Chapter 5: The Tattoo

Sunday night at Pinetop drew the biggest crowd of the summer. The fence along the front straight was four deep by dusk, and somebody had set up a grill in the infield selling burgers for cash, and the announcer, a man named Curtis who'd called every drift night at Pinetop for a decade, worked the crowd through a bullhorn because the PA system had died in June and nobody had fixed it.

The track at Pinetop sat on a flat ridge top above a former logging town, a two-mile road course that wound through old growth pine and granite outcroppings, the kind of place that had been carved out of a mountain one dynamite blast at a time in the seventies and had never quite stopped smelling like the sawmill it used to be. On a Sunday night in July the place smelled like cut pine and burnt rubber and the funnel cake truck that parked at the gate every weekend, and the noise of it, the engines and the crowd and the bullhorn, carried down the ridge into the town below like the whole mountain was humming.

The old logging road that the course followed had been the main haul road in the forties and fifties, a wide dirt track cut through the forest to drag timber down to the mill in town, and the road had been wide enough and graded enough that somebody in the seventies had looked at it and seen a race track, and the town had let them pave it because the mill was already closing and they needed something to keep people from leaving. The original asphalt had been laid in 1974 and repaved once in the nineties, and in some of the slower corners you could still see the seam where the old surface met the new, a ridge in the pavement that the tires kicked over if you weren't paying attention, and Dani always paid attention to it.

Dani sat in her car in the staging lane, engine idling, waiting for her heat. She'd qualified twelfth, which put her in the middle bracket, tandem battles against cars closer to her own pace before the final showdown against the top eight. She'd spent the afternoon under the hood, adjusting boost by ear, richening the fuel map a hair because the car had felt lean on the last run, hesitant right at the top of second gear.

She'd felt the lean spot on the warm-up run, a half-second hesitation as the turbo spooled and the engine grabbed for air it wasn't getting, and she'd known before she lifted off the throttle what was wrong, the way she always knew, the way her grandfather had taught her to know, by sound and feel and the small language a car speaks when it wants something. She'd richened the map two clicks, test run, two clicks more, and the hesitation had smoothed out, and the car had pulled clean through the top of second, and she'd closed the hood satisfied.

Her phone sat in the cupholder, face-up, screen dark. She hadn't texted the unknown number back. She hadn't blocked it either.

Curtis's voice crackled through the bullhorn. "Bracket one, first battle, lead car number forty-four, chase car number sixteen, let's go, let's go."

Dani watched the first pair launch off the line, tires smoking, the lead car diving into the first corner in a long controlled slide while the chase car mirrored it a car length back, and the crowd roared when the chase car got too close and clipped the lead's bumper, both cars sliding wide, both drivers correcting, neither spinning. Good battle. Curtis called it for the lead car.

She was up in bracket three.

Her lead run went clean. Dani drove her line through the course, a snaking ribbon of cones and clipping points through the old logging road grade, holding the slide angle steady through the sweeper, and her chase car, a Corolla with more grip than power, couldn't keep pace on the transition. She advanced.

Her second battle, as chase, she pushed harder, closing the gap on the lead car through the final hairpin until she was inches off his bumper, and the crowd went up in a wave of noise, and Curtis called it in her favor.

She was in the final eight.

She pulled into the paddock to let the car cool and drank an entire bottle of water in four swallows and checked the bracket sheet taped to the timing tower.

Her name, or the name she raced under, sat across from ROOK.

Dani stood very still.

She read it again. Maren vs. Rook, final eight, third battle. Her stomach did something complicated, half thrill, half dread, the kind of feeling she got standing at full draw with her pin floating on the ten ring, everything depending on the next half second.

She walked to her car. She sat in the driver's seat with the door open and her feet on the ground and she made herself breathe. Four counts in. Four counts hold. Four counts out. The same breath she used at full draw.

A shadow fell across her open door.

She lifted her head. The kid from the Rook paddock stood there again, no corndog this time, his clipboard under his arm.

"You're up against him," he said. Not a question.

"I saw."

"Nobody's beaten his time this season. Nobody's beaten his time in two seasons."

"I heard."

He studied her for a second, his head tilted, and something in his face shifted, like he was seeing her for the first time instead of just the car. "You've got a good line through the sweeper. Best I've seen tonight, actually."

"Thanks."

"He's going to see that too." He tapped the clipboard against his leg. "Good luck, Maren."

He walked off. Dani sat with her hands on the wheel and watched the black Skyline roll out of its canopy toward the staging lane, low and clean, the flat six popping on the overrun, and she felt her pulse pick up in a way that had nothing to do with fear.

She lined up behind him at the start. He was lead car first. The starter dropped the flag and the Skyline launched off the line and into the first corner in a slide so smooth it looked slow, though the timing tower would later show it wasn't, and Dani chased, matching his angle, matching his line, closing when she could, backing off when the course tightened, and through the sweeper she found the same clean arc the kid had complimented her on and she held it a full car length off the Skyline's rear bumper, close enough that the crowd screamed, close enough that Curtis's bullhorn cracked with excitement.

The Nissan had less power, that was clear from the start, the Skyline pulling a car length on every straight the way a car with a hundred more horsepower will, and Dani couldn't close that gap on power, but she could close it on angle, on commitment, on the willingness to carry speed into the corner that a smarter driver wouldn't, and she carried it, and the gap that should have grown on the straights closed back up in the corners, and the crowd could see it, and the crowd went wild, because the crowd at Pinetop loved nothing more than a mismatch that was too close to call.

Curtis called the lead run for Rook, narrow.

They swapped. Now she led, he chased.

Dani drove the tightest line she had in her, every clip point exact, every transition held a beat longer than instinct told her to hold it, because instinct said back off and her grandfather's voice in her head said hold it, hold it, let the car tell you when. She could feel the Skyline behind her, close, closer, the headlights washing her mirrors on the entry to the last corner, and she held her line through the exit and crossed the finish and the crowd exploded.

Curtis's voice cracked through the bullhorn. "That is close, folks, that is close, judges are deliberating."

Dani sat in her car, hands shaking, heart slamming, and watched the judges huddle at the tower. She'd driven the best two runs of her life. She knew it in her body the way she knew a good release on the bow, the way the arrow left before she consciously decided to let it go.

The verdict came back.

Rook. By a hair. The chase run, they said, showed tighter proximity through the final corner.

Dani exhaled. Not devastated, not even close to devastated, which surprised her. She'd lost to a ghost and she'd made him work for it, and some part of her that had nothing to do with winning felt like she'd found the top of a mountain she hadn't known existed.

The two cars rolled into the winner's circle, a roped-off square of asphalt in front of the timing tower where the crowd gathered three deep to watch the trophy get handed out. Dani parked, killed the engine, pulled her helmet off, and climbed out into the noise and the grill smoke and the stadium lights.

The Skyline parked beside her. The door opened.

He got out in a black firesuit unzipped to the waist, a plain white shirt underneath damp with sweat, his hair stuck to his forehead. He pulled his own helmet off and shook his head and the crowd cheered his name, ROOK, ROOK, and he lifted a hand to them without looking, the gesture of someone used to the noise.

Dani stood two feet away, catching her breath, when he turned toward her to offer the customary hand, the good-battle handshake that every driver gave every driver they'd just raced.

His forearm was bare, sleeve pushed up past the elbow.

A bird in flight. Black line work. Climbing from wrist to elbow in a single clean stroke.

Dani's whole body went still.

Her eyes rose.

He was already looking at her, and he was already smiling, and it was the same eyes, the same dark eyes she'd seen above the seam of a visor in a 7-Eleven three nights ago, the ones that had smiled at her when she'd told him to take it back.

"Hey, babe," he said.

The crowd roared around them, thinking it was a joke, a bit, a driver being funny for the cameras somebody was holding up on their phones. Dani stood frozen, her helmet under her arm, her chest heaving, staring at the tattoo, at the face, at the mouth that had just called her babe in front of forty cars and two hundred strangers like they'd been together for years.

"You," she said.

"Me," he agreed.

"You're Rook."

"I'm Rook." He held out his hand for the customary shake, and there was a challenge in his eyes now, daring her to take it, daring her to complete the ritual like nothing had happened, like he hadn't just detonated her entire night.

Dani did not take his hand.

"I bet everything I had on winning tonight," she said, very quietly, so the cameras wouldn't catch it. "Everything. My whole entry f*e back times four, side bets, all of it. I needed first."

His smile flickered. Something behind his eyes shifted, calculating, and for a second he seemed less like a boy on a motorcycle and more like someone who'd just realized a joke had landed somewhere he hadn't meant to throw it.

"I didn't know that," he said.

"You didn't ask."

"Dani." He said her name like he'd been saving it, like he'd practiced it, and hearing her actual name in his mouth after three days of being nothing but a stranger and a text message hit her harder than the loss had.

"How do you know my name," she said.

"I know a lot of things."

"That's not an answer, that's a threat."

"It's not a threat." He stepped closer, dropping his voice under the noise of the crowd. "I've been trying to find you since Wednesday night. I didn't know you raced. I didn't know any of this. I just wanted to see you again."

"Well, you saw me." Her voice shook, and she hated that it shook, hated that after the best drive of her life she was standing here with her eyes burning because a stranger with a bird tattoo had just cost her rent money and a piece of her heart she hadn't even agreed to hand over. "Congratulations. Great victory. Enjoy your trophy."

She turned and walked toward her car.

"Dani, wait."

"Fuck off, Rook," she said, not turning around, and the crowd, thinking it was still the bit, laughed and clapped, and Curtis's bullhorn crackled with something about a lovers' quarrel, and Dani got in her car and slammed the door and sat there with her hands shaking on the wheel while behind her, in the winner's circle, the boy with the bird tattoo stood holding a trophy he suddenly didn't want, watching a red taillight pull away into the dark.