Page 21 of Furious

Have you ever thought about what it’s like to sit behind the wheel of an F1 race car? Maybe you know something about the drivers, the teams, the drama, the money, the crashes. But underneath all that stuff, there’s a feeling. Gloved hands resting on a wheel. The sick-sweet-heady-broiling perfume of asphalt and exhaust. The enraged roar of twenty high-test, expensive engines and the voices of hundreds of thousands of people crowding the stands. There are the hopes of all the drivers, their nerves, their sweat, the half breath after the last red light is lit and then LIGHTS OUT AND AWAY WE GO—there’s the moment everyone pushes their feet into the gas and it begins.

After that, it’s a scramble for position and dozens of laps around a track, each one with the potential for glory and danger. Your wheels hug the curves, you check out of the corner of your eye for other drivers. There’s a too-tight turn, a miscalculation, a sliver of bad judgment, and the car beside you goes spinning off into the gravel or careening into the wall.

It’s a place where milliseconds matter, where death lurks at every turn, and where the sweetest victory can be stolen in the span of an exhale.

I haven’t driven anything as supreme as an F1 car, but when I raced I had the sweetest taste of a fraction of what it must have been like for those drivers. God, I miss it.

As I sit at a long table inside the Clearview Senior Center and Nursing Home’s leisure and activity room on Saturday morning, stringing beads onto a piece of ribbon and listening to Mrs. Delores Russell, a pint-sized white woman with purple hair that matches her purple lipstick and plum-colored dress, explain why she can only eat peas on Thursdays, I can’t help but think of how I used to spend every Saturday at a racetrack, either in my own car or watching Mom race. If I close my eyes, I can almost feel the rumble of the cars shaking the ground as they fly past. There’s the hot wind in my hair as Mom pulls into the pit, and the nerve-wracking stress as her crew changes her tires in mere seconds.

She was so good. So fast. So clean in all her driving, always. What had happened the day she crashed? Had it been because she and Dad had argued that morning? Or was it something else, some small thing that—

“Are you sure you want to go with the blue?” Mrs. Delores Russell asks, interrupting my thoughts as she glares at the teal-blue-purple bead pattern I’ve been stringing.

Before I can reply, a cheer fills the room. Behind Delores, the TV is on and a group of other Clearview residents watch an older episode of the Netflix F1 show Drive to Survive, eagerly cheering for every team and arguing whether or not Lewis Hamilton will be world champion this year. I long to join them, since Dad doesn’t even let us put racing on at home anymore, but I told Delores I’d help her make jewelry for her granddaughter, so I’m stuck at the table.

“I think the blue works here,” I say, holding up the bracelet.

Delores purses her lips. “My granddaughter hates that color. Go for pink.”

“What about green?”

This makes Delores glare at me over her coffee. “Pink. And make it quick. We’ve got a lot of other pieces to make.” She gestures to the complete jewelry set she’s drawn out in her sketchbook.

Delores used to be an artist, but now her hands are too unsteady to string beads, so she sticks to designing complicated patterns for volunteers to bring to life. Already she’s told me three times how disappointing I am at bead stringing and how wrong my color combinations are for this bracelet.

Gripping the already-strung beads, I yank them off the ribbon. They pool in my hand, and I glance up at the clock hanging above Delores’s head. It’s 12:45, and there’s still no sign of El, although the volunteer event starts soon. Of course, it’s my own fault for arriving half an hour early, but I thought I might catch El and see if she’d come up with any ideas for getting Max’s jacket back from Riley. I could’ve just texted her, yes, but that feels like a friendship line we’re not quite ready to cross yet.

Across the room, a loud gasp cuts through the TV viewers. Delores and I both turn to watch as an F1 car—someone on the Haas team by the looks of it—spins out, cutting across a tight field of other race cars. Three drivers—Ferrari, Aston Martin, and AlphaTauri—smash into each other, and fenders, wheels, and other car bits go flying, but my eyes don’t leave the white Haas car. It crunches as it hits the side rail, crumpling in on itself. A fire erupts, and there’s a collective intake of breath inside the nursing home.

“Get out of there!” shouts one of the seniors, an older Black guy with white hair and a deep voice. He waves his hands at the driver, as if that will help.

As if anything will help.

All at once, my breath has been stolen. All at once, it’s February of this year all over again. I’m at Daytona. There are three laps left in the race when something goes wrong. Mom’s in the lead and then suddenly, she’s not at all. Where she should’ve taken a curve easily, she spins out. Her car hits the side of a wall at full speed and then ricochets across the track, flipping and bouncing in a way that makes my stomach churn. Mirrors, parts, and pieces of her car wing off, littering the track. As her car slides to a stop in the center of the track, flames start at the engine. The other cars fly past, still racing, even as flags are waved, telling the drivers to slow down. A safety car is sent out. Dad shouts into his headset. Then, he’s running toward Mom’s car. I stand in the back of the pit, unable to move, my feet stuck to the floor like they’ve got magnets on them. There’s a TV in front of me, broadcasting live coverage of the race. The announcers are saying something about the crash. I remember feeling out of my body, somehow there but also far away. All of me desperate for this not to be happening. Mom was supposed to take me to get my license tomorrow. It was going to be a celebration—when she won at Daytona, I got my license. Then, we would go to the Caribbean for spring break as a family to celebrate.

But no. It all came apart in milliseconds.

The top of her car was crunched, like a soda can that had been stepped on, but even on the TV, I saw her struggling to get out. There was her arm, her face for just a moment.

“Mom!” I had yelled, my voice lost among the thousands of others. Then, my feet started to move again. I had turned away from the TV, breaking all of my dad’s rules by rushing toward the track. Hands grabbed for me, pit crew members and other people on her team—“Don’t, JoJo! It’s not safe to run out there on the track!”—but I didn’t care. I pulled away, surging toward Mom’s car. If I could get her out of there, she would be okay. We could be okay. Life could go on as it had before.

“MOM!” I yelled again, but just as I was close enough to see her face, strong arms pulled me back.

“JoJo!” It was Dad. His face was red, his voice frantic. “What are you doing out here?”

“I have to get to her, Dad. We have to get her out!”

He waved toward the safety team. Part of them was trying to put out the fire and the other was working to cut Mom out of the car. “They’re working on it.”

“They’re not working fast enough!”

“We have to let—”

That was when the fire found her fuel tank. A great, heaving blossom of orange and red, it surged upward. The explosion sent us all sprawling. I’d landed hard on my belly, gravel digging into my hands. Dad had flung himself over me, making a dome of his body as metal and fire rained down around us.

Mom never made it out.

The beads in my hand clatter to the floor, spinning wildly under the table and dancing across the room.