The Outside Groove (21 page)

“I won't do any more interviews,” I said, still staring into Mom's eyes. “But I put the license money down. I earned that money, and I should be able to spend it however I want.”

Big Daddy opened a beer. “Sorry, Casey.”

“Oh, Wade,” Mom interrupted, pulling her hand from my arm and drawing it to her temple. “She said she won't do any more interviews. Let her race.”

And as quickly as she said it, she stood and walked into the kitchen, where she ran the faucet.

Big Daddy shook his head in that way that didn't say no but, rather, asked,
What did I do to deserve this
? “Fine,” he grumbled and took a hearty gulp of beer.

For a few moments, no one said anything. I knew my next move was to trade my media blackout for some honest talk about Uncle Harvey, but it seemed that the time to play that card had already passed on this occasion. I also feared—no, was certain—that Big Daddy would've insisted that I stop racing in exchange. And, despite the fact that his namesake won another Thundermaker feature that day, he wasn't in the best mood, though he was a touch less cranky than he'd been when I came in from the garage. I couldn't take the risk. When I dropped the Uncle Harvey grenade, he needed to be wearing a few more coats of protective certainty about his son's professional racing future.

“Anyway, you're in the Road Warriors,” he said in a tone that suggested he was rationalizing his leniency toward me—as if Dale, Larry, Kirby, and I went wheeling around the track on tricycles.

I ignored the comment and watched Mom moving around the kitchen, marveling at the notion that she also had cards to play in this crazy game. And, unless I'd misread this situation, the fact that I was still a racecar driver owed something to her having just played a big

If my grabbing headlines was Big Daddy's concern, he must've rested easy for the next three Sundays. He definitely had nothing to worry about on my first race after winning the Road Warrior trophy. That run, on June sixth, shaped up to be a “respect race,” just as Uncle Harvey had predicted. Every Road Warrior driver on the track seemed determined to see me finish dead last—if at all. And those black DQ flags must've gotten lost in the Demon's Run laundry because there were no apparent limits to how hard drivers could bump me, how annoyingly they could block me, or how obscenely they could gesture to me on the caution laps. Three specific incidents robbed me of any hope at a decent finish: 1) when Parker Hurley, driving the black-on-gold car 19 sponsored by W
EE
W
UNS
D
AYCARE
, cranked my rear bumper down onto my right rear tire, causing the metal to smoke the rubber—and sending me to the pits; 2) when Kirby Mungeon rode me into the Widowmaker so hard that I practically bounced into turn one and over the bank; and 3) after I drove through the middle of a two-car wreck, catching one of the car's rear bumper hard enough to pop Theo's hood right open. Just seeing the checkered flag waving over my ride—wherever in the lineup I finished—was a victory of sorts.

Fletcher walked past my pit that day as Jim, the Sharks, and I were removing the duct tape that we'd used to fasten the hood down so I could finish the race, but I didn't say anything to him. Didn't even look up. Tried to look too busy. He seemed about to speak but, hearing Bean give the Thundermakers their ten-minute warning, kept moving along.

The next two races worked out better, especially the one on June 13, since, after I'd stunk up the track the previous week, the handicapping system sent me onto the racecourse in the sweet seventh position. I avoided all the accidents that day and took a respectable fourth.

Fletcher called me on my phone that afternoon, after the Thundermaker feature, but I didn't pick up.

I wasn't exactly taking the racing world by storm, but I was getting quality “seat time,” as Uncle Harvey had put it. And my crew seemed to be learning a lot along the way. Just watching the Sharks climb out of Bernie's Toyota on a Sunday afternoon, I could tell they meant business. T.T. especially was getting into the short-track racing scene. She'd started bringing a stopwatch to the races and timing my practice laps to see how I ran on lines high in the turns, low in the turns, and compared to the good movers in the field. Turns out math wasn't her worst subject either.

On the third Sunday, June 20,1 started toward the back of the pack and more or less stayed there—“took what the race brought me,” as Uncle Harvey always advised. And what the race brought me was nothing special. No wrecks. No dramatic, come-from-behind victory. No trophy.

Nevertheless, my mediocre racing ability had impressed someone. As I handed Tammy my helmet and Bernie my steering wheel and climbed out of Theo that third Sunday, I spotted two girls—maybe ten or eleven years old—waving at me over by the pit gate. The girls had pens and race programs in their hands. I took a few swigs of water from the bottle T.T. tossed me and walked over. Some junior high school kids were performing bicycle tricks out on the track, but back in the pits, I still felt like all eyes were on me. I strode as calmly as I could over to the gate and did something I never, not in a million years, imagined I'd do: signed autographs. The whole exchange seemed surreal, and as I watched the girls walk away, I felt dizzy. I also failed to notice Fletcher approaching.

“Hey,” he said, startling me.

I pretended I didn't recognize him and started walking back to the wrecker.

“Can we talk?” he said, following.

I said nothing as I watched Jim and the Sharks load Theo onto the flatbed.

“I want to know what I did wrong,” Fletcher said.

I caught the Sharks watching me, their expressions hidden behind sunglasses. “You didn't do anything wrong,” I said. “You just did what you were told.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“You didn't have to ask me to the prom,” I said.

“I wanted to,” Fletcher said. “Really.”

Bean's microphone clicked on: “And not to take away from the incredible feats of these kids on their bicycles, but at this time I'll give the Thundermaker ten-minute warning. Ten minutes, Thundermaker Sportsmen, until your feature. To your pits at this time, please. ”

“Coffee break's over, Fletcher,” I said.

“Casey, I wanted to ask you to the prom. That's why I asked you.”

“Whatever. I'm over it. You better get going. Looks like Wade may have some further instructions for you.”

Fletcher gave me a puzzled look. “Further instructions?”

From down in Wade's pit, Lonnie waved to Fletcher and gestured to his wristwatch.

Fletcher held up one finger—the universal sign for
Give me one more minute.
He stared at me. “I don't get this.”

“No,” I said. “You don't.”

Fletcher shook his head.

I didn't say anything else. I just watched Jim haul my ride away, watched the Sharks watching me, hanging close in case I needed them, and listened to Fletcher walk away.

***

Instead of going straight home, I decided to stay and watch the Thundermakers. I'm not sure what compelled me, but I guess I'd begun to feel more a part of the whole Demon's Run scene in recent weeks, so I walked out through the gate and in front of the grandstands, my firesuit on but unzipped nearly to the waist like I'd seen some of the other racers wear them after a race. More or less complete strangers waved to me and gave me the thumbs-up. I made it about two sections of bleachers along the main straightaway before Bean spotted me. The loudspeakers clicked on:

“Looks like Casey LaPlante, we'll call her your Road Warrior Princess, has come out to greet her subjects. How about a wave for the little people, Casey?”

A few people laughed at Bean's comment, astoundingly enough. I'd already learned that, out there at Demon's Run, it was pointless to try and hide from Bean, so I faked a smile and waved in the general direction of the announcer's booth. Then I turned and headed back to the pits.

I sat in the pit bleachers along with a few dozen crewmembers from Thundermaker teams and watched the big boys run their feature. I had to admit, the roar of those eight-cylinder engines got a person's attention, and the way the Thundermakers instantly accelerated and decelerated as the pace car took them around the track at top speed gave the impression of jungle cats, maybe cheetahs, tearing into the earth on the hunt. The more closely I watched the cars prowling the oval, I figured they were probably accelerating and braking, accelerating and braking. Otherwise, there'd be no way they could speed up and slow down as quickly as they did. I was tempted to ask one of the crewmembers if I was correct in that assumption, but I was struck by just how serious everyone looked there in our little stand of bleachers.

Two laps later, the Thundermakers crossed over in the backstretch and got ready to run. Wade, the unchallenged leader so far in the season, started at the very back of the field, in a position Bean called “shotgun,” for some reason. It'd been a couple of years since I'd seen Wade race, and even then, I hadn't paid much attention to him. On that particular June day, though, I went to school on his driving technique. He was good. No, not good—gifted.

To be brutally honest, I'd have preferred not to give my brother credit for anything at that point in our lives, but to see him on the racecourse stirred a strange sense of family pride. I'd have sworn that every single car out there, from the car right in front of Wade at the back of the pack to the car in the pole position, drove as if aware of Wade's presence. When the green flag dropped, he toasted the first four cars in front of him like they'd been stuck in first gear.

Two laps in, and I could see him running his line in the turns. All around the track, he kept his front end right up close to the car in front of him, just to the point of bumping. He claimed whatever asphalt he wanted with each yank of the wheel, slipping like mercury through traffic, the other drivers backing away from the poison.

I watched him, mesmerized, as he untangled the field and tossed his competitors aside. As he held second place in the last five laps, I could almost sense him grinding down the lead car, Johnny Savard's W
ILLOW
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IVER
I
NN
car 11. Wade waited until the white-flag lap to make his move, as though he'd been toying with Savard. The fans rose to their feet.

As Wade sailed underneath the checkered flag, a solid car length on Savard, I found myself on my feet too. I couldn't help it. While I hadn't been paying close enough attention to Wade's racing career to have watched his progress, I was genuinely impressed by his skill. And it dawned on me in an instant how he got to be so good: by focusing on nothing else but racing.

I climbed down from the bleachers and headed back out to the grandstands to catch a lift home with Mom. Passing through the concession area, I heard my name uttered in a woman's voice. I didn't look, but a few steps farther, I heard someone else, this time a guy, say my name. “She's my new favorite,” someone else, a young girl, said. “She kicks butt.”

I won't deny that hearing a compliment brought a smile to my face, but having just seen Wade do his thing, I knew I was still a complete rookie. Or maybe he really was ready for the Circuit.

The big news at the post-race party that afternoon was that Big Daddy finally got a call from a Circuit team scout who'd heard about Wade and wanted to see him race. In fact, that phone conversation was the only thing anyone talked about. It got so boring that the Sharks couldn't stand it. They left after an hour or so, and I headed upstairs to my room.

I booted up my computer and hit the Cray College website. I clicked through pages, imagining myself in each scenario: peering through a state-of-the-art telescope; strolling through fallen leaves with a look of philosophical contemplation on my face, hands clasped in the muffler pocket of my Cray College sweatshirt. The fantasy images seemed so real, more real than they'd ever seemed, that I opened my desk drawer and retrieved my acceptance letter just to be sure. I pulled the letter out and laid it on my desk, using my pencil cup and cell phone as paperweights. Here and there a smudge marred the fine paper, which was understandable, since I'd handled the document more than Jefferson must have handled the Declaration of Independence.
Congratulations
...I was in. I was really in.

I was going. Leaving. And not turning back.

But did anyone really care? Sure, people knew me a little differently than they had before I started racing, but instead of being “Wade LaPlante's little sister,” wasn't I just “Wade LaPlante's little sister who drives in the lowly Road Warrior division”? I'd made Big Daddy nervous for a few days. That was fun. The first night Vin Coates came up, I'd stolen Wade's media spotlight for a few minutes, something I'd never even thought possible. Still, as I sat in my room and listened to the party going on down in the driveway, laughs and indecipherable conversation mixing in a murmur of voices, I was nagged by the feeling that whatever I'd been chasing the first time I took Theo out onto the Demon's Run racecourse wasn't something I could catch out there. I definitely caught something, namely a nasty case of short-track racing fever, but not even my two shiny trophies glimmering among a dozen cross-country ribbons and that nice “coach's award” plaque Coach Meserole gave me at the fall awards banquet seemed to add up to much. I didn't need any more trophies or ribbons. I needed answers.

One by one, Wade's crewmembers took off in their muscle cars, the barking mufflers fading down the hill of Meadow Ridge Road and winding up again as the guys blasted off. When my window was a slate-gray shade of dusk, and the driveway was silent, I walked downstairs.

Big Daddy and Mom sat at the dining room table, Big Daddy with a can of beer and a folder full of papers in front of him, Mom with a glass of iced tea and a catalog. She smiled as I sat down next to her.