22. Mackie
MACKIE
April is going to be the reason I break.
I’m sitting in the parking lot of the arena with the engine off, chewing my thumbnail down to nothing.
I just spent forty-five minutes inside pretending to interview the equipment manager about stick tape brands because I needed a reason to be in the building.
The reason is six-one and pretends I don’t exist.
The regular season ends in six days. Then playoffs. Then we tell him. Every time I think about it my brain fast-forwards through the conversation and lands on my dad’s face and I can’t get past that part. I can imagine the words. I can’t imagine what his eyes are going to look like.
My mom knows. She’s known since Vancouver, maybe before.
Even though she hasn’t said anything directly since the midnight comment she’s started doing this thing where she doesn’t ask where I’m going on weeknights and once, exactly once, she looked at me across the kitchen and said “he seems like a sweet boy” and then went back to chopping onions.
Kara’s been my alibi forty-three times since January and I’m pretty sure she’s keeping a spreadsheet with columns for date, excuse used, parent the excuse was given to, and a scoring system for how much I’m going to owe her depending on my dad’s reaction.
“You look like garbage,” she tells me on FaceTime. She’s lying on her bed eating chips and I’m still sitting in the arena parking lot with my seatbelt on like a person who has her life together.
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. Bags under your eyes. Hair situation. And you’ve been biting your nails again.” I look at my nails. She’s right. They’re destroyed. “How many more games?”
“Three regular season. Then playoffs start.”
“And then you tell your dad.”
“That’s the plan.”
“Mackie.” She props her phone up, which means I’m about to get the Kara Court treatment.
Hands together, full prosecution mode. “You need to do something that has nothing to do with him, the team, or the secret. You need to go do something stupid and fun and completely pointless that has nothing to do with any of this. Go to a concert. Get a tattoo. Drive really fast somewhere.”
I’m barely listening because she just gave me permission and she doesn’t even know it yet.
I text Zach from the parking garage of his building.
He comes downstairs in sweats and a hoodie and stops when he sees me leaning against the driver’s side of his Mustang. “No.”
I watch him run the probability of his car being damaged (low, I’m an excellent driver), of him having a heart attack in the passenger seat (moderate to high), of me dropping this and suggesting something safer (zero).
“You said ‘maybe some night.’ It’s tonight. I’m cashing in.”
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere you can’t say no.”
The Mustang rumbles under me when I turn it on and I feel it in my entire body, a low vibration through the steering wheel and up my arms and into my chest. This car wants to move.
It’s been wanting to move since he bought it and he’s been driving it like a grandmother on the way to a doctor’s appointment.
I pull out carefully, obeying every traffic law, both hands on the wheel, checking every mirror, because the first five minutes are about trust. I need him to stop bracing himself against the center console with his hand, which is adorable and also insulting.
We take the route toward the industrial district I’ve been to twice before with Kara and her brother in his Civic.
The road is the same: straight, flat, and empty enough to breathe.
“Where are we going?” Zach says. He’s trying to sound casual but his hand is still gripping the door.
“You’ll see.”
I turn down the access road and that’s when he sees it.
Two cars launch at the far end of the strip and the sound hits us a second later, engines screaming, as one pulls ahead and the crowd erupts.
I watch them blast past us and disappear around the curve and my hands are tight on the wheel and my heart is already going.
The strip clears. People drift back to their spots along the sides. A car rolls up to the starting line—some modified hatchback, low and loud, revving in place. Nobody pulls up next to it. The spot is open.
“Mackie, no.”
“Zach, yes.”
“Mackie, we need to leave. Right now. Please. This is ILLEGAL.” His voice has taken on that tone where he sounds extremely calm but isn’t calm at all.
“This is an arrestable offense. I am a professional athlete at a street race. If someone takes a photo of me here my career is over. Barrett will kill me. Your dad will kill me. I will be dead. Multiple times.”
“Relax. Nobody knows who you are.”
“I’m six-one and I’m sitting in a Mustang at a crime scene, Mackie.”
“It’s not a crime scene, it’s a parking lot.”
I’m already pulling forward. The hatchback driver looks over at me through his window. I look at him. He nods once as I pull even with him at the line.
“Mackie.” Zach’s hand is on my arm. “Please do not do this.”
“One race. One. And then we leave.”
He stares at me for a full five seconds. Then he pulls his hood up over his head and sinks down in the seat.
“If I get arrested,” he says into his hoodie, “I want you to know that I will never forgive you.”
“Noted.”
“And this is the worst thing you’ve ever done to me and that includes the time you ate the last of my cereal and put the empty box back.”
I lean over and kiss his cheek. “You’re the best.”
A guy walks out to the middle of the road between the cars and holds both arms up. For a second everything goes quiet, just engines idling and the distant thump of music from someone’s trunk.
I grip the wheel. My heart is slamming so hard I can feel it in my wrists.
“Three,” the guy calls out.
“Oh my god,” Zach whispers from inside his hood.
“Two.”
The Mustang rumbles under me like it’s been waiting for this, like every cautious trip with Zach driving was building to this exact moment.
“OH MY GOD,” I whisper.
His arms drop.
I floor it. My hand slams the shifter from first to second, and the Mustang launches and the force shoves us both into the seats and the tires catch and the engine screams and I am ALIVE.
The hatchback is right there next to me, matching me for the first two seconds, and then the Mustang pulls ahead, one car length, two, the road is disappearing under us.
I grab third gear and I’m grinning so hard my face hurts and Zach is making a sound that is somewhere between a scream and a prayer and I can see the end of the strip coming up fast.
“MACKIE THAT WAS A STOP SIGN.”
“It was a suggestion!”
“STOP SIGNS ARE NOT SUGGESTIONS. STOP SIGNS ARE LEGAL OBLIGATIONS.”
I ease off the gas and the Mustang settles and behind us I can hear people cheering and the hatchback’s headlights fall back and I won. I WON. My hands are shaking on the wheel and the adrenaline is flooding through me and I can’t stop laughing.
Zach is plastered against the headrest with his hood still up and both hands pressed flat against the dash.
“Mackie. Get us out of here. Please. Right now. Before anyone takes a picture.”
I take the next turn and loop back around toward the highway and by the time we’re on the overpass heading home the street race is a cluster of distant headlights in the rearview. My heart is still hammering and Zach hasn’t moved.
I pull over on a quiet side street, kill the engine, and turn to face him. He’s sitting there with his hood pushed back now, jaw tight, eyes wide, hair messed up, and I wait for him to be angry.
He’s not angry.
“That,” he says slowly, “was the most terrifying thing I’ve experienced since the third period in Vancouver.”
“But?”
“But.” He swallows hard. “You’re an incredible driver.”
“I KNOW.”
“And the car sounded amazing.”
“I KNOW. I’ve been TELLING you.”
“And you look—” He stops. “Fuck. The way you look behind the wheel of my car is going to be a problem for me.”
I climb across the console before he finishes the sentence.
My knee hits the gear shift and I yelp and he laughs into my mouth, a surprised, relieved, slightly unhinged sound, and I’m laughing too and kissing him and neither of us can stop.
The adrenaline is still burning through me and his mouth is on my neck and I can feel his heart slamming through his hoodie.
He breaks the kiss, breathing hard. “We should go back.”
“Probably.”
Neither of us moves. He’s looking at me like he can’t decide if I’m the best or worst thing that’s ever happened to him.
“The playoffs start in four days,” he says, and I know what he’s really saying—after the season, we tell him, the clock is running—but I don’t want to talk about the clock right now.
“The playoffs start in four days,” he repeats. “After the season. We tell him. You promised.”
“I know.”
“I’m driving home.” He unbuckles his seatbelt. “And we’re going the speed limit. And we are never coming back to this place. Ever. In any car. For any reason.”
I laugh so hard I can’t breathe, leaning against the window, while he walks around to the driver’s side and pulls out onto the road at exactly thirty-five miles per hour. Both hands on the wheel. Checking every intersection twice.
I put my feet on the dash.
“Feet off the dash.”
“You are no fun.”
“You had enough fun tonight for both of us.” He glances over. “You’re never driving this car again.”
“You say that now.”
“I mean it. Never again. This was a one-time thing.”
“You said that about letting me stay over on a gamenight and now I have a key to your apartment.”
He sighs, shaking his head because he knows he lost this round and I lean my head against the window and watch the city go by.
The playoffs and my dad and the weight of everything that’s coming.
But right now, driving home at the speed limit in a Mustang that finally knows what it can do, I let it all go.
It’s the last normal night before everything changes.