11
IF I DIDN’T know it was medically impossible, I’d say that Robinson was born with a wrench in his hand. Or that as a baby, he sucked on a spark plug instead of a pacifier.
This gearhead gene was why I was taking him to Torrance, California, next—because it certainly wasn’t my kind of place. Torrance breeds NASCAR drivers and semiprofessional cage fighters. (Ugh.) It has a racetrack, a giant rock ’n’ roll car show, and about five hundred stores that sell car parts.
In other words, for a guy like Robinson, it’s the Promised Land. The kind of place he had to—he deserved to—experience.
When we pulled into the parking lot of the Cal-Am Speedway the following afternoon, Robinson sucked in his breath and gave me his crooked, perfect grin.
“Axi Moore,” he said, “you are greatest person I have ever known.”
“You just wait,” I said, smiling back.
I steered him away from the glass atrium entrance and toward a side door propped open with a rolled-up copy of Car and Driver.
Brad Sewell was waiting for us in the pit. “Alexandra,” he said, stepping forward to give me a bear hug. “Long time no see, kiddo.”
Robinson clearly wanted to know how this beefy dude with a Dale Earnhardt tattoo and I were acquainted. But I simply said, “Robinson, this is Brad. Brad, this is my friend Robinson.”
“Nice to meet ya,” Brad said. “Let me walk you through a few things, and then we’ll get you in the cockpit.”
It was only then that Robinson understood what he was actually here for, and he looked like he might spontaneously combust from excitement.
He turned to me. “It’s like Say Anything,” he whispered.
We’d watched that old movie a hundred times. One of the best scenes is when the geeky main character takes his reluctant date, one of the Beautiful People, to an art museum after hours. He can do this because he’s friends with the museum guard, and because he’s hung a painting of the Beautiful Girl in one of the galleries.
Today was my museum moment for Robinson, but better. I’d bribed Brad with a chunk of my savings, and I’d shamelessly pulled the “I knew you when our sisters were in the cancer ward” card.
Brad began talking gibberish to Robinson, something about “initial turn-in” and “apex of the curve” and “neutral throttle on the corner.” But Robinson was nodding confidently, and then he was climbing into a flame-resistant Nomex suit, and Brad was fitting him with a radio helmet and snapping him into a five-point harness.
“Any fool can speed on the straightaway; it’s the curves that make a racer,” Brad said over his shoulder.
“Oh, sure,” I said. Like I knew what he was talking about—I couldn’t even drive to the grocery store.
Robinson revved the engine and then pulled out of the pit. He didn’t go that fast at first, but he must have gotten the hang of it after a while, because the engine got louder and the car became a green blur flashing past us again and again.
“So how’s your little sister?” I asked Brad.
“She’s in remission. Two years now.”
“That’s fantastic,” I said. Lizzie Sewell had been really nice to Carole Ann. Lizzie, it seems, was one of the lucky ones.
“And what about you?” Brad asked, and I pretended not to hear. Fortunately, just at that moment, the bright green car came screeching to a halt on the track outside the pit, and Robinson opened the door.
“Axi, you have got to get in here!” he yelled.
I looked over at Brad. I was hoping he’d tell me that the other seat belt was broken or that he was fresh out of helmets.
“There’s a suit over there that’ll fit you,” he said.
And that’s how I found myself in the passenger seat of a custom Chevy race car, outfitted like Danica Patrick and quivering with excitement.
“On your mark, get set, go!” yelled Robinson, and we peeled out onto the track, zero to sixty in about a millisecond.
The g-force slammed me against the seat, and the stunning, brain-shaking roar of the engine filled my ears. I could feel the noise as much as hear it. It vibrated in my chest and shook me deep in my guts.
I couldn’t help it: in joy and terror, I screamed.
I stopped, though, because I couldn’t even hear myself. And then I screamed some more.
We came toward the first curve, and I noticed the tall chain-link fence that arced inward over the track. Somehow I understood—even though I was totally incapable of higher thought, of abstract things such as words—that the fence was to keep us from splattering our body parts all over the bleachers in a crash.
The car had thick mesh netting instead of windows, so the wind came rushing in, hot and smelling like asphalt and oil. I couldn’t see how fast we were going, and I didn’t want to know.
We banked around the curve, the engine squealing.
As we pulled into the straightaway and Robinson hit hard on the throttle, suddenly my vision seemed to narrow. It was like looking through a tunnel. Everything on either side of me blurred and faded, and all that mattered was the airspace in front of us, and how lightning fast we were going to blast through it.
My body was singing with fear and happiness and an incredible feeling of being completely alive in the moment. I was no longer Alexandra Jane Moore—I was a supernova strapped into a bucket seat.
Go, go, go! I thought wildly. Because screaming, after all, was useless.
We took three more sound barrier–shattering laps, and when we finally slowed, I turned to Robinson with wide and no doubt crazy-looking eyes.
“Oh my God,” I said, pulling off my helmet and shaking out my sweat-drenched hair. “Oh. My. God.”
Robinson cackled madly. Brad came over and said, “Whad-dja think?”
It took Robinson a moment to answer, probably because he had to wait for his brain to stop vibrating. Then he said, “I might have just had the best time of my life.”
I started laughing like an idiot, because that was exactly what we’d come for, what I’d wanted to give him.
Carpe diem. Because today, after all, was all we knew we had.