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Authors: Erik E. Esckilsen

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BOOK: The Outside Groove
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I suppressed a sigh. “That was the year Wade made his move,” I said. My eye fell upon the racing magazines as I remembered the Fourth of July Firecracker 50 Mr. Blodgett was referring to. Wade got to run in his first Thundermaker race because he'd been the Fans' Pick in the Road Warrior division heading into the holiday event. The Road Warrior Fans' Pick almost always finished dead last in the Thundermaker race. Wade won the thing—and not just won it, but won it in style. He'd started in the pole position—the inside lane at the front of the line—lost it, passed cars to reclaim the lead, got passed again, scrambled back to the front, and generally worked the racecourse in a way that started people calling him the next Big Daddy.

“And what a move it was,” Mr. Blodgett said with such sugary admiration that I almost laughed.

I might've let out a little squeak, because he looked at me suddenly, as if snapped out of his reverie. “That your plan, Casey? Got an eye on the Thundermakers?”

“Those rides run, what, about a zillion bucks?”

“To start.”

“Nah. Four cylinders will be plenty for me. I'm not in this for the long haul.”

“College in the fall?”

“That's the plan.” I waved my checkbook at him. “Do I make it out to you or Demon's Run?”

“You've got a ride then, a Road Warrior ride?”

“Getting one. Nothing fancy.”

“Crew?”

Feeling a blush coming on, I faked a laugh. “With a name like LaPlante? You've been to our house for a prerace Sunday breakfast, Mr. Blodgett. People have to bring their own
forks,
we have so much crew. Now, I'm just going to write this out to...?”

“Make it out to Demon's Run Raceway.”

“How much?”

Mr. Blodgett opened his desk drawer, removed a sheet of paper, and handed it to me. “This is the license application and release form.”

“Release?” I took the sheet and read it, trying to keep my eyes from popping at the dollar figure I read in the upper right-hand corner of the form.

“How old are you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Then I'll need your dad's signature on that. Or your mom's. Doesn't matter.”

“Why? If I'm paying with my own money—”

“You're a minor. We need parental consent.”

A sigh snuck out, but I filled out the rest of the check anyway.

“Racing's dangerous, Casey. Doesn't hurt to talk it over.”

I wanted to remind him that my family and I
had
talked it over ... in a way ... and that, if the dangers of racing had been on Big Daddy's and Wade's minds at all, then they had a sick sense of humor.

“So, then, I'll just get a signature then,” I said, trying to sound cheerful. I signed the check, tore it out, and handed it to him.

He inspected the check, set it in the precise center of his desk, and stared at it for a few seconds. Finally, he looked at me. “You'll be our first female driver, you know.”

“Glad I can help the track keep up with the times.”

“You seem very sure about this.” He stroked his beard and gestured, with a flip of his head, in the general direction of the track. “You know it gets rough down there. And I'm not just talking about the racetrack.”

“I've known most of those guys my whole life,” I said. “I know just how they get.”

After a long pause, during which Mr. Blodgett smoothed his beard a couple more times, he pulled a document the size of a biology textbook from a stack on the corner of his desk. “Here you go then,” he said, handing it to me.

“You've got some homework.”

“What's this?”

“Your driver's manual. Rules, regulations, and vehicle specs. You want your engine guy to give it a careful read. We don't want any misunderstandings in the pits.”

“Got it. I'll have my, um, team look it over.” I tucked my checkbook back inside my sweatshirt and pulled out my car keys. “Well, it was good seeing you, Mr. Blodgett.” I extended a hand to him.

“Good seeing you, Casey.” He rose, his knees making a metallic
thwong
as they hit his desk. He shook my hand then looked down at the check on his desk blotter, as if unsure of what'd just happened, how he'd let it happen, and what it was all going to mean as the season got under way.

Chapter 3

The news that I'd bought a Road Warriors season's license, news that'd evidently beaten me home from my meeting with Mr. Blodgett, who must've called my parents as soon as I left his office, didn't please them one bit, especially not my father. As soon as I walked in the door, Big Daddy sat me down at the dining room table. Mom was in the kitchen, fixing dinner. Wade wasn't home yet. Somewhat predictably, Big Daddy began griping about the money I'd spent, and would continue to spend, on getting a ride together and keeping it running—money, of course, that I wouldn't have for college expenses come autumn. Money he'd have to come up with.

Mom, to my amazement, offered a few words in my defense as she set the plates and utensils on the table and motioned for me to begin setting. “What if she gets a sponsor or two?” she said. “I'm sure there's a few businesses in town who'd love to put their name on the car driven by the track's first woman racer. You know people will be watching her closely.”

Big Daddy groaned and turned toward the dim living room. “Right, watching her bite wall,” he said.

Mom frowned sharply at the sink.

“I'll be fine,” I said.

Big Daddy turned back to me. “And who's going to crew for you? And where are you going to garage this thing? I just don't think you know what all's involved, Casey.”

“How could I not know what's involved, Dad, living above a racecar garage my whole life?”

Big Daddy furrowed his eyebrows at me.

Mom also watched me as I stood and began setting the table. “Where
are
you going to keep this car?” she said.

“At school.” I kept my eyes on my task. “In the lab lot outside the industrial arts wing.”

“And crew?” Big Daddy repeated.

I took a moment to line up the silverware perfectly next to the plate I set before him. “Still working on that.”

Big Daddy sighed. “I just don't know, Casey. I need to think about this.
You
need to think about this—”

The Red Snake pulled into the driveway, its growling engine interrupting Big Daddy in midsentence. He got up and started for the door leading out to the garage.

“Wade, we're eating in five minutes,” Mom said with a slight edge in her voice.

Big Daddy just grunted, “Yup.”

When we were alone, Mom gave me a long, serious look. “Is there anything you want to tell me?” she said.

“About what? ”

“About this racing business?”

I stared at her, trying to read in her eyes how much she might already know about my racing plans. She'd defended me a few moments earlier, keeping negotiations open with Big Daddy. I was grateful for that. But did that mean she sincerely supported my decision—and how fully? “What about this racing business?” I said.

Mom's look hardened, her eyes narrowed, her jaw muscles taut—an expression I rarely saw, since I'd never done anything to suggest to her that I was even capable of irresponsible behavior, at least not compared to Wade, whose romantic irresponsibility was the stuff of Fliverton legend. I didn't crack, though, and a few moments later, Mom's expression softened to one conveying simple worry. “I'm going to sign the release form,” she said. “I don't like this idea of yours, but I'll sign it.”

“Thanks.”

“But you're going to indulge me a lecture on the dangers of auto racing.”

“But, Mom, Wade—”

“You're not Wade.” She squinted once, quickly, a flickering reminder of that stern face I'd seen a moment or so earlier. “And you're going to listen. It's not open for debate. I'm your mother.”

***

Cresting the hill of Uncle Harvey's driveway, on the watch for maniacal tow-truck drivers, I spotted my uncle and the longhaired guy standing next to the wrecker that'd almost wrecked me about a week earlier. On the truck's driver's-side door, in obviously hand-painted black letters against the rust-colored truck body, were the words J.B.'s Towing. In the right bay of the shop sat a car that made my stomach clench. If it could've even been called a car. It was more like a mistake of geometry. The front and rear ends were perfectly rectangular, with the boxlike roof sitting directly in the center like the pilothouse on a tugboat. That's what the car reminded me of—a tugboat. A tugboat that had been painted with what looked like vast amounts of pea soup.

As I pulled up to the shop, Uncle Harvey gave me a wave with one hand while holding a crowbar with the other. When I got out of the car, he handed the crowbar to the longhaired guy and they both started circling the car.

“What do you think?” Uncle Harvey said as I stepped into the shop.

“It has a certain retro appeal.”

The longhaired guy smirked.

“This is Jim Biggins,” Uncle Harvey said.

“How you doing, Jim?”

“No complaints,” he said with a nod, then set his jaw as if contemplating something.

Standing next to him, I noted that Jim was stockier than he'd seemed cranking across my uncle's yard in his truck, and he looked older than Wade by a couple of years at least. Sandy blond hair hung to about his shoulders, and when he turned, brown whiskers caught sunlight. I thought his eyes were blue, but I didn't want to stare, and, anyway, what I noticed first about his eyes were the dark circles underneath them.

“Jim here's your pit crew,” Uncle Harvey added. “And your car's an old Chevy, mostly. Chevy, a little Ford, and four other cars. Six in all. Blodgett likes his drivers to run the same equipment, and his preference is for Fords—Mustangs in particular. You'll see some Tempos too, and some cars, like this one, that are harder to classify. But I read his manual cover to cover, and I'm pretty sure this ride'll do.” He chuckled. “Chassis comes from an old cop car, if you can believe it.”

“I've always wanted to ride in a cop car,” I said.

Jim tapped the driver's-side door with the crowbar. “It's not as much fun as it looks.”

Uncle Harvey smiled at Jim, the corners of his eyes drawn down.

''You know a lot about racecars, Jim?” I said.

He shook his head. “Not much. But I've got a tow truck, so you can at least get this thing to the track. ”

I turned to Uncle Harvey. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You're in my pit crew, right?”

Uncle Harvey laughed, but as he stuffed his hands in his pockets, I caught an anxious flash in his eyes. “Ah, I'm afraid not, Casey,” he said. “Got more than I can handle just staying on top of my work here.”

“You found time to build me a racecar.”

Uncle Harvey clenched his jaw. “That I did. And that's going to be the extent of my involvement in all this.”

I shot Jim a curious look.

His gaze revealed nothing.

“You don't even want to come and watch?” I said.

Uncle Harvey looked at the ground. “Wish I could. Really, I do.”

“Why can't you?”

“Look, time's a wasting.” Uncle Harvey whirled around, pulled his hands from his pockets, and clapped them together. “You've got eight days to learn how to drive. Helmet's on the seat there. We can get you another if it doesn't fit. Now get in and fire it up. See how she feels.”

I didn't say this to Uncle Harvey, but I'd already decided that the car was a
he
—Theo, after a tugboat character named Theodore in a video that Blaine and Maddy Egan used to watch, when I baby-sat them, before they got so studious and I became their tutor. I shortened the name to Theo, which was also the name of artist Vincent van Gogh's less-famous brother, the one of the two that actually had some common sense—a quality I felt dwindling within me.

***

If Theo looked like a tugboat on the outside, on the inside he was more like the storage hold on a tuna trawler. There was nothing in this car. Nothing. Everything had been stripped out. There was just a seat sunk way down low, a harness to strap myself in, and a wide rearview mirror. Not exactly riding in style.

But what Theo lacked in style he made up for in nimbleness. This was a quick car. He felt a bit loose in the clutch and steering—he didn't respond immediately to turns of the wheel—but as I rolled into the pasture behind the shop and gave him some gas, he lurched at the tap of my foot, like a dog eager to run off-leash.

I circled Uncle Harvey's pasture a few times, not opening Theo up too much, since the ground was bumpy in spots. I was afraid that, if I went too fast, I might bounce through the roof, even with the harness holding me like a fly in a spider web.

After about a dozen laps or so, I started to get a feel for this guy. I put him tight in the turns and accelerated. That was going to be the cornerstone of my racing strategy: Take the inside corners, geometrically speaking the shortest distance around the track. Maybe Bean St. Onge, the Demon's Run track announcer who'd coined the nickname Wade “the Blade” LaPlante, would give me a nickname like Casey the Insider.

The pasture turned to asphalt in my mind, the trees framing the field becoming grandstands. I could see the fans on Beer Belly Hill cheering and clanging beer cans as I came screaming around turn three. I could see Big Daddy and Mom smiling as I whiplashed through traffic like a huge metal eel. Maybe even Wade, standing in his pit, would look out onto the track as I ripped the racecourse apart. Maybe Fletcher, too.

Chapter 4

In the week before the Demon's Run season opener, no one said much to me at home. Big Daddy and Wade were consumed with preparations for his first race as defending track champion. Mom seemed almost as frantic as they were, and I don't suppose that my decision to race did her nerves any good. Ever since I'd got my license and started driving Hilda to work at the Egans, she'd let me come and go without asking too many questions. She trusted me—both my parents did. Still, every so often that week before the season opener, Mom would give me a fretful look as I passed through the kitchen, car keys twirling on my finger, as if I were heading out on a date with a dangerous man. Her suspicion was correct.

BOOK: The Outside Groove
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