the racecourse eight back from the leader. Rolling around turns three and four as the pace car lined us up, I got a look at the field—eight cars ahead, nine behind, eighteen in all. Aside from what I might discover I'd actually retained from Tammy and Bernie's pre-race briefing, my strategy was simple:

• Run my line, which included rolling my right tire over an arrowhead-shaped tar blotch in turn one, another one shaped like a pistol in turn two, a wedge-shaped gash in the track in turn three, and a greasy sunburst in turn four.
  
• Take one car at a time.
  
• Avoid getting tangled in someone else's wreck.
  
• Try to “take what the race brings me” instead of doing what I really wanted to do, which was take Theo's front end and T-bone, chop, and ram every one of those skunk-pig-dogs.
  

First priority: car 44, there in front of me, Larry Greer's snackbar Godmobile.

After two laps behind the pace car, we crossed over in the backstretch. I had the inside lane, paired up with a yellow Mustang with a black number 78—a kid from Flu High I didn't know. He didn't have a sponsor, just a lot of black paint spelling things like J
UST
B
RING
I
T
! and T
HIS
S
PACE FOR
R
ENT
and D
R
. M
AKEOUT'S
C
OURTESY
S
HUTTLE
, which was obviously a bogus sponsor. On our next lap, as I came around turn one, I saw the pace car dart to the infield, and the whole column of cars scrunched up. As D
R
. M
AKEOUT
car 78 and I rounded turn three, the leaders were rounding turn four and heading for the starting line. I could see the flagman holding the green down at his side. We were looking at a clean start.

Knowing that the flagman's attention was on the first and second cars, the instant he began to raise his flag arm, I matted the accelerator. The green flag dropped. Theo roared, and I wedged his front end in between the rear bumpers of the cars ahead of me, Larry's car 44 and a black Mustang with a baby blue number 90. Car 90's back end read, I
F
U C
AN
R
EAD
T
HIS
...2 B
AD
4 U. A nanosecond later, a rumble of engines rippled through the column. I accidentally bumped 90, and he twitched to the outside. This being neither the time nor the place for apologies, I kept the accelerator floored and plunged into the space between cars 90 and 44, drawing Theo's nose up almost even with Larry's rear tires.

Knowing Larry, a former chemistry lab partner—and a pretty good one—I knew he played by the rules, which he used to his advantage by drifting across my front end. I lifted to avoid getting slapped. Fair enough: I hadn't quite reached his rear tires. I held close to his tail, though, as I ran the first lap. I slid out to my line: arrowhead, pistol. I checked my rearview mirror to find a rust red Mustang, car 11, following right in my tracks. I felt the momentum surge as Theo exited the turns. Glancing back, I saw car 11 start to fall off.

I worked Larry for another lap, coming out of the turns a bit farther up on him each time. Larry held tight to the car ahead of him, Kirby's truck. Car 11 hadn't figured out a way to take me yet, so I ran another patient lap dead to my line: arrowhead, pistol, gash, sunburst. Coming out of turn four, though, just as I accelerated and slid up on the outside of Larry's tires, I looked across the infield and saw Dale's car 07, about five cars back from the front, fishtailing. He regained control a couple of seconds later, giving up one spot to the car on his inside, but that tiny blink of chaos created a mini chain reaction in the column of cars. I held the gas tight to the floor, kept my left front end glued to Larry's right rear. Maybe Larry tapped the brakes, maybe he lifted, or maybe the ripple effect of Dale's fishtailing distracted him. Either way, I was almost dead even with him as we went into the backstretch.

I ran my line around turns three and four—gash and sunburst—and exited with a perfectly timed punch of the accelerator.
Yesss!
I was a wheel up on Larry. With a glance in my rearview mirror, where car 11 had fallen back about a car length, I really went to work on car 44, dogging him hard, turn after turn.

Two laps later, I had a half-car lead on Larry. Coming out of turn four, I cranked the wheel toward him and then back. Larry lifted. I blew by him.

I drove right up tight to Kirby's rear end and held my speed. I might've been going a little crazy by then because I couldn't help but smile back at the little Martian guys painted on Kirby's truck. Theo's tires dug into the asphalt.

I shadowed Kirby for two laps, hovering just to the outside, following him move for move, knowing that the mental burden of his race weighed more heavily on him, being nipped at by a trailing car, than on me. I felt like I could run right up the bed of his truck and over his cab roof. At least that's how Theo was handling. I was also handling this race better than I'd handled any race so far, a rush of adrenaline and endorphins swirling through my limbs and brain, my firesuit generating a mini-meltdown of body heat. I'm surprised I didn't start hallucinating. Maybe I was hallucinating, because I felt weirdly happy—proud to have clawed my way to Kirby's bumper and delighted, in a sick way, to know that every time that freak looked in his rearview mirror, a bumper-clinging, road-ripping picture of me and Theo stared back at him.

I decided to reclaim my line. Approaching turn three, I made a quick move to the inside. When Kirby tracked me, I jerked the wheel to the right and entered the corner on a perfect line in the outside groove, my right tire rolling over the arrowhead tar blotch. I hit the pistol next. Exited with speed.

My left front wheel was almost to Kirby's right rear. I could easily have tapped him. Could've done a little bump-and-run. I didn't need to, though. Kirby seemed jittery enough just to have me so close that I knew how to get him out of the way. I ran my line for another lap, and when I was just shy of even with him, I pinned him hard to the inside. Pinned him and held him there. I drifted out in the turns just enough to hit my marks but then went back to holding Kirby to the inside.

When one of the three cars ahead of Kirby, car 14, decided to bump-and-run Dale in car 07, both cars, along with car 09, which had been trying to come up on the outside, started spinning around. Their high-speed square dance spun toward the inside lane. I held Kirby still, pressed him to the inside, even when he drifted out to tap my door. I tagged him right back, screaming “You're it!” Poor kid had to brake when we caught up to the wreck. I pulled quickly to the outside groove and sailed past the mess.

Coming into the front stretch, I saw the flagman drop the yellow caution, meaning that I'd have to hold my position. Which was fine with me. I was in third place.