by Anna Cove
They waved the flag for the start.
This wasn't right. I was supposed to have a moment of peace before we started a race. The little voice in my head said, it's okay, it's only qualifying. But I couldn't shut it down. It was like my thoughts had been sent down a roller coaster and I couldn't get off the ride. I shifted through my gears and completed the warm up laps. As soon as the race started in earnest, a stream of voices entered my helmet. I was doing well. It was a good start. I should just keep steady. But it competed with the constant stream of voices inside my head.
She fucking left me. Why would she do that? She hadn't even given me the chance to apologize.
What will I do without her?
Who was I kidding? I lived without her for years. I lived my entire life without her. I could do it. I had this—I had the thrill of the wind running past me, of the world bearing down on me. Of the hours and hours alone in this car. Of the hours and hours alone…
Fuck.
This was my fault. It was all my fault. I could barely suck in enough oxygen to breathe. Spots formed in front of my eyes.
It was hard enough on my body to race, especially on the road tracks. I could never get up to full speed, and I was constantly having to steer, to focus on getting around the corners, to avoid hitting other cars. Now that my mind was also a mess, the combination was making me nervous. My reactions were delayed as I moved through the turns.
"Everything all right in there?" came a voice in my ear. It was Amanda. "You're awful quiet."
I pressed the paddle as far as I could, as far as I dared, and whipped around the next corner, nearly colliding into one of my opponents. I was approaching the finish line and had many laps to go, but instead of crossing the line, I veered into the pit.
"What are you doing?" Ed's voice cut through my ears.
I brought my car to a stop, released myself from my seatbelt, and stepped out of the car. I lifted my helmet off and ripped the radio from my ear, throwing them both to the ground.
The announcer squawked on the loudspeaker but I couldn't hear his words. I couldn't hear anything. All I knew was that I didn't want to do this anymore. I couldn't take going around and around and around in circles and going fucking nowhere.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
KRYSTA
"Fuck, Tanya, are you trying to kill me?" The pain was nearly blinding. Excruciating. It radiated right through my feet and up my hips, sending thorns into my brain. Or that's what it felt like anyway.
"You've got to keep pushing."
"I know," I said, gritting through the pain of simply lifting my leg. "I fucking know that."
Then the pain was gone. "You don't have to talk to me like that, Krysta."
I took a moment to catch my breath and wiped my sleeve across my mouth. The past few minutes replayed in my head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have lashed out at you. It just hurts more than usual."
I groaned and fell back into my pillows. "Can we be done for the day?"
Tanya perched on the edge of the bed. "Do you want to talk about it?"
"Talk about what?" I asked. It was easier to pretend the last few weeks had never happened than to rehash them over and over again. Since I'd come home, I'd been to the doctor. My injuries were healing spectacularly well. It didn't feel like healing. If anything, everything hurt more.
"Ever since we came back, you've been really upset. I understand, of course, you had to leave Billie. It's hard for me and Terrance to be long distance, too."
Terrance was Tanya's boyfriend. They were officially dating now. I hadn't heard the end of it since we got back, and Tanya had insisted on spending long hours with me even after our sessions were over, so I heard it a lot. Once I swore I'd caught her having phone sex in the bathroom. I was all for my girl getting some, but that's where I drew the line.
"Billie and I aren't long distance."
She hadn't even texted me since the last time I'd seen her. She hadn't even checked in to see if I was all right. How could she go from caring so much to not at all? I just couldn't figure out where everything had turned. Had she ever cared at all? I dragged my legs up as much as I could, approximating a curled up ball.
Damn it, I couldn't even get the fetal position right.
"Then what are you, sweetie?" Tanya swooped my hair away from my face. "You haven't told me anything."
This only irritated me more for how irritable I'd been with her in the last few weeks. Not only that, but her touch brought with it reminders of the only other person who had touched me like that recently. Billie. My limbs felt heavier than ever. "I don't know. Nothing, I suppose."
"I don't see how that could be possible. That girl loved you."
"Not enough to come after me." There it was. She hadn't chased me. She was willing to chase a whole pack of cars, but me? Apparently, I wasn't worth the effort. Apparently, I wasn't interesting enough. That only confirmed my suspicion of pity.
It was better this way. This way, I could start my own business again. I had started finding my tribe again. It wasn't all about her. It was about me. That, at least, was refreshing.
"What happened at the track? What did her father say to you?"
Tanya had asked me this a dozen times since we'd returned to Florida and, this time, my answer was the same. "I really, really don't want to talk about it."
"Suit yourself." She stood.
"It's just that—" I sat up, looking at her. "I was putting her life at risk. Every moment I was there she had to split her focus."
Tanya crossed her arms and jutted out her hip. "She was doing a fine job of it."
"She crashed."
"Someone clipped her car. It was an accident. It happens in that sport."
"Her father said—"
"He did, did he? Oh, baby." She eased herself back into the bed. "Whatever he said, that man was manipulating you. Couldn't you smell the smarm rolling off of him?"
"Yes, but…" But that's not why I'd left. There were other reasons, too. Like Billie's distant attitude. I shrugged. "He's kind of right. He told me she had dated someone who worked with her before, too. Our relationship was all for show."
"I can't see how, but I wasn't in the relationship either. Is that the only truth?"
I picked at a stray thread in my comforter. "Think about it. Even if I was well, I would be a distraction for her. And with these—" I gestured at my boots.
"What?"
Was she really going to make me finish? My voice felt caught in my throat. "It was just too much."
Tanya shrugged. "Seemed like she was doing just fine with it."
"She had enough to deal with—"
"Keep telling yourself that."
"What are you saying? What do you want from me?" This was almost as bad as the physical therapy. Tears burned my eyes.
"I'm saying this was a scary thing for you and I wouldn't blame you if you left because of that."
"I wasn't scared." I folded my arms. Had I been? Sure, in the beginning, but I had dealt with it. Right? I mean, I had asked her to be my girlfriend.
But I hadn't even made it twenty-four hours.
Crap. Could Tanya be right? Had I run without giving it a chance? Was it true that she was only with me to humor me or could there be some other explanation for her moods those last few days? It was so hard to know now, like trying to extract fresh water from mud.
Tanya leaned over and pecked me on the cheek. "You're too young to know this yet."
"I'm twenty-four."
"Exactly. And when I was twenty-four I thought that the man who had just dumped me was the one. I gave up on the little thing called love."
I sighed, my eyes swimming with the tears. The rest of me felt dull, exhausted. Just because she was happy didn't mean I would be one day. "One minute you're saying I should get back with Billie—"
"I didn't say that."
"You implied it. And the next you're giving me the fishes in the sea spiel. Get your advice straight, Tanya."
She
smacked me in the butt with a towel. "There's the cynical sass I love. It'll get better, dear. One way or the other it gets better. That's just how life works. You can either lie in your bed and wait for it to happen, or you can grab it by the balls. Your choice."
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
BILLIE
Round and round and round my brain went, as if it couldn't get off the track. Backward, forward, staying in the same place. I had returned home to my parents' house. Well, it wasn't where I had grown up, but my parents had transferred my childhood room faithfully, trophy by trophy and poster by poster, so it still felt like home. It was the closest I had to a permanent residence.
For the first time since I was a teen, I wasn't watching racing, strategizing a race, or, well, racing. I wasn't sitting at the kitchen table with my father late at night.
Now, my father was barely home, trying to deal with the mess I'd left when I walked off the track. My mother drifted like a shadow behind me, watching me, as if one moment I would pull out a knife or go running from the house and jump off the bridge into the river at the edge of the property. Wasn't going to happen. Not because I wasn't feeling horrible, but because I had no energy to run.
Every day was the same as every night. I had no purpose, no idea what was going on beyond the reach of my parents' paradise.
It was their lifelong dream to live on a farm, and I had helped them get there with my racing earnings. This is what racing had given me. This is what my wins could do. These thoughts only served to muddy the wasteland of my mind.
The tulips were sending up their blooms, the grass turning green again after the harsh New Hampshire summer. My mother had taken away my phone after it wouldn't stop ringing off the hook. It stopped me from calling Krysta, from begging her to come see me. To come save me from myself.
After all that, after so many years, it was Krysta that I wanted. Not racing. And that was pretty fucked up since she had left me without a word.
One day, I came inside from my walk and heard a man speaking on the TV. "Any word on Billie Page?"
"Her camp is tight-lipped about whether she'll race at the Indy 500. My bet? She's done."
"No. Really? That girl—"
Woman, I corrected in my head, leaning against the door frame to the living room.
"Lives and breathes the sport. She's been racing since she was a child."
"But after that crash?"
"I have to admit, the odds are not in her favor."
"I agree. She's too cautious as a driver."
I folded my arms, watching these men—these strangers—talk about my life as if they knew me. Armchair experts who thought they knew something about racing. Even they doubted me.
My mother watched them, her hand on the power button of the remote as if she was sneaking porn instead of the news.
"Idiots," I said.
"Billie." Mom clicked off the TV and stepped toward me, the fair skin of her cheeks reddening. "I thought you were out for your walk."
"I was."
"I was just—"
"You don't have to explain what you were doing, Mom."
Mom's mouth bobbed like a fish. "I didn't mean to watch it, but once they started talking about you, I couldn't help it."
Ever since I'd stepped out of the car, it felt like I was living inside a cotton ball. Like the little cotton fibers had plugged my ears and strung over my eyes and rubbed my fingers. It made me tense and dull at the same time. At this news report, I felt nothing. Should I? I didn't know. What did I know?
I started toward my room.
"You don't have to do this any more," my mother said, her voice barely a whisper.
I turned to her to make sure I wasn't hearing things. "Say again?"
"You don't have to race any longer. If you're scared after your crash, you don't have to get back in the car."
"I'm not scared, Mom." I continued toward my room. Why did everyone think I was scared?
"I never agreed with your father, you know, putting you into racing so early."
This made me stop. Some of the cotton fell away from my ear. In my entire life, my mother had never contradicted my father in public or in private. She had followed him like a devotee follows her cult leader, repeating the party line whenever she got the chance. Or, more often, standing in silence and watching as he encouraged me. Forcefully.
The sunlight streaming through the kitchen window was so bright it was almost jarring. Still, I wanted to hear what she would say, so I pulled out a chair and sunk down into it. "Why not? I loved racing. I wanted to do it. I begged you."
"Sure. Maybe. After you started."
"What are you talking about?"
Mom folded her arms across her stomach, then grazed her fingers with her lips as she stared out the window. "Do you remember when you were little? You would spend hours roller-blading, climbing trees, reading books. You had so many interests."
I closed my eyes. I couldn't remember a time before my thoughts were overtaken with racing. They were only a vague dim memory, as if I'd read about them in a fiction book years ago rather than experienced them myself.
"You're old enough now. You can decide what you want on your own. Without your father."
I swallowed. "I do. I have. I… I love racing. I've always loved racing."
"I think you love your father and that's why you continue to race."
I shook my head to make sure I wasn't imagining this scene. "Why are you telling me this now?"
Mom sucked in a breath and let it out. "There comes a time in all our lives where we reach a turning point. Where we can decide on our paths. You're at one right now. You can choose to do what you have done for your entire life, or you can choose a different path."
Maybe she was right. I had wanted to win for my father, for Ed, even for the little girls, but I had never wanted it for myself. As the thought rose in my mind, the pressure on my chest lifted. "What about you guys? How are you going to afford…?" I gestured at the open-concept kitchen and the huge windows surrounding me.
"We'll be fine."
"I mean, just a couple more years and I could really set you guys up for life."
Mom reached out and took my hand. "You're taking on all these burdens. You've always done that, my sweet girl."
I pulled my hand away as these words jarred against my thoughts, against the lingering burning in my stomach. Those guys on the TV? They were idiots, but they represented the voices of so many who didn't believe in me. Who doubted me. If I quit, they would win. She couldn't take the heat, they would say. Funny, my father had used the same saying for Krysta. I didn't want people to say the same about me. I wanted them to say I was a fighter. A winner. "I want to win."
Mom didn't flinch or sink back. "Then what?"
Weeks ago, I would have continued protesting that racing was what I loved. I would have shut down this whole conversation by telling her I would race forever. The fact that I hadn't told me something. The fact that I was even considering other options proved something had changed. Krysta's words came back to me. What do you want from life? Winning, maybe. But not this was the clearest answer. "I don't know what else to do."
Mom smiled, her eyes sad. Had her eyes always looked sad? "Remember how I insisted you go to college?"
"Mmhm." It was the only thing my Mom had insisted on, threatening to leave my father if he didn't relent.
"You have options, my dear. You hold a degree from one of the most prestigious colleges in the country. What do you want to do?"
Every option I came up with had to do with racing. A race engineer, a mechanic. It was like I knew no other world.
My mother slipped her hand into mine. "You'll figure it out. In the meantime, you're enough, sweetie. Even if you're doing nothing, you're enough. I just want you to be happy. You deserve that."
For the second time in as many weeks, tears started to stream down my face. Krysta came to mind—our simple interactions, how she looked at me with so much love in her eyes even whe
n we weren't doing anything. Not for the first time, I asked myself why. Why had she left the day of the race? Why hadn't she found a way to contact me? Dad's explanation just didn't fit. It didn't seem like her.
I flinched at this thought, but my mother's words had made me realize something. It was a lie. It was all her, I had told myself. But it was me, too. Maybe even me alone. I had been ambivalent and she'd sensed it. She deserved better than that.
"I messed up something that mattered to me."
"The girl?"
I looked up. "How did you know about her?"
Mom shrugged. "I didn't, but I can tell when my baby's heart is broken."
How about when she breaks someone else's heart? It was a mutual breaking. I'd nicked her and she slashed us apart. She'd finished the deed when she'd left without even trying to work it out. That's not how relationships worked. And it wasn't like her. What would make her do that?
"Do you think Dad could have…" I shifted in my chair, uncomfortable even thinking the question, never mind asking it. He would do a lot for my career, but sabotage a relationship? I wasn't sure he would go that far. "Do you think Dad could have said something to her that might have scared her away?"
Mom was quiet for a very long time. She stared into my eyes with her brown ones. Somehow, even the recessive green eyes had won against her traits. "I think your father would have done anything to keep you safe. If it meant blowing up your relationship—absolutely."
"To help me win, you mean," I said, clutching my hands together.
The words had just rolled out of my mouth. I hadn't even been aware I was speaking them, but now I realized they were true. The funny thing was, before I had discovered she was gone, I had had one of the best races of my life. And Dad had screwed that up. I could have won the Long Beach race.
But I wouldn't have. Just like every other time, I would have croaked at the end. At the thought of winning.
Oh, my God. I see it, I thought. I sabotaged myself in my races because I wasn't racing for me. It was always for Dad. For Ed. For the team. Just like I'd blamed Krysta for leaving, I'd never taken responsibility for my racing either.