Chapter 1
Sally
There’s a particular kind of heartbreak that comes from talking sweetly to an engine… and being ignored.
“Come on, baby,” I mutter, turning the key again. The starter whines like a bored teenager forced to get up before noon. “Don’t embarrass me in front of the camera. I’m trying to make content here.”
The camera is perched on a tripod three feet away, and an LED light strip is clipped to the garage door rail like a desperate Christmas decoration. It’s recording the whole tragic ordeal: me sitting behind the wheel of my grandpa’s 1967 Shelby Mustang GT500, cheeks flushed, hope circling the drain.
Another turn of the key. Another sputter and wheeze.
Then—nothing.
Not even the courtesy of coughing before dying. The little spinning “wheel of death” on my laptop has more personality than this car right now.
I smack the steering wheel gently. “You have one job.”
Silence.
I glance toward the camera. “So! What we’ve learned today is that Mustang Sally”—I pat the dash with more affection than I’ve given any human male—“is feeling shy. No big deal. We’ll, um… cut here and try again tomorrow.”
I scramble out of the driver’s seat to stop the recording before my growing panic becomes immortalized content. That’s the fun thing about trying to start a YouTube channel. Everyone tells you to be authentic, but no one warns you that “authentic” might include actual footage of your hopes and dreams going up in smoke before you even have enough subscribers to monetize your suffering.
I hit stop. The LED light fades. My confidence does too.
“Grandpa, I really need you to send me a miracle,” I whisper to the hood. I half expect his old ghost to chuck a wrench at me.
Maybe I’m doing this wrong. Maybe I should’ve waited until I had, I don’t know, skills. But Grandpa raised me on grease and grit and the belief that if you love something enough, you can rebuild it.
And I love this car even if she is being a diva tonight.
I brush the dust off my jeans and look at the Mustang again. She’s rough around the edges—paint faded, rust freckles on her fenders, one headlight permanently squinting like she’s suspicious of my intentions—but I see what she used to be. What she could be again.
This car is the last thing he gave me. The last piece of him that still exists in steel and memory.
Little me would giggle every time. I didn’t understand the tenderness behind it back then. Now I do.
Three months since I lost Grandpa. Three months living alone in the house I shared with him and inherited on his death. Every creak in the floorboards still sounds like him. The garage smells like oil and Old Spice.
You don’t just lose someone once. You lose them over and over. Every day, when the loss creeps up on you and the grief hits again because you know they’re gone. Losing someone is a journey, not a single step.
And it’s not just the car that’s his.
It’severything.
Grandpa used to say,Now I’ve got two Mustang Sallys to take care of.
Little me would giggle every time. I didn’t understand the tenderness behind it back then. Now I do.
He worked on the assembly line his whole life. This car was his escape plan—weekend grease under his nails and dreams in engine form. Then he got sick, and the Mustang sat in the garage.
Now it’s mine.
I want to make him proud. But wanting and knowing how are very different things.
I drag the tripod back inside, stow my filming gear, and attempt to shove my frustration into the same toolbox of emotions where I keep grief and baked-in perfectionism. Spoiler: it doesn’t quite fit.
Okay. Deep breath.
