Overdrive (2 page)

TIM CARHARDT SAT
in the bank security office thinking he had royally messed up his chances at a new life. He was sure the police would come and take him away and he’d get sent to a reform school in Florida. He had stolen a key from a letter addressed to his distant cousin Tyson Slade. That was his crime—he was trying to look at what was inside a safe-deposit box at this North Carolina bank. But the bank had stopped the whole process and made him sit here.

The security guard (his shirt pocket said
Stout
) sat on the edge of the desk, his arms crossed like a gargoyle on one of those old castles in a horror movie.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Tim said. “That’s my dad’s stuff in the box.”

Mr. Stout didn’t say anything, but when Tim got up, he blocked his exit and Tim just rolled his eyes and sat again.

A guy in a suit approached the room along with Mrs. Maxwell, a worried look on her face. She asked questions and interrupted the guy, then dialed her cell phone.

Great,
Tim thought.
Now she’s calling Dale. Or maybe she’s calling for a bus to ship me out of here.

Tim hated the fact that he’d let the Maxwells down. He hated that he’d caused them trouble. He wanted to crawl away somewhere and die, like an old dog.

Kellen, the youngest Maxwell, walked up to the door and pressed his nose against the glass, cupping his hands around his eyes so he could see inside. He smiled and waved when he saw Tim.

Tim nodded, then looked at the floor. He felt like a criminal, and the voices of Tyson Slade and his wife, Vera, returned. “What would your daddy think?” Vera had said when he’d busted the mailbox of a neighbor.

The door finally opened and Mrs. Maxwell entered. The guard left and closed the door, with Kellen still outside.

“You okay?” she said.

He nodded, looking away.

“We were worried when you didn’t come back.”

“Got tied up here. I thought I could make it in time, but it took me a while to find the place, and then they kept me here.”

“You want to tell me about it?” Mrs. Maxwell said.

“Not much to tell. Tyson got a letter with a key in it, and it said some of my dad’s stuff was in a box here. I just wanted to see what was in it.”

“Does Tyson know you have the key?” she said.

Tim shook his head. “I kind of intercepted it.”

Mrs. Maxwell’s cell phone vibrated, and she stepped outside.

Tim looked out the window toward the street and imagined squeezing through and running down an alley. He’d let his mind go like that in stressful situations—especially in school in Florida. The teacher would talk about some complicated problem or people would tease him about sitting at the back of the class, and he’d close his eyes and tear an engine apart or ride with his dad or go through prerace motions at a track. He could spend an hour going through those memories or following the initial spark of the engine switches all the way through the process of making a car come to life.

“Tim?”

At that moment he was scaling a brick wall at the back of an alley, trying to find a way over. He opened his eyes and saw Mrs. Maxwell.

“How are you doing?” she said.

He stood. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

The bank guy with the suit was behind her. “Mrs.
Maxwell has explained everything and you’re free to go. I’m sorry to hear about your father.”

Tim’s eyes darted between the two of them. He wanted to ask about the key and the box, but he figured getting out of here was enough right now.

The security guy, Stout, stood back with his arms at his sides. When Tim passed, he nodded, as if he was trying to say,
Sorry about all that happened to you, buddy.

Kellen ran up to Tim as they left the bank. “I’ll show you where we parked.”

JAMIE LOVED RACING XBOX
and PlayStation video games, but the race simulator (known as the RS 43) was more advanced than anything she’d ever played. The RS would let her choose any track in the country that featured cup races and some that didn’t. Charlotte looked and felt like Charlotte. Talladega and Daytona were the favorite choices of just about all the students because there were no restrictor plates here—on the straightaway, Jamie had gone 234.

This morning she chose Pocono because that was her dad’s next race. She punched in the right series of numbers and watched the familiar tri-oval, 2.5-mile track appear on the screen. There was the tunnel. The short shoot. The front stretch. And, of course, the long pond. It was one of the oddest-shaped tracks in NASCAR but one of her
favorites. She loved looking at the surrounding woods and snow fences.

Jamie loved going to Pocono with the family. It was usually right after school let out, and she and Kellen and her mom would drive through Virginia, Maryland, and into Pennsylvania. It was a gorgeous trip with all the trees and flowers so green, and since their dad was usually already there, they’d stretch the nine-hour drive into two days of shopping (which irritated Kellen). They’d find quaint shops along the way and an outlet mall or two, then spend the night at some lodge with moose heads on the walls.

Kellen always insisted on naming the heads and said hello as they went through the lobby. “See you, Billy Bob,” he’d say. “Have a good night, Beauregard.”

The front desk workers smiled, which only made it worse.

Now, sitting in the simulator, the Pocono track laid out in front of her, she couldn’t help smiling too. She missed her family. She missed home, though she didn’t miss the last days of school. She had finished all those tests and assignments like she’d promised, and her senior year was staring her in the face, but that seemed like a million years away with the summer just beginning.

She chose the test-drive function of the simulator
and drove out of the pits, shifting through the gears and getting up to speed. She took it easy the first time around, then hit the accelerator as she turned onto the front stretch and passed the start line. You could really get the speed up on this mile-long stretch, but if you didn’t slow down for turn one, you were toast.

Jamie drove two laps before checking her best lap times against the other drivers in the school. She was fourth at the moment, but her competitive juices made her start again, and she didn’t stop until her initials were at the top of the list.

When she went into race mode, racing against the familiar cars of current drivers, things were a lot different. She had to maneuver to the directions of an electronic spotter who told her when she was clear. Every now and then, something would happen with the simulator that surprised her. A deer would jump onto the track or a spectator with her name painted on his chest would climb to the top of the flag stand and wave. The simulator tried to make drivers concentrate on everything but the race, and she had driven long enough to know that she had to narrow her focus to a pinpoint and keep it there the whole race.

But the simulator didn’t just gauge how fast you could go or how many cars you could pass. It also studied reflexes of a crash ahead, how fast you noticed a rising temperature needle or a needed wedge
adjustment, whether you could drive the correct speed in the pit areas, and more. Bud and the other teachers received printouts of each session, so there was no playing around. If they caught you burning the tires or driving through the infield, you were gone. That had happened early on to a couple of the guys who thought the RS 43 was a toy. In fact, most students had already been cut.

“This is how it goes in a race,” Bud had said. “Just like life. You look around after a few laps, and some cars are back at the garage. It’ll be the same here.”

Of all the NASCAR tracks on the simulator, the one Jamie returned to each session was Denver. They called it the Mile-High Double Mile because the track was just over two miles, and Denver was at 5,280 feet above sea level. The track wasn’t very old, but it had already been the sight of some great races. She loved the mountains in the distance, the extreme banking that was even steeper than Daytona or Talladega, and the thin air. She dreamed about racing there one day.

In her qualifying heats, she had come close to the real track record of just over 201 mph. That made her feel like she could hang in with the best drivers.

When her session was over, she checked her times against the other class members and saw she was slightly ahead of someone with the initials
C.D
. She
went through the list of people and couldn’t remember anyone with those initials, then climbed out of the simulator to let the next person in.

Kurt Shibley, a cute guy without the swagger and the attitude of some others, was waiting. “How’d you do today?”

“Blistering at Bristol,” she said. “Still need some work on the turns at Darlington.”

“Sonoma has me bamboozled,” Kurt said.

“Oh, Watkins Glen—don’t even talk about it.” Jamie laughed. “Hey, do you know anybody with the initials
C.D.
?”

Kurt shook his head.

“You two gonna gab all day or are you going to race?” Bud said. “Get to the gym, Maxwell. Trainer’s waiting. And you step inside the cockpit, Shibley.”

Kurt nodded to Jamie. “I’ll check on those initials. Want to talk over dinner?”

“Deal.”

ON THE DAY SCHOOL ENDED
Tim was cleaning out his locker when Cassie Strower, Jamie’s best friend, caught up to him in the hallway. Cassie was pretty but not in a drop-dead gorgeous, cheerleader, and makeup kind of way. She had a great smile and a clean, fresh look that made Tim feel like he needed to take a bath every time he saw her. She had shoulder-length hair that she kept pulling behind one ear.

“Missed you at youth group last week,” Cassie said, dipping her head and smiling. She had white teeth too. Looked like she’d never had a cavity in her life.

“Yeah, I kind of got hung up last Wednesday.”

“What happened?”

Tim crumpled some papers in the bottom of the locker—tests with lots
of red ink on them. “Nothing. Just trying to clear the decks of some junky stuff from my past.”

“Really? Like what? I’m interested.”

He tossed the crumpled mass toward a trash can, and it bounced off the rim. So much for trying to impress a girl. “There’s something of my dad’s at this bank, and when I tried to see what it was, they told me I couldn’t.”

“That’s awful,” Cassie said. “Can’t the Maxwells help you?”

“They tried, but basically Mr. Maxwell said I need to talk with the guy down in Florida I used to live with, and I’m not going for that. Mr. Maxwell talked with the bank and some lawyer guy, I guess.”

“What do you think is in the box?”

“I don’t have any idea,” Tim said. “Maybe I’ll never know.”

“Well, it’s something we can pray about.”

Tim found a textbook wedged in the back of the locker. “I don’t think God cares much about a kid who steals stuff. Know what I mean?”

Cassie bit her lower lip, and her eyes seemed to bore right through him. “There’s a verse in the Psalms that’s one of my favorites. It says, ‘The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed.’ Not that I think you’re crushed or anything, but I can tell losing your dad really hurt. I’ve been praying for you.”

Tim just stared at her like a deer on a Ferris wheel, wondering what to do or say. She had no idea what had happened to him at churches—the good and the bad. She had no idea how much he hurt every night thinking about his dad. Living at the Maxwells’ house made it easier in some ways but harder in others. Harder because as much as they were good to him, he knew he didn’t really belong.

He slammed his locker. “Thanks.” It was all he could think of to say.

“Have you heard anything from Jamie lately?” Cassie said.

Another sore subject. Tim felt like a fifth wheel near girls in general, and with Jamie he was wheels five and six. “She’s still at that driving school and doing okay. Her mom said if everything goes well she’ll be there until the middle of July when they have the last race.” He paused. “Look—I need to get this book back to my English teacher.”

“Sure. See you tonight?”

Tim shrugged and walked away.