Chapter 6 #3
I push myself off the ground, my palms stinging. Somewhere between our cart going rally car and falling all over the asphalt with Cameron, I’ve also managed to scrape up both my hands, my left elbow, and my right knee.
Great. Add another five minutes for the bathroom stop I’m going to have to make to avoid looking like a six-year-old learning how to ride a bike.
I rush over to the golf cart, now tipped over on its side. The connecting rod on the front axle is snapped in two. Completely useless as a mode of transport.
Behind me, Cameron pushes himself up. “Frank’s going to flip when he finds out.”
The thought of more tedious punishment sends a wave of dread through my body.
A thick, overgrown cluster of bushes lining the path gives me an idea.
I grab the dented edge of the rack on top of the cart and pull. “Come on, give me a hand.”
Cameron stares with his mouth half-open. “You’re joking.”
I brace myself, attempting to hoist the cart above the shoulder-height hedges. I’ve pulled off heavier 1 rep maxes during conditioning, but it’s too unbalanced without someone holding the other end and drops back down with a clang.
I glare. “This would be a lot faster if you shut your mouth and make yourself useful.”
“You’re gonna get caught.”
I push aside the coils of doubt in my mind. “No one ever comes up here, and if they do, who’s going to stick their head behind some random bushes?”
“What if maintenance notices a missing buggy?”
“Didn’t Caleb and Grayson walk off last year with two bottles of champagne meant for the annual gala and no one noticed?
” They still brag about it at the top of their lungs.
I clasp my hands together and put on the most pathetic help me face I can summon.
“Do you want Frank to give us another car to build from scratch on top of the one we already have to put together? That means at least twenty more hours like the one we just had.”
Cameron bites his bottom lip, the gears in his head turning as he weighs Frank’s wrath and additional forced proximity with me against the sweet, sweet potential of no one ever finding out. He finally sighs. “Not a word to anyone.”
“Thank you.” I clap my hands and hop up and down. This feels like a victory, even if the dubious prize is Cameron helping me dump a golf cart behind some bushes. “Come on, hurry up.”
He seizes the other end. In two seconds, we’ve hoisted it over the hedges.
“See? You won’t notice unless you get off the path and stand right over this exact spot.”
“You’re mad.” He shakes his head.
My phone dings again. Three minutes.
The OTC is a half mile away from here. I’ve done six-minute miles before. This can all still work.
Turns out, being super in shape from training to withstand g-forces and operate heavy machinery doesn’t turn one into Usain Bolt. I make it to my Dietrich meeting five minutes late and panting like Mom’s brother Uncle Jun whenever he walks up a flight of stairs.
The OTC canteen, crammed at mealtimes with everyone from strategy directors to design interns, is empty this time of day except for a couple of the kitchen staff having late lunches.
Dietrich sits by himself at a table near the center, staring into a notebook.
The late-afternoon sun pouring in from the canteen’s floor-to-ceiling windows bathes him in an ethereal glow, like a racing god come to grace earth with his presence.
Which he basically is. His pedigree is legendary—his father is an ex-F1 driver, his mother a former Euro karting champion who got pregnant before she could move up to higher categories.
He’s got more racing blood in his pinkie than I have in my entire body.
I don’t know if it’s the half mile I did in Birkenstocks or if this is just what happens when you’re about to have your first one-on-one with a giant of the sport who also happens to be incredibly cute, but I can barely feel my legs as I approach him.
I get all the way up to the table before he looks up from his notebook. “Hello, Justine.”
“Hi,” I say, my knees feeling all knobby and like they don’t have any joints. “Sorry I’m—”
“Five and a half minutes late.” Dietrich glances at the large clock on the canteen wall that’s impossible to read because of its minimalist design. It’s literally two silver hands with no labels or ticks. “Orbital should get our junior drivers more accurate watches.”
I flush. “I was doing an—assignment for Frank and got caught up.” No need for him to know I got put in a penalty box for fighting with my teammate, then dug a hole ten feet deep in said penalty box as a result of fighting some more with said teammate.
Dietrich’s gaze sweeps up and down my legs.
A spark of pleasure shoots through me—I know it’s supposed to be insulting being objectified and all, but it’s Dietrich Lange—until I realize he’s staring at the bright red cuts on my knees, not the curves of my calves.
In my hurry, I completely forgot to clean up in the bathroom beforehand.
“What was the assignment?” The corner of Dietrich’s mouth twists. He looks startlingly like Cameron trying to hold in a snort in front of Frank.
“Assembling the FC-80. I got cuts when… one of the blunt parts slipped.”
“You got a cut from an old car part? I think you need a tetanus shot, no?”
When I fantasized about how this meeting would go, it involved me strutting in and wowing Dietrich with my determination, my talent, and maybe my tastefully curated outfit. What it did not involve was… whatever you call this.
I pull out the empty chair opposite Dietrich, desperately wondering how I can steer this conversation back in the direction I was hoping it would go. “Um. I think I had all my vaccines updated when I flew over from the US.”
Dietrich shrugs in a I wouldn’t do that if I were you way. “I suppose we should start, then. So, I am your assigned mentor. I’ve been told by management we’re to meet every month. I’m supposed to answer questions you have for me about racing and whatever you wish. How would you like to begin?”
As eager as I am to get off the topic of infectious diseases, this is such a 180-degree turn that I’m thrown off.
Before I can think of something more eloquent and confidence inspiring, I blurt out, “I want you to help me win. I want to be F3 champion this year and get a seat in F2 next year. I want to be a Formula 1 champion someday.”
I want to kick myself. I could have mentioned how I won my very first kart race by almost an entire lap—like Dietrich did—or how much I idolize Lewis Hamilton—like Dietrich does.
So many things I could have brought up to ease in, and instead I hammer him on the head with the most boring, cliché junior driver wish list.
“So, like everyone else here,” Dietrich says, and I swear I detect a slight eye roll. “Why do you think you will make it when so many don’t?”
I swallow, my throat dry.
He continues, “Six of the seven F3 race weekends this season take place in Europe, where your competitors have all raced but you have not. How will you find an advantage?”
Dietrich’s words make me feel clammy all over.
It’s not like I haven’t thought about this before—it’s more or less all I can focus on during my worst moments of self-doubt, when I feel like the only reason I got called up was because someone thought it was a bad look for the grid to be thirty white guys.
When I feel like the racing world’s biggest fraud.
But it’s much different thinking about my fears versus hearing someone voice them out loud, especially someone whose poster is hanging on my bedroom wall back home.
I do my best to summon the blustery fake it till you make it attitude that usually gets me through all my media interviews. “I’ve won almost every race I’ve ever participated in. I adapt to cars quickly—”
“Like I said, just like everyone else. This sport is difficult, it grinds you down, pushes you until you think you are going crazy. Everyone here is the fastest where they come from.”
The Dietrich Lange I know from hours of Orbital’s YouTube channel is good-humored and always cracking dry, witty jokes with reporters, fans, and other drivers.
The one sitting in front of me is sardonic, skeptical.
My crush wilts and crumbles like leaves in the fall.
This must be why the phrase “never meet your heroes” exists.
I know I messed up by being late, but he doesn’t have to be so mean, even if his time is multiples more valuable than mine.
“So tell me,” he says. “Why are you different from everyone else? And don’t give the obvious answer, please.”
Under the glare of his blue-green eyes, the words come pouring out before I can replace them with something more PR appropriate.
“I love being fast. I love winning. I’ve come so far—the nonstop racing these last few years, living an ocean away from home—if I don’t make it, then all these sacrifices will have been for nothing.
” It’s what I’ve spent my life chasing, for as long as I’ve been old enough to understand what goals were (and Mom made sure I knew what those were before I was out of OshKosh B’gosh overalls).
The high of winning, the validation that for one race, at least, you’re indisputably the best—no matter what anyone says or does.
Between the morning spent listening to the guys make mean-spirited jokes, my Bonnie-and-Clyde afternoon with Cameron, and now this disaster of what was supposed to be a life-changing mentoring session, I feel—to my horror—my throat tightening and my eyes stinging.
Dietrich jumps up. He’s back a moment later, shoving a stack of cafeteria napkins in my face. “Are you okay?”
I blink back the wetness and wave the napkins away. “All good. It’s just allergies.” I give an exaggerated sniff for show.
“Are you sure?” He’s all concerned eyes and Mr. Nice Guy now, which makes me feel a trillion times worse. I don’t want his—or anyone’s—pity.