‘It wasn’t your fault.’ Asta felt awful that he was taking this on himself.
‘No, it kind of was. Hear me out. I’ve been thinking a lot about this. I’m pretty sure you don’t need someone to hold you back. You need someone who can let you loose. You have this fire in you, Asta, and it needs to burn. It needs to go a little crazy sometimes. When you’re in it, you’re gone. That’s your magic.’ His eyes scanned the ceiling, as if all of Asta’s races were playing out before him. ‘You’re so good. Damn it. You’resogood. By the time we’re out of here, you will have the entire racing world eating out of your hand.’
Everyone kept saying stuff like that. People had said those things about Leia once– how she was going to be a star– and look what happened to her. Asta remembered how she had felt at West Granger, and again this week, when the dragons started falling in front of her. Gem didn’t know how close she was to failure. What if the best she could hope for was a raceway full of people chanting her name when she was nothing more than a bloody smear on the track?
‘Gem—’
‘Look, I’m not saying I’ve done a lousy job or anything. But you need a real manager, someone who knows when to let you go off and do something stupid and when to hand you some different stupid thing to do– one that won’t wreck your future.’ He laughed to himself. ‘Mostly, you need someone who doesn’t have to answer to Grandma. She thinks it’s my fault you aren’talreadythe queen of the world.’
Asta wriggled happily under the covers. ‘I knew I was her favorite.’
Behind Gem, Carmine pulled his head back through the hatch, and the sound of his scales sliding against the wall sounded almost mechanical, like the soft purr of a smooth-running engine.
‘That stuff that Felix Seraphin said to you yesterday,’ Gem said gently. ‘It wasn’t fair. You know that, right?’
Asta could still see Felix’s face. Underneath all his anger and frustration with her, there had been a river of sadness. There was something he wasn’t saying. She was sure of it.
‘He talks like his way is the only way. What an ass! I’m sorry, Asta. I didn’t know he thought like that.’
‘He doesn’t.’ Asta pulled the duvet further into her lap and bunched it around her fists.
Gem looked confused. ‘You’re defending him?’
‘No,’ Asta said. She didn’t know how to tell Gem what she knew in her gut. When Felix said those things, it was like someone else was saying them. His parents, maybe? All she knew was, something was off.
‘Well, he was right about one thing,’ Gem ventured. ‘You can’t do this by yourself. You have to let people help you. Just, you know, the right people.’ Gem glanced at the door, but once again stopped short of saying more.
Asta laughed sadly. Ask for help. It wasn’t bad advice, just too late.
‘What I’m saying,’ Gem concluded, getting back to his feet, ‘is that you don’t have to feel bad when someone else comes along and tells you that they can do a better job than me. They can. To me, you’ll always be my weird little cousin who, for whatever reason, I really want to like me. And because of that, there are things I’m too much of a dragonshit coward to tell you. Or ask you.’ He met Asta’s gaze for a second and then looked away.
‘There’s nothing to ask,’ Asta said quietly. ‘Remember? I’m behaving myself now.’
On hesitant footsteps, as if he wasn’t sure if their conversation was done or not, Gem returned to the kitchen to fetch his cup of coffee, which he had left on the counter. Asta wondered if he knew she was lying.
20
Asta left for the track already dressed in her red race suit with its maze of embroidered patches. She put the jar in the bottom of her helmet and placed her gloves on top of it in a haphazard manner that she hoped would disguise the gravity of what she was about to do.
She was surprised to find Felix waiting outside of her room. It was torture, seeing him like this every day, because the fact was, she really needed him right now– the old Felix, that is, the one she had loved. Asta pushed her longing away and braced herself. Any minute now, he would pick a fight with her just to avoid saying what he really wanted to say.
Felix fell in step beside Asta, matching her pace. He was in jeans, a thick workman’s jacket, and a cap that he probably thought made him unrecognizable to fans. All it really did was lend him a charming, down-to-earth air, as if he had just gotten in from tossing hay bales with Asta’s father. It was a good look on him, but it wasn’t helping Asta keep her feelings at bay.
‘I decided something,’ he said.
‘What did you decide?’ Asta shifted her helmet to the other hand so that Felix wouldn’t spy the jar in the bottom.
‘We’re friends again.’
Asta stopped walking, and he stopped with her. She looked for a smile, a sign that he was teasing, but he was dead serious.
‘We are?’ Asta didn’t know what to say. ‘Felix, things with us are. . .’ Totally fucked up is what they were.
‘They suck. I get that. We’ve been through some shit.’
Asta raised her eyebrows at the scale of the understatement. ‘You could say that.’
‘Right? But why go through all that shit, if we don’t actually gothroughit.’
