Motocross Me (3 page)

“Sundays. You should know that. You’ve been to enough of them.”

“I was a kid. I don’t even remember those days.” I can’t finish the last bite of my burrito, despite how much I desperately want it in my belly. It is
sooo
good.

Dad’s face falls. His mouth moves like he’s about to say something, but then Marty comes in and my dad switches back to Bossman Jim.

Eventually, I’m put to work. Dad emphasizes that today is crunch day and all my work needs to be done by five this evening when the campers start to arrive. Tomorrow is a series race and it’s more important than other races, he says. So important, in fact, that riders show up a day early to camp out to be first in line to practice the next morning. A whole area of the grass parking lot is wired with electricity for motor homes.

My first task is to make two hundred copies of the sign-in sheet and six-freaking-hundred copies of a waiver that each racer must sign. I pace the room for thirty minutes waiting for all of the papers to print.

Next on the list: assemble five boxes of plastic dirt bikes, sparkly poles and marble bases into trophies. They come with golden engraved plates with the track’s name on it. It isn’t exceptionally hard, but it isn’t very easy either. Dad comes in to check on me about a thousand times, and each time he tells me this crazy new bit of information: race day is tomorrow. Thanks, because I totally didn’t know that already.

As promised, Molly arrives at noon with another foil-wrapped set of meals for the staff. After we eat, Molly takes me on a ride in her pink golf cart and gives me a tour of the track. There are a lot of things about racing and owning a track that I don’t know, despite spending my childhood here.

Things like how the tall podium at the finish line is where the main flagger stands. All five colored flags mean something different, and the checkered winning flag is the only one I know. The white flag means there is one lap left in the race, and the green flag means the race had just started and is good to go. Yellow and black are the bad flags: yellow means the rider has to slow down because there is a fallen rider up ahead.

There are also flaggers stationed throughout the track who wave a yellow flag anytime someone crashes. Molly says, entirely too casually, that black means get off the track immediately. I can’t think of why they would ever need to use a black flag.

I notice something about Molly as she shows me around the track. It’s the same with my dad too; they both have a glow in their eyes when they talk about motocross, like it’s the single source of all their happiness. Motocross is in their blood. That means there’s a small amount of it in my blood too, and although I’m hot and bored and covered in sweat, I hope I find it.

I’m on my fourth Gatorade and I haven’t had to pee all day. The big thermometer on the outside of the tower reads just over a hundred degrees. Sweat rolls down my forehead and I swipe it away with my hand. The sweat is clear, but, I know that’s where all the Gatorade went. Gross.

I’m hanging a string of triangle banners along the driveway when a truck and a motorhome drive in through the main entrance. Molly goes up to the first truck and hands over her clipboard so they can sign the waiver. She directs them to the left of the parking area where the electrical hook-ups are. Dad had said the gates opened at five, but there’s no way it’s already that late. I still have yards of banners to hang, so it absolutely cannot be five o’clock already. I dig my phone out of my back pocket, wipe away the sweat on its screen and check the time.

Five fifteen. Dad will kill me. I rush to hang the next string of banners, holding it up to the wooden fence with my knee and pressing hard on the staple gun with both of my hands. It slips out of my grasp and slams me in the knee. I think I curse, but I’m in so much pain I can’t hear myself think or scream.

“Slow down, slow down.” Dad relieves me of the staple gun and continues where I left off. “See if Molly needs help with early registration and then you can quit for the day.”

“Thanks Dad,” I say, running to Molly before he can change his mind. Taking money and making people sign a clipboard has to be easier than continuing to fight with that staple gun.

Molly is still smiling when I get to her. Her face hasn’t changed from that brilliant smile in the four days I’ve been in Mixon. Maybe it’s some kind of new plastic surgery? I don’t know, but as weird as it is to see someone perpetually happy, it beats having Mom’s drunken, makeup stained face any day.

By now, the track entrance is lined with trucks and motorhomes, all of them with dirt bikes in the back. The next truck drives forward and Molly hands the clipboard to the driver. It’s a man, his wife and their three sons. He signs all of their names, hands Molly fifty dollars and drives away. Seems simple enough, if you know how to count by tens, a skill which I am lucky enough to have.

“Do you want some help?” I offer. I don’t mind if she wants me to stay, but I need a shower so bad I can almost feel the hot water splashing down my back. Or maybe that’s just the sweat. Ugh.

“No, but you could stay a bit and meet some of our friends. My best friend Maggie is two cars down. We both married motocross men! Can you believe how lucky we are?” She gushes like a teenager and hands the clipboard to the next person in line. They sign it, pay and drive off. The next truck is Maggie, who was almost as happy to meet me as Molly is on a daily basis. Her husband Joe is cute for an older guy. He asks how someone
as pretty as me
could have come from someone like my dad. I turn a deep shade of red.

A brand new – as in no official Texas license plates yet – Dodge Ram  with an RV hooked on it is next in line. It’s black, shiny and about five feet taller than me. Loud rap music blasts from the speakers, the bass sound system shaking so much I can feel it in my feet. Molly waves him through without making him pay or sign.

“Why doesn’t he have to pay?” I ask.

“He’ll pay. He can park first because there’s no way I’d be able to reach into that truck of his.” She rolls her eyes, frowning that sort of frown that looks like a smile.

We sign in a few more trucks and she introduces me to everyone. Most of them already know who I am before she announces me as Jim’s daughter. I’m not sure if it’s flattering or weird or just plain mean to be told how much I look like forty-year-old man.

The sun starts to creep down the horizon, but it’s still as hot as ever. I am soaking in sweat and wisps of my hair stick to my neck despite my ragged ponytail. My muscles have had all they can take today. I’m about to find Dad and ask for a four-wheeler ride back home when I hear footsteps behind us.

He’s tall with shaggy blond hair and muscular arms. He’s holding a twenty-dollar bill. He’s muscular. And he’s holding a twenty-wait, I already said that. My heart speeds up. My eyes go wide and then I try to stop them by squinting, which probably makes me look like I have a nervous twitch.

 I manage to step back and choke on my spit in the one millisecond it takes him to look at me from head to toe and then speak to my step-mom. He says something, but I have no idea what because I’m pretty sure I just died. I don’t know what to do with my hands,
oh God what should I do with my hands?
Shoving them in my pockets, I squint into the distance, as if there is something so amazingly important over there that it requires all of my attention.

“Trust me, I know it,” he says in a voice that was as sexy as his huge strong shoulders and charming blue eyes. Oh, wow. I’ve been watching Lifetime movies too much. “It’s just my dad and me today,” he says as he hands her money.

“Where’s Jackie?” Molly asks.

He takes the clipboard. “Visiting my grandparents. She may come up here tomorrow.” He signs it with his left hand. He’s a lefty just like me. Not that I’m paying attention or anything.

“Ryan, this is Hana.” Molly introduces us with a wave of her hand from him to me.

He gives me the look-over again and holds out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet Jim’s daughter.” He grins, showing teeth that are so impossibly white, they must have been bleached in some crazy cosmetic experiment. I mumble something in agreement and shake his hand, all while trying to keep my knees from buckling.

“Ryan’s one of the fastest guys around here,” Molly says.

Ryan rocks back on his heels. “
The
fastest, actually.”

“Oh? That’s cool…” I say, like some kind of lobotomized freak.

A drop of sweat rolls down my back. I’m standing in front of the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever met, in a pair of old shorts and a paint-stained shirt soaked in a gallon of sweat. Holy crap. I have to get out of here and save any bit of dignity I have left. Wanting to run, I excuse myself as ladylike as possible and then dash through the woods, over the bridge and into the house without looking back.

Dinner is delicious. I haven’t eaten food this good since Thanksgiving dinner with Grandma. And Grandma’s been dead longer than I care to remember. I load up my plate with Molly’s homemade macaroni and cheese, baked chicken and mashed potatoes. Working at the track all day drained all my energy. My stomach grumbles as though I can never eat enough food to satisfy it. But I’ll keep trying.

Dad doesn’t stop talking about me at the dinner table. He says everyone liked me, and that it’s great to have me around. He doesn’t even mention the banners I failed to hang in a timely manner.

“Honey, you’re officially part of the motocross family,” he says, putting down his fork, then grabbing my hand from across the table.

“You mean our family?” I ask with my mouth full of macaroni. I’m already plotting my maneuver to grab more of it from the large bowl on the counter.

“The motocross family is everyone. The riders, the workers, the spectators.” Dad points his fork in the air as he talks. “We’re all a part of the motocross family, and now you are too.”

I nod. Motocross family? That’s about the cheesiest thing I have ever heard. Motocross is just a sport, like soccer or baseball or underwater basket weaving and I’m pretty sure baseball families and soccer families didn’t exist. At least not in the way my dad is portraying motocross families. But he’s sitting here holding my hand like we’re on a Dr. Phil episode and he looks so proud, so I don’t say what I’m really thinking. I just smile back and say, “Yeah, that’s awesome.”

I shower until the hot water runs cold and then I plop into bed wishing I had skipped that third helping of macaroni. I’m exhausted from working today and mortified at meeting Ryan while looking like a deranged, smiling freak who hasn’t bathed in days.

As I lay in bed, I can see the lights from the track through my window. One of those lights belongs to Ryan, where he is prepping for the race tomorrow. Where he will inevitably see me again. And although he doesn’t know it yet, the next time he sees me, I won’t just be Hana, Jim’s daughter.

I’ll be Hana, Jim’s HOT daughter.

Chapter 4

I wake up before my alarm the next morning. That’s improvement number one from the old Hana way of life. I hadn’t slept much, but I’m still energized because it was the kind of sleepless night where you’re too excited to sleep. Ryan had filled my every thought while I stared at the ceiling as the early morning hours ticked by.

Today I will be confident and sexy, not the mumbling idiot I was yesterday. Ryan will trip over himself when he sees me again. I was never like his in Dallas. But Dallas boys were either book nerds or party nerds. I hate studying and I hate partying. But I’m okay with motocross. And muscles.

Motocross and Muscles. Now that should be a Lifetime movie.

Just yesterday I thought I would drop dead of exhaustion if I had to wake up this early, but now I couldn’t sleep longer if I had to. Last night I mentally tried on every outfit I had until I imagined the perfect ensemble that would make Ryan drool. I’m so glad I shoved that denim skirt into my bag when I left Mom’s house.

I stand in front of the big mirror in my closet with my eyes closed. When I finally get the courage to peek at the new skirt-wearing me, I open one eye first and then the other. It isn’t as bad as I’d imagined, save for my pale and unshaven legs. Hopefully Molly has an extra razor.

The skirt works on two levels. First of all, it’s the sort of thing guys love to see. Secondly, it will help with the humid and disgustingly hot weather I’ll be baking in today. So I swallow my doubt and try to push back my fear of showing skin in public. Again, Mom creeps into my mind. I am not becoming like her. I am not becoming like her.

No, I’m not.

I’m just improving the old me.

Downstairs, Molly has breakfast burritos waiting in the basket and, though they smell delicious, I know the butterflies in my stomach won’t let me eat today. She doesn’t hand me the coffee thermos today, but it isn’t because the staff finally realized how gross it is and quit. Apparently they had an industrial coffee maker installed in the score tower. Now my father and every other delusional coffee-lover will have all of the nastiness they can drink in record brew time.

My black Chucks are drenched from trudging through the dew-covered grass on the walk to the tower. A pair of rhinestone encrusted sandals would’ve made my outfit perfect, but I know I chose the correct shoes for a day of work.

 The people who camped out last night are parked so far away, I can only make out a black blob of what I think is Ryan’s truck. The white RV-shaped blob next to it has the lights on. That means not only is he awake – he’s probably shirtless. Today will be an amazing day. I look amazing. I know Ryan will look amazing. Laughing to myself, I climb the stairs. I don’t notice how the metal steps are slick with dew just like the grass until it’s too late.

My foot slips on the third step and I stumble forward, falling hard on the stairs in front of me. The basket of burritos tumbles over the arm rail and crashes in the dirt below. Tears come fast and I stop trying to scramble back up to my feet because every part of me hurts. My knees, my shins, my elbows. My face hurts the worst. The tears sting as they roll down my cheek. The door swings open.