The Lovely Reckless

I can’t tell if she’s asking because she likes the idea or hates it. “If you think I have a chance at winning.”

  “We’d have to start practicing tonight.” She rubs her arm through the sling and winces.

  “Are you okay?” I hate seeing her in pain, and I hate her father for doing this to her.

  She squeezes her eyes shut and takes a deep breath before opening them again. “I’m good. What time are you free?”

  “I finish working at the rec center at seven.” I’m really doing this.

  “I’ll meet you in the parking lot. My other sister Ava is a sophomore. She can drive us in my car.”

  There’s no way I can get out of riding with Lex, not without an airtight story. “Actually, that won’t work. Can you meet me near my dad’s apartment in Westridge instead?”

  “You name the place. Just text me the address. I’m not showing up to class with mascara all over my face and my arm in a sling. Put your number in here for me.” She hands me her cell.

  I add my number and return the phone. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “This is more than a favor, Frankie. If you do this, I’ll owe you.” She’s serious. I hear it in her voice.

  “You don’t owe me anything. That’s not why I’m doing it.” I want to help Cruz. I think of her as a friend, and she wasn’t racing for fun.

  She shakes her head and smiles to herself. “It makes sense.”

  “What does?” I ask.

  “Why Marco is crazy about you.” She takes off down the hall, leaving me speechless.

  Did Marco actually say that to her? Or anything remotely close to it?

  I climb the stairs to the second floor and walk to the end of the hallway, where a window overlooks the quad. The side door opens and Cruz slips out, leaving the same way she came in. Time to face Mrs. Hellstrom alone.

  I’m about to head to English when I notice someone else crossing the quad toward the parking lot.

  Where the hell is he going?

  If Abel wants to sneak around, he needs to stop wearing a dead rock star’s leather jacket.

  * * *

  Lex drives faster than usual on the way to the rec center.

  Does she know Abel left school before first period? Did they have another fight?

  Lex weaves between lanes, and I feel seasick.

  “I need to talk to you about Abel. I saw him ditching this morning before first period.”

  She pulls at the ends of her hair. “Why do you care? You have new friends now.”

  Her comment hits a nerve. “I’m going to ignore that.”

  “What about Abel?” I try again. “Do you know why he left?”

  She pulls into the rec center parking lot. “No. And I don’t care.” The pain in her voice says otherwise.

  “Yes, you do.”

  “But I wish I didn’t,” she says softly.

  * * *

  Cruz chose a parking garage for our first lesson, which seemed like a strange place to practice street racing. But she insisted it was perfect. Her cousin worked the evening shift, so he could play lookout.

  When we arrive at the garage later that night, Cruz’s cousin raises the electric arm and waves us through. Ava grinds the gears, and Cruz cringes. “Easy. You’re going to wear out the transmission.”

  Ava glares at her. “Guess you should’ve given me driving lessons when I asked last year.”

  “Just stop on the second level and let Frankie take over before you give me a heart attack.”

  Ava hops out on level 2 and sits on the trunk of a stranger’s Lincoln Town Car with her legs crossed. “I’ll watch from here. I value my life.”

  Not encouraging. “So what’s the plan? How do you race in a parking garage?”

  Cruz laughs. “You don’t. I’m teaching you how to get off the line when the flagger gives the signal. If you can’t do that, there’s no race.” She points at the ramp. “Stop halfway up.”

  “I’ll never get the car out of first gear fast enough without stalling or rolling backward.”

  “Are you saying you can’t drive stick?” she asks.

  “It’s been a while. Am I racing uphill?”

  “Getting off the line fast is all about the bite point. If you can’t tell when the clutch engages, you’ll stall on the line and the rest won’t matter.” She points at the ramp. “Let’s do this.”

  I drive halfway up and stop.

  Cruz runs her hand along the dash and takes a deep breath. “Try to go easy on her. Technically, she isn’t mine. If we screw anything up, I have to fix it or cough up the money to pay someone else to do it. And if we total the car, I have to replace it. A Nissan GT-R in this condition isn’t easy to find.”

  Great. No pressure.

  “Who owns the car?”

  “A guy named Kong. He owns King Kong Bodyworks. He lends us his cars, and he gets a cut of whatever we win racing. It’s like a lease.”

  “Does he own Marco’s car, too?”

  “Yep. Mine, Marco’s, Deacon’s, and a few others. It works out for everyone. We’re the only people on V Street with top-of-the-line cars who aren’t dealers. Everyone else buys a piece of shit and puts their money under the hood.” Cruz’s expression turns serious. “This stays between us, right? Kong is a good guy, but the cops won’t see it that way.”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “Are you ready to do this?”

  “I think so.” I have no idea.

  I press the clutch to the floor and shift into first gear. I let up on the clutch and give the Nissan some gas, trying to synchronize the two movements. The engine revs along with my pulse, and the car starts rolling backward.

  “Brake!” Cruz shouts. “Don’t hit the wall!”

  I slam my foot against the brake pedal, and the Nissan jerks to a stop.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get it.”

  “If my clutch survives.” Cruz rubs her temples and exhales slowly. “Straighten out the wheel and try again.”

  After thirty minutes of stalling and sliding backward, I’m ready to give up.

  “Stop overthinking it, Frankie. Trust your instincts.”

  In theory, it sounds easy. But after all the wrong turns I’ve taken—the choices I let other people make for me and the bad ones I made on my own—trusting myself feels impossible.

  With the clutch pinned to the floor, I shift into first again.

  I can do this.

  One foot is on the clutch, the other on the brake. I picture the pedals on a piano, the way my feet controlled them as my fingers danced across the keys. Playing the piano requires a firm but delicate touch … and timing. Getting up this ramp can’t be harder than playing Mozart’s Concerto no. 19 in F Major.

  I release the clutch, balancing the weight between the pedals, easing up on the brake and pressing down on the gas. The car starts rolling backward, and my first instinct is to hit the brake again. But I feel the clutch catch.

  A little more gas …

  The car springs forward, and the engine revs higher than it should. I shift into second gear, and the GT-R launches up the ramp.

  Cruz smiles. “See. Piece of cake. Now let’s do it a couple more times.”

  “Okay.” I don’t move. “This is just a ramp, Cruz. I’m guessing a race will be a lot harder. Maybe we need to come up with a plan B?”

  “You are plan B.”

  CHAPTER 18

  PERFECT PITCH

  It’s only eight o’clock in the morning, and I need a nap. Practicing on the ramp last night was nerve-racking. I lean against my locker and zone out. I don’t see Marco until he reaches over my shoulder and puts his hand on the door above me. He angles his body, caging me in on the other side, and looks down at me.

  My mind flashes back to the kiss, the way his lips felt against mine. Without thinking, I touch my mouth. Marco sucks in a sharp breath.

  He’s so close. The scent of leather and citrus envelops me.

  The only interaction we’ve had since the kiss and
the disaster that followed was with Cruz before school yesterday, and it didn’t involve talking to each other.

  “I have to go.”

  “Don’t leave,” he whispers, warm breath tickling my neck. “I was waiting for you.”

  “Why?” I pretend he isn’t inches from nuzzling my neck.

  “To say I’m sorry.” For yelling at me or kissing me? Marco shifts, and his chest brushes my shoulder.

  Why does the slightest physical contact with him send my pulse into overdrive?

  Because you made out with him on the hood of a car, and it was the most amazing kiss you’ve ever had.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Does that mean you accept my apology?” he asks. “Only an asshole would make a comment like that after what happened to your boyfriend. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “It’s fine.” I try to maneuver around him, but Marco steps in front of me and I plow into him.

  He catches me by the shoulders. “It’s not fine—not what I said or what happened to him.”

  The hallway is packed. Footsteps echo. Locker doors slam. Voices become muffled and distorted. I can’t have a flashback now—not in the hallway in front of everyone. Not in front of Marco.

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” It’s a plea.

  Marco nods and lets his hands slide down my arms, his brown eyes locked on mine. “Why did you kiss me, Frankie?”

  It’s the last question I expected him to ask, and I don’t have an answer—not one I’m willing to say out loud. The bell rings, and students rush down the hallway like the building is on fire.

  “Because you were drunk, right?” he asks.

  Say yes and he’ll leave you alone.

  “It doesn’t matter.” I step around Marco and walk into the crowd, but I hear him call out behind me.

  “What if it matters to me?”

  * * *

  “What’s going on between you and Marco Leone?” Lex asks the minute we pull out of Lot A. “And don’t say nothing, because everyone is talking about you two.”

  Perfect.

  Lex tightens her grip on the wheel. “If you don’t want to tell me, then just say so. But don’t lie to me.”

  I pull at the loose threads on my shoelaces. “I’m not sure.”

  “But something is going on?”

  I lean back against the headrest. “We kissed. Once.”

  And I’ve thought about it a hundred times since then.

  Lex chews on her bottom lip. “Were you going to tell me at all?”

  “Were you going to tell me you slept with Abel?”

  “Fine. We’re even.” Her shoulders sag. “But you don’t want to get involved with Marco. You’ll be the one who gets hurt.”

  “We’re not involved. We kissed one time.” Knowing how Lex feels about Marco, I’m uncomfortable talking about him with her. We ride the rest of the way in silence, something Lex used to hate.

  * * *

  “How’s your hand-eye coordination?” Cruz asks later that night. We’re on a dead-end street behind an old recycling plant for more street-racing prep. The whole place reeks of wet newspaper.

  “Why? Are we playing tennis?” I’m in a rotten mood. At school today, I overheard Abel on his cell talking about bidding on something.

  Cruz gives me a strange look. “My racket is in the shop.”

  “Stupid joke.”

  “You think?” Cruz angles her body toward me. “Back to the original question. Do you have good hand-eye coordination or what?”

  “I can play treble and bass clef scales on the piano simultaneously, which, musically speaking, is pretty badass.”

  Cruz taps on the gearshift. She’s all business tonight. “Then it’s time to teach you the hard part.”

  “Wait. I thought the ramp was the hard part.”

  “Getting off the line will make or break you in a race. But even if you don’t stall, you’ve still gotta shift from first gear to sixth as fast as possible.” She taps on the plastic in front of the speedometer and gas gauge. “The tachometer will let you know when it’s time to shift into the next gear.”

  Don’t stall on the line. Watch the street and the tachometer. Get to sixth gear fast. That’s not complicated or anything.

  “Frankie? You ready?” Cruz watches me expectantly.

  Will she kill me if I say no? “Yeah.”

  “I’m gonna count to three.”

  I position my feet on the pedals and shift into first. A little gas, and the six-cylinder engine roars to life.

  “One.”

  The tachometer reads five thousand RPMs. Exactly where I want it.

  “Two.”

  “Three.”

  I dump the clutch too fast, and the car jerks to a stop. “Shit.”

  Cruz taps on the dashboard. “Back up and try again.”

  I stall two more times before I start listening—not to Cruz but to the engine.

  On my fourth attempt, I hold the GT-R at five thousand RPMs as Cruz counts down.

  The engine revs.…

  I hear it and my feet synchronize. I hit the gas, let off the clutch, and with tires squealing, the car flies off the line.

  My eyes dart between the street and the tachometer. The arrow shoots up. When it hits a little over nine thousand, I feel the pull that tells me to shift to the next gear. I repeat the process, trying to watch the tachometer and the road at the same time, until I hit fourth gear and realize I don’t need to check the RPMs anymore.

  When the engine reaches the magic number, it revs at exactly the same pitch and intensity. All I have to do is listen.

  “Check your tach!” Cruz barks from the passenger seat. “If you push her too hard, the engine will blow.”

  Tuning out Cruz’s voice, I listen for the ramping sound that means the car has hit nine thousand. Relying on my ears instead of my eyes makes sliding into fifth and sixth gears faster and smoother.

  The GT-R crosses the mock finish line, and I circle around to where we started. “How was it? Don’t sugarcoat it.”

  “Slow.” Cruz doesn’t sound annoyed. “You have to check the tach. If you lose the race, it’s one thing. Frying my engine is something else. I’d owe Kong more than a cut of my winnings.”

  “I don’t need to look at the gauge. Listening to the engine is easier. I figured it out when I hit fourth gear.”

  Cruz shakes her head like she’s trying to wrap her mind around what I told her. “Hold on. Are you saying you can already hear when it’s time to shift?”

  “Yeah. The engine makes this whirring noise like it’s winding up, and the pitch spikes.”

  “Uh-huh.” She stares at me like I just told her I could read minds. “Do it again.”

  It takes three more runs before Cruz believes me. Who knew perfect pitch was good for more than singing and playing an instrument?

  I fall into bed that night with my shoulders aching, proof that every minute was real. Another feeling eclipses the pain pounding my body.

  Pride.

  The old Frankie finally brought something valuable to the table.

  CHAPTER 19

  BFFS

  I make it to English just before the bell the next morning. Cruz is already sitting in the back of the classroom, her silver-studded black-leather high-tops propped on the chair in front of her. I take a seat next to her.

  “So what’s going on between you and Marco?” she asks the moment I sit down.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Marco doesn’t stand in the hall and stare at girls or beg them to talk to him.”

  As usual, I search through my backpack for a pen. “There was no begging involved.”

  “That’s not what I heard from my sources in Lot B this morning.”

  “Please take out your journals.” Mrs. Hellstrom waves a composition notebook in the air. “Hopefully, everyone spent some time writing, because your first assignment is due today. Of course, I would never ask my students to e
ngage in an activity without doing it myself. So I’ll start by reading from my journal.”

  We’re screwed. She’s one of those teachers who thinks we’ll be inspired if she participates in this experiment along with us. Mrs. Hellstrom dives into a painful selection about what a loser she was in high school, pausing at the more dramatic moments.

  Cruz kicks my chair and holds out her hands in a what the hell? gesture.

  I tear off a piece of paper and scribble the words across it. I’m not about to risk someone overhearing me say them out loud.

  We kissed.

  Folding the scrap in half, I pass it to her.

  “No shit?” Cruz blurts out when she reads it.

  “Miss Vera Cruz,” Mrs. Hellstrom snaps, her arm extended with the open journal balanced on her palm. “You may not use that kind of language in my class.”

  “Sorry,” Cruz says. “Your writing is just so … deep. You know?”

  A few people turn around and look at Cruz like she’s crazy. Not Mrs. Hellstrom. She raises her chin proudly. “Thank you, Miss Vera Cruz. Please watch your language in the future.”

  When Mrs. Hellstrom finishes, she closes the notebook and waits as if she expects applause. “Who else would like to read? Don’t be shy.” No one volunteers. “A show of hands. How many of you completed the journal assignment?”

  Two hands go up.

  A guy in the back fake-coughs. “Liars.”

  I’m not the only person who doesn’t want to bare my soul.

  Instead of admitting defeat, Mrs. Hellstrom gives us the rest of the class period to catch up. The minute she turns away, Cruz kicks my chair again.

  “Let’s get back to Marco kissing you.”

  I’m not sure if telling her was a good idea, but it’s too late.

  I lean closer. “Actually, I kissed him. He basically dared me to do it.”

  Cruz raises her eyebrows. “Uh-huh.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “So you just kissed him?” The hint of a smile plays on her lips. “At least that explains why he was following you in the hallway like a puppy.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  Mrs. Hellstrom looks up.

  Cruz waits until she returns to her book, then whispers. “I’ve known Marco since elementary school. He doesn’t follow girls around.”