Titans

  Magnolia takes off after Lottie, I take off after Magnolia, Padlock takes off after me, and the cameramen take off after the four of us. If we all joined forces—cameramen included—I still don’t think we’d be able to stop Rags from pummeling Arvin Gambini.

  Rags collides into his prey and the two of them fly into the lush green grass growing inside the track, fists landing on shoulders, boots kicking shins. Now my manager is dragging Arvin to his feet, shaking him by his pressed white shirt, calling him a soul-sucking money-hungry scumbag.

  Theo dives to separate them, but I can’t help thinking his reaction is delayed when he wedges himself between Rags and his younger brother.

  “You knew that jam would affect my jockey!” Rags bellows.

  Arvin points at Rags from behind his brother’s back. “You’re out of here, you waste of space. You’re gone!”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Rags growls. “Toss me out like you did when I wouldn’t give you the credit for the EvoBox. Hey, Arvin, have you been able to replicate what I built? Have you found my replacement as easily as you said you would?”

  Arvin notices Lottie pulling on Rags’s sleeve, and the smile returns to his mouth. “Hey, Lottie. There’s a gal who found a replacement for you.” Arvin opens his arms wide. “I like my women a little older, polished, and refined, with enough sense to realize when they’re wasting their time with a penniless android-of-a-human-being.”

  Lottie’s hand lands cold across Arvin’s cheek. “You took advantage of me when I was hurting.”

  “I took advantage of you?” Arvin covers the place where she struck him. “It’s good to see you’re spending your settlement money wisely. Six months of marriage bought you entrance into my race, which I can respect, but with that?”

  He points to me, and damn him—damn him—I suddenly feel like I’m the one who’s been punched. Maybe it’s the look of disgust on his face, or the sympathy on Theo’s, but shame colors my cheeks. Padlock noses the underside of my arm like he’s trying to reassure me that what Arvin implies isn’t true.

  Rags makes another lunge for his target, but Theo keeps him from advancing while simultaneously pushing Arvin back. The cameras don’t miss a thing. They’re faceless, those cameras, blinding flashes hungrily soaking up every last millisecond of my humiliation.

  “You’ll always be a has-been, Rusty,” Arvin barks as he strides away from the scene.

  “And you’ll always be a scoundrel.” Rags motions toward the journalist, and then at Arvin. “Don’t trust him. He’ll use you like he would a Kleenex, and with as much consideration.”

  “Let’s go.” Lottie grabs on to Rags’s arm. When his gaze lands on her, his eyes swim with pain. As much as I adore Lottie, her betrayal cuts through me too. Lottie was married to Arvin? And she left Rags to be with him? It doesn’t make sense, but then, I can’t imagine many women would survive a romantic relationship with Rags. He’s probably not the best with public displays of affection. Or private ones either.

  Magnolia places her arm around my shoulders as the warmth seeps out of my cheeks. “Come on.”

  I stride toward the track, unsure what I’m expecting. Sympathy, perhaps? But that’s not what I see in the jockeys’ faces. They seem sickened by me, as if it’s my fault their race day was dampened by drama.

  “This is what happens when you bring trash onto the track,” someone utters.

  A couple of jockeys laugh.

  “Did you have a nice trip back there?” Batter asks, grinning broadly.

  More laughter.

  Padlock is by my side in an instant. My nervous fingers swim through his mane.

  Another jockey, one I don’t recognize, speaks up. And when she does, it’s like she’s rehearsed these words since she first laid eyes on me. “Why are you here? We have one place left in Detroit where we can keep things normal. Without your kind shoving their way in, complaining about discrimination and handouts and special scholarships set aside just for you. These races are for those who can afford them!”

  “That’s right,” Penelope says, nodding. “Those who earned it.”

  “Whose families worked for it.”

  Tears sting my eyes, because I can’t believe this is happening. The cameramen are busy chasing Arvin and Theo in their retreat. Little do they know they’re missing prime-time action.

  Batter takes a step forward. Red blotches paint his cheeks. Like he’s oh-so-cheerful. Like he’s freaking Santa Claus. “You from Warren County?”

  I don’t respond.

  “Yeah, I know you are. Do your parents work at all?”

  “You shut your mouth,” Magnolia says quietly, appearing when I need her.

  Batter shakes his head, red curls bouncing. “You think we’re being cruel. But we’re only calling attention to the obvious. There was a day when the privileged were allotted, ya know, privileges. Now everyone thinks they’re owed a piece of everything.”

  “You shouldn’t be out here,” someone else states.

  I’m shaking with shame, but with anger too. Are they for real? This is like a part in a movie where I think to myself, That’d never happen. People aren’t really that ridiculous. But this is happening, and I see my own hurt in Magnolia’s eyes. She blinks it away, but the damage is done.

  I storm toward their group, fury blazing behind me like a villainous cape—my father’s rejection, our eviction notice, my grandfather’s death, my mother’s denial, my older sister’s abandonment, my younger sister’s anger. This cape of fury will protect me from the look in their eyes, because I have no more room in my heart for hurt.

  “You think you’re better than me? Because you have money and I don’t? Because you have this sport that allows you to loom over those you deem less worthy?” I spit at their feet. Lottie would have my hide if she saw. “Let me tell you something, people like me keep this track in business. It’s people like me who stand outside those gates and pay for bet cards. It’s people like me who put their hopes and dreams on you and your horses. So I guess in a sense you’re right. During these races, we look up to you. I know I did as a kid. I imagined you were brave and strong and resilient—everything I aspired to be. Everything every one of those men wishes to be when they return to their crap houses and crap jobs and crap lives.”

  I tilt my head like I’m seeing the jockeys for the first time. “I was wrong about you, and so are they. You’re just a bunch of judgmental elitists, thanking the gods for that chain-link fence that separates you from the pigs. Am I right?”

  Batter glances at Skeet before looking back at me. “Uh, yeah, that’s about the gist of it.”

  The warmth returns to my face. I suppose I thought my speech would instill some guilt in them, but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

  “Are we supposed to be changed now?” Batter laughs. “Don’t think for one second we’re ashamed that we’re rich and you’re poor. That we’re sad that we’re here”—he digs his heels into the dirt—“and they’re there.” He points toward the men who are watching us speak without hearing.

  Padlock pushes closer to my side, and I push closer to his.

  I don’t have anything left inside me. These jockeys stole any fire I had left to burn tonight. So I do the only thing left I can do, I tell my best friend that we should go home, and I lead her and my Titan away from the wolves.

  I can’t help looking back once. I’m not sure why I do it. Maybe I like the pain. Maybe it’s better than being numb. When I do, I meet Hart’s gaze. He’s grinding his teeth, and I know in that moment he’s not on their side. He hates Batter and Penelope and Skeet and the other jockeys who prodded me. But he isn’t going to stop their harassment, either.

  And just like that, my anger returns.

  On the way home, after we drop off Barney and Padlock, and then Magnolia, I find the courage to ask Rags about what happened between him and Arvin.

  “He’s a dirtbag,” he says. “Not much else to say.”

  I clear my throat.
“But what did he do to you, exactly?”

  Rags drives the distance between Magnolia’s house and mine at a snail’s pace. “Short version? Arvin worked temporarily for Hanover as a consultant, and promised the designers a hefty bonus if we could create an emotional hub for the Titan 1.0. And after I successfully did it, he tried to skirt his way out of paying when I said I wouldn’t give him credit for the EvoBox.” Rags grinds his teeth. “Back then Hanover Steel was a start-up company, so they had every excuse to pay us pathetic wages and get away with it. I needed that bonus, and I deserved it.”

  “Did you fight for it?”

  “Bet your rear I did. Arvin’s lawyers found some emails he sent promising the bonus and told him it was grounds for me taking him to court as long as I was employed there. But bonuses aren’t a promise of payment, and if you’re gone from the company, they’re not necessarily owed to you. That’s the beauty of a bonus.”

  “So he got you canned.”

  Rags shrugs. “Yep, you can do that when you hold that much stock. He told me on the way out that since he was quitting his temp position anyway, he didn’t have to pay me a thing. Good thing we built Padlock at Barney’s place. Those lawyers would have confiscated our project if they could have found him hidden beneath Barney’s stable.”

  My blood boils for Rags. “What happened to Barney?”

  “He quit when he found out. I told him it was pointless, but he wouldn’t listen.” Rags laughs. “Barney slashed the tires on Arvin’s beemer that night.”

  “What would you have done with the cash?”

  Rags stops laughing and sadness creeps into the corners of his eyes. “Do you want to know why I showed you the Titan Barney and I built?”

  I overlook that he sidestepped my question, because this one is much more interesting. “Why?”

  He glances over. “Because you have two things that make a winner: stubbornness and heart.”

  “How do you know I have heart?” The stubbornness goes without saying.

  “Because you helped an old man on a hot day.”

  “You’re not old,” I say.

  He raises that bushy eyebrow.

  “You’re ancient.”

  Rags chuckles, and some of the hollowness in my chest is quenched.

  Since I’ve got him laughing, I chance a dangerous question. “Why do you hate Lottie so much? Because she left you for Arvin?”

  Rags sighs. “It’s not like she cheated on me. We weren’t together when she started seeing him.”

  “So … ?”

  “So don’t hate her just because I do.”

  “I don’t hate her,” I say softly.

  Rags remains quiet for a long time. And then, “Neither do I.”

  We’re parked outside when I say, “Thank you.”

  “For what, kid?”

  “For giving me a chance to do something big.”

  “It was either you or me. I’d rather you be the one who chances breaking a leg.”

  I bark a laugh.

  Rags stares past me at my house. “Everything okay at home?”

  I follow his gaze. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it’s tough living in Warren County. And because you’re awfully young for no one to wonder why an ancient man is dropping off their daughter at this hour.”

  “It’s fine.” It’s not fine. We’re teetering on the edge of a cliff, about to nosedive into homelessness.

  “If you say so.” I close Rags’s truck door and pat the outside twice, signaling that he can leave. But before he does, he squints at something in the distance and says through the open window, “Look at that woman. It’s almost two o’clock in the morning, and she’s pruning her bushes.”

  I smile before heading toward my house, because that bush is actually a holly shrub. And that woman is my mom.

  The next preliminary race goes better than the first. It’s longer, which allows Padlock and me to gain a better lead, and this time there are no jams to trip us up. The memory of the jockeys’ taunting rested neatly in my mind as I ran that day, and in the end Padlock and I finished eleventh place out of the twenty Titans who remained.

  Rags tells me I performed brilliantly, that the second prelim race is cutthroat because of jockeys wanting to keep their sponsors. It looks bad to bettors and the media when a jockey loses a sponsor, and with it free upkeep, fuel, and incidentals incurred by racing. It doesn’t take long for a jockey to lose their confidence on-track if the sponsor, media, and bettors turn their backs on them, Rags told me.

  Lottie swore she’d stand by me no matter what, so I didn’t worry about that too much. What I did worry about was my placement. Even though I secured a better rank than I had in the sponsor race or first prelim, I still was only two horses away from failing before the circuit races even began.

  Today is July 2, the day the local news channel announces which thirteen jockeys will proceed to the three Titan Circuit races, the ones the track engineers create. Rags informs me that these tracks will include jams at every turn, and it’s time to get serious about training. I inform him that I’ve been serious since the beginning.

  Tonight I have another session with Lottie, but today belongs to me. Well, sort of. Rags dropped Padlock and me at a pond at the east end of Warren County. The pond’s still water breeds the plumpest mosquitos, and the abandoned factory on the edge grows spongy green mold up its walls. Small white blooms sprout around the perimeter of the pond, weeds that my mother would call wildflowers, and there’s a span of crunchy grass to the left that stretches into the early-morning horizon.

  Rags’s instructions were detailed as always: Spend time with your horse.

  That’s all he said before shutting his tailgate and driving away. After two prelim races, he knows I’m not utilizing the autopilot switch. Says when I fell into the trench that should have been my first move until we were back on solid ground. Adds that if I don’t learn to trust Padlock, he’ll pull me from the season.

  He’ll never actually do that, though. Rags was sweating bullets after his argument with Arvin, afraid we’d really be kicked out. But word is the man from Chicago has an interest in seeing me continue.

  Maybe he wants to see me nosedive in the circuit races. It’d be a lot more interesting than my being kicked out.

  Padlock ventures to the edge of the pond and dips his head toward the water. For a moment, I think he’ll touch his muzzle to the algae-coated surface and pull in a lukewarm drink. But he only turns his head toward me, the squeaking hinges in his neck reminding me he’s a machine, not a real horse.

  “We’re supposed to bond.”

  Padlock snorts.

  “That’s what I said, but the old man’s stubborn.”

  Padlock takes a couple of shuffling steps in my direction and stops.

  “I mean, what if there are vagrants living in that factory? We could be mugged!”

  I imagine Padlock having an eyebrow. I imagine him raising it.

  Groaning, I fall back on the grass, watch as a grasshopper leaps to safety. The sky is having an identity crisis overhead, blue sky and white clouds on one side, darkness and doom on the other.

  “It’s going to rain, I think.”

  Padlock swallows the remaining space between us and kneels down in the grass. I turn my head, expecting him to look back at me, but he only gazes at the water. Unsure what I’m supposed to do with my Titan, I stare at the water too, watch as dragonflies dance above the surface. After a long silence, something splashes. A catfish, or maybe a man-eating alligator. One thing’s for sure, there’s one less dragonfly than there was before.

  I flick my eyes toward Padlock. My chest tightens ever so slightly. “It’s not like I don’t trust you,” I say quietly. “I just don’t trust anyone.”

  Padlock’s ear twists around. It’s a sure sign he’s listening. But that doesn’t mean he understands what I’m saying. Even if he can experience human emotions, he’s not actually human. So if I said things to him right now it?
??s not like it would matter.

  “I only trust myself now. It’s easier that way.”

  I sit up, hug my knees to my chest.

  Padlock lies still, front legs folded beneath his chest, his back ones kicked out to the side.

  “I used to trust people. Like my grandfather …” I lick my lips, feel my heart clench. “But he lost our home because he couldn’t pay for it anymore. Because he gambled too much. So we had to leave Wisconsin.”

  A small lump forms in my throat. “We had to live in our car for a while. It wasn’t even that long. No big deal. But it put pressure on my grandpa, who had a bad heart. He took, like, eight pills a day.”

  I chew my bottom lip, consider biting my tongue off so I’ll stop talking to a mechanical horse.

  “We had just gotten an apartment in Detroit when my grandpa started gambling again, and he and my dad had an argument. My dad was pissed, so he left to cool off, but before he did he told me to keep an eye on my grandpa. Because even when my dad hated his father, he loved him.”

  My eyes burn. “But I remembered I left my chalks in the park. So I left to get them, but before I did, I asked my mom to watch Grandpa. And I tossed Grandpa’s pills to Dani and told her he was having a bad day. And just in case, I told Zara to stay off the phone.”

  I get to my feet and angrily swipe tears from my cheeks. “It’s not like I expected anything to actually happen. But it did. Grandpa had a heart attack and I wasn’t there. And neither was Zara, who snuck outside to call her friend. And neither was Mom, who was busy looking for Zara. And even though Dani was there, she swears she doesn’t remember me tossing Grandpa’s pills onto her bed. So when he fell, she looked in the kitchen. And the bathroom. And in Mom and Dad’s room. But the pills weren’t there.

  “By the time I got back, it was too late.”

  I glance at Padlock. The horse is certainly looking at me now. Big, dark eyes taking me in, both ears pointed in my direction. How long did I last before I told this hunk of metal my deepest regret—twenty minutes? Jeez, I need a therapist.