by Claire Adams
“Okay,” she says.
She slows down immediately, and I give her directions to the quickest route from where we are.
We drive Ghost Town end to end and then circle the perimeter. It’s not a big area, but with all those places to hide, it’s good to be sure the fuzz isn’t just stashing themselves behind something.
Finally, I tell Kate to pull over next to the curb.
“Okay,” I tell her. “The first part of the lesson was going to be double-clutching. It doesn’t have anything really to do with cornering, but it’s one of those things you’ll want to get used to doing.”
“What’s the next part?”
“You know the word ‘apex,’ right?” I ask. “You read books.”
“I do read books,” she chortles. “Yeah, the apex is the peak, the point at the top of an angle.”
“I have no idea what you just said,” I tease.
She playfully smacks me on the leg. “Come on, I want to learn to be a big bad racer, too.”
“The goal when you’re going around the corner is to get as close to the inside curb as you can without hitting it. You're trying to cut the corner as closely as you can so you don’t lose too much speed. You’ll want to go a little wide before the turn in so you’re not at too sharp an angle. Is that making sense?”
“I think so,” she says. “Get as close to the inside of the turn as possible without running over anything. To do that, I’ll need a wider angle of entry, so the inertia doesn’t throw the car off the road and into a building when I take a corner at speed.”
“Still don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tease. “Let’s do a four block square. Head up two blocks, take a right, go two blocks, take another right… They’re industrial blocks, so you’ll have more than enough space to play with the speed a bit. Not too much, though.”
“All right,” she says. “How fast should I be going when I make the turn?”
“As long as you’re all the way in the left lane before you turn, I’d say we can start you off at twenty-”
Her foot’s on the floor, the gas pedal buried somewhere in the carpeting beneath it. It may not have the raw power of the Chevelle, but it puts my head against the headrest for a few seconds.
“Ready?” she asks.
“Tap the brakes and slow down before you try to take a curve,” I tell her, looking at the speedometer as it passes fifty.
Her foot comes off the gas, and she does exactly what I told her to do, pumping the brakes, except she only slows down to thirty-five before jerking the wheel hard to the right. We’re going too fast, though, her turn too sharp and too late so the car understeers and Kate’s slamming on the brake pedal to keep “inertia from throwing us into a building.”
We come out of it, though we’re only doing about five before Kate’s ready to put her foot on the gas again.
“That’s called understeering,” I tell her. “You turn the front wheels, but the car just keeps going straight. It happens on front-wheel-drive vehicles.”
“Okay,” she says. “I’m assuming if there’s understeering, there’s oversteering. What’s that? Is that a rear-wheel-drive thing?”
“Yep. With oversteering, the back tires lose traction, so the tail swings out. There is an upper limit on how fast you can take a corner. It changes depending on what you’re driving and your skill level and all that, but too fast is going to be too fast in almost anything you drive.”
“Okay,” she says. “Let me try again, then.”
She starts going again, this time getting the car up to fifty-five.
I tell her, “You’re going too fast.”
“I’ve got to learn how to slow down for the turns, too,” she says.
I’m saying, “Yeah, but I was going to go over that after you’d gotten used to them at slower-” when she takes another turn.
It feels like it’s way too early, but her angle is good going into the corner. We come out a little wide on the other side, but all in all, it’s a pretty drastic improvement.
As soon as Kate’s got the car evened out, she cries, “Woo!” She says, “Yeah, I figured you were trying to take me through the lesson piece by piece, but you forget: I’m a quick study.”
“A little early,” I tell her. “It made you come in a bit too shallow, but it was a lot better.”
“Good,” she says, “now we can speed it up.” Without another word, her foot’s hard down on the gas and we’re passing sixty.
“Kate?” I’m asking, then I’m shouting, “Kate!” as her foot doesn’t even touch the brake when she takes the corner.
We go up the far curb, and she wrenches the wheel to the right, getting us back on the road, but causing the car to spin halfway around before coming to a shrieking halt.
“You’ve got to slow it-” I start, but she flips the car around and starts going again.
“I haven’t done the full lap yet,” she says. I’m just hanging onto anything I can, certain this isn’t going to end well.
She gets going about sixty-five, but she goes wide, braking early and turning almost right where she needs to. We’re entering the corner a little slower than the last one, but Kate is almost at the apex, and we come out the other side clean.
“Pull over a minute?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says. “You’re the boss, boss.”
I open my door half a second before the car has come to a complete stop, and I climb out onto the pavement, crawling my way toward the curb the way a shipwrecked sailor would crawl to shore.
Once my hand falls on the curb, I lift myself up enough to turn and sit, my head between my knees as I breathe heavily.
Kate slowly gets out of the car and makes her way over to me, sitting down by my side.
“Was I that bad?”
“No, actually,” I tell her. “You’re a lot braver than I thought, though. And, I already knew you were brave.”
She’s looking at the ground. “I know I should have listened and slowed it down before that last corner, but I wanted to feel what it’s like when it’s going wrong, you know? That’s how I learn: I test things, push limits,” she mutters. “It’s never sounded like an exciting concept before because I’m usually pushing the limits of how much I can get done for other people in a given day. That’s what was going through my head, anyway.”
“Honestly,” I tell her. “You were pretty great. You scared the crap out of me on the first three turns, but that last one was perfect. If you can keep that up, you’re going to have it mastered in no time.”
She looks over at me. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “You’re a natural. One thing, though.”
“What’s that?” she asks, her voice much brighter now.
“Before I get back in that car, promise me you’ve found the limit and you’re ready to start doing it the way you did that last corner,” I answer.
She sighs.
“You’ve got to give me a buffer zone,” she says.
“What do you mean?”
She answers, “If you say go in at thirty, you’ve got to at least give me some leeway. I may not be able to get it right on. I’m thinking ten miles per hour. So if you’re telling me thirty, you’ve got to let me do forty.”
“What’s to stop me from telling you twenty so you’ll only do thirty?”
“Yeah, I’m going to have to be able to go at least forty,” she says. “I haven’t found the edge yet between too much and too little, I’ve just flown past it and come up a little short.”
People say this all the time, but this woman may quite literally be the death of me.
For whatever reason, that only makes me want her more.
Chapter Nine
The Girl from [who drove to] the Wrong Side of the Tracks
Kate
It’s not the easiest thing in the world to admit, but my parents were right about one thing: something has been changing in me.
When I’m at work, I don’t just quietly make my way from one place to
another, dropping what I’m doing whenever someone wants me to do them a favor anymore. I’m still a little ways from full-on assertive, but it feels good to feel confident about myself for once.
Over the last few days, I haven’t seen too much of Eli. Every chance I get, I’ve been heading out to Ghost Town to practice taking corners.
There’s a rattling sound that’s developed since I went over the curb the last time, and I’m pretty sure my power steering is starting to go. Good thing I have a mechanic for a boyfriend.
I’ll give him a call in a little while, but for now, I’ve got an hour before I have to get to work.
If anyone saw me out here, I doubt they’d take me seriously. After all, I am a twenty-year-old candy striper racing around a deserted part of town in a completely unmodified economy car at nine o’clock in the morning.
I really couldn’t care less.
There’s freedom in this. It’s not a chaotic freedom, though. It’s incredibly structured. There is chaos there, but with the right approach, it can be more or less negated.
I’m still in town at the moment, so for now, I keep my speed within the limit. I’m the most courteous driver on the road, and that just makes what’s coming that much sweeter.
When I finally reach the edge of town, I keep my speed conservative until the car behind me turns off and, before they’ve completed the turn, I’m passing fifty on the thirty-mile-per-hour street.
A few seconds later, I’m pushing seventy-five, Ghost Town growing ever larger as I’m driving. By the time I get to Ghost Town proper, I’m keeping steady at ninety.
I’m just beginning to ease off the throttle when an unexpected sound jolts me out of my senses.
It’s a siren.
“Oh no,” I mutter, looking in the rearview mirror at the police cruiser directly behind me. “Oh no, oh no,” I repeat. I got so caught up in the thrill, I forgot to watch for cops.
There’s an instant there where I’m looking down at my speedometer and then looking over what I can see of Ghost Town. In that moment, I’m even checking for gaps in the fences for me to get through.
I’m already doing ninety. How long is he going to keep up with me after I start ducking in and out of warehouses and parking lots?
That instant passes in, well, an instant, though and I press down on the brake pedal, easing the car all the way from ninety to zero. I put the car in park.
I’m expecting the usual slow walk up, but as soon as the officer’s car is stopped behind me, he’s out with his gun drawn, using his car door as a shield, shouting, “Turn the car off and toss your keys out the window! Do it now!”
Oh my God.
“Do it now!” he shouts again.
I roll down the window and then turn the car off, throwing the keys out the window as instructed, just hoping the officer behind me has decent self-control.
“Put your hands out the window where I can see them!” the officer shouts. “Do not move!”
I put my hands out the window, wondering if I should be opening the door and getting on my knees or something, but the officer makes no further demands as he slowly walks along the side of my car to just behind my door.
His gun is still on me.
I’m not generally the type to cry in front of police, not that I would have had much opportunity to, but looking into that black circle I can’t control it.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing going ninety down my streets?” the officer asks.
“I’m not armed,” I tell him. “I’m cooperating. Could you please lower the gun?”
The officer begins to shake his head, but I see his eyes drop down to look at my hands. They’re trembling. Tears are still streaming down my cheeks, no matter how hard I try to stop them.
Stoicism isn’t an option.
“Keep your hands exactly where they are,” he says. “I’m going to open this door and you’re going to get out of the car slowly.”
“What about my seatbelt?” I ask. It sounds like a stupid question, but there’s that gun. I do not want a misunderstanding right now.
He sighs. “Slowly, with one hand, unbuckle your seatbelt. Just remember, it’s going to take me a lot less time to squeeze this trigger than it would take you to try to draw on me.”
“I’m unarmed,” I tell him again. “I’m reaching over to undo my seatbelt.”
Very slowly, keeping my hand in the officer’s line of sight as much as possible, I reach over and press the button unlatching the seatbelt. I slowly return my hand to join the other.
“Keep your hands where they are,” he says.
I do.
He opens the door, and I stay as still as possible until he instructs me to step out of the car, “Nice and slow.”
With my hands still up I climb out of the car. As soon as both my feet are on the ground, the officer has me turned around and pressed up against the side of my car.
“Do you have anything in your pockets or on your person that I should know about? Weapons, drugs, needles, anything that could potentially be a threat?”
“No,” I answer, trying to breathe evenly. It’s barely a relief when the officer returns his gun to his holster.
He’s patting me down, telling me, “Spread your legs a little farther. Hands stretched out to the side.”
I follow every instruction as he finishes frisking me. That’s something I was hoping wouldn’t ever be crossed off of my bucket list.
“Arms down, but keep them where I can see them.” He grabs my shoulder and spins me back around to face him.
I’m still shaking, glancing back and forth between his gun and his eyes.
“What are you doing out here doing fifty-five over the limit? And don’t tell me you just lost track of your speed,” he demands.
I’m really trying to answer, but I’m shaken up to the point I can’t think straight. By the time I think I’ve got some sort of answer, it evaporates again.
The officer’s look softens. “Do you know why we have speed limits?”
“To lower the odds of people getting hurt,” I tell him.
He nods. “That’s right,” he says. “So how is it you know that and you just decided to ignore it?”
“I was out here alone,” I tell him, “or at least, I thought I was alone out here. I’m not saying I should have done it, but I wasn’t trying to put anyone in any kind of risk.”
The officer crosses his arms. “You were putting yourself at risk,” he says. “Why would you come out here? Were you specifically coming here to race over my streets or what?”
With the gun back in his holster, I’m a bit more comfortable, but not much.
“I just-” I stammer.
He sighs. “It’s all right,” he says. “Take your time.”
I take a breath. “I guess I just wanted to know what it felt like to be free,” I tell him. I’m laying it on thick, but I really don’t want to go to jail and I’m pretty sure milking my initial reaction is the only way that’s ever going to happen.
The officer winces a little at my words, but he commands for me to, “Turn around.”
I do.
“Put your hands behind your back,” he says.
I’m being arrested. I am actually being arrested.
He slips the cuffs on me tight enough I’m asking him if my hands are blue before I turn back around again.
“They’re not that tight,” he says without checking. With that, he leads me back to his car, opens his back seat and tells me, “Watch your head,” as he puts me in the backseat of his squad car and closes the door.
He doesn’t get right in the driver’s seat, though. He goes back out into the street and collects my car keys before coming back to his car.
He gets in the front and we take off, leaving my car unlocked in the middle of Ghost Town. I just hope none of Eli’s racing friends are into stealing cars.
My tears have dried, and I’m looking out my window, my forehead pressed against the glass.
I’m actually going to jail.
“What made you think that cruising around at almost three times the posted limit is the only way you can feel free?”
Suddenly the excuse seems just silly.
“I don’t know,” I tell him.
“What you were doing was extremely dangerous,” the officer says. “I know it can be a rush going faster than you’re supposed to, but if you’d have seen the things I’ve seen during my career, you wouldn’t be quite so eager to put your foot down.”
“Yeah,” I answer blankly, still looking out the window.
“I know you don’t want to be lectured, but you could have killed yourself out there,” he says. “If you’d gotten into a crash, even a non-lethal one, and I hadn’t been around to pick you up, who knows how long you would have been there waiting to be rescued.”
“I know,” I tell him.
It’s more an intellectual thing than it is anything I’m particularly tempted to act on, but I’ve seen what can happen to people who get in car crashes, too. I know they don’t all come out of it as well as Mick.
I know a lot of people don’t come out of it at all.
Isn’t that kind of the point of the whole thing, though? If there’s no risk, where’s the rush? Where’s the reward?
“I don’t want to see you get hurt,” he says.
“I know,” I tell him.
He looks in his rearview mirror and adjusts it so I can see his eyes in the glass. He says, “So what are you doing?”
“Sir,” I tell him, “I honestly don’t have a good answer for you. I know what I did was stupid and reckless, and I know it was against the law.”
“So,” he repeats, “what are you doing?” He adds, “I take it you knew all this before I pulled you over and you still did it, anyway.”
Frankly, I’m already starting to get a little sick of talking about it. I know the officer is only doing his job. If anything, he’s going a bit out of his way to show concern.
Still, though, I’m handcuffed in the back of his car and he’s taking me to jail. There’s not much he could say that hasn’t already gone through my head.
“Are you from here in town?” he asks.
“Yep,” I answer blankly.