Titans (16 page)

During the last half-hour of class, Lottie disappears down the stairs. When she returns, she’s bearing a tray of food. My mouth waters, taking in the smells. After carefully setting the meal upon the table, she motions for Magnolia and me to pull our chairs close.

We don’t need further encouragement.

Lottie motions to two small plates next to our larger ones, and then at a basket of rolls and dish of butter near the center of the table. “Please, take a roll and eat it.”

Magnolia and I hesitate, as if we know we’ll do something wrong. In the end, I shrug and make a grab for one. The smack on my hand comes when I split my bread in half and attempt to butter the entire thing at once.

“No,” Lottie says gently. “Proper etiquette calls for you to place a small portion of butter onto your bread plate. Then, using your own knife, tear a bite-sized piece of bread away from the rest and butter only that part before eating it.”

“Can I do a lot of little pieces at once?” Magnolia asks.

Lottie frowns. “One at a time. And as you eat that piece, be sure and place your butter knife down. In fact, you should almost never be chewing or swallowing anything with utensils in your hand.”

Eating our bread takes an eternity, and Lottie explains that this is the point. It gives us time to chat with our dinner partners, and the smaller bites prevent us from having to speak with our mouths full.

Next, she gives us each a bowl of tomato-basil soup. The rules are fairly easy to remember on this one. Spoon away from our bodies, and then to our mouths, making a half circle each time. It’s much different from the rapid-motion, loud-slurping bowl-to-mouth method we Sullivans adhere to. But I’ll admit, when I lower my spoon to the bowl’s lip while swallowing, I’m better able to taste the soup. And I notice things like what Magnolia is saying across the table, and I’m able to comment on what Barney is doing outside the window between tastes.

Lottie teaches us other things too, like how a salad is actually supposed to be eaten by slipping our forks beneath the lettuce and bringing it to our mouths, as opposed to piercing it. “In America, this tradition is fading,” she explains. “So watch your dinner partners for cues. If they pierce the lettuce, you may as well. But, again, always place your fork down between bites while chewing.”

Magnolia and I then share a breast of lukewarm chicken. I know Lottie must have brought this from home, and probably had to reheat it in Barney’s microwave. Still, it’s flavored with lemon-pepper sauce, and is juicy when we cut off a bite—
one bite at a time
—and slide our fork beneath the meat and bring it to our mouths. “Just like the salad, you may pierce the meat if others at the table are. But check first in case they’re the old-money type.”

Lottie holds up a paper towel. “Imagine this is your white cloth napkin. If you must leave the table, put the napkin in your chair. When you are done eating, place it to the left of your plate.” She places it next to my plate as an example. “Also, when you’re done with your utensils, place them diagonally across the plate, top left to bottom right.”

Magnolia and I practice doing these things with fascination, learning this code we never knew existed, as Lottie checks her watch. She must decide we’re out of time, because she says, “You are not of age to drink, but when you are, never order a stronger drink than your host, or outpace them in rounds. And if faced with a menu, ask your host what they plan to eat, then use that item as a benchmark for what to order yourself. If they are paying and are ordering a forty-dollar dish, for example, be sure your own dish costs that much or less.”

“Forty bucks for a meal?” Magnolia exclaims. “What are they ordering, a golden goose?”

Lottie touches her shoulder. “I assure you there are many meals at many restaurants that are twice that amount. And if you learn to compose yourself as a lady, and keep ambition in your back pocket, you will eat at such places long after the Titan season concludes.”

“Pfft. Yeah, right,” Magnolia scoffs. “How do you know so much about this stuff anyway?”

“I didn’t always,” Lottie admits. “I was raised by a single mom, and helped raise other people’s children before I knew restaurants with cloth napkins existed. But I got married about three years ago, and everything changed.”

“Ooh, you got yourself a sugar daddy,” Magnolia says, wide-eyed.

Lottie chuckles lightly. “I’ll admit he had money, but he was a man of false promises, and so I used his money to become the woman I always wanted to be. I wasn’t in it for the money … until I realized that’s all there was.”

I run my eyes over Lottie: her beautiful smile, hypnotic hips, and thick, black hair, subtly streaked with gray. When I look at her, I see two people. The girl she once was, and the woman she’s become. I decide she didn’t need this man’s money to have class. Maybe just the confidence it gave her to become what she already was.

“Are you two still together?” I ask gently.

Lottie shakes her head. “No. The man I married wanted his work more than he wanted me. And I wanted the man I lost long before I met my ex-husband.”

Rags appears in the doorway, breaking the sullen moment. He scowls at her before ordering my rear out onto the track. I jump up and make for the door, but then turn back and do three things: I place my napkin to the left of my plate, lay my fork and knife diagonal across the porcelain, and bow like a humble servant before her queen.

“Thanks for the lesson,” I say with a mischievous smile.

“You may be joking, but you did everything correctly save for that bow,” Lottie notes appraisingly. “Oh, and be sure to announce that you are leaving. Don’t just bolt upright like a savage.”

“This is what you’re teaching them?” Rags snorts. “What a waste.”

Though I teased Lottie myself, I grimace. “Why is it a waste? I could be like one of those rich track kids if I’d had someone to teach me.”

Rags shoots me a look like he’s disappointed. “You don’t want to be like them, Astrid. Be a girl who likes a little dirt under her nails. Be a girl who isn’t afraid to eat with her hands or speak her mind.”

I think on what he’s telling me. Then I say, “Why can’t I be both?”

Lottie beams like I’ve handed her a silver moon.

Rags glares at her. “To the devil with you, woman.”

Lottie ignores him and hands me an envelope that I’m to take in addition to my presidential addresses. “We’ll cover these more in detail when we reach
Strength
, but until then, study these when you have time.”

I give her a soldier’s salute before racing down the stairs and into the sunshine. Padlock gallops toward the house when he sees me, and though I fight the grin that works its way onto my mouth, it’s no use. I pat him on the shoulder and he noses my neck.

“If Lottie has her way, I’ll become a lady before the summer is out,” I say to my Titan. “But I’ll always ride you like a savage.”

On Saturday, June 11, I wake with a nervous racket in my stomach. The feeling never leaves me. Not as I do six practice runs with Padlock (two apiece, stretching eight, ten, and twelve furlongs). Not as I wash my Titan inside the dimly lit barn. Not as Magnolia braids my hair, weaving in a yellow ribbon she embroidered with
Strength
, one of Lottie’s magic words. And not as I sit in my room, waiting for the moment it’s time to leave.

Tonight, I will run in the first preliminary race.

And though I have a team that’s thick as thieves, I feel alone.

My father won’t look me in the face, hasn’t since the night of our argument. I think about what he said; that he could stop me from racing if he wanted. But he hasn’t, and sometimes I wonder if it’s truly because he doesn’t want to call attention to our being related. Or more accurately, call attention to the fact that his daughter is involved in the same thing that shamed him the year before.

I haven’t seen Dani for more than fifteen minutes in the last week, and my mother is already elbow-deep in Mr. Lakely’s vegetable garden, though the sun still burns low in the distance.

After knocking on Zara’s door, I poke my head in. She’s in bed, her light off, her drapes shut. “Zara, I’m going now.”

There’s a rustle, and I see in the hallway light that she’s turned over to face the ceiling. “Can I come with you?”

“No, Zara. It isn’t safe outside the gates.”

Zara has learned about my racing a Titan. I don’t know how she found out, but one day she simply looked at me and said,
I know about the horse. I’m not so stupid
.

Zara rolls toward her wall again, and I watch as her back rises and falls.

“I can take you to the park tomorrow morning if you want,” I say. “Like last week.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Zara—”

“Leave me alone,” she says, louder. And because I’m afraid my father will hear her and decide he’ll lock me in this house after all, I softly close her door. She needs me, I know that. But what she needs more is stability, and we can’t have that if I don’t race to win. My mother’s ring bought us time, but how much?

Not enough.

An hour later, Magnolia, Rags, Barney, Lottie, and me are unloading at Cyclone Track. The moon hangs heavy overhead, watchful, as we push the iron plank into place—diagonal from the ground to the lip of Rags’s truck bed. True to word, neither Rags nor Barney has turned off Padlock since I asked them not to. So when the plank is secured in place, the horse simply rises out of his casket and walks downward of his own accord.

It isn’t a glamorous entrance. Not when compared to the other Titans appearing from trailers that are sleek and black, or wrapped in sponsorship logos bearing the jockey’s last name.

“Those big companies work quickly,” Lottie says. When she sees I’m biting my bottom lip, she leans toward my ear. “Remember, Astrid, they’re always watching. Show them a brave face.”

She motions toward the cameramen stationed around the track, one hovering just overhead on a two-story platform. I react immediately, hold my head up higher, pat my Titan and smile as if I’m hiding a deadly secret. I pray they don’t catch the way my knees weaken with each step.

Padlock doesn’t fidget as much as he did last Sunday, but his silver hooves still dance below his body.

“Let’s get you in the stall,” I say before reining him and placing a bit between his teeth. He walks after me without complaint, and I’m relieved to have a task to focus on as the cameramen snap pictures, and bet makers scream names and odds, and race-goers wave wads of cash. They are a good fifty feet away, behind the short chain-link fence, but it’s as if they are inside my head.

Once we’re in the stall—same booth, this time with my name hastily scribbled outside the door—I pull on my silks and attempt to drown out the shouts from jockeys up and down the corridor. Barney and Rags leave to fetch the saddle, and Magnolia escorts Lottie outside to see about securing me an interview after the race.

I’m alone with Padlock when I spot Arvin Gambini walking down the aisle. He stops at each stall and speaks briefly with the jockeys’ managers. When he grows close to our stall, Padlock stomps his front left hoof into the dirt. Over and over.
Thump-thump-thump
.

Arvin smiles at me, and my skin crawls. “If it isn’t the underdog, or shall I say, the underhorse.”

I open my mouth to tell him what I think of his humor, but he shakes his head and cuts me off.

“I’m kidding. You two have added an element of excitement to this year’s circuit, and I’m glad for it.”

I find myself speechless, knowing I shouldn’t trust him, but wanting badly to believe him. “You … you don’t mind that I’m here?”

He shrugs a shoulder and leans over the stall gate as if spilling gossip. “I may have been hesitant at first, but it gets tiresome watching these Titan replicas race year after year. I always wanted to see a Titan 1.0 operate on the track. But then Rags—your manager, I believe?—left the company, and no one could quite finish or duplicate what he’d done.”

“Oh” is all I say, because I thought Rags was fired. And Barney too.

Arvin slaps his hand against the stall door and straightens. “Where is that manager of yours? Gotta fill him in on some details regarding today’s race.”

“He went to get my saddle. Want to tell me and I’ll relay the information?”

“Nah, I’ll catch him.” He studies me for a moment longer as Padlock
thump, thumps
his hoof. “You know, you remind me of myself. A fighter who doesn’t mind bending the rules.”

The back of my neck burns as I work out whether to accept this as a compliment. For years, Arvin Gambini has been labeled a slick-talking, money-hoarding businessman, preying on others’ gambling habits. But as I look at him now, I wonder if he wasn’t just a man with little money of his own. A man who had to prove to his grandmother, and himself, that he was worthy of running an underground empire.

“I’m glad you’re okay with my being here,” I say. “I’ve been a fan of the horses since I was twelve. Since before the first season.”

“Because you were a dreamer,” he tells me. And then he grins—shiny, bright—and I back up. Because I see it then, the crocodile grin he’s giving me. He must see the crack in my certainty, because he gives a quick wave and tromps away from my stall and out of the multi-million-dollar stable.

By the time my crew has returned, the Titans are already lining up, the lady with the clipboard checking off the parts to ensure no one is racing with an advantage. Rags and Barney secure my saddle, and I pull myself up.

“Did you talk to Arvin?” I ask Rags.

His entire face scrunches. “God, no. Why would I do that?”

“He came by. Said he was going to tell you something about today’s race.”

Uncertainty washes over Rags’s features, but then he shakes his head. “Whatever he would have told me would’ve been mind games, nothing more. You know how to run this horse, and you know the course will be ten to fourteen furlongs, at best guess. So just do what we’ve trained for, and remember to check the cutoff time.”

The cutoff time.

That’s one of two qualifying elements to move on to the second preliminary race. First, I have to complete the race in a certain amount of time, which will flash on the board alongside the track length sixty seconds before the starting gates open.

Second, I have to place well enough to continue. Forty-two horses ran in the sponsor race, but only thirty-five will run tonight. That’s mostly because of the
one horse, one jockey, one season
rule. The jockeys who didn’t secure sponsors figured it was because they weren’t prepared enough to compete this season, and probably opted to try again next year. Or maybe it’s because they couldn’t afford the entrance fee. In any case, I’ll be racing against those thirty-four remaining.

And after tonight, there will be only twenty.

“I’ll do my best,” I say, my eyes focused on the line of Titans. “I have to go.”

Rags pats my leg awkwardly, and Barney tells me he’ll keep an eye on Magnolia. I hardly hear them talking, though, because now I’m remembering Lottie’s lecture this week, and the envelope she gave me that first day we spoke about etiquette. I narrow my gaze on my competition, and in the folds of my mind, I run through what I’ve learned.