Chapter Seven

El drops my hand as soon as we reach the minivan. Which is a shame, because it felt right there, resting in mine. But she's also dealing with a lot—I can only imagine how shitty she feels knowing her sister was with that guy—not that I can say anything about that. So, I just keep quiet as El unlocks the car. As I open my door, her hand reaches out, resting on the handle.

"Thanks again for going with me," she says, casting a quick glance back at the apartment building. "I mean, you didn't have to. And this could've been dangerous, but I'm glad you're here."

I'm not quite sure what to say, so I default to humor, as always. "Absolutely. That guy was … not great … which is to be expected, I suppose, based on someone with a beard that bad."

Mercifully, El laughs at this. "He was awful. And did you see that living room? I swear you could've planted crops in the dust on top of the coffee table."

"The fish tank was also a crime. And I wanted to steal their cat away from them. Grandma Jolene always says to never trust a man who can't treat his pets well."

"Amen to that."

A long pause stretches between us. "I'm sorry though," I say, twisting a piece of hair that's come out of my ponytail. "I really hoped we'd find out more about Max."

El swallows once. "Me too." Her voice is wobbly. "But maybe Max doesn't want to be found. Maybe I should give up."

I fight every part of me that is Grandma Jolene's granddaughter and don't offer El a hug or a sweet tea for her sorrows. "Not a chance. If this were a detective show, I'm certain this is where someone would say, ‘That guy's hiding something. I can feel it.'"

El scowls. "He definitely knows how to find Max, unless he's totally lying. But how do we get him to tell us?"

I smile, confidence filling me. Feelings are hard, but racing, that's easy. Or easier at least. "We race him for it?"

"With what? I'm not risking my sister's bike; I've never even raced it before."

"Then I'll race him."

"You don't even have a driver's license. Or a car." El looks pointedly at what she calls the Oatmobile.

She's not wrong, but she's not completely right, either. Mom's car isn't running yet, but it could be. "All details we can figure out later."

"Those are hardly small details."

"Trust me. We'll come up with a plan. Now, come on. Cheer up. I'm buying you lunch."

"From where?"

"The Shake Shack, of course. I saw one as we drove into Deerfield."

El looks at me through her eyelashes, looking so cute for a moment as understanding dawns on her face. "JoJo Emerson-Boyd. This is not a homecoming dance. There's no need to get so fancy."

I bark a laugh. "What can I say, you're worth it."

El laughs as well and we spend the rest of the ride to the Shake Shack laughing and talking about El's shortish racing career and who's winning on the F1 circuit this season. By the time we get milkshakes and fries to dip in them, El's decidedly more cheerful.

Once we're parked outside Jolene's house, a long silence stretches between us. I want to say something cool, memorable. Something that conveys how much I like hearing her laugh.

"So, see you on Saturday at the nursing home?" I blurt after slurping up the last of my strawberry milkshake.

It is neither smooth nor interesting, but a relieved look flashes across El's face. Because, right, we're just barely-maybe-sort-of friends. Nothing more.

"Yes, see you then. And in the meantime, I'll try to think of a way to get Max's jacket."

"We'll figure it out." I hop out of the minivan and hurry into Jolene's house, forcing myself not to look back.

Have you ever thought about what it's like to sit behind the wheel of an F1 race car? Maybe you know something about the drivers, the teams, the drama, the money, the crashes. But underneath all that stuff, there's a feeling. Gloved hands resting on a wheel. The sick-sweet-heady-broiling perfume of asphalt and exhaust. The enraged roar of twenty high-test, expensive engines and the voices of hundreds of thousands of people crowding the stands. There are the hopes of all the drivers, their nerves, their sweat, the half breath after the last red light is lit and then LIGHTS OUT AND AWAY WE GO—there's the moment everyone pushes their feet into the gas and it begins.

After that, it's a scramble for position and dozens of laps around a track, each one with the potential for glory and danger. Your wheels hug the curves, you check out of the corner of your eye for other drivers. There's a too-tight turn, a miscalculation, a sliver of bad judgment, and the car beside you goes spinning off into the gravel or careening into the wall.

It's a place where milliseconds matter, where death lurks at every turn, and where the sweetest victory can be stolen in the span of an exhale.

I haven't driven anything as supreme as an F1 car, but when I raced I had the sweetest taste of a fraction of what it must have been like for those drivers. God, I miss it.

As I sit at a long table inside the Clearview Senior Center and Nursing Home's leisure and activity room on Saturday morning, stringing beads onto a piece of ribbon and listening to Mrs. Delores Russell, a pint-sized white woman with purple hair that matches her purple lipstick and plum-colored dress, explain why she can only eat peas on Thursdays, I can't help but think of how I used to spend every Saturday at a racetrack, either in my own car or watching Mom race. If I close my eyes, I can almost feel the rumble of the cars shaking the ground as they fly past. There's the hot wind in my hair as Mom pulls into the pit, and the nerve-wracking stress as her crew changes her tires in mere seconds.

She was so good. So fast. So clean in all her driving, always. What had happened the day she crashed? Had it been because she and Dad had argued that morning? Or was it something else, some small thing that—

"Are you sure you want to go with the blue?" Mrs. Delores Russell asks, interrupting my thoughts as she glares at the teal-blue-purple bead pattern I've been stringing.

Before I can reply, a cheer fills the room. Behind Delores, the TV is on and a group of other Clearview residents watch an older episode of the Netflix F1 show Drive to Survive, eagerly cheering for every team and arguing whether or not Lewis Hamilton will be world champion this year. I long to join them, since Dad doesn't even let us put racing on at home anymore, but I told Delores I'd help her make jewelry for her granddaughter, so I'm stuck at the table.

"I think the blue works here," I say, holding up the bracelet.

Delores purses her lips. "My granddaughter hates that color. Go for pink."

"What about green?"

This makes Delores glare at me over her coffee. "Pink. And make it quick. We've got a lot of other pieces to make." She gestures to the complete jewelry set she's drawn out in her sketchbook.

Delores used to be an artist, but now her hands are too unsteady to string beads, so she sticks to designing complicated patterns for volunteers to bring to life. Already she's told me three times how disappointing I am at bead stringing and how wrong my color combinations are for this bracelet.

Gripping the already-strung beads, I yank them off the ribbon. They pool in my hand, and I glance up at the clock hanging above Delores's head. It's 12:45, and there's still no sign of El, although the volunteer event starts soon. Of course, it's my own fault for arriving half an hour early, but I thought I might catch El and see if she'd come up with any ideas for getting Max's jacket back from Riley. I could've just texted her, yes, but that feels like a friendship line we're not quite ready to cross yet.

Across the room, a loud gasp cuts through the TV viewers. Delores and I both turn to watch as an F1 car—someone on the Haas team by the looks of it—spins out, cutting across a tight field of other race cars. Three drivers—Ferrari, Aston Martin, and AlphaTauri—smash into each other, and fenders, wheels, and other car bits go flying, but my eyes don't leave the white Haas car. It crunches as it hits the side rail, crumpling in on itself. A fire erupts, and there's a collective intake of breath inside the nursing home.

"Get out of there!" shouts one of the seniors, an older Black guy with white hair and a deep voice. He waves his hands at the driver, as if that will help.

As if anything will help.

All at once, my breath has been stolen. All at once, it's February of this year all over again. I'm at Daytona. There are three laps left in the race when something goes wrong. Mom's in the lead and then suddenly, she's not at all. Where she should've taken a curve easily, she spins out. Her car hits the side of a wall at full speed and then ricochets across the track, flipping and bouncing in a way that makes my stomach churn. Mirrors, parts, and pieces of her car wing off, littering the track. As her car slides to a stop in the center of the track, flames start at the engine. The other cars fly past, still racing, even as flags are waved, telling the drivers to slow down. A safety car is sent out. Dad shouts into his headset. Then, he's running toward Mom's car. I stand in the back of the pit, unable to move, my feet stuck to the floor like they've got magnets on them. There's a TV in front of me, broadcasting live coverage of the race. The announcers are saying something about the crash. I remember feeling out of my body, somehow there but also far away. All of me desperate for this not to be happening. Mom was supposed to take me to get my license tomorrow. It was going to be a celebration—when she won at Daytona, I got my license. Then, we would go to the Caribbean for spring break as a family to celebrate.

But no. It all came apart in milliseconds.

The top of her car was crunched, like a soda can that had been stepped on, but even on the TV, I saw her struggling to get out. There was her arm, her face for just a moment.

"Mom!" I had yelled, my voice lost among the thousands of others. Then, my feet started to move again. I had turned away from the TV, breaking all of my dad's rules by rushing toward the track. Hands grabbed for me, pit crew members and other people on her team—"Don't, JoJo! It's not safe to run out there on the track!"—but I didn't care. I pulled away, surging toward Mom's car. If I could get her out of there, she would be okay. We could be okay. Life could go on as it had before.

"MOM!" I yelled again, but just as I was close enough to see her face, strong arms pulled me back.

"JoJo!" It was Dad. His face was red, his voice frantic. "What are you doing out here?"

"I have to get to her, Dad. We have to get her out!"

He waved toward the safety team. Part of them was trying to put out the fire and the other was working to cut Mom out of the car. "They're working on it."

"They're not working fast enough!"

"We have to let—"

That was when the fire found her fuel tank. A great, heaving blossom of orange and red, it surged upward. The explosion sent us all sprawling. I'd landed hard on my belly, gravel digging into my hands. Dad had flung himself over me, making a dome of his body as metal and fire rained down around us.

Mom never made it out.

The beads in my hand clatter to the floor, spinning wildly under the table and dancing across the room.

"Shit," I swear, dropping to my knees and crawling under the table to pick them up. Tears fill my eyes. This is why I don't think about the crash. Why I work so hard to keep racing separate from that day in my mind. Because if I think too closely about it, I'll never get into a car again.

And that's just not acceptable.

Mom wouldn't have wanted that and she always knew how dangerous racing could be. "That's part of why I do it," she had told me. "Because it makes me feel alive. Even when it could kill me. There's a certain feeling that I'm always chasing."

Another cheer fills the room. I stop trying to catch rolling beads and look up. On the TV, somehow, the Haas driver stumbles out of the still-burning car. He waves his hand, and moves toward the safety crew that's been dispatched.

Lucky bastard. Why did he get to walk away and Mom didn't? Who decides these things?

Fuck. It's just so unfair.

"You missed some," a familiar voice behind me says.

I swipe at my tears as El appears beside me on the ground under the table, holding a handful of blue and teal beads. She glances at the TV and understanding crosses her face.

"I was wondering if you still watched races," she says softly.

"Sometimes." There's too much ache in my chest to lie.

"Do you miss it?"

"Always."

"But not the crashes."

"Not the crashes."

She takes my hand, opening my clenched fingers. The beads fall from her palm into mine, hitting the others gently. Her hand lingers as she closes my fingers over the beads. "It's okay to not be okay. I know people always say things like that, but it's true."

Before I can reply, Delores pops her head below the table. "What are you two doing down there?" She eyes the closeness between us suspiciously. "We're making bracelets here, not gabbing all day."

"Be right there, Mrs. Russell," El says. "I brought you some new charms from the craft store." She fishes a small brown paper bag from the pocket of her shorts and holds it out.

Delores takes it eagerly and turns away, leaving me and El beneath the table.

"Did you think of anything yet?" I ask El. "So we can race Riley?"

"Not really. I wish we had a fast car, but I hardly think the Oat-mobile will beat him. He probably wouldn't want it anyway."

As soon as she says it, I decide what to do. And I think Mom would approve. Her words whisper in my mind: There's a certain feeling that I'm always chasing.

Maybe helping El will bring me that feeling.

I let out a deep breath. "I have an idea of where we can get a car, but it's going to take some planning. And some work, since it currently doesn't run."

El raises an eyebrow. "Want to come over to my house tonight to figure it out?"

I definitely do.

"Yes."

"Come by at seven. My parents are going out to dinner."

"GIRLS!" Delores is decidedly not happy that we're still under the table.

El shoots me a knee-melting grin and clambers out of my space, leaving me a little breathless.

There's a certain feeling that I'm always chasing.

As I stand up, too, I know exactly what my mom meant, in more ways than just on the racetrack.