Girls Like Boys

We left from Travis’s house really late, or really early, depending. It was past two AM when we finally arrive. Unlike the old abandoned highway where the guys usually ran, this location seemed entirely too close to the rest of the city. While the buildings here were dilapidated warehouses, probably not in use much anymore, they were still industrial – nothing like the barren strip of road I’d anticipated. This wasn’t a rural street race; the guys were running on the outskirts of town.

I frowned at Travis. “I thought this was one of Cam’s races, ‘out in the middle of nowhere’?” I quoted, crossing my arms over my chest as Travis pulled the car closer to the crowds and parked on the sidewalk.

“It looks city,” he said as he turned the keys in the ignition, “but honestly, Cody, nobody comes out here. It’s a better location than Halin Bridge, that’s for sure. Cam helped set it up with some local guys. They normally run bigger cars than us and normally run out by Halin, but they really wanted to combine for a race or two. This was a compromise.”

I hummed skeptically, glancing through the tinted window to the surprisingly large crowd around us. Along the driver’s side, I watched Flynn, Benji, Erick, and Cam pull up out of the street and onto the narrow strip of sidewalk that separate the buildings from the road. Shay followed with Travis’s BMW, parking parallel along the edge of street so he could peel out faster if need be.

Without another word, Trav popped his door open and climbed out of the Nissan. With a uncertain sigh, I followed, pulling myself out into the crowd that formed along the side of the street, buttressed by one of the old brick building.

“Don’t get lost,” Travis called off-handedly as he stepped around the back of the car and slid into the spot at my side. Lightly, he rested his hand against my back and led me toward where the other guys were congregating, starting to mingle both with people they recognized and those who simply showed interest in their vehicles.

“Travis Laughlin,” someone said by way of greeting. Trav’s attention turned to the people crossing the street in our direction.

I watched Travis as he responded. He immediately grinned, sort of cocky, and pulled from me to greet the newcomers. The three of them looked like another set of Travis’s typical brood; nothing particularly conspicuous, just a group of college-aged guys like the rest of them. Around us, however, the age range was a bit broader than usual. Most looked to be in their twenties, maybe a few younger than us even, but it was obvious that this set-up expanded beyond the scope of university students.

Travis didn’t introduce me as he talked animatedly with these guys about some car feature something or other. Honestly, I think it was a gift on Trav’s part not to loop me into that conversation, but that didn’t stop one of the guys from smiling in my direction in lieu of introductions.

“Cody, don’t go too far,” Trav said over his shoulder as the other two urged him over to the hood of his car. He met my eyes and paused, even as the two walked on without him, calling at him to hand over the keys or hurry up. Reluctantly, Travis glanced at the one who remained behind and his proximity to me. “Shay!” Trav called, nodding in my direction as he turned to catch up with the others.

Shay got the message, even as I rolled my eyes and turned back to look out to where more cars were arriving still. The long-haired brunette separated from Flynn, Erick, and the others and practically bounced over to my side. His shoulder brushed against mine as he leaned across to shake hands with the guy lingering behind. “Shay Hart,” he introduced, “and you’ve met Cody.”

The stranger nodded, tucking a stray strand of hair out of his face as he moved forward to shake Shay’s hand. “Karl Fremont.”

I smiled politely, taking stock of him. He was lanky, with skinny arms and legs, but not particularly tall compared to Travis or Shay for that matter. Where Shay was thin and sinuous, Karl was simply skinny, saved only from being ‘scrawny’ by his average height.

“I think you know my sister,” Karl said a bit awkwardly. Whether he was speaking to Shay or me, I couldn’t tell. He barely glanced away from the street as he spoke, arms folded across his chest. “Hannah,” he added when neither Shay or I knew who he was referring to.

“Oh yeah,” Shay said with an easy nod. “Travis introduced us. She races, right?”

My attention zeroed in on Shay at the news. Travis said they’d met at a race, but he didn’t give details. I’d simply assumed that, like myself, Hannah was a bystander to all this. But Karl nodded right away, jerking his chin toward a group of people across the street, clustered around a couple vehicles that I couldn’t place.

I couldn’t make it their faces from this distance in the dark, but in a mixed group of girls and guys, I assumed that Hannah was there among them, fitting effortlessly into this very-Travis night. Shay and this new-comer to our group made pleasant conversation, laughing and joking like old friends. That was Shay’s magic; he was effortless around others, open, bright. It wasn’t hard for him to find comfort in the presence of others.

Travis reappeared not too long after, wrapping his arm around my shoulders to pull me with him, calling for Shay and the others to follow so they could figure out more about tonight’s schedule from whoever was in charge here tonight. Karl, having already checked in with his sister before our arrival, pointed our group in the direction of someone named Darrin, whom Travis and the some of the others were apparently already familiar with. It didn’t take long for Cam and Benji to locate him. From what I could tell, he was only a little older than the guys. Even so, he was less serious than Camden was when running races. He had an easy grin on his face as Travis and Erick vied for his attention. He was in mid-conversation when he turned to look at our group, glancing at Travis from top to bottom, turning a skeptical, playful eye to the others.

“Good to see you again, guys,” he said by way of greeting, simply nodding to Camden in some sort of guy sign of mutual respect. “You’re all still on for tonight? I’ve got Cam in the first, Travis and Flynn slotted in for the second run,” he said, “and Erick and Benji in the third.” His phone lit up his face as he slid it from his pocket to double-check.

Even though I normally made fun of Cam for having a clipboard at these events, it was almost bitter sweet that this new organizer succumbed to modern technology. I caught Camden’s eye and wiggled my eyebrows as Darrin scrolled through a list on his phone. Cam answered with his middle finger.

I grinned, shaking my head as Trav and Benji both looked to me.

“Yeah, okay,” Darrin said as he apparently found what he was looking for. He flashed a note at us, showing the guys who they were running with. I barely had a chance to scan for any familiar names before he clicked the phone off and slid it back in his pocket. “A couple different people are taking bets, if you’re interested,” he said, motioning in the general direction of everyone around us. “There’s quite a few different groups out tonight, so it should be different than your usual thing.”

Erick grinned and shrugged, running his fingers through his blonde hair as he scanned the crowds for anyone taking bets on tonight’s races. I could see why the guys wanted to expand past Highway Eleven; new drivers meant less predictable runs. They didn’t have the same chance of winning that they did when they were mostly racing against each other, but the payout must’ve been bigger during something like this. While they normally ran in threes when Cam organized, the lineup tonight was twice as big.

Travis and Flynn were in a heat of five, while Benji and Erick had two additional people. Cam technically had a different classification, something about larger tires, so he was in a smaller group of four, but still, it was bigger than our home-operation.

Erick, Flynn, Benji, Shay, Travis, and I headed back toward our cars while Cam went ahead to start his car up and move in back into the street alongside the others. The guys clapped him on the back and shoved him forward as he went, lazily ushering their friend into the first race. Surprisingly, it seemed I was more interested in Cam’s race than the others, since I hadn’t seen Camden race before. Every time I’d attended, he’d been behind the scenes, keeping things running.

“Cody, you betting?” Benji asked as he started collecting money from the rest of the guys. He paused expectantly, waving the cash at me.

Coming up from behind where he’d been rifling through something in his car, Travis swooped in next to me with money in hand. He pulled it out of Benji’s reach just before he could snatch it. “Are they betting straight?” Travis questioned, leaning against the back of his car beside me.

Benji shrugged while a couple of the others, Erick and Shay, shouted something over each other. Benji glared back at them, then turned to Trav. “I’ll find out,” he said, grinning as he stepped forward. “You betting on yourself?” Benji asked.

“To place,” Travis said and simply handed over two hundred dollar bills.

I glanced at Trav incredulously, but he simply shrugged as Benji collected the cash and wandered off to find whoever was in charge of the wagers. The rest of us hunkered down as Cam ran the first race with three others in his same division, or whatever they called it. He whipped past us in third place, cursing as he slapped to a stop behind the others. As he forfeited his money, since he didn’t place in his own run, he pulled back in next to us complaining about some mechanical thing he and Shay had tried that apparently didn’t hold up halfway through the run. Shay, delighted at having something to tinker with, immediately disappeared under the hood. Cam followed, ignoring the guys’ jabs and insults about his loss.

“You good?” Travis asked as I followed him to the driver’s side of his Nissan. He leaned toward me, one foot already in the car, the other on the ground.

I nodded easily. “Be careful,” I said, wishing the words held more meaning. “Don’t put yourself at risk to win, Trav.”

A smile toyed at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes, colorless in the dark, glanced over my head to our group of friends behind me. I knew the thoughts churning in Trav’s head, and they flared to the forefront of my own as his gaze dropped directly to mine, mischievous, daring. None of the others knew what happened between Travis and I before I left for winter break in Indiana, and they definitely didn’t have a clue about how familiar it was becoming to kiss this boy standing in front of me. In Indiana, Travis joked that Benji was giving him shit about not sleeping around like he did before, but the guys would never put anything together. They had always found our friendship oddly affectionate, same as Ramsy did, and probably everyone else. In their eyes, we’d always been on the edge. But I wanted to kiss Travis here, in the dark before his race, with light-pollution like a halo over our heads.

Trav’s fingers lightly brushed against my wrist, then he ducked down into the driver’s seat of his Nissan, grinning at me as the car purred to life and the console cast shades of violet over his face.

Trav backed up entirely too fast, tearing into the street as Flynn, parked on the other side of where I stood, languidly pulled onto the road to join the others. The flanked either side of the six-car lineup, using both sides of the street for the race. Travis was on the side farthest from me, the right lane, so I couldn’t make him out in the driver’s seat as the run roared to life. When it came down to it, I didn’t really enjoy the actual races. From the sidelines, it was a lot of waiting, of trying to see the best I could from a distance. Tonight, practically in the city, once they turned the corner, they were gone beyond rows of decrepit two and three story factories.

Gingerly, I stepped followed the line of the street toward the BMW. The guys glanced up from their conversations as I went, probably ordered on threat of death to keep an eye out for me, but didn’t say anything as I hopped up to sit on the trunk of the car. I caught a couple disgusted looks from a duo of girls in the crowd next to the car as I sat on Trav’s expensive vehicle, but I ignored them and settled in to wait for him to make it back around to this point. The end of the race was really the only section I got excited about; when I could see Travis maneuver his way to a win.

Tonight, he reappeared to my right, cutting steep around the corner, barely avoiding another racer as the other driver cut the corner too narrowly, heading for Travis at an angle rather than running parallel. I gasped involuntarily as Travis braked and jerked the Nissan to the left and out of the other car’s trajectory, serving practically off the road before straightening back out behind the other car. I knew, even without seeing him, that Trav was pissed.

I pushed off the back of the car, my feet slapping against the cement as my gaze locked on Travis’s Nissan. He sped up as they came to the straight in the road, heading to the invisible finish line about a block down from where I stood. Travis veered to his right, trying to cut up and around the driver as he held close to the left-edge where Travis previously was. Travis and the other driver whipped past where me and the guys stood. The girls next to me screamed out some sort of cheer as they passed, apparently rooting for Travis’s obnoxious blue Nissan Skyline.

My attention was pulled back to the end of the street as Flynn barreled around the corner, and I grimaced as he cut around barely a foot from the guard rail that kept regular drivers off of the sidewalk. The last driver was about a good car-length behind, but that didn’t stop Flynn from accelerating even faster as they evened out onto the straight road.

The guys and crowd around me began to shout, yelling in the other direction as Travis and the other driver came up to the end of the race. From a block behind the cars and the finish line, it was nearly impossible to tell which car, Travis or the other, passed first, and apparently the guys were undecided as well, because they immediately roared into argument over whether Travis made it or not. Benji was always loyal to Travis, and as his biggest supported, was loudly and obnoxiously advocating Travis’s win to everyone. Erick, on the other hand, was uncertain and was mostly arguing for the possibility that Travis ‘didn’t win.’

I laced my fingers together, waiting to see Travis’s reaction when he emerged from the Nissan. Flynn rolled up in third place just as Travis’s door popped open. He made a bee-line for Darrin and his group of friends. Travis was visibly pissed, and the moment the guy who won stepped out of his car, Travis reared around toward him. I frowned as Flynn hurried out of his car and jumped in front of Travis, pushing him back slowly, saying something to him, shaking his head. Travis and the other guy argued for a minute, Travis allowed Flynn to lead him away, then finally Travis shook his head, shouted something final at the other guy, and shoved away from it all.

Travis collected something, probably cash, from one the guys standing around Darrin, then climbed back into his car and sped off. He went and turned around up the street, and as he passed back through, he crossed just a little too close to the winning driver. The winner’s smug grin dropped as he jumped back from the Nissan.

“He cut you off,” I said as I dropped into the passenger’s seat of Trav’s Nissan. I’d moved back up to where he parked before and was waiting as he rolled in and slammed the car into gear.

Travis left the car idling, his head back against his seat, and simply nodded with his eyes closed.

I scooped up the small pile of cash from the passenger’s seat before I sat down and tucked it into the center console as I turned to Travis. “Are you okay?” I asked slowly, knowing he was never this angry over losing. It was how the other driver won that made him mad, rather.

“I’m fine,” he answered, reaching up to turn the car off. He dropped the keys into one of the cup holders and turned to look at me, offering a grimace in lieu of a real smile. “How much money did we get?”

I grinned and shook my head at him, motioning for him to move his arm so I could get the money back out from where I’d stuck in. I handed it over to him, tucking my legs under me as I watched him count.

The total was a little over two thousand dollars. It would’ve been more had Travis won the race. The way betting was handled was that drivers received cuts based on where they placed, and bystanders received a much smaller cut of that total. I wasn’t quite sure how the math or divisions worked, but Travis rarely bet as a bystander. Often he just bet on himself, through one of the guys, to win or place during his own runs. If Travis had waged that he would’ve won this time, rather than simply placed in the top, he would’ve lost his money.

The two of us tucked the money away and locked the car as he rejoined the crowds as the third race got started. Erick, Benji, and the other two cars were already at the starting line, engines on, waiting to go. They shot forward just as Travis and I stepped back to our friends on the edge of the street.

When they were out of sight, I turned toward the guys and listened to their conversation. Shay had claimed that whatever he did to Cam’s car, something about a piston, was working perfectly and so Cam must’ve lost because he was a bad driver, not because of Shay’s mechanics. That set Camden off, and the group rallied around Shay, moving to the hood of Cam’s car to prove that the part was fine, so it must’ve been Cam’s fault.

I simply leaned against the side of Cam’s car and watched as they pointed things out under the hood and argued with one another. Shay had his hair tucked behind his ears on both sides as he defended himself against Cam’s insults. Cam, incredulous, scoffed and turned away as the guys descended into a series of jabs and jokes about Camden trying to blame his loss on something besides himself.

“Deflecting much?” Shay joked, slamming Cam’s hood shut definitively.

Cam rolled his eyes, about to say something to Shay, but his attention snagged behind me, in the direction where the racers were going to come from when they appeared. The people around us cheered as one of the cars, one of the drivers we didn’t know, took that corner and headed toward us, past us, to the finish. Right behind him, I caught sight of Erick’s maroon Nissan. It was a different model than Travis’s, but besides how they looked, I didn’t know the difference between them. Benji and the fourth driver were right behind Erick, each crowding in, preparing to make that turn tightly. However, my heart leapt into my throat when Erick pulled in too close to the edge and skimmed the guard rail that separated the street from the sidewalk.

The driver’s side of the front of his car scratched along the metal guard rail, almost wedging beneath it. Around him, Benji and the other driver seemed to anticipate what was about to happen, because they each veered away from Erick’s car to get out of the way. Erick didn’t have time to brake as the car wedged into the guard rail, the back of the car fishtailing with the momentum. The speed pulled Erick out from where he was wedged, but with the front of his car crunched – the metal pressing down into the tires – he had no way to control it. In a panic, even as Travis and the guys anticipated the mistake Erick was about to make, Erick slammed on the brakes. The Nissan rolled.