Page 95 of False Start

“Almost did it,” I amended. “We still need to find out if we won this thing.”

“If we won this thing, huh?” Trent’s smile was infectious, eyes alight.

“Which we didn’t,” I tamped down my excitement. “But maybe we placed in the top three.”

The end of the rally party was in full swing and stretched out of the parking lot and overflowed into the car show. Car hoods were open, and teams wore their costumes as they traded beers and sodas in the street. We navigated around the crowds, making our way toward Tom and Ashley, who sat under a tent emblazoned with “Road to Nowhere Rally.”

“You made it,” Ashley said as we approached, checking her watch. “You cut it close. Again.”

“We had a roadside repair,” Trent all but crowed. “Did you check it out yet?”

Ashley shared a look with Tom. He shook his head. “Apparently not.”

That was all the prompting Trent needed to pull out his phone. “It was amazing. Kit repaired a cracked transmission.”

“I didn’t repair it,” I corrected. “I just worked around it. And I probably destroyed the Cougar in the process.”

Trent aimed the video at them, and they watched the cut and edited two-minute video Trent had posted nearly an hour ago.

When they finished, Tom sat back in his seat and shot me an impressed smile. “You came up with that?”

“It was a two-part solution. Trent came up with the duct tape idea, I came up with the windshield wiper workaround. Or borrowed the idea from something else I read.”

He nodded. “You’ve got a real future as a shitty car mechanic.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I blushed.

“And how many points does this shitty car mechanic earn?” Trent asked.

Tom sighed, rubbing his scruff-laden chin. “Five.”

“Which puts us…” Trent deflated. “Two points behind first.”

“Second place is pretty good for your first rally,” Ashley said. “You should be really proud of yourself.”

Trent nodded, but didn’t brighten up. I bit my bottom lip, my hand moving to my phone in my pocket. “Exactly how badly do you want to win, Texas?”

THIRTY-ONE

TRENT

The car rallyand car show long over, Nowhere, Florida emptied quickly. We said goodbye to the other rally drivers and then watched the car show participants drive away and the shops close up as the sun set.

Team Barbie graciously left us with two bottles of wine poured into sports drink bottles, and Kit and I laid on the hood of the Cougar, enjoying one last drink before the rally was well and truly over.

“You need to stop petting it.” Kit swiped the bare metal first place trophy out of my hand, sloshing her drink.

“I can’t,” I answered, my face sore from smiling. “It’s perfect.”

“Don’t you have, like, a hundred trophies?”

I stole it back out of her hand, running my finger along the poorly welded joint holding the metal cut out of a rusted car onto the stand. “But this one is my favorite. I just have a bunch of dumb championship rings.”

Kit rolled her eyes. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”

“I’m ridiculous?” I tucked my arm under my head. “You were the one who posted the naked rockslide video online.”

In a shocking turn of events, we had a path to victory. A final two secret points: our heavily edited rock slide video.

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