Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (7 page)

As soon as he’s most of
the way back to the shop, I roll my window down. Only, the smell gets stronger
as I do. I’d really never noticed it before, but knowing what his cologne is
supposed to smell like must have made it jump out at me.

Maybe I just have to get
him to stop wearing cologne.

We get to the meet-up at
the old gas station on Stockholm Blvd, and I’m already a little overwhelmed.

I was expecting five
cars, ten at the very most, but the parking lot is jammed with nearly every
nice car I’ve seen driving around town. People are out of their cars, looking
under hoods, chatting, arguing.

“So, do people ever call
the cops when you’re trying to figure out where to go?” I ask.

“Not really,” he says.
“They used to, but now we have a rule that if we meet up in front of an actual
store, everyone buys something before we go. Thirsty?”

“Sure.” After that, Eli
was right. It’s just a lot of waiting.

Everybody seems to want
to race, but nobody wants to agree on a place to do it.

“Is there something I
should be learning here?” I ask. “Like are they talking about which places are
best to race or are they just trying to get out of it?”

“It’s a little bit of
both,” he says as we just walk around. “Everyone wants to look like the one,
but not everybody can hack it. They bargain down to a car they think they can
beat in a place they think they can beat it, and that’s when something will
actually happen.”

Eli tells me all kinds of
things about the different cars as we go past, none of which I can remember or
remotely understand, before finally it’s starting to look like there’s a
growing consensus among the guys in the middle arguing.

Then, a few more cars
show up and nobody can agree on anything once again.

This goes on for way too
long.

I’m considering having
Eli take me home when he nods toward one end of the parking lot where people
are starting to get in their cars.

We make our way to Eli’s,
gathering the location of the start line as we go, then follow behind everyone
else.

“Do you know where we’re
going?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he answers,
“Rochester and Cedar Hill. We’ll probably get a couple of runs in there, and if
you’re not sick of it, we can follow them to the next spot.”

I nod and look out the
window.

Everyone in the pack is
driving surprisingly courteously. I’ve been expecting revving engines and
shrieking tires, but it’s sedate; however, there is a tension in the air. It’s
like a surgery before the first cut.

We’re about a block away
from the intersection when Eli pulls over, parking diagonally against the curb,
leaving about a foot of space between concrete and bumper.

“We’re here,” he says.
“We can stay here and watch so we can be close to the car in case they try to
break it up, or we can go closer to the starting line and watch the burnouts
and all that.”

“Burnouts sound like
fun,” I answer.

“All right,” he says. “Do
you want a play by play or do you just want to watch?”

“Play by play.”

Eli takes my hand,
guiding me through the crowd of people moving toward the intersection.

“Can I ask you
something?” he asks as we duck between two people.

“What’s that?” I return.

“How did you get so interested
in this? It doesn’t sound like you’ve really ever been into racing and now you
want to get out there and do it yourself. Don’t get me wrong: I think it’s
awesome. It’s just, you know, there are cheaper hobbies—
safer
hobbies, too.”

“Would you rather I
wasn’t so interested in it?”

“Not at all,” he says. “I
just don’t want you to think you have to pretend to like something if you
don’t. I’d rather you tell me if something bothers you than just go on
pretending you’re feeling great while you’re thinking about jumping in front of
one of the cars.”

We’re finally to the
point in the crowd where we can’t get any closer without becoming a lot more
familiar with these strangers than I would like to be. But, Eli’s not quite
done yet, and he shoulders his way between two people, and then two more, until
we get to the front.

About twenty feet away
from the starting line now, we’re standing on the edge of the curb. There are
some people crowded in between the cars on the street, but we can see just fine
from here.

“All right,” he says.
“After they get the cars in place, they’re going to put down a mix of methanol
and traction compound to treat the road.”

“Treat the road?”

He nods. “It helps a lot
off the line,” he says. “They’ll do a burnout along the groove after they’ve
lit the compound and it’s gone out. Then, they’ll go back and set up on the
rubber they left on the road. You get a much better launch. Is all this making
sense so far?”

“I think so,” I tell him.
“It’ll probably help when I see it.”

About then, two men go
out into the street, in front of the two cars that are lined up to race,
carrying what look like one liter water bottles. They spray the road with some
kind of liquid I’m assuming isn’t water and two more people follow them,
setting the trail aflame.

They do this for about
fifty or sixty feet and then run off to the sides. The cars on the line fire up
their engines and roll forward.

“Oh right,” he says.
“They’re going to put down a good puddle’s worth of traction compound in front
of the drive tires to start the burnout and get the tires heated up enough to
lay down-”

Eli’s voice is drowned
out as the back wheels start to go and the smoke fills the air. I may not have
the specifics down yet, but I think I get the general idea.

At one point, one of the cars
catches some traction and roars down the road a ways, leaving a dark set of
lines on the ground where a decent portion of his tires used to be. Then the
other one goes.

They pull back to the
beginning of their tracks, and I’m looking along the road, wondering why nobody
else has tried coming down the street. It’s hard to tell from where I’m
standing, but I think they’re blocking the intersections.

A woman wearing more
clothes than I would have expected, having seen some of the movies Eli teased
me about back at Grog Hill, walks out into the street. She points to one car,
then the other.

The engines are deafening
and the cars lurch forward at infrequent intervals, but always rock back more
or less to their place. The woman standing in front and between the cars raises
both hands above her head and, with an exaggerated gesture, drops them.

Both cars are off faster
than I expected. They’re already most of the way down the block and past the
intersection, their brake lights only coming on when they’re a long way in the
distance.

“Who do you think won?” I
ask Eli. I couldn’t tell; it looked pretty close to me.

“Hold on,” Eli says.
“Nobody’s lining up after them. See that guy on his cell phone? We’ve got to
go.”

“What are you talking
about?” I ask. “Everyone I’ve ever met who isn’t me has a cell phone.”

“Come on, cops are
coming,” he says.

I don’t hear anything or
see anything, but everyone on the street is starting back toward their cars,
slowly at first and then we’re all running.

Eli’s got me by the hand
to pull me through the crowd. We get to the car, but almost bowl over a few
people getting over to it. I start for the passenger’s side, but Eli just says,
“Nope,” and pulls me toward his side.

He throws open the door
and I jump in. He’s in half a second later, and he turns the keyless ignition,
The cars ahead of us are already gone.

Eli throws the car into
gear and we’re peeling out, turning sharply to the left with just enough space
to miss the curb when I see the first blue and red lights coming down the road
toward us.

Eli takes a right and
then a left on the next street.

“Still want me to tell
you what’s going on or do you just want to focus on getting out of here?” I get
the sense that he’d rather I do the latter.

“Let’s just go,” I tell
him. “We can talk about the rest later.”

We’re going down this
street for a while, fast, but when we get to the next stop sign, Eli comes to a
complete stop.

“There’s an old strip
mall around here,” Eli says. “I can never remember which turn it is, though.”

“Shouldn’t we be going?”

“I’m pretty sure it’s a
left,” he says and I’m stomping the floor with my right foot, trying to make
the car go with the pure force of my will.

He eases the Galaxie onto
the road and he’s looking in his mirrors, saying, “I think we’ve lost them, but
we should lay low for a minute. Everyone’s got their mark and we got out of
there before a cop picked us as his project for the night. They should be out
of the area before too long.”

It makes sense, what he’s
saying, it really does. Still, there are cops and we were running from them and
now, I can still hear the sirens in a few different directions as we follow the
speed limit, using the turn signals.

We’re going along at
about twenty five when Eli jerks the wheel hard to the left and I’m all but
sitting in his lap.

“Sorry,” he says. “We’re
here, though.”

We pull around behind the
strip mall and there’s a little alley running for about fifty feet before a
gate opening out onto the next street. Eli pulls the car a way down the alley
and turns it off, putting a finger to his lips.

It’s dark without the
headlights on, but the stars are out in force, providing an unmatched ceiling
to the corridor between the buildings.

He slowly lowers his
finger from his lip.

“Are we all right?” I ask
in a whisper.

“I think so.”

I’m nervous enough to
keep quiet, but relief is starting to flow through me, turning my fear into
excitement as we actually outran the cops in this piece of junk car. They
weren’t really chasing us specifically, I guess, but it’s still cause for excitement.

“So,” Eli says, his voice
still low, “you never really answered my question back there.”

“Which question?”

“Why this, why street
racing?”

I shrug. “I don’t know,”
I tell him. “Why not?”

“There are a lot of
reasons why not to do this,” he says. “There aren’t nearly as many for it.”

“I don’t know,” I tell
him. “It just struck something in me when Mick was talking about it. Even
though he was lying there in a hospital bed, knowing that you do this—it just
caught me by surprise, at first. Then, I don’t know, I just kept coming back to
the thought. The more I did, the more I wanted to see it, to feel it, you
know?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I know
what you mean. Do you understand why I’m showing you this—not just the race,
but the stuff with the cops, too?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “It’s
not a joke. One wrong move and you’ll end up in a tree with Mick.”

Eli cracks a smile and
chuckles softly. “There’s another thing, too,” he says.

“What’s that?” I ask,
resting my arm on the top of the seat, resting my head against that hand and
looking at him.

“It’s not just about the
cops. They’re not all just out to get us or anything. People die doing this. If
you’re not careful, you can hit someone else’s car, or worse, you could hit a
person. As long as you’re in the car and the car’s moving, you’ve just become
the most responsible driver on the road because you’re easily the most
reckless. The chances of something going wrong with a racer are a lot higher
than anyone else on the road. Except drunk drivers: those guys are just assholes
because they’re all risk, no responsibility.”

“So it’s not just a
hobby, it’s a philosophy,” I observe.

He suppresses a smile
and, in the nicest way I think he can manage, says, “Well, the philosophy is
‘don’t hit anybody, don’t hurt anybody, don’t kill anybody,’ so I don’t know if
it’s all that involved. You just need to be aware that people aren’t going to
know how to react to you, so you’re going to have to learn to anticipate-”

I interrupt him with a
firm kiss on the lips, and it’s only mostly to shut him up. I’m interested in
racing because it’s dangerous, exciting—just like Eli.

If I can just get out of
this stupid shell I’ve been hiding in most of my life, I know that I can be one
of those people who don’t have to walk around with their heads down, saying
sorry for every little thing, even when it’s not their fault. Somewhere in me
is one of those people that sees what she wants and isn’t afraid to take it.

Eli’s kissing me back,
and his hands move around my sides to my back, his fingers pulling me toward
him, only I run shoulder first into the oversized steering wheel.

I pull back, laughing and
rubbing my arm.