Chapter 12
“You carting a house in there?” He glances at my backpack.
Mom’s still insisting I take the test though. “Just in case,” she always says. I’ll never admit it, but part of me secretly agrees.
“Just some dry cleaning I’m dropping off later,” I say as nonchalantly as I can.
I tie up my bike, then hop into the driver’s seat of the golf cart Cameron’s standing next to. It’s been an unspoken rule since our second get-together that I drive. Whether it’s because Cameron doesn’t want to risk another wreck or because he can’t be bothered to fight with me, I’ve never asked.
I fail to stifle a giant yawn as I start the cart.
“Big night out?” He climbs in next to me.
“Sort of.” If staying up until midnight learning a new TikTok dance with Roz counts as a big night out. “What about you? Pub night with ‘the lads’?”
“Nah. I don’t go out when I have morning training.”
“You already hit the gym?” I glance at my phone. Eight a.m. Amazing. I usually can’t get myself out of bed until seven, and that’s on a good day. “You don’t even smell bad.”
“Do I look like the type to go unshowered after conditioning?”
Probably not, now that I know him a little bit. It’s actually surprising how nice he smells—like a freshly mowed summer lawn.
I resist the urge to lean in closer and take a sniff.
“Here,” Cameron says as we pull up next to the black shed on Lot 19, unfortunately a too-familiar sight now. “I’ll give you a hand.”
Before my foggy morning brain can process what’s happening, he gets out of the cart and grabs my backpack off the rear seat, swinging it over his shoulder that isn’t already occupied with his own bag. The books inside thump and clunk.
He raises his eyebrows. “What kinda laundry you got in here?”
“None of your business.” I hop out and reach for my bag.
He takes a step back, the beginnings of an evil grin spreading on his face. “Wait, let me guess—you’ve got five kilos of tampons in here.”
“Har-har, you’re so funny. Now give it back.”
Cameron holds the backpack high above my head, lifting the heavy load without a single tremor. “You’ll have to come get it if you want it so badly.”
He’s smiling way too widely for someone who’s torturing me before the sun is fully out. I jump and grab the side of the canvas, pulling with all my might—at the exact moment he drops his arm.
The motion throws me off-balance, and I go stumbling onto the concrete, backpack landing heavily next to me.
“Shit.” He kneels. “Are you okay?”
I ignore the hand he’s holding out and push myself up. Luckily, some light dirt seems to be the only damage, unlike the last time I went crashing into the ground in front of him.
“You’re not hurt, are you?”
“No thanks to you.” I seize my backpack, clutching it to my chest.
A fat Princeton Review tome slides out and lands with a plop on the cracking asphalt. I want to scream with frustration. After all that, some zipper somewhere must have come loose.
Cameron wrinkles his forehead. “Are you prepping for uni exams?”
A flush spreads from my collar to my forehead. Caught red-handed. By the last person I’d want to know I’m studying. I can already hear the insults in his snooty posh-boy accent: Good thing you’ve got backup plans, Kwong. Probably gonna need it.
“Yes,” I admit, bracing myself.
Cameron tilts his head, looking at me hard. “I’m doing A-levels.”
“A-what?”
“Our equivalent to your SATs.” He gestures toward my practice book. “That is what you’ve got there, isn’t it?”
I force myself to give a tiny nod.
“My nan pushed me to do at least one or two if I could. In case racing, well…” He shrugs, letting the rest of his words hang between us. The redness around his ears matches the blotchiness all over my face.
I want to ask him why he’s taking A-levels when he’s the one who called Pat a melt for stressing about his tutoring sessions. But then again, I, too, talk a big game about Formula 1 while secretly worrying I’ll never cut it.
We stand silent for a moment, then Cameron clears his throat. “We could multitask, if you want.” At my confused look, he elaborates. “I could read you practice questions while you work on the car, and vice versa.”
As weird as it would be to do practice questions with someone who, two minutes ago, I would have expected to roast me like a Thanksgiving turkey, it does sound better than battling local students for a seat at the downtown Starbucks. Efficient, too, to kill two birds with one stone.
“Sure, okay.”
“Okay.” He nods, looking as surprised as I feel.
We retrieve the toolbox and FC-80 parts from the creaky shed and spread the pieces out on the ground for easy assembly. To my relief, Cameron volunteers to go first.
“I’ve got a history exam next month.” He reaches into his gray backpack. A second later, he hands me his iPad, a Quizlet already loaded.
“But we have two races!”
He grimaces. “Only one window a year.”
And I thought taking the SATs postseason was going to be a pain.
While Cameron bends over the sorted car components, I find the most comfortable-looking patch of ground in the shade and plop myself down. “Witte and Stoly… pin?”
“Agrarian reforms in early-twentieth-century Russia,” he says without missing a beat, getting to work on a rusty main plane and end plate. “Changes included the development of large-scale individual farming and public education. The success of the reforms is debated.”
I swipe to the next prompt. “Council of Clermont.”
“Pope Urban II, 1095. The pope’s speech included a call to arms for the First Crusade, resulting in the capture of Jerusalem and establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.”
I raise my eyebrows. It’s not like I thought he would be a total academic slacker, but I didn’t exactly have Cameron Evans: CEO of History on my bingo card either. Between traveling for races and off-track conditioning, there’s limited free time to focus on schoolwork. “Seven Years’ War.”
“Global conflict between 1756 and 1763 involving most major European powers and many smaller states. The conflict ended in victory for the Anglo-Prussian alliance, resulting in Britain’s rise as the world’s dominant naval power.”
We go through the rest of his question bank in the amount of time he takes to build nearly all the front wing. Estates General. Robert Peel. He even aces the one about the Freedmen’s Bureau, which I can only vaguely remember despite getting a 5 on my AP US History exam last year.
“Wow,” I say after he finishes rattling off a detailed summary of the causes of World War I. “You know your stuff.”
He looks as happy as a puppy. “Not as thick as I come off, eh?” He fishes his water bottle out of his bag and sits down next to me, taking a large glug.
“I never said that.” Out loud.
“You’ve never said anything good until now either.”
I make a pffft sound. “Like you need compliments from me.” I quote the top comment from his latest Instagram post. “ ‘Always perfect and always will be.’ ”
His smile stretches so wide, you’d think I just told him he’s the most wonderful boy to ever exist. “I knew it. You are stalking my socials.”
“You wish. It was the first thing that popped up on my feed this morning.” Not exactly the truth, but I have zero desire to see the peacock mode he’s sure to go into if I admit I once scrolled through his post history until I was well into his junior karting years.
“You can be honest, I don’t mind.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Ridiculously intelligent, you mean to say.”
I laugh despite myself and throw a loose piece of asphalt at him. “Do you have any more you want to run through? Otherwise I promised my mom I’d do fifty SAT questions before dinner.”
He catches the pebble easily. “You’re up.” He leans over and tugs the end of one of my braids. “I like these, by the way.”
Zing. I feel something deep in my stomach that has nothing to do with the subpar overnight oats Mom fed me for breakfast.
“It’s my go-to when I don’t want to brush my hair,” I explain, and immediately want to clap a hand over my mouth.
Why does my brain function like an engine in desperate need of an oil job when I get the slightest bit nervous?
And on that note, me being nervous is completely silly to begin with.
I’m talking to someone who’s more likely to block me on a hot lap than kiss me in the rain, or show up at my window with a boom box, or any other kind of nice running-to-the-train-station-type gestures.
His laugh is like a thunderclap. “Barking mad.” He shakes his head, grinning.
I shove my review book at him. “Here, start on page 239.”
I get up and bend over the partially finished car, all too conscious of his presence.
“Many animals,” Cameron reads, “including humans, must sleep, and sleep is known to have a role in everything from healing injuries to encoding information in long-term memory—damn, this is boring—but some scientists claim…”
As I’m finishing up the rear wing and debating if it’d be weird to ask Cameron if he wants to grab lunch, Pat’s voice sounds behind us. “Hey, guys.”
I jump, dropping the piece with a clank. Pat and Sasha are driving up in a golf cart, the electric motor ninja quiet.
“What are you guys doing here?” My question is two-pronged. Why are they at Lot 19—which no one would ever bother going to unless they were explicitly ordered—and what is Sasha doing on Orbital Campus at all when he drives for a different team?
As if he can read my mind, Sasha says, “I had a confidential meeting at the OTC.”
I freeze. My thoughts immediately leap to the F2 seat. Was he meeting someone about it? Judging from the smile that’s turned into a sneer, he definitely was. And he wants me to know it.
My mind churns at the possibility. It wouldn’t be the first time a team chose a driver outside their own youth academy, but it happens so rarely it hasn’t crossed my mind there could be candidates other than Cameron and me.
But Sasha is good, and he comes with ample sponsorship dollars from his father’s company.
F2 teams may be better funded than F3 teams, but a giant sack of money gives any driver a leg up.