Titans

  Lottie waves an arm toward the room, and I head inside and take a seat, my hands beginning to sweat. As strange as this feels, I can’t help growing excited. Is there really a chance I’ll race again? Does this woman really have the fifty thousand we need?

  And if so, what will she expect in return?

  Lottie folds her skirt beneath her and sits across from me in the interview room. “You’re probably wondering how I know Rusty.”

  “Rags?”

  She smiles. It’s a nice smile. Makes me want to touch her mouth, which I realize isn’t healthy. “That’s right. He got that nickname from the engineers, didn’t he? Rusty was quite ambitious when it came to the Titans. He wanted to know everything and do everything.” Lottie’s smile dims. “He sacrificed a lot in order to spend so much time with those horses.”

  I study Lottie’s face. Her eyes seem sad like the bald-headed man’s, but for a different reason. It’s obvious Lottie and Rags have history. The question is what kind, and what happened in the end. Out of curiosity, I glance at her left hand. No ring.

  Lottie produces a stack of papers. “I met Rusty at Hanover Steel seven years ago. I thought he was brilliant then, and I still do. And I saw the way you raced on Sunday night. You’re a natural. A little reckless, perhaps, but a true jockey.”

  My chest expands. If she’s trying to bait me with praise, she’s doing a solid job.

  “Here’s what I’m offering, Astrid. I’ll pay the entrance fee and any expenses you may incur along the way, including riding equipment and maintenance for the horse. In exchange, you’ll attend any and all practices your manager sets, and you’ll follow my lead when it comes to your public persona.”

  I squint at her. “What do you mean, my public persona?”

  Lottie folds her hands. “I want you to accurately represent the county you live in. So, no pretending you’re something you’re not, or wearing designer clothing to jockey social events. That sort of thing.”

  I grin. “So I can keep my jeans and tennis shoes?”

  “Not exactly. I want you to be relatable to the working class in the greater Detroit area, but I also want you to be someone they aspire to emulate. A role model. Not a pipe dream.”

  Once again, I think about the magazines squashed between my mattress and bedsprings. My dirty little secret. She doesn’t want me to be like the models inside. She wants me to be real, but better. An improved version of Astrid Sullivan that Warren County citizens and others like them can look up to. I like the idea. I wish I’d had that when I was younger. I wish Zara had it now. But how can I be that person?

  “What if I can’t be what you want me to be?” I mumble.

  Lottie takes a ballpoint pen from her purse and slides it across the table. The pen cap has been chewed to bits, making it less intimidating somehow. “All I’m asking is that you try. Follow my lead off the track, and Rags’s lead on the track, and together we might have a shot.”

  I take the mangled pen. “What about Barney? He’s been helping us. And my friend, Magnolia? I want them to stay involved.”

  Lottie laughs lightly. “That’s fine. What else?”

  I swallow and lean back in the chair, avoiding her gaze. “How much will I get if we win? If you’re paying for the sponsorship fee, then you’ll want a cut of the winnings. How much will be left to me and my team?”

  “I’ll take back whatever we need to cover the fees and expenses, let’s say seventy thousand, and then an additional two hundred thousand to cover the risks of putting my money on the line. That’s two hundred and seventy thousand to me, an almost three hundred percent return. More than enough.” Lottie nods to the paperwork. “The remainder would be split between you and Rusty. If my expense estimates are accurate, that’d leave you with eight hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars each.”

  It’s more money than I’ve ever dreamed of holding in my hands. That kind of cash would pay off our house, and Magnolia’s family’s house too. Maybe I could even invest a portion into Magnolia’s secret online store. She deserves that, and so much more.

  “What about after the races end?” I ask, thinking back to the photos Hart and I supplied to the Titan Enquirer cameramen. “Will I be free to sign an endorsement deal if a company wanted me after the summer is over?”

  Lottie opens her palms. “What happens after the summer isn’t my business. I only want to be a part of you winning.”

  I chance a smile. “I want to be a part of that too.” Studying Lottie under the fluorescent lighting, I know she wants more than what she lets on; most likely something to do with Rags. But she already changed the subject once when I asked. My concern is continuing the Titan season, and this woman is offering me a way to do that. So I read the paperwork quickly, breezing over parts because she’s watching as I read and I’m afraid she’ll change her mind if I take too long.

  Then I take the pen and sign my name at the bottom of each page. After she does the same, she offers me her hand. We shake and grin at each other like two love-struck morons.

  “I’ll meet you at Barney’s place this Friday after the race schedule is announced.”

  “You know where he lives?” I ask, fishing for information.

  She shrugs her purse onto her shoulder. “I’m familiar.”

  Rags is waiting for me outside the interview hallway. He sees the papers in my hand, and looks at me expectantly. I nod to tell him what he wants to know. My manager curses loudly, but I don’t miss the excitement flash across his face.

  “We’ve got ourselves a sponsor,” I say. “No cost to us. And no company to report to.”

  He presses his lips together. “It’ll cost me.”

  I want to know what he means, but I’m too astounded that this is really happening, and I don’t want to ruin the moment. So instead, I find my best friend and we dance for hours, celebrating, before Rags and Barney insist it’s time to leave.

  I fight the twosome initially, but after grabbing another two truffles, I relent, my mouth full of chocolate. After taking a few steps toward the exit, I overhear Theo Gambini listening to his younger brother talking passionately about salt mines, of all things. Theo stops listening and looks at me, tilting his head to one side as if he’s studying an alien species. Maybe it’s the buzz from securing a sponsor, but I find the courage to lift my hand and wave.

  Theo hesitates. Then he raises a single finger in acknowledgment and the hint of a smile touches his mouth. It’s gone the moment his younger brother sees who he’s looking at. Arvin’s brow furrows and he runs his tongue across his teeth like he’s imagining the taste of my overcooked, ill-flavored flesh.

  Arvin glares at me long enough for my stomach to turn. I didn’t think anything could rupture the mountain of hopefulness I’d constructed in my mind. But I know what Arvin is thinking when he looks at me that way—trash. Unworthy trash that could reflect poorly on his precious, prestigious circuit. He may promote his races to the working class, but I can’t overlook the gate that separates his expensive track and gleaming horses and privileged riders from those who are less than.

  When Magnolia pulls me away, I have a healthy supply of dread coursing through my body.

  The feeling is nothing compared to what awaits me at home.

  Rags is gracious enough to drop me off out front. It’s a first for him; not making me walk from his house. I thank him for that, and for the flowers. I don’t expect him to say more than what he does, which is a gruff, “Be at my house at eight in the morning. No excuses.”

  I roll my eyes and smile as he pulls away, but when I face my house, my smile falters. The light in my room is on. Maybe Dani finally came home to, I don’t know, gather her strength before leaving again to be with Jason. But if I know my sister, she’d be asleep already. It’s eleven o’clock, and though Dani likes herself a good party, if she is at home, she’s hibernating in bed. Always.

  Raw nerves bloom in my stomach as I gather my feathered skirt and head toward the front door. I stop outside
and peer through the window to the left to ensure my dad isn’t up. He’s nowhere to be seen. Probably off making a microwave function with only the use of a fork and a box of toothpicks.

  Even though Dad’s MIA, I’ll still have to deal with Dani seeing my dress. My mom asked me to keep it from my sisters, and now I’m going to start a household riot.

  I swish through the door and close it gently, then tiptoe down the hallway. My parents’ bedroom door is shut tight, and so is Zara’s. So I form a plan. I’ll peek around the corner, and if Dani is back, I’ll hop in the shower for a few minutes and return wearing a towel. The dress can spend the night in the hamper.

  Though I’m not sure why, I find myself holding my breath when I slyly glance around the corner, a criminal in the making. But it’s not Dani I see sitting on her bed.

  It’s my father.

  His hands are on his knees, and his head is lowered as if in prayer. But I know that’s not right. I pull back lightning-fast, but that breath I’d been holding rushes out. Before I can make a break for it, my dad catches sight of me.

  “Dani?” His voice is misleadingly soft. I stop, hoping he’ll say my own name instead of my sister’s using that same exact voice. If he did, I’d go in there. I might even sit next to him and lay my head on his shoulder. Tell him everything about my night and pray he understood my reasons for doing this. Pray I understand his reasons for putting us in this situation.

  He doesn’t say my name, though, and I know I’m avoiding the inevitable by standing in the hall. Am I really going to hide from my dad? Is he really that big of a monster? Guilt leads me to step into view.

  As soon as he sees it’s me, and I mean the moment his eyes wash over my face, he rises to his feet. Gone is the softness he fooled me with. Gone is the aging man sitting on his oldest daughter’s bed, wishing she’d return.

  Now there is only anger.

  “Where have you been?” His voice is dangerously low. It takes five years off my age, and all of a sudden I’m twelve instead of seventeen.

  My tongue attempts to answer him truthfully, but my brain won’t have it. Call it survival instincts. “I went to a dance with Magnolia. At the Knights of Columbus hall.”

  “And you’re just now getting home?” he says. “Did you think to tell your mother or me where you were going?”

  I’m stunned silent, because my dad rarely asks when I will be home or where I’m going. He says he trusts his kids and doesn’t need to hover over them, but in actuality, I don’t think he wants the headache of constantly questioning us.

  Before I can form another lie, he leans his head back and his eyes narrow. “That’s a nice dress, Astrid. Where’d you get it?”

  Ooh, that one is too easy. “Borrowed it from Magnolia.”

  I’m proud of myself for that answer. Look at me, one step ahead of the grizzly man!

  My dad crosses the room in an instant and takes hold of my elbow. “I’d like you to look me in the eyes and answer all the same questions I just asked. Let’s start with Where have you been?”

  My body turns inside out: firing nerves and throbbing brain and pounding heart are now open for public viewing, free admission. I can’t think with my dad this close to me, can’t breathe when he’s gripping my elbow this tight. My father has never laid a hand on me or anyone in my family, but right now, his fingers feel like they’re made of iron. Like they’ll cut right through muscles and tendons, and from here on out, I’ll live with half an arm.

  “I … I went to …” I can’t finish the sentence, because I can see it in his flared nostrils. I can see it in the way his head shakes ever so slightly, like I’ve upset him in the worst of ways.

  He knows.

  “Say it,” he growls.

  I swallow a lump in my throat and whisper, “I went to Travesty Ball.”

  “Why?”

  “To secure a sponsor.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can race in the Titan season.”

  “WHY?!” His voice fills the room. It’s so loud my brain rattles inside my skull. Tears sting behind my eyes and my bottom lip trembles.

  “To try and win. So we can keep our house and be a family again.”

  “And you thought gambling was the way to do that? Did Grandpa teach you nothing? It was his debts that made us lose the last house. It was his debts that led to us living out of a car. And do you remember how that ended, Astrid?”

  “I remember he was a better gambler than you, Dad!” The words leave my mouth before I realize what I’m saying. My grandfather’s addiction was a loud one. He didn’t care who knew so long as someone would lend him a ten spot. My dad, on the other hand, has the decency to be ashamed. I’m not even sure he knew that we knew. And now I’ve put it out there that I do.

  “Anyway, I’m not gambling,” I whisper, afraid I said too much. I try to pull my elbow away, but his grip is vise-like. “A man who used to work for Hanover Steel is lending me a first-edition Titan, and tonight … tonight I got a sponsor. Someone who’s going to pay for everything so I can race.” I raise my chin in a final attempt to maintain an adult conversation, instead of one between child and father. Even still, my voice quakes. “It’s because I’m good.” And then, a bit louder, “I ran in the sponsor race, and I finished in the top half. You should have seen it. You should have seen how this horse—”

  He throws my arm away like a rotten piece of fruit. “You think I have any interest in seeing you make a fool of yourself? The only thing you’re going to do is get yourself hurt.”

  I press my lips together to keep them from trembling. “I won’t get hurt. You’ll see if you come watch.”

  His nose scrunches like he’s smelled something bad. “No. No, if I go up there then they’ll all know you’re my daughter. And that’s a shame far worse than losing my job. My kid pretending to be one of them? Involving herself in the same gambling circuit that robbed us of every dime I’d saved over the last five years? You do what you want, but just know I want nothing to do with you as long as you’re a part of that.” He shakes his head and motions toward my dress. It burns against my skin, and suddenly I see myself in his eyes. Dressing like them. Pretending to be something I’m not.

  Reminding him of every bad decision he ever made.

  Like father, like daughter.

  “You disappoint me,” he says dejectedly, like he’s given up on a great task. “I can’t even look at you.”

  He walks by me, and that’s when I lose it. That’s when I stop pretending his lack of affection doesn’t tear me to pieces. That this last bit of rejection doesn’t burn those pieces to dust. My voice isn’t my own when I speak.

  “Daddy, please.”

  He stops in the doorway, but doesn’t turn around.

  Tears flow down my cheeks and slip salty-sweet onto my lips. “I wanted to help. I needed to help after what happened with Grandpa.”

  When I left Grandpa at the house when you told me to stay home, is what I mean. When I told Mom, and Dani, and even Zara that I’d be back soon, and what to do if anything happened to Grandpa while I was out. When my disobedience killed my family member and the trust I had in my family.

  Every muscle in my body tenses awaiting my dad’s reaction. He has to turn around. He must. If he doesn’t, my heart will shatter into a million parts.

  My mother’s voice comes from the hallway, asking what he’s yelling about, telling him to come to bed after he grumbles a response. My dad listens to her. For the first time in as long as I can remember, my dad listens to someone other than himself.

  It’s too bad that when he does so, it involves leaving me alone in my room.

  Hours after he’s gone, when I’m lying in bed wishing Dani would come home from Jason’s, I’m still cycling through our conversation and what I should do to repair things. If I quit racing, we’ll go back to normal. He’ll spoon baked beans onto my plate and hand it over without a word. He won’t complain when I bring a book into the room and sit as close as I can to a
man I wish I knew—but never too close.

  He won’t be disappointed in me anymore.

  But is that enough? No. I know what I have to do. I have to show my father I won’t quit. I have to show him that mistakes can be forgotten, and he doesn’t need to carry our weight alone, because that’s what family does.

  I have to win the Titan Derby. I won’t settle for the way things are.

  Not when I know they could be so much better.

  The next morning, before the sun has risen, I make my way to Rags’s place. He opens the door in jeans and a white shirt, stained yellow near the belly button region. His white hair sticks up like it’s trying to escape his head, and he rubs the heel of his hand into his eye.

  “What is it, kid?”

  “Let me take your truck.”

  “What?” He drops his hand. “No.”

  “I have a driver’s license,” I lie.

  “Well. That’s more than I’ve got.” Rags studies my face, zoning in on the circles beneath my bloodshot eyes. “I know you didn’t drink that much champagne.”

  I don’t respond.

  “All right, out with it. What’s wrong with you?”

  Again, I plead the fifth.

  He scratches his armpit and squints at something over my shoulder. “Let me get my vest, at least.”

  Then he slams the door, leaving me on the porch, in the dark, until he returns ten minutes later. Once we’ve loaded into the truck and stopped by Magnolia’s house, where she tells me through her cracked window that No, she’s not getting up this early, and why the heck am I waking her up?, we make our way down a route I’ve memorized over the last two weeks.

  The sun slumbers on when Rags pulls up outside Barney’s house. He kills the engine. “What’s this all about? You that eager to start training?”

  I lower my head and mumble, “I needed some space. Mind if I hang in the barn for a while?”

  Rags wipes invisible dust off his dashboard. “Yeah, all right. I’ll go inside and wake up that good-for-nothing senior citizen. See if I can’t make breakfast. It’ll be a miracle if that man has anything more than stale bread and half a stick of margarine.”