Chapter Sixteen

Here's the thing.

Even on a dented and dusty GSX-R600, this guy should be able to smoke Jo in a drag race. It's not a super-powerful bike; honestly, the fact that Riley's racing us on a 600 when his muttonchopped, glassy-eyed friend is sitting on the sidelines on a 1000 shows they didn't think much of us even before they saw the Hornet. Still, I know that bike can do just over an eleven-second quarter mile. I don't know if Jo knows, but she has to see that a thirteen-second car up against a modern sport bike on a straight is some real tortoise versus the hare bullshit.

I believe in Jo. I trust Jo. I really do. I'm just trusting her while I stand on the sidelines with the neck of my T-shirt stuffed between my teeth to keep from screaming with anxiety, because it seems simply impossible that we can win in her beloved Betty.

I should've remembered that nothing is simple when it comes to JoJo Emerson-Boyd.

As the girl on the runway drops the flag, Jo roars instantly and cleanly off the line, the Hornet's blue paint flashing under the fading sun.

Not so much Riley.

With reflexes slower than Jo's—fuck yes, Jo!!!—he's still hanging out on the line a second after she's taken off. I can imagine the sweet, sweet shock on his face behind that tinted face shield. He never expected her to launch like that.

JoJo and the AMC Hornet SC/360: underestimated, but amazing.

I know exactly what happens next, and why Riley overcompensates, throwing the throttle totally open in his panic to catch up. He should've held a little back. Instead of streaking after Jo, his rear tire spins on the blacktop, pinning him in place for another valuable second before he's off the line and trying to catch her.

But he can't.

To a chorus of groaning and heckling from his friends and the gathered crowd, Riley crosses the finish line just after my Car Girl?. And now I'm absolutely screaming, sprinting down the runway toward Jo as she turns the Hornet around to cruise back toward me, this dude and his 600 once again in her dust. We meet in the middle where she pulls to a stop. I throw myself on her before she's even got two feet out of the car and on the pavement, flinging both of us awkwardly across the seats.

"You did it!" I shriek into her ear. "You're incredible, Jo!"

She hugs me back, and I feel her arms shaking around my waist, just barely. But she sounds extremely cool and collected when she says, "I've been told."

By the time we work our way back out of the Hornet, Riley's pulled up to idle the bike beside us, the sourest of frowns above his jagged, scraggly beard. Two of his bros are jogging up from the sidelines behind him. I tense where I stand beside Jo, realizing the potential stupidity of our plan. I mean, beyond winning the race, we didn't have much of a plan. What if Max's supposed friends don't want to give us what we've fairly won? Or what if …

What if Riley was lying? He's got my sister's jacket, sure, but he never gave us proof of her location, and we never asked. What if all of this was for nothing?

But the glassy-eyed Gixxer boy with the muttonchops practically brays in Riley's face as he arrives. "Nice burnout." He barely looks at us as he dumps Max's jacket into my arms.

I hug the familiar amber-brown leather to my chest, burying my nose in the thick fabric hood. It smells like whatever's been simmering in the hot bed of Riley's truck, probably, or beneath his bed. But under the perfume of old-burgers-and-skunk, I still detect a whiff of Max. Like her attic bedroom, it's held on to traces of her all these months later.

"And the address?" Jo demands while I'm busy sniffing and swallowing hard.

Riley pulls a folded piece of paper from his shorts pocket.

Jo takes it, frowning as she smooths it out and scans the handwritten address. "Clark's Gold Star Pawnshop in Richmond? What the hell?"

"That's where she works," Riley says, begrudgingly.

"No," I protest. "She's in Boston."

"She was in Boston," Riley says. "But she texted me about a mint-condition Time Walk MTG card from the pawnshop a few weeks ago—"

"MTG?"

"Um, Magic: The Gathering?" Riley sneers at us. "It's only one of the most powerful and rarest cards. Max said her Boston roommate's cousin hooked her up with a job after she moved, and she'd send me the card if I'd Venmo her for it. Probably asked twice what it was priced at, and I doubt she even paid for it, but she knew I'd been looking. Anyway, that's the address it shipped from. You can find her there."

"But …" I'm flailing upward through this information, like a swimmer swept off their feet by the breakers. "But I got a postcard from her, just a couple weeks ago. She sent it from Boston."

"Maybe it got lost in the mail, or she had her roommate send it after she left?" Muttonchops guesses.

I can't think of a reason she'd do that.

"We'll call the shop tomorrow," Jo leans in close to tell me. "We'll ask if Max is working, and they'll tell us if she's there at all. This is good, El. This is a clue," she insists.

"Yes. This is good." It is. This is a win. I cradle the jacket in my arms, repeating, "This is a good thing."

And that's when the blip of a police siren cuts through the sounds of idling bikes and revving engines, as two City of Benton Creek cop cars jam through the gap in the chain-link fence, flashing their warning lights. They park to either side of the gap, and we watch as the pair from one car pulls a plastic road barricade out of their trunk. They set up across the only way out, while the pair from the second car climb out into the overgrown grass, bullhorns in hand.

"Y'all know you're trespassing," a cop with a mustache like a Picture Day comb drawls into his bullhorn. "We have to chase you out of here again, it's gonna be a real problem. Now line up, you know what to do."

"Shit, shit, shit …" Riley mutters as the small crowd around us shifts nervously.

A guy standing beside his murdered-out Fiesta spits onto the runway, then slumps into his driver's seat and cruises slowly toward them across the grass. Stopping at the barrier, he speaks to the mustache cop, passing what must be his license and registration through the rolled-down window while the other three check his trunk and back seat.

"El …" Jo whispers while the crowd around us starts to move.

I clutch sightlessly for her hand, and she takes it.

The cops look more annoyed than angry, and in an unlikely blessing, this crowd of bored small-town gearheads is almost made up entirely of white dudes aside from us. So I don't think anyone's in immediate danger from them. But my parents? They'll kill me. Then they'll ground me until I graduate, and Putt by the Pond will fire me, and I won't be able to show my face at volunteer club with an arrest record, and UNC will never let me in once they find out I've been trespassing and street racing—

Well, technically, your girlfriend was street racing, a treacherous, wheedling, familiar little voice whispers inside of me. You were only standing here.

God, I hate that voice.

Maybe Jo sees something in my face, because she says, low and urgent, as she disentangles our hands to open the passenger door for me, "You won't get in trouble, El, I promise. They're not gonna bust you just for being here when you weren't even driving."

I start to climb in, but stop to realize aloud, "You don't have a license, Jo."

She hesitates, and I think I see something in her face for the first time, a flicker of uncharacteristic fear, before she forces a tight smile. "So they'll call my dad, and he'll call my grandma, and I'll get a lecture from Italy. What are they gonna do, take away my car keys? It'll be fine."

The drivers around us are reluctantly pulling out and lining up behind the Fiesta. It seems the cops don't find anything, because two of them move the barrier to let him pass through the gap in the fence, then walk it back into place before circling a lime-green Nissan. They'll make their way down the line until they get to us, car by bike by car. Tempted as I am to believe Jo, I'm pretty sure that driving a technically stolen car without a license is bigger trouble than she's making it sound. And I'm not the only one with plans for my future.

"Maybe … maybe we should switch. Say I was driving."

"No, El, just get in the car," she says, gently shoving me toward the passenger's seat.

But I can't. I can't let Jo take the fall for everything she's done to help me. Can I?

I'm still frozen on the asphalt when an engine revs loudly, and we both snap our heads toward the fence. The cops have just moved the barrier for a car to pass through, but before they can move it back, Riley and the Gixxer boys rip out of line and plough through the gap in the fence after it. I can hear the cops swearing and shouting from here as they do. Both pairs pile back into their cars and turn their sirens on, taking off after them and leaving the rest of us behind.

I glance back at Jo. "Should we … should we wait for them to come back?" I ask, even as the remaining cars take advantage and tear through the fence toward freedom.

She stares at me as though I've just suggested we hide the evidence of our crimes by eating the Hornet. "Are you kidding?" she shrieks, but she's laughing, too. "Let's go, go, go!"

We throw ourselves into the Hornet and take off, and now I'm laughing, too. She sticks to the speed limit as we thread our way through back roads, but we don't cross paths with Riley or the cops. By the time we reach the highway toward Dell's Hollow, I'm absolutely giddy with adrenaline and relief. Jo and I haven't let go of one another yet; we stay connected, my arm threaded below hers while she keeps a hand on the stick so that we're layered atop one another, my hand resting on the leg of her jeans. As we come up on a familiar exit, I squeeze. "Hey, pull off here?" I ask. It's a total impulse, but the thrill of victory and escape makes me bold. I feel like a completely different person.

Trustingly, she takes the exit without asking why.

I direct Jo down a stretch of rural roadway under a sky steadily darkening to ink, and though she glances sidelong at me, she doesn't question it. At last, we reach our destination: Pemberly Mill, a half-finished housing development in the middle of nowhere. Along the honeycomb of streets marked with 10-mph signs, two-story town-houses in inoffensive shades of sand and taupe and fog stand in various stages of construction on dirt lots or lawns that have turned to meadows. Some have no siding at all, only particleboard. Some are missing roofs, their rafters bared to the night like bones, while a handful look move-in ready. Like anybody could be inside right now, living their mysterious lives.

But nobody's around except for us.

"This is where you used to come with Max, right?" she asks, parking beside the dry basin of what would have been a man-made pond. She takes in the rows of dark windows on a darkening street. "To practice riding?"

I'm surprised she remembers. "Yeah. She had me ride for hours, learning the difference between dirt bikes and the R1 so I could get my motorcycle learner's permit. She, um, forged Mom's signature on the forms and took me to do the tests so I could get my endorsement. My parents still don't know. It's the most rebellious thing I've ever done, until today."

"Eliana Blum!" Jo shrieks. "You are a wild card."

Maybe I am.

"She was a good teacher," I say, protective of the memory. "Like, she took it seriously. Drill after drill after drill until she thought I could pass the off-street skills test."

"And you aced it, right?"

"Well, it wasn't that different from the Husqvarna, since the controls are pretty much the same. Though the highway is scarier than a track, obviously. And you sit differently, you know, and the turn radius is really different, plus there's countersteering to consider on a street bike, and you can't lean a dirt bike around a curve like that without a low side… ." I trail off when I notice JoJo watching me with the same rapt attention I bet I wear on my face whenever Letty Ortiz is on-screen: leaned forward, eyes bright. "What?"

"I just like it when you talk technical."

I flush. "Wait till I tell you about the one hundred points of traction."

"Oof." She bites her lip.

"Lean angle points versus acceleration and breaking points—"

"El, would you get the fuck over here?"

What started as a joke is no longer so funny, and I am extremely aware of my hand on her thigh right now, the worn texture of her jeans and the warmth of her muscled leg beneath it. Without a center console between us in the compact cab, it's easy enough to lever my weight and swing my own leg up and over so I'm straddling her lap … until I'm perched awkwardly with my back smashed up against the steering wheel. Laughing, Jo reaches down to slide back and recline the seat. Not all the way, but enough that I'm fully braced over her now, my elbows on either side of the headrest, my mouth inches from hers. It's a soupy summer night, and without any air flowing through the AC-less Hornet, it's even hotter in here.

But I don't care. And I feel sorry for the El of one month ago who had no idea what it was like to breathe the same air as the undefeated JoJo Emerson-Boyd. Leaning down to kiss her is the easiest thing in the world; with the seat reclined and gravity working for me, I just have to let myself fall.

By the time Jo drops me off, it's after ten o'clock. I am mostly put together, cooled by the highway wind on the ride back, though I can feel my lips are still redder than they should be as I stand in my driveway, and there's no saving my hair. Tying Max's jacket around my waist to free my hands, I scoop it up into a miniature ponytail. At least my parents should be in bed by now, the porch light left on just for me.

But I'm surprised to see the living room lights on when I wrestle my key into the front lock. I don't even have the door open before my parents appear in the entryway. And at the looks on their faces, any lingering trace of a smile fades from mine.

Mom peers out into the night behind me, where the Hornet's headlights are just disappearing beyond the sweetgum tree that blocks the road from view. "Was that your friend JoJo driving?"

"Yes?" Caught off guard, I'm scrambling to remember what alibi I gave my parents. I told them I'd be with JoJo, didn't I? Yes. And she told her dad that she was meeting me for a volunteer club event. "Sorry, I didn't think you'd still be up. I tried to be quiet—"

"Your friend JoJo," Dad chimes in, "who you're certain has her driver's license, and did not steal a car from her grandmother's shop without permission?"

"I—" Shit. Shit. "I mean … it's her mom's car," I say faintly, because we might've miraculously escaped at the airfield, but now we're caught, and I'm in trouble, probably massive amounts. And now Mom has noticed the jacket knotted around my waist, Max's jacket. All of the blood drains from her face, and all of the blood is draining from my face and fingers and toes, and I am the worst wild card in the world for having no idea how to salvage this situation, and how the fuck were we caught?

"Kitchen, now," Mom says, low and cold, as Dad shuts and locks the door behind me.