The Outside Groove (12 page)

As the other drivers filed past, I looked around for the pit bleachers. I must've looked lost because the redhead Shark caught my eye and waved me over. “Which way are the pit bleachers?” I asked her.

“We'll get you there,” she said. “Name's Bernadette. Bernie. ” She cocked her arm back, giving me one of those swooping handshakes the guys at Flu High gave each other.

“I'm Casey.”

“This is Tammy,” Bernie said, gesturing to the girl in the tube top, who nodded and adjusted her top.

“And she's Tammy too,” Tube Top said, pointing at the girl in the pink T-shirt, who had most of her tar-black hair crammed inside a gray knit cap better suited to winter than to spring.

“We call her T.T.,” Bernie said. “Tammy Too, get it?” She held up two fingers. “Or Two.”

“Got it.”

A few drivers walking ahead of us glanced back and snickered, laughed, said things I couldn't quite hear.

“Dogs,” T.T. muttered. “Pig-dogs. This here is a pig-dog race.”

I'd never heard of a pig-dog before but figured, judging by how T.T. used the term, that maybe pig and dog were words she attached to things she didn't like.

“You been driving long, Casey?” Bernie said.

“Nah, I was just in one race.”

“One?” all three of them said.

“Yeah.” I shrugged. “Wrecked with five laps to go.” “Drag,” T.T. said.

“I was in last place anyway. Over in Fliverton.”

“You wreck it good?” Bernie said.

“Good enough to need the Hook.”

“Fricking stone,” T.T. said.

I looked at her. “Stone?”

“A saying we have around here,” Bernie said. “It means, like, rugged. Courageous.”

“So, why are you running down here in Byam?” Tammy said, adjusting her tube top again. “It's kind of a hike from Fliverton, isn't it?”

“I guess it is. But I want to run this enduro. It's a long race. Maybe I can learn something ... if I can stay in the thing.”

“Aren't you, like, freaking?” Tammy added.

Two drivers passed us, each kind of sneering at me. I waited for them to walk out of earshot. “I'm wicked nervous,” I said, “but not as bad as last race.”

“Stone,” T.T. repeated.

“That is pretty stone,” Bernie said. “You're the only girl driver we've ever seen here. We were surprised to see you strap in for practice.”

“I'm still a little surprised just to be here.”

Bernie nodded in a definitive way, as if she'd made some sort of judgment. “Well all right then,” she said.

T.T. jabbed a finger at the crowd of drivers gathering on the pit bleachers just ahead. “Run these skunk-pig-dogs,” she said, smacking me on the back. “Run 'em hard.”

“No guarantees,” I said. “I'm not very good at this.”

The Sharks slowed down, and as I drifted away from them, Bernie said, “Maybe not yet.”

***

The Corkum County Speedbowl drivers' meeting was almost identical to the Demon's Run meeting in content but completely opposite in tone. Mr. Ladd said he wanted his drivers to know that there would be teardowns if he suspected illegal car modifications but that he wasn't going to assume anyone was cheating. “You're a winner until we tear you down and discover otherwise,” was how he put it. He gave a spiel similar to Mr. Blodgett's about the bump-and-run and chopping, but he presented it more as a clarification of the rules. “And remember,” he added, “there are kids over there who look up to you as role models.” He pointed toward the grandstands. “As ridiculous as that sounds.” He smiled and a bunch of drivers laughed.

I turned around to look at some of the other drivers, but most seemed to look right through me. A couple dropped their smiles when our eyes met.

“Now get out there and raise some hell,” Mr. Ladd said and clapped his hands.

The bleachers shook as the drivers climbed down. I hung back, out of the stampede.

***

The Sharks were waiting for me after the drivers' meeting, and we walked back to my pit together. Every ten steps or so, a couple of other drivers passed by and smirked. Each time, the Sharks provided a name and a couple of tips on how I might race such a “pig-dog,” to use T.T.'s term.

The grandstand loudspeakers clicked as I reached Theo. “Drivers and race fans, we're ten minutes away from the start of the Corkum County Speedbowl spring streetstock enduro,” the announcer said. “Street-stock drivers, return to your pits at this time, please.”

Jim reached inside Theo and pulled out my helmet and the steering wheel. He handed me the helmet.

Uncle Harvey gestured for the Sharks to step back. “We're talking about an hour behind the wheel,” he said, “probably a little more.”

“Any last-minute strategies I should keep in mind?” Uncle Harvey shook his head and looked toward the track. “Take what the race brings you. Patience.” He clapped me on the back. “And keep turning left. ”

The field rolled around the track a few times behind the pace car, engine noise blocking out all other sound. We crossed over into pairs, and on the next lap, pulling up onto the high bank in turn two, the pace car accelerated and knifed its front end for the infield lane. Rounding turn three, I spotted the flagman down the front stretch leaning out, a green flag tucked under his arm. The announcer shouted something indecipherable. I took a few deep breaths and swallowed, my mouth salty with saliva the way it sometimes got after a grueling crosscountry run just before I puked in the grass. A film of sweat coated my face. In the next instant, the lead cars rounded turn four, the green flag unfurled, and seemingly every driver out there matted the gas. Theo lunged into the main straightaway.

The field of racers seemed satisfied to run two laps in position, maybe to settle into the race, but the column of cars had loosened by the third lap. Coming into the main straightaway, I saw space open up on the outside, so I cut over and edged up on two cars heading into turn one. Coming out of turn two, I'd passed one cleanly, probably on engine and tires alone: Theo was feeling downright spry. In the backstretch, I slid to the inside barely far ahead enough of car 12—a lemon yellow ride with black numbers and lettering for B
YAM
C
ENTRAL
B
EVERAGE
—to be innocent of chopping. I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw fifteen cars where, five seconds earlier, there'd been thirteen.

In turn one on the next lap, I drifted out and stayed high on the bank. I focused on getting to that line I'd driven during my practice run—the wide radius, the boundary between the shortest distance around and minimal resistance, the line that made the asphalt oval into the closest thing to a circle I could drive without flying off the race course. I had the line mapped out like this: In turn one, straddle the jellyfish-shaped oil spot. In turn two, run my right wheel over the tar blotch. Floor it. In turn three, run my left tire over the crack in the asphalt where a tuft of grass grew through. In turn four, trace with my right tire the smile of a skid mark midway up the bank. Stomp the gas. Exit speed.

I drove my line for a few laps. It was a good line, good enough, at least, to keep me from being passed. So I started thinking about being a passer.

Noticing the condition of car 03 ahead of me, a red metal box almost as stupid looking as Theo, with a banner in white paint for Y
ANDOW
P
LUMBING
& S
EPTIC
across the back end—but with few major dents—I considered the driver might've had some skills to keep his car looking so fresh. I got my right-front end up to his left-rear bumper and dogged him.

Car 03 didn't move much in the field, but in the turns I could tell he had a good line. I drove it with him for a couple of laps. Then I started to experiment. Drifting out from car 03,1 took a wider arc midway through the turns, searching for a spot where the line around the corner straightened out sooner, allowing me to pick up speed a nanosecond earlier. I remembered something I'd read in
Racing for Keeps
by Flip Brackey about how, when two cars are running at the same speed, one leading and one trailing, the trailing car that pulls outside won't pass the lead car unless the driver can improve overall lap speed. And faster lap speed, I'd learned, began with corner exit speed—those gains in time that multiplied down the straightaways by entering the straightaways a mile or two per hour faster.

I started trying to nail a more precise spot in the turns that'd shoot me into the straightaway sooner. I stayed just to the outside of car 03 coming into the straightaways. I picked up a little distance on him on every lap—not enough to take him, but enough to let him know I was there. I worked him, wore him down, haunted him like a green ghost.

And I remained patient. Five, six laps later, P
LUMBING
& S
EPTIC
car 03 and I were dead even. He wobbled slightly on the inside, as if nervous running door-to-door. Maybe this driver got tweaked by collisions, I considered—hence his relatively dent-free ride. But I tried not to race
him
so much as the course for the next few laps, hugging my line, my better line. I just drove it and drove it and drove it.

Five more laps, gaining a foot or so every trip around the oval, and I had this kid. We came out of turn four on lap thirty-two and into the straightaway, and I just glided on over across car 03's front end, feeling him lift as I ripped the inside up the front stretch.

In turn one again, now running with no one beside me, I pushed Theo to see how he was holding up. His tires still gripped tightly, and he was still responsive to the steering. Then I thought about how
I
was holding up. Although I was soaked with sweat, the adrenaline rushing through my body wasn't messing with my stomach the way it had at the start of the race. I felt pretty good. No, better than good. I was genuinely having fun.

So I drove my line—jellyfish, tar blotch, tuft of grass, smiley skid—watched my mirror, and felt for the slightest push in my tires settling in the corners. Car 03 stayed close, and a black Mustang with a number 88 painted in neon yellow pulled up even with him, but no one was blowing my doors off. No, one thing was obvious: I could maintain speed. I wasn't in anyone's way. I could race these guys.

The sun came out another ten laps or so later, throwing a glare across Theo's hood, stinging my eyes. I almost wanted to shut them and go to sleep. That's when I understood, in a way that I never had as a Demon's Run spectator, the nature of an enduro. The race was about half over, and, never mind Theo's tires or engine, I wondered if
I'd
endure to the end.

I was startled by a cloud of dust and smoke swirling in the turn ahead. Three cars tangled and spun down the banked corner, tumbling to the inside lane. One of them rolled backward into the infield. I looked in my mirror and found room on the outside, but not much. I slid over. Car 03 slid with me but not car 88, coming up on car 03's outside. He must've seen what I was trying to do because he chopped car 03 out of the way and kept moving down the track until he tapped me with his door. I mashed back against him as we went into turn one together. He slapped me back, trying to nudge me into the carnage clogging the inside lane, but I didn't let him. I slammed back even harder, accelerating in the turn. I felt my tires sliding across asphalt but car 88 holding me in place. As I passed the wreck, I yanked the steering wheel to the left and plunged into the straightaway. Exit speed.

I flew down the stretch and looked in my rearview mirror. A couple of cars that'd been ahead of me, but running on the inside lane where the three-car wreck settled, were now part of the mess. Car 88 was trying to take me on the inside, and I gave him some room there, knowing my best line was in the outside groove. When car 88 rapped me, I absorbed the blow and pushed back. Lifted in the turns. Feathered the throttle. Exiting the turns, I worked Theo for all he had. I lost track of time. Felt faint. Raced on.

Another rap on the driver's-side door from car 88 heading into turn one and I was through playing tag with this guy. I drifted out high on the banked turn heading to turn two and accelerated a second earlier than usual toward the straightaway. Car 88 tracked me with his front end on my tail. I looked in the mirror and assessed his position, concluding that he hadn't come up far enough on me to be technically passing. Car 88 was sticking his nose where it didn't belong. I told him so in the only way I could: I cranked the wheel left and forced him to lift—not a chop, more like rolling up a huge metal newspaper and threatening to slap him on the nose with it.

A swell of cheers from the grandstands and the announcer's manic shouting drew my attention to the flagman leaning out over the track. He waved the checkered flag as a column of cars—fifteen in all—sailed underneath it. The sixteenth car was mine. I'd done it. I'd endured.

***

As I pulled into the pits, Uncle Harvey gave me a gaptoothed smile and a thumbs-up. I rolled into my slot and killed the engine. Even with the engine off, I felt like I was vibrating, the adrenaline still surging. Jim walked over to my window, and I took off my gloves and helmet and handed them to him. Then I yanked off the steering wheel and set it aside. I got out of the car and hopped down onto the grass, grabbing Jim's shoulder as my knees buckled.

“You OK?” he said.

“I feel like I just ran a marathon.”

Uncle Harvey clapped his hands, then gestured with a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the track. “Now that was a good, clean race. I notice you picked up a few positions by staying out of that wreck. There's a trick to file away for future reference.”

I looked at Jim, detecting the trace of a smile. “Shoot,” he grumbled a second later, glancing down the pits.

The Sharks approached, ignoring the eyes watching them pass. I had to admit, the sight of them walking together was hard not to give a second glance—something about the cool attitude they affected in their strange uniform, a uniform that announced to the world that they didn't care how they looked to others. Sure, they wanted people to look at them, and they seemed to gain power by ignoring the attention.