The Outside Groove (25 page)

“I'm not saying it makes any sense,” Jim said, “but it's true. I've heard it with my own ears. You've got people talking here. You had your name in the paper every day so far this week. Sounds like that reporter, Coates, is getting downright irritated that he can't nail down if you're running on Sunday or not.”

“Must be a slow news week.”

“And didn't you sign autographs for those girls?”

I shrugged.

“I'll tell you something,” Jim said in a tone I'd never heard him use before. He didn't seem angry, but he wasn't pleased. Considering that, in the span of a few minutes standing around in a pasture, we'd exchanged more words than in all the conversations we'd had up to that point combined, I turned to give him my full attention. “I know what it's like to be invisible,” he said. “Poor. Homeless. A delinquent. Now, you don't want to know my life story—”

“Sure I do.”

“Well I don't want to tell it to you. But I do want you to understand that there are a lot worse places than Fliverton and even Byam. I've seen them. I've lived in a few, got chased out of a few, and I consider myself lucky to be standing right where I am today.”

I didn't know how to respond. I felt like telling Jim that we all wanted different things out of life and that I was entitled to my opinion about whether Fliverton's obsession with racing made it a crazy or sane place to be. But I knew that, looked at through his eyes and experience, my problems with my hometown were just petty complaints. Still, that didn't diminish the anger that'd built up inside me while we'd been talking: anger at the fact that to be somebody in Fliverton was to be a
racing
somebody, anger at myself for knowing this before I started racing but still thinking that proving myself on everyone else's terms was going to change something—in me or in them. I'd driven all that way for what? To be told what to do. To be put in my place. To be told, yet again, who I am. “I'm glad you're feeling at home here,” I finally said, as much to calm the bitter storm swirling in my gut as to recognize Jim's perspective on the matter. Still, I couldn't help adding, “But you don't know what it's like to be me.”

Jim shrugged. “No one ever does, right?”

“Why are we having this conversation?” I grumbled. “You want to know if I need a tow on the Fourth of July.”

Jim's expression darkened. “I don't work for you,” he said.

“Then why are you doing this? Why do you even care?”

Jim jammed his hands in his pockets and looked away. “I'm not sure. I guess I'm trying to learn something.”

“Learn what?”

“Learn how to get on in a place.”

“Well,” I said with a laugh that came out sounding snottier than I'd intended, “don't look at me.”

Jim looked directly at me—and it wasn't one of his sunnier looks, not that he'd ever displayed many of those. “I was thinking about your uncle.” He flipped his chin toward the path to the yard. “There's a guy who survives on what he knows, what he can do.” Jim slapped the Thundermaker's front panel. “I admire him.” He wore the faintest smile as he said this, as if he were trying to conceal it. Something had definitely changed in him since the day we met. “But I've got to tell you,” he said, his expression growing serious again. “Harvey gets agitated whenever you're out here in this car.”

“Why? He built it for me.”

“Sure, but now you can't race it because of your dad. You told Harvey you're not racing, but I'm not sure he believes you. He's not stupid, you know.”

“That he is not.”

“And if he thinks racing this car is a bad idea, well, I'd take that under consideration.”

“I will,” I said, trying not to sound snippy, like I sometimes did when people offered me advice I didn't ask for.

Jim gave me those narrowed eyes again, and then—classic Jim Biggins—he just walked away.

***

I passed through the garage and opened the kitchen door, spotting Big Daddy and Wade in their usual place, at the dining room table surrounded by spreadsheets. I sat down with them, right across from Wade with Big Daddy on my left, and said nothing. Big Daddy frowned at me, and Wade squinted with more open annoyance. “What's up?” I said.

Wade snorted. “We're working.”

“Oh.” I reached for the wicker basket of napkins in the center of the table and began working on some grease under my fingernails.

Wade snorted again.

“Need a tissue?” I said.

I could feel Big Daddy's eyes on me, but he didn't say anything.

“You guys ready for the big race?” I said. “It's less than forty-eight hours away—”

“Casey, your brother and I are right in the middle of something,” Big Daddy said, still sounding fairly calm about my interruption.

“I got an e-mail from the cross-country coach at Cray,” I said, which wasn't a complete lie, since I'd received a general welcome e-mail from the athletic department about a week earlier.

“Who?” Wade said.

Big Daddy sighed. “That's great, Casey.”

Mom walked into the kitchen from the garage, and Big Daddy looked at her. I kept watching my father. A pleading expression flashed in his eyes, as if he were desperate to be rescued. From me. His daughter. I looked at Wade, and he was making the very same face.

“Casey,” Mom said, obviously getting the hint, “I found a few things I thought you could use in your dorm room. Come have a look.”

“Maybe in a little while,” I said, turning back to Big Daddy.

He was already immersed in his spreadsheets again.

I really was already gone.

I went upstairs and called Jim. I told him that I was sorry if I'd seemed cranky earlier in the day, and I let him know that I was taking the next day, Saturday, off from racing in Byam. “I need a break,” I said. “I've had racing on the brain.”

“That can't be good,” he said.

Then I called Bernie and told her my plan.

Sunday morning, I hit my alarm clock the moment it went off. I dressed and then crept downstairs. I eased open the door leading from the kitchen to the garage and nearly screamed at the sight of Wade sitting behind the wheel of car 02. He watched me pass the car, but when I was out of the garage, he slid out his window and followed me. “You're going to do it, aren't you?” he said from a few steps behind. “You're going to race.”

“People are sleeping,” I said.

“Why are you doing this? Why do you have to do this?” “I don't
have
to do anything. I make my own decisions. That's the whole point.”

Wade stopped walking.

I got into my car and looked at him standing there, arms at his sides, shoulders slumped. He looked sad, pathetic even, and I wondered where all his action-hero cockiness had gone. He walked over to the passenger side and knocked on the window.

I rolled it down.

He reached in, unlocked the door, and climbed into the passenger seat.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“No, what are
you
doing? Are you racing?”

“I was thinking about it.”

“Don't. At least not in the Thundermakers. I heard you got a ride.”

“Where'd you—”

“Doesn't matter.”

“One of your butt-kissing crewmembers spied on me.”

“Just don't, Casey.”

“Why?”

“Please. The scouts aren't coming to see brother-sister racing circus nonsense. This is my day. This is all I've got.”

“You want my sympathy? After the way you treat people? And besides, no day belongs to anyone.”

Wade looked ahead, as if he were a driver's ed instructor bracing for a first lesson. “You don't understand,” he said. “You think it's easy?”

“What, treating girls like shop rags you just toss in the wastebasket?“

“I'm back with Samantha.”

“What?”

Wade nodded.

“How'd you manage that? She actually seems to have a brain.”

“I apologized like I've never apologized before. I
begged

“I'd have loved to see that.”

“You want to know why I'm back with Samantha?”

I couldn't imagine why my brother would make one decision or another on any matter that didn't have four tires attached to it. “Let me guess. Those ‘fun' team T-shirts Mom bought didn't look good enough on Gail or Maxine, and Samantha bumped her head on something.”

“She wants me to stay,” he said in a small voice.

“What?”

“Here in Fliverton.”

“But if you get on a Circuit team—”

“I know.”

“You can't stay.”

“I know, I know.” Wade snorted. “Believe me, I know. Since the day I strapped in for my first Kart race, everyone's been talking about the day I leave
—dreaming
about it.” Wade just kept staring ahead. “Point is, if Samantha had her way, I'd stay.”

“You don't want to go to North Carolina?” I said.

Wade shrugged. “I guess I do. I mean, of course I do. It's what I've been working toward. But, I don't know, it's like I never had a chance to work toward anything else.”

“I thought you liked racing.”

“I do.” Wade turned toward the garage, where car 02 sat awaiting its glorious destiny. “I just ... I don't know. It's just weird, that's all, growing up hearing everybody talk about how they can't wait until you're gone.”

“Well, but Wade, that's not exactly what they're saying. People want you to succeed.”

“I know, I know. And Samantha and I have been talking.”

“Talking about what?”

“You know. Like, if I do get on the Pembroke team, maybe she'd go down there with me. And if I don't, we'll maybe move in together here.” He looked at me. “Point is, people are going to miss you, Casey. Nobody besides Samantha really cares about me.”

“You know that's not true.”

Wade arched his eyebrows. “Big Daddy?”

I didn't know what to say. Part of me wanted to disagree with him, but another part wanted to think he was right, to think that Wade—selfish, immature, cocky, man-child Wade—maybe saw something that I'd missed. It was a strange idea to grasp, and I wasn't sure I trusted it.

“I wouldn't exactly call Big Daddy
my
biggest fan. He said he wouldn't pay for Cray College if I raced.”

“So don't race,” Wade said. “This is my day.”

A car turning up Meadow Ridge Road caught my attention. I watched the rig crest the swale: Fletcher's Dart. The thought suddenly came to me that maybe Wade was just psyching me out. As the Dart dipped again, my stomach clenched. “I make my own decisions,” I said. “Now I've got to go.”

Wade watched me. “You know I'd miss you if you go,” he said. “I would,” he said. “Take the only thing I've got, and take it away with you to fancy college land.”

I fired Hilda's ignition.

Wade got out and slammed the door.

A light turned on in my parents' bedroom.

***

I drove Hilda to the fishing access and pulled up next to Bernie's Toyota. I opened the passenger door for T.T., who got in. I led Bernie and Tammy to Uncle Harvey's road, where I had Bernie pull over about one hundred feet from his driveway. I told her to turn the car around to face back in the direction from which we'd just come. Better for a quick getaway. I put Hilda in neutral and got out so that T.T could get behind the wheel.

I walked up Uncle Harvey's driveway and crossed the yard. I opened the shed door as quietly as I could, climbed into car 06, and took a deep breath. In three lightning-quick motions, I fired up the ignition, put the car in gear, and drove across the yard. I didn't even look in my rearview mirror.

On the road, I slipped in between Bernie's car and Hilda so that they were leading and tailing me. I began my journey to Demon's Run sandwiched between the cars, low to the pavement, stealthy and out of sight.

I was the first car in through the pit gate, so I took a pit at the end of Thundermaker Row. I killed the engine, climbed out the window, and Byam-gripped my crazy crew.

We wandered to the snack bar together and got some breakfast. Vin Coates, sitting at a picnic table and drinking a cup of coffee, nearly spat his doughnut out when he saw me. Looking toward my pit, he must've figured out that I'd found a Thundermaker ride after all—and that he'd been missing the story in the
Granite County Record
all week.

I sat on the hood of car 06 and reviewed what I'd learned in the past couple of months about racecar driving. I visualized the track, the turns, my front end drifting somewhere out there just beyond my vision. I ignored the other drivers who filed into the pit slots around me and, instead, reminded myself that I had no idea what it was going to be like racing the Thundermaker drivers. As the sun burned off the morning haze, I tried to think of names for my ride. The Green Ghost. The Green Snake, which made more sense than the Red Snake. The Green Girl, which sounded too girly. The Green Party. I couldn't think of anything clever, so I settled on Green.

The Road Warriors ran their practice laps, and then Bean called the Thundermakers to the course. I'd eaten a decent breakfast, but I still felt lightheaded as I rolled onto the track and began circling with the twenty-five other cars. I was shaking too, as much from the rumble of my engine as from nervousness. I focused as intently as I could on finding my line, trying to suppress any thought or impulse that didn't have to do with keeping my speed up.

Every other lap or so, a driver pulled alongside and gave me a dark look, but mainly I expected that drivers would try to stay away from me, since, as Bean had reminded the crowd as we were lining up for practice, “the last few street-stock Fans' Picks have made better roadblocks than racers out there, the exception being, of course, Wade ‘the Blade' LaPlante three seasons ago.” Because my decision to race in the Firecracker had been a secret, my rig hadn't been set up with the close mechanical attention that I'd grown used to. Still, Green responded like a whip to every jerk in my wrist at the wheel, the tires seeming to grab at the asphalt and tug it close.