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fourteen
Rumor Has It… Last year’s King of WHPA and now the King of the Road may be gone for this week’s match, so place your bets elsewhere tonight! Want more Tea? Be there or be square!
Gloria Walton
The guys who come in first, second, and third always have a dozen girls to choose from when the race is over. The rest of the racers have their pick of the remaining pit lizards. Pretty much any guy who finishes is guaranteed to get laid. I get it. Fast cars are sexy as fuck. If I didn’t drive one, I’d probably be first in line for a backseat celebration.
It’s different for girls. The handful of female racers get wolf-whistles, but the guys who want us don’t treat us the way the guy racers get treated. They’re weirdly aggressive, like they want to bring us down a peg, show us our place. Like we belong in a kitchen and not on the street with the smell of smoke and rubber filling our lungs and the thrill of adrenaline and nitrous oxide in our veins.
So, when I come in first, I know I’ll be mobbed if I stick around. Before the others get back, I do a burnout and leave the lot behind. For the next half hour, most of the guys will be out fucking the adrenaline out of their system, so I can take a minute to clear my head instead of sticking around to soak up admiration and aggression.
I turn away from the street where the racers are coming in, making sure my hair is still tied back, and then I gun it. June Bug rockets forward, and my stomach drops as I’m flattened against the seat, unable to even draw a breath for a second. I shouldn’t be doing this in town. The stretch where the race happens is empty. Crowds of spectators block off the regular traffic, if anyone happens to be out at midnight in our small town.
Even cops look the other way, their palms greased by the bored, privileged racers like Royal Dolce and the dangerous, gang-affiliated ones like Heath Stone. But away from our racing stretch, there’s no protection.
I don’t care. I’m feeling reckless and restless tonight, haunted by memories of last year’s Bye Week festivities. The game of hide and seek where I hid behind a Dumpster so the Dolce boys wouldn’t find me.
I should have let them find me. I’d already endured their tortures for a year. One more night would have been nothing in the grand scheme. I probably wouldn’t even remember it this year.
So I made the worst mistake in a life full of mistakes, and I hid too well.
And the person who found me instead was so much worse than the Dolces. If someone had warned me before the race that night that Colt Darling would ruin me in ways the Dolces hadn’t, that they never could, I would have laughed in their face.
I fly onto the interstate, away from Faulkner, and give her a little juice. I have that urge again, the need to flee, to drive until I’m so far from this town that it can’t infect me with its venom.
Words from the past whisper in my ears like ghosts in the back seat, ones I can’t escape no matter how fast I drive.
“Look at me when I’m inside you.”
“I’m gonna need a repeat every day from now until forever.”
“I’ve already gotten everything I want from you, princess.”
“I’ll enjoy seeing you around school, knowing I could destroy you.”
All the best and worst things anyone has ever said to me come back to haunt me. The best week of my life is the worst because it was the best.
The engine roars louder as I top 150. If I got loose right now, my chances of survival are close to zero. It would be quick, though. No suffering. If I could choose, this is how I’d want to go. With June Bug at my side until my last breath.
My chances of being arrested are higher. There aren’t many cops out after midnight on the interstate, but if I drive long enough, I’ll pass one. I wouldn’t just get a ticket. Going this fast, I’d be arrested.
I picture myself behind bars. No more makeup. No more size two jeans that have to be zipped with plyers. Just an ugly orange jumpsuit.
Like father like daughter.
I smile to myself. It’s funny how my real smiles are grimaces.
I wonder if Daddy ever regrets what he did, if he looks back at his life and wonders how he got there, to the place he is. I wonder if he ever traces the threads back, trying to find the first wrong turn that led to all the other wrong turns, the other wrongs he committed. Was there a moment where he had to make an impossible choice? Or was it a collection of little choices he never even noticed until he was so lost he couldn’t find his way back?
I don’t believe those stories about people selling their souls to the devil. The devil doesn’t wear his own face and tell you the wager up front. No one would take that deal. The devil wears a thousand faces, from pretty to plain, and you only find out you’ve sold your soul when you read the fine print in the middle of a wall of text in the terms and conditions, when it’s too late to take it back. When it’s too late to go back to the life you lived before, when love was all you had, and it was enough.
I realize I’m further from Faulkner than I need to be, and I pull off at an exit and turn back. If I’m not back for the games, Baron will notice. He doesn’t care that Rylan stayed home, but he’ll care if I do.
Probably.
He won’t care that I’m there, but he’d care if I wasn’t.
I turn up “Midnight Sky” on the radio, and my foot bears down on the gas pedal again. I come up behind an eighteen-wheeler and swerve around it, my heart dropping. For some reason, I’m sure I’ll see a speed trap ahead. But there are no cars, no lights. I increase my speed, watching the needle climb, a grim smile on my lips.
