All around us, a strange silence is spreading through the press, and my blood turns to ice in my veins.
“Sorry,” the reporter tells me. “Sorry about that. Thank you for talking with us, Travis, and good luck tomorrow.”
“Thanks,” I say through numb lips. The reporter has hauled out her phone and is typing rapidly, muttering “Wait for confirmation” to her cameraman. I glance around, already reaching for my phone, but before I can get it, another reporter steps up to talk to me, with a face like death warmed over.
“Travis, give us a word,” he says, pushing his mic in my face. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but we’ve just learned that Antony Costa passed away about an hour ago.”
It’s so unexpected—so horrifying—that for a moment I’m paralyzed. I stare at the reporter, who’s reminding viewers that Antony was one of five drivers involved in the Formula 2 crash in France two weeks ago.
“He was improving initially, and doctors had hoped for a full recovery, but unfortunately the family has just released a statement confirming his passing.” He looks to me. “Travis, what do you make of this devastating news?”
I stare at him blankly, my mind jerking back and forth, until words spring forth from somewhere in my brain.
“It’s horrible,” I choke out. I remember Antony’s mother, and the way she’d stroked his hair in the hospital, like he was a little kid. “It’s... I can’t imagine what his family is going through.”
The reporter opens his mouth to ask another question, then seems to think better of it. “I think we’d best leave it there. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Antony Costa’s family during this tragic time. Travis, thanks for speaking with us.”
Dimly, I realize the other reporters are wrapping up interviews around me, the other drivers being led off by their trainers or PAs, all of them frowning, some of them shaking their heads.
“Motherfucker,” my trainer, Brian, says. “That’s crazy. Two deaths from one crash.”
He’s texting on his phone while he walks, pushing me forward with one irritating hand. I can tell he’s just dying to go gossip about this with the rest of the team.
“I’m going back to my room,” I snap, striding ahead of him without waiting for an answer. I weave my way through thecrowds, flinching from fans who try to approach me for a selfie. I close the door to my room and sit down on the small, padded bench across from the closet. I put my head in my hands and close my eyes.
Antony is dead.
I can’t believe it. I saw him days ago, and he looked so good. He was weak, sure, but he was talking and laughing and sitting up in bed to eat the food his family brought him. What the hell happened?
I rub my arms and punch the temperature up five degrees on the thermostat. It doesn’t help. I’m frozen with terror. I had always thought that if Jacob woke up, that would be it. He would be safe. Antony looked so much better than Jacob, I was actually jealous of his family. A small, awful part of me had almost resented them for their good fortune. If a driver could recover that quickly, I wanted it to be Jacob.
Now, even if Jacob does wake up, hestillmight die.
I thought I’d already learned the depths of fear and grief, but now I’ve plummeted to some new, darker level. My insides are cold and hollow, and there’s a horrible static filling my mind. I sit in my empty room, staring at nothing, and the hours tick by, one after another, until I finally fall asleep.
I wake up stiff and disoriented, slumped uncomfortably on the tiny bench in my room. For a moment, I’m not sure what’s woken me, then someone raps sharply on the door. Heather, the PA who flew with me from France, is standing outside. Her brown eyes widen when I pull open the door.
“Are you alright?” she asks, looking me up and down with faint alarm. “People have been looking for you all morning.”
“I’m fine,” I say shortly. “Where do I have to be now?”
She raises an eyebrow at my tone and then clicks her tongue. “Brian is ‘sick’ again”—she traces her fingers around the word—“so I’ll be with you today. There’s a quick bit of press to do, then they’re having a ceremony and a minute of silence for Antony Costa before qualifying.”
Great.
I blunder through the press, handing out stilted, one-word answers until the reporters give up and move on to more well-spoken drivers, then everyone gathers for a ceremony at the front of the grid. I pull my cap low over my eyes and speak to no one, but I’m still put in the front row, where I have an unobstructed view of Antony’s racing helmet.
As a band plays his national anthem, I stare at his helmet, an inexplicable fury spreading through me. I can’t stop thinking how unfair it is that he died. How pointless. If he hadn’t tried to pass Jacob on that corner, if Parrot’s brakes hadn’t locked up, or if they’d locked up a half second later... it was the sum of a thousand random things, any one of which done differently could have prevented all of this from happening.
The minute of silence ends, and someone gives a speech, but all I can hear is the slow, angry thud of my pulse. I head to my car and sit in it silently while I wait for Q1 to start. I’m so angry, if anyone talks to me, if anyone evenlooksat me, I’m going to lose it. Antony’s death has erased all the progress I thought Jacob was making. How can Jacob survive, if Antony couldn’t?
He can’t. He can’t survive. Which means every moment I sit here is a moment I should be at his side.
When I go out onto the track, I feel entirely disconnected from my body, like I’m watching myself from ten feet above. I don’t hear anything my engineer says over the radio. Later, I’ll thank god thetrack was almost empty, because I’m not sure I would’ve had the wherewithal to avoid other cars on their out lap.
I end up in P1, somehow, at the end of it. I sit in my car in the garage, fury burning a pit in my stomach, and wait for Q2. When it starts, I go out for another lap and set a new track record. No one speaks to me as I sit in the garage again, waiting for Q3. I beat my Q2 time, setting another new track record, and end up taking pole position.
I wish I could go back to the garage, throw my helmet off, and head home, but that’s not how things are done. I pull my car in front of the “1” flag and get out of the car to a roar of applause. I know my every move is being broadcast on live TV, and on every enormous screen around the track. I ignore the crowd and pull off my helmet, swallowing the urge to fling it angrily to the ground.
