Asta laughed, but she didn’t answer right away.
Allie waited.
‘Can I tell you something off the record?’
‘Sure.’ Allie touched a button on the recorder. ‘What is it?’
‘I hate it.’ The words were out before she could stop them.
Allie looked surprised. They put their notebook down and listened.
Asta focused her eyes on the opposite wall, hoping it might help steady her. ‘Silverscale has been my obsession since I was twelve. I built it up as this pinnacle– like it would prove something about me, and I could finally be happy– but the only time I’ve really been happy since I got here was when I forgot where I was.’ Asta took a deep breath. ‘Iloveriding, but I’m starting to wonder if I still loveracing.
‘Being here is so much pressure, you know? It’s not healthy. I’m injured. I should be healing. But I can’t, because it feels like I’ll be a failure if the next race doesn’t go exactly right and then the next one and the next one.’ Would it ever stop? ‘I wish I didn’t have to race today. I wish I didn’t have to race ever again.’
‘What would you do instead?’ Allie asked gently.
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you didn’t race, what would you do?’
It was an impossible question.
From her first glimpse of a Silverscale race on her father’s old TV, Asta had known that she was meant to ride dragons. Not just ride them. That wasn’t enough for her. She couldn’t see herself prancing around a show ring, winning medals for perfect pirouettes. She was meant to fly, to reach that speed at which there is nothing else but forward motion and the rush of wind. And that meant racing.
Back when it was just her and Felix in the fields, she had no doubts about what she wanted to do with her life. But as soon as she got to Pillar, it was all status and politics and gossip. The tournaments were no better– everyone trying to claw their way to recognition, and the organizers happily accepting the entry fees, even knowing that, for most competitors, their dreams would amount to a hill of beans. Debt and obscurity, if they were lucky. Worse, if they weren’t.
The only people who had ever seemed happy to Asta were the people who raced for the fun of it, without ambition, but she had never been one of those people. It was always Silverscale or nothing. At Silverscale, she told herself, all the nonsense would drop away, and at least she could justride.
But that hadn’t happened. Silverscale turned out to be the same as all those little tournaments, the same as Pillar, only on a bigger scale. Petty rivalries became a matter of life and death. Hummer could terrorize his own family and threaten whoever got in his way because the prize was worth it. Felix’s whole life had been claimed by the pursuit of that damned Silverscale title. Making Silverscale her one and only dream, Asta had come to believe the same lie that Felix had– that shewasracing, that there was nothing more to her than that.
This place took hold of people, and it ate them alive.
‘Before I ever knew what racing was really like,’ Asta said dreamily, thinking back to her days in the fields in Medley with Felix, running the Double Decker or the Ricochet, ‘I thought it would be this big adventure. But I got here, and it’s—’ She thought of walking into Horizons Raceway for the first time. ‘It’s so much smaller than I thought it was.’
‘Smaller?’ Allie looked confused.
‘Not literally. It all just feels so. . . limited. If I raced the way I really wanted to?’ Asta laughed at the thought. ‘They wouldn’t know what to do with me.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ Allie asked, leaning in. ‘How do you want to race?’
But something had clicked in Asta’s brain. She had to find Felix.
‘Allie, I am so sorry, but I have to go.’
Allie was caught off guard. ‘Oh, wow. Okay.’ They started to say something else, but Asta was already out the door.
‘I’m sorry,’ Asta called over her shoulder.
Asta took off at a run for Essie’s stable, weaving between fans, riders, and Silverscale staff on the crowded sidewalk.
Out of the corner of her eye, Asta caught sight of movement on the other side of the housing unit– a flash between buildings moving in the same direction she was. Someone was following her. She quickened her pace, racing against her unseen pursuer on the other side of the building. Suddenly, she darted through the gap between Housing Units 3 and 4 and planted her feet.
Karol Bruce nearly knocked her over.
‘Hello, Karol,’ Asta said.
Asta assessed the young man before her. The purple color of his bruise from Nat’s boot to his face had taken on a slightly green hue overnight. He would probably be sorry to see it fade. It gave him an air of toughness that he had always lacked, being something of a sniveler.
