Glowering, I turn to the TV, ignoring her tiny cackle. Man, she reminds me of Renata. They’dloveeach other, too. Suddenly a bit seasick again, I finish my orange juice right as the Formula 1 theme song starts playing from each sound system—because of course they’d play their own theme song at an actual race, to their favorite customers.
And guess what? The Paddock Club elite clap. A montage starring each driver plays across the screens:Number one, Arthur Graywood, Cavalli, nodding at the camera with a smirk. Numbertwenty-four, Christine Fay, Stark-Benzin, flicking her hair back. Number eight, Fausto Ferreira Sanchez, no smile, arms crossed—
My stomach flutters.
Tables clear as the rich people book it to the long bank of windows overlooking the garages, our balcony filling up, brushing my shoulders. Mei goes to a corner and I do, too, my legs numb, skin tingling. I think back to that night at the high school fall dance, frozen in my sequined dress. How my body felt like I couldn’t move. That was the last real date I’ve been on. When I’d gotten home, my feet were bleeding from walking miles in Steve Madden heels, and my sisters cried and Grandma swore and Dad tried to drive to the school gym to confront the boy, but me? I held it together. I said I was okay, it wasn’t a big deal, I didn’t like him anyway. Later, when everyone else was asleep but us, Dad made me pancakes and we sat on the porch, two big moths under a buzzy yellow light looking into the blue.
No one in Waterfield deserves you, kiddo, he’d said.You’re too good for ’em.
Is that why you don’t date?
It’d been years by then, longer now.You girls are my life now. My heart’s full, Dad said.But you? You’ve got all the time in the world.
We hadn’t known then that there was any chance he was lying. Hadn’t fought over statistics and what I should do with my life. And we’ll never know, if I have my way—since I feel the same. I don’t have room for anyone new. There’s a big, blinking,no more room at the innsign on the motel billboard of my heart, and that’s not coming down anytime soon. Because there’s my family that’s here, and my family that’s gone, but the grief doesn’t go away; it shape-shifts into new silhouettes. When one memory heals, the pain just moves somewhere else, to another dark corner of yourbody, a different hiding place, a new disguise worn over its familiar face. It’s the Irish prayer about ankle-turning that used to sit in her kitchen, then it’s macaroni and cheese with mustard, then it’sGoodbye Horses, then it’s white butterflies. Then you see a chair on the side of the road that’s her favorite shade of red-wine purple, and you remember that her chair will always be empty.
Faust can hate me. He can think the worst of me. That’s fine. Mei, too. Christine. Eddie. It doesn’t matter.
My heart is full.
I can do this.
Below the railing, there’s a palpable commotion as the final workers clear off the track. A calmness works itself through me as the cars peel through the formation lap, the noise of the circuit dropping to a fuzzy murmur. Muffled through the plaster walls of my priorities.
No, it isn’t me doing that. The air around me has gone weirdly hush. My skin shivers with it, the energy of hundreds of thousands of excited people holding their breath.
Beep.
Beep. Beep.
Beep—
One more short beep reverberates through the miles-long circuit. It’s the sound of the five red lights above the track turning on; I remember it well. That’s the sound of a race about to start. Startled, my eyes swivel to the starting line, where Faust’s long, chrome-gray car is nestled in the middle of the pack. Right behind Bernard.
My thoughts catch, tripping over themselves.
Then they go quiet, too.
Before I have time to fully comprehend that I’m about to see a Formula 1 race in person from the Paddock Club, while working onmy favorite team… the lights go out and the cars jump forward and it’s happening, here, right now. And I’m filled with ridiculous, incandescent excitement that doesn’t leave room for anything else.
The cars hurdle down the track toward an unbelievable kink in the circuit that doesn’t seem physically possible while driving this fast. Only it is, and one car after the other takes the corner, effortlessly falling into a line. Almost effortless. There’s a tangle near the front, a dark blue car I don’t recognize gunning for an overtake and failing miserably, locking up and spinning offtrack.
“Oh my god, Iknewthat was going to happen, but no one believed me.”
I jump, grabbing the railing as I turn to find—a waiter? Judging by their black pants, white button-down, and short black ponytail. “Do you mind?” she asks sheepishly. “I kind of only took this gig so I could get in for free.”
“Oh yeah. Please.” I squeeze to the left to let her lean against the railing with me. “I can cover for you, too, if anyone comes looking. Blame me for everything and anything.”
“Really?” She brightens up, grinning. “You’d Karen for me?”
“Of course. You were just helping me figure out which chardonnay to order.”
She laughs, then goes deathly quiet. I follow her eyes to the gigantic screen across the balcony, above the grandstand, streaming the race. I’m not sure what I expect. Another spin-off? Gravel damage? Missing wheels? It’s the first grand prix of the season; the grid will be a mix of shaken-up teams and rookies and egos. There’s a lot to prove and little space to do it.
I don’t expect to see Christine’s car, crumpled against a barrier, on a screen the size of a movie theater.
Smoke billows from the shredded rear, as if she’d tried to brakeher way out of the collision, and that’s all I can process at first. I feel like smoke, only half-real. Mostly air. “Goddamn,” the waiter breathes out—right as Christine’s radio message appears on the screen.
He ******* drove into me.
