Page 25 of Furious

“Why is it at Jolene’s?”

“Mom was storing it at Grandma’s garage. It’s been there a few years now—like I said, it doesn’t run right now. But it was always Mom’s favorite. She named it Betty. Mom grew up poor. Like she used to tell me there was dirt-poor, and then there was Appalachian-kid-in-the-mountains poor, and then there was what she had experienced. Both her parents were addicts, and she was raised by her great-aunt Betty, who was always out of work. They spent most of Mom’s childhood in a run-down trailer that had no running water, and Mom went to school in the same clothes most days. But she loved her great-aunt Betty. And they loved nothing better than to watch NASCAR at the restaurant where Mom started working on weekends. Then one day, despite all odds, a NASCAR driver actually came into the restaurant. Somehow, they started talking, then they started talking shop. He was so impressed by everything she knew about cars and the circuit, he asked her to join his pit crew for the weekend, then permanently. Mom was sixteen. And the rest, as they say, is history. You can read about it online.”

And I have. There were many, many news stories about JoJo’s mom’s meteoric trajectory from pit crew to practice driver to actual NASCAR racer. She’d come out of nowhere and, the minute she turned eighteen, started beating everyone else almost immediately. Sponsors fell over themselves trying to sign her and she was winning races months after starting out. But none of that explained the Hornet, or why it didn’t run.

“Where does the Hornet come into this story?”

“Ahh,” JoJo says, her voice soft as she concentrates on Mario Kart for a moment. “Right, the Hornet. Mom always promised herself she’d get that car if she ever had enough money. She used to keep a picture of it on her wall as a kid, and Great-Aunt Betty, who didn’t live long enough to see Mom race, said it wasn’t the most popular, but it was the finest car in the world. Mom bought it for herself after she won her first race, and it broke down once in Dell’s Hollow, which was how she met Dad. It’s not run in a few years, because we were busy with racing … and then Mom was gone … and it’s still here. But I think I can get it running. We just need to get the keys.”

I want to hold JoJo’s hand, or thank her for sharing her mother’s story with me. But I don’t want her to think I’m pitying her; I would hate that, if it were me. So instead I ask, “Where are the keys?”

“In Grandma Jolene’s safe, in her office. She’ll let me work on the car with them, but she locks them up there, so no one will steal the famous car that belonged to DeeDee Emerson.”

“How are we going to get the keys, then?”

“I have some ideas.” JoJo shrugs. “But first, I have to get the Hornet running. Once we do that, we can worry about the keys.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

JoJo’s eyes light up as she launches into a gearhead nerd-out about fuel injectors. As JoJo’s been talking, I’ve tried to stay on track while avoiding the Pokeys that flail toward me every time I drive nearby. Meanwhile, as Princess Peach, she’s been exploiting every half-pipe and dash panel. Predictably, she speeds through the finish line while I’m still gingerly picking my way across the sand. I don’t think I could’ve beat her, even if I wasn’t distracted by her wild plan—and a little bit by the feel of her skin still against mine.

But now, with no game to pretend to focus on, I have to push back. “JoJo, your mom’s car isn’t a fair exchange for a jacket,” I state the obvious. “Or an address, if we’re lucky.”

“Of course it’s not. So doesn’t that tell you something? You really think I’d race if I wasn’t sure I could beat that guy?” She flashes the cocky smile I remember from the go-kart track: a smile that was well-deserved.

“Maybe not. But still. I’m not gonna let you risk it for Max. It’s not worth it.”

“Well, I’m not doing it for Max; it’s for you. Like I said, it’s hardly a risk if I know for a fact that I can win. And anyway, I do think you’re worth it. So promise you’ll consider it, okay, Detective?” She reaches over to press Play on my controller, and we’re dropped down onto the infamous Moonview Highway track. The traffic light turns green and, just as with the last game, she hits the accelerator at the exact right moment to take off with a boost.

I don’t take off at all.

Instead I do one of the bravest things I’ve ever done, which is probably a low bar. I mean, I wasn’t brave enough to hang a picture of Letty Ortiz in my bedroom. I wasn’t brave enough to keep it pinned on the track. I wasn’t brave enough to break up with Abby Bacon even when she barely answered a text for the last month of our relationship, or after I saw her at the Cineplex with Charlotte Masciarelli when she’d claimed she was busy helping her aunt wash her dogs. I wasn’t brave enough to demand that Max stay with me, or to demand that our parents let her stay, because I needed my big sister and that was all that mattered.

But I’m just brave enough to lean in—slowly, so she can see it coming and dodge if she wants—and ask JoJo Emerson-Boyd once our lips are inches apart, “Can I kiss you?”

She nods, her signature grin dimpling her cheeks.

JoJo tastes like Coke and pickle chips and summer, like … I don’t know, like that feeling of being a kid and playing outdoors past what should be your bedtime on a night like this, the sky still impossibly blue and bright, feeling safe and excited at once. A feeling you don’t even know you’re gonna spend your life chasing. I haven’t felt that way in a long time, but I do now as I slip my fingers through the hair that’s fallen from JoJo’s claw clip, and she tosses her own controller aside to cradle the back of my neck and pull me down.

Princess Peach shrieks on-screen as something blasts her off the road.

We break apart, giggling, and JoJo’s green eyes shine in the sunset glow of the skylight. She smirks (smirks!) before scooping up her Wii Wheel once more. “Pick up your controller, Blum—I bet I’ll still beat you.”

I do, though King Boo still hasn’t left the starting line. “So … is this our first date?” I ask, my lips feeling slightly like somebody else’s lips, somebody braver and happier and luckier than me.

“No, silly,” she says as she laps me. “This is our second.”

CHAPTER NINE

JoJo

If I close my eyes, I can still feel El’s lips on mine and taste her strawberry chapstick. It’s 7:00 a.m. the day after our first kiss, and I’m standing in Grandma Jolene’s garage. I’ve got the bay doors open, and a cool breeze that smells of earth and the deep valleys of the Appalachian Mountains wafts in. I run a finger along my bottom lip, wishing I was back in El’s room, Mario Kart on the TV, the space between us nonexistent as El leans in to kiss me.

It was a terrifically brave move on her part—and one I’d been thinking about making from the minute El took me up to Max’s attic bedroom. And then again when she’d sat down beside me on the bed. Our legs touching had been absolutely delicious and unbearable, but I still wasn’t entirely sure she was into me like that, so I’d sat as still as possible. Not being brave. Until she’d leaned over and asked to kiss me first.

Fearless.

El Blum is fearless, even if she doesn’t know it.