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Shelby and I stay on the bleachers and watch the next ten motos. The younger kids take forever to race four laps around the track. But the older, faster racers finish their six laps in just a few minutes. Shelby explains that Mixon is a two-minute track, meaning the fastest racers can complete one lap in two minutes. She knows everything about motocross. Despite Molly’s crash course in how to work at a motocross park, I don’t know a thing beyond working here.
I know it is unintentional, but she has this way of making me feel like an idiot when she says something about motocross and I give her a blank stare. Every single time it happens, her eyes widen and her jaw falls open and she says, “I can’t believe you don’t know this stuff!”
I listen and ask a lot of questions because every detail I can memorize about Ryan’s sport is sure to impress him later. She tells me about the black foam thing many riders wore under the bottom edge of their helmet and how it prevents their neck from breaking in a crash. She snaps her wrist in a pantomime of how the brace works. My stomach feels like I just witnessed a real neck breaking. Teig flashes through my mind – I hope he wears one.
A guy on a blue dirt bike flips off the side of a jump and lands on top of his bike. The crowd makes this excited yet worried, but mostly excited sound. He shakes himself, then waves a hand in the air before lifting up on his hands and knees.
“Is he okay?” I ask Shelby.
“Yeah he’s fine.” She nods, “It’s standard to wave if you’re okay. When they fall and just lay there then you know something is wrong.”
Sure enough, the guy stands up, pulls his bike out of the dirt and merges back into the race. Now that the excitement is over, Shelby goes back into her motocross monologue.
“You mean you don’t know about how Oak Creek had that huge pricing war with Mixon?” Shelby stares at me like I’m a jellyfish asking about the ocean.
“Um, no?” Tisk Tisk. The daughter of Texas’ most popular motocross track has no idea about the supposed pricing war between Mixon and what the heck is an Oak Creek anyway?
“A few years back, it cost eight dollars to practice at every track,” Shelby says, wiping sweat from her brow. “Then Oak Creek raised their price to ten dollars, and so did Buffalo Springs. They talked your dad into raising it, too.”
“Oak Creek and Buffalo Springs are other tracks, then,” I guess. Shelby rolls her eyes and continues, “Yeah. And then they went to fifteen dollars last summer and Mr. Fisher refused to charge that much. He said no one should pay that much money to ride around on dirt for a few hours. The other tracks got really mad.”
“Did they lower their price?”
“Nope,” she says, crossing her arms like she’s in charge. “Buffalo Springs went out of business recently. Oak Creek is still open. Mixon gets more business than anyone, which is great because we live so close, only about fifteen minutes away.”
“So you live in Mixon?” Sometimes I don’t believe that Mixon contains civilized life besides my dad’s family. But since it does, I think I just made a new friend.
“Yep,” she smiles as if thinking the same thing. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. Most of these guys drive for an hour or more to get here. I’m just down the street.”
Two girls who could pass as real-life Barbie dolls sit on the bench below us. One of them is the girl who sang the anthem, and the other looks like a carbon copy in the same skirt and a similar top. Their hair is stick-straight and perfect. Despite the heat, their makeup is flawless – something my crappy cosmetology skills could never pull off. I envy and hate them at the same time.
The anthem girl asks Shelby when her brother is racing. She answers in one word, “Sixteen.” The girl thanks her in that fake high-pitched voice that hot girls tend to have. I almost throw up.
“I’m guessing you don’t like her?” I whisper.
“Heck no,” she snaps, making an exaggerated gagging sound. It’s a classic case of plain girl versus hot girl rivalry. I’d been the plain girl my whole life, but today I had hoped to cross over into the hot girl realm.
The girls sit on the bench with their legs crossed, watching the races. I check over myself, sitting with my feet on the bench below me, elbows on my knees, sweaty hair pushed behind my ears. If it wasn’t for this skirt, I’d look like a man. Ugh.
“I don’t know how they do it,” I say, trying to loosen the tension from Shelby’s hatred. “Maybe they are just born hot and they can’t help it. I’ll never be able to compete with girls like that.”
“Oh I don’t hate her because she’s gorgeous,” she whispers. “I hate her because she’s a backstabber.” Fire fills her eyes.
The gossip fiend in me begs for more. “Details. Now.”
“They’ve been coming to the races for as long as I can remember. And they always ignored me.” She leans closer to me but keeps her eyes fixed on the race. “Then one day last year, Alyson, the one who sings, suddenly started being nice to me.” She glances back at them, “Do you think they can hear me?”
“No, I can barely hear you over these loud bikes. Go on.”
She hesitates, speaking even quieter, “So anyway, they included me in their stupi
d group, and it turned out that they just wanted to get to my brother.”
“What do you mean?”
“They liked him, not me, and when he rejected them both, they dropped me from their radar.” She presses her lips together and forces an apathetic eye roll that so does not convince me. I doubt she even convinces herself.
“I don’t know why you’re upset about that. It’s not a big deal.” I’m disappointed that her story wasn’t more scandalous.
