Chapter Four

I know what they say about small towns and the kids who grow up in them. We're supposed to feel trapped, like a goldfish in a glass bowl, just swimming tight little circles in our own crap till we bust out or die trying. But there's a lot I've loved about growing up in Dell's Hollow. Like sure, we've got one hair salon in town; Shelly Fry runs it out of the converted utility room in her mother-in-law's house twice a week, and if you dared to drive into Deerfield and cheat on her with CostClippers, Shelly would hear about it before you made it back home. And okay, I've eaten everything on the menus of both of our town diners, neither of which have changed since before I was eating solid foods. There are no strange and unexplored corners, no uncharted alleyways to lead you someplace you've never been.

But that just means that every place is a memory.

Even Putt by the Pond, where Mom and Dad would take us to celebrate—a perfect test score for me, a track win for Max, an exciting Panthers victory, whatever. Aside from the Cineplex, and unless you count the Walmart parking lot where the "troubled" kids (never me) hang out after dark, it's pretty much the place to be in Dell's Hollow. It has a mini golf course, batting cages, a go-kart track, an arcade, and thirty-two flavors of sno-cone, all of which I've sampled. My paychecks are minimum wage–sized, so my car fund could barely fill a gas tank at the moment. Still, summer jobs demonstrate responsibility—to colleges and to parents. Plus I get free tokens to use every week, so I haven't paid for a round of the Fast Furious: SuperCars arcade game once this summer.

On my way to the employee locker room to change, I pat the Day-Glo orange machine. A tween in the seat races through Shinjuku in the ‘06 Dodge Viper SRT-10 from Tokyo Drift. It's one of the easy tracks, but they plough spectacularly into a train as I pass.

I can't help thinking that I'd love to watch JoJo play; I bet she picks the hard tracks every time.

Zaynah's already in the locker room when I elbow through the door, re-pinning her daisy-print hijab in the mirror. She hasn't been less than fifteen minutes early for a shift all summer. "Sixty-four seconds to spare, Blum," she comments, nose wrinkling, "and please don't take this the wrong way, but you kind of smell like a gas station?"

Lifting my T-shirt hem to my own nose, I groan. That extra layer of deodorant and dry shampoo clearly didn't help. I pull out my flaming-red work polo before stuffing my backpack into my tiny locker. Zaynah shows up for her shift wearing her polo over a long-sleeved shirt so she can dress at home, in privacy, but she doesn't care that I'm shameless (about my body, at least). I wrestle off my contaminated T-shirt as I catch her up. "I skipped a shower to stop at Jolene's garage before work. Did you know she has a granddaughter?"

"Sure. I met her when we were kids, at one of our Hug-a-Horse events while she was in town with her parents."

The first thing to know about Zaynah Syed is that she's a Horse Girl?. Her family runs the Syed Rescue Farm, which is mostly a ranch for unwanted horses, but they've also got pigs, donkeys, chickens, and at the moment an alpaca pair named Bonnie and Clyde. They run on donations and grants and volunteers. Plus they do parties and events to take care of their animals, either until they find homes, or forever if they're sick or old or just too wild to be wanted. It was Zaynah's idea to cofound the Dell's Hollow Volunteer Club with me, inspired by her parents' work.

The second thing to know about Zaynah is she's my best friend, even if we have spent our whole lives competing—in the classroom, in middle-distance events when we ran junior high track, in crushes (we never actually act on our crushes, and Zaynah doesn't date; we just like to prove to each other that our crush of the moment is the deepest and truest and crushiest). A day doesn't go by without us texting, even if we're sitting in the same room, sending TikToks back and forth.

"Why were you at Jolene's?" Zaynah asks. "Did the Oatmobile break down?"

"If only, but no. I was looking for something Max might've left at the shop. I, um, got another postcard today."

Zaynah shines her big, thoughtful brown eyes at me, and asks carefully, "Oh yeah?"

"I think Max is staying in Boston."

"Well, that's … good." She takes a paper towel from the dispenser by the sink just to twist it in her hands.

It's not Zaynah's fault she's turned into an awkward turtle. Nobody really knows what to say about Max, at least not to my face.

My sister has something of a reputation around Dell's Hollow, and not just because of her brilliant amateur track career. She might have taken the car out one night—the car my parents meant to let me drive once I had my license, but they loaned it to Max after she moved home—and she might have driven straight through the roundabout that circles Dell's Hollow's town green. She then might have crashed it into the Founder's Fountain in the middle of the green.

But it wasn't her fault! This was in March, during a rare snow for North Carolina, and she never could help moving just a little faster than the rest of us. She was barely speeding. She made one mistake, but anybody could.

Icould, as hard as I try not to.

"I think it is good," I tell Zaynah as I finish buttoning my polo.

"Sounds like it. El, just be … never mind. Come find me at the cone counter during break? I'll make a kiwi cone for you."

"Z, do not," I say. It's true there's no actual kiwi in the kiwi flavoring, but I don't believe that fruit should be neon green, as Zaynah well knows.

I choose to ignore the part where she clearly meant to say be careful. It's nothing I haven't heard before, and it's nothing I need to hear again. I'm always careful. I follow every rule in the employee handbook, including leaving my phone in my locker, which nobody does but me, not even Zaynah. I have a 4.1 GPA going into senior year, and have had my application essays to UNC–Chapel Hill drafted for months, even though I can't apply for early decision to their sports medicine program until October. I floss every day so that when the dentist asks me about my flossing habits, I can say I floss every day and snag that sweet nod of dental approval. I'm never late for curfew, I weed the garden beds every Sunday like clockwork, and I don't lie to my parents.

I hardly ever lie to my parents.

After I clock in at the front desk, the shift manager sends me out to the go-karts. We have a jellybean-shaped asphalt track surrounded inside and out by a barricade of stacked tires. I relieve Jericho Brown, who works the opening shift, and take his place on the stool beside the narrow starting lane of empty karts. There's an overhanging roof, so I don't have to sit in the baking sun all afternoon, and it's not a hard job. I lower the chain to let the next group in line onto the concrete loading platform, then help them each choose their karts. We have two speeds: a red 16-mph kart for kids, and a blue 24-mph kart for twelve and up. I list off the rules: no crashing into other drivers or the barricade, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle, shoulder harness must stay buckled, etcetera. When I move the traffic cones that block the starting lane from the main track and flip the stoplight to green, customers get five minutes to race. I announce the last lap over the loudspeaker, flip the light to red, and put the cones back out in time for folks to pull back into the cart lane. Easy peasy, but since it's technically the most high-stakes attraction in the park, I do have to pay attention.

On a summer day like this, there's hardly ever a lull, and I'm relieved when I get to pull out the BACK IN FIFTEEN sign for my scheduled break. I'm all set to hang it on the chain then head for the cone counter when the small round bronze plaque set in the concrete of the platform catches my eye:

DEEDEE EMERSON DROVE HERE

I don't remember seeing it in the fall, when I was just a customer. They must've had it installed this spring. Now I remember; it was after …

Oh my God.

It was after DeeDee Emerson died.

How had that slipped my mind? It's true I don't follow NASCAR, like I told JoJo, but DeeDee Emerson's death made our hometown newspaper, the Dell's Hollow Daily (it's actually a monthly paper, but I don't think anybody's ever complained about the false advertising). DeeDee—JoJo's mom—really was a hometown hero. It was a point of pride that a real live racing star had eaten the hush puppies at one of our two diners, and hugged a horse at our local rescue farm, and driven one of our go-karts. I mean, North Carolina is the home of NASCAR. And there I was, bantering with and harassing this nauseatingly cute girl about my sister's jacket, completely forgetting the article that ran in the Daily when her mom crashed mid-race… .

"Hey, you," says a voice right behind me.

Goosebumps shoot down my back despite the wet summer heat, and I swivel around so fast, my stool nearly tips. I stumble up onto the platform to keep from spilling over with it. "JoJo!" It comes out in a kind of squeal.

She's swapped out her mechanic's jumpsuit for a pair of denim shortalls over a cropped black tank, her work boots for sneakers, and her long brown hair is pulled back with a claw clip, the pink tips spraying out the top. Shading her green eyes from the sun as she looks out over the track and crinkling her pierced nose (holy guacamole), she says, "God, I remember this place. Is it smaller than it was back then?"

"You might just be taller."

"Not much."

It's true, she's a few inches shorter than me, but skinny-strong. If she competes the way Max did, even if it's on four wheels, then she probably trains the way Max did. Though my sister is soft-strong, like me. "As long as you can reach the pedals, you can ride. So are you, uh, waiting to ride? I was about to go on break."

"Ride alone? No," JoJo scoffs, shoving her hands into her shortalls pockets. "We have a bet, remember?"

"Ah. What exactly are we betting on?"

"Hmmm." JoJo's nose crinkles as she considers this. "How about if you win, I'll help you with your investigation, Detective. I didn't get the chance to ask Grandma Jolene about Max's jacket. I looked around and I haven't found it yet—sorry about that. But I can help with other stuff. Like, you're looking for your sister's address, right? Well, Grandma would never just give it to you, even if she had it. Privacy laws or whatever. She's ethical like that. But I'm in the shop almost every day, and she's headed out of town for a while. More than enough time for me to snoop."

"Snoop how?"

"You know. Through the files in the locked cabinet."

"That's not what I meant when I asked for help. I don't want you to get in trouble. Not to mention, I don't want to get in trouble."

"You don't?" JoJo smirks. Smirks!

"Can't you just ask Jolene? Hold on." I pause negotiations to hang my break sign on the chain at the entrance to the loading platform, where a line of customers is building anew. They grumble, but wander off for the moment. By the time I turn back to JoJo, she's looking down, mesmerized by the dull gleam of her mother's plaque.

She glances up at the squeak of my sneakers on the concrete, and damn it, I forget to fix my expression for just long enough that her cocky smile falls away. "So, I guess you know," she says accusingly.

"I—"

"It's fine. It doesn't matter." JoJo crosses her arms, staring out at the empty track instead of meeting my eyes. "Let's talk about what I get when I win."

I choke out an anxious laugh. "If you win."

"If I win, then you cover for me with this volunteering crap," she says, suddenly more businesslike. "You're the club leader, right? My dad's trying to get me to join up. He's literally holding my license hostage. I looked at the paperwork he gave me, and it lists you as the student contact."

"Well, I'm the co-leader," I correct her, reeling a little. Is this the whole reason she showed up here? And if it is, why should that bother me? It's not like she's personally invested in me or my family.

"Great! So if I win, you put my name down on your attendance sheet or whatever. Then I get to take a nap in a park twice a week while I'm supposed to be doing my civic duty, and I still get my license at the end of the summer."

"You want me to help you scam … me?"

"Basically. Is it a bet?"

I weigh my options. Obviously I want to know whether Jolene has Max's address, but breaking into her files, or falsifying club attendance? Honestly, this is the kind of thing my sister would agree to, which means it should be an instant pass for me. Max might live her life a quarter mile at a time, but I make all the right choices, and everybody in town knows it, so no one has to worry about me.

"Scared you'll lose, or scared you'll win?" JoJo challenges.

Her words kick up the old flare of competition I used to feel at Devil's Paradise before my nerves inevitably set in: staring out across the natural slopes of the winding red-clay and sand track, determined to hold the inside line on the turns, to stay in attack position, to keep it pinned. To win, and maybe more importantly, to have Max watch me win. "Fine. Let's do this. But like I said, I'm not off until seven."

"You can't sneak in a race on the clock?"

"Absolutely not," I say, aghast.

"Okay, then." The smirk returns. "I can wait."

Five minutes after my shift ends, and after I've let Zaynah know her ride home will be just a little bit late—though I decline to explain exactly why—I'm harnessed into a blue kart of my very own in front of JoJo in line. She said I deserved the advantage because she's just that confident. But I'm not worried. Okay, yes, dirt bikes and go-karts are different beasts, but she's never seen me ride; maybe she'd be worried if she had. I glance back over my shoulder at JoJo, who tosses me a nod that's exceedingly cool and completely annoying. I refocus on the road ahead, determined to win. And when my shift replacement flips the light to green, I only hesitate for a sliver of a second—like always—before I stomp on the gas pedal. I swerve around a kid in a red kart and a burly guy wearing a Tar Heels snapback to take the lead. For half a lap, up the long arc of the bean-shaped track, I keep it.

Then, all of a sudden, it's gone.

It turns out JoJo wasn't bluffing. I get the holeshot, taking the first corner, but by the time I've straightened out, she's pulled up alongside me. She flashes her teeth at me, green eyes shining, and then I'm inhaling her dust as she pulls away. This girl is fast.

I stand a chance at overtaking her as we round the corner at the other end of the bean, since I've been sticking like a burr to the inner barricade, but just as I think I've caught her, JoJo muscles past me and I'm forced to let up on the gas. And that's it. I don't catch her again for the rest of the race; in fact, she laps me halfway through. By the time my replacement announces the final lap, I'm still hopelessly behind. She laps me once again right before we pull reluctantly into the lane beside the loading platform, both of us windswept and laughing. I lost, but it turns out, I've missed this in the months since I last took the Husqvarna out of the shed. I missed the rush and the way I think about nothing but the path in front of me for five whole minutes when the sound of my heart is impossibly loud but everything else gets perfectly quiet.

"I almost had you," I quote FF to JoJo as she appears on the platform above me.

"You almost had me?" She follows the script, even as she holds out a hand to help me out of the kart. "You never had me! You never had your car!"

I let her haul me up by the arm with her extra strong grip, but before I've even found my footing again, the consequences of my loss settle in. The race was whatever. She did warn me, so it's not like she's some kind of kart shark. I should've seen this coming. But I let myself get excited at the idea of having an ally, even a cocky-on-the-verge-of-obnoxious one. It was nice, talking about Max with someone who hadn't decided a long time ago who my sister was, and that I—and Dell's Hollow—are somehow better off without her around. Which is just not true, for the record. And now I'm back to square one, unless I can sweet-talk Jolene and her ethics into helping me. Even though I'm just some girl who she let buzz around in the background of her shop for a few months, without ever exchanging more than three sentences …

JoJo must notice my good mood fading because she shakes me by the wrist, which she's still holding onto. "So. Grandma leaves for Florence with Florence soon—"

"Huh? With whom for where?"

JoJo laughs. "Grandma Jolene and her soulmate, Florence, are going to Florence, Italy. Anyway, she leaves a bit later this month, and I'm not like, in charge or anything, but I'll be alone in the shop pretty regularly. Seems like that's the perfect time to start."

"To start?"

"Our investigation."

I know I can't just keep repeating JoJo's words back to her, and yet: "Our investigation?"

"Why not?" She lets go of me at last to slick the flyaway hairs from her ponytail back out of her face. "I acknowledge that I kicked your ass, but it's not like I'm so busy, I can't help you. Doesn't seem like there's much hope for a social life in Dell's Hollow, and now that I don't have to make time for volunteering …" She trails off with a smug little grin.

Even though I should be thanking JoJo, like on-my-knees thanking her, I suddenly want to wipe that smile off her face. I don't like to be pitied (I should know, because everyone looks at me with pity whenever the subject of Max comes up), and I don't like how she's talking about my town. "You know if you showed up to volunteering club, you might have a social life? I get that we're small, and we're like 85 percent farmland, and we're probably not as cool as whatever cool-people place you came from. But this is my home, and now it's your home, too, so maybe you're not actually any better than me."

I meant to say "us"—you're not better than "us"—but the punch seems to land all the same. JoJo takes a step back, and then another, right across the memorial plaque. Which reminds me of why she moved to Dell's Hollow in the first place.

Well, shit.

"Um, I'm gonna head out," JoJo announces. "It's like a twenty-minute bike ride back to Grandma's, and I don't want to get run off the road by a horse cart in the dark." She smiles, but weakly.

"I didn't mean—do you want a ride, at least? I'm driving my friend home, but we've got a bike rack and everything."

"It's okay. I missed my workout today, so. I'll see you around, Detective?"

"See you after your grandma leaves for Italy, right?" I feel like crap taking her up on her offer now, as much as I need her.

"You never know. Maybe sooner." She taps my sneaker with the toe of hers and strolls off, hands in her shortalls pockets, leaving me behind on the loading platform to wallow in my shame and annoyance and gratitude. A whole mess of emotions.

Nothing is going to be simple when it comes to JoJo—I can already tell.