“Good-bye,Humongo.”
“Congratulations, Juliet.”
Only one reporter bothers to ask Julien about Juliet. The rest fall over themselves to get the scoop about the stewards’ decision and congratulate him on keeping his pole position.
Beneath the praise, there’s a lingering undertone of “You’re only first because the car is fast.”
Nothing is ever good enough for reporters with bias.
The Ferraro PR team tells Julien it’s better to control the narrative and announce himself to his followers before it devolves into a witch hunt. It makes sense in theory, but it still takes hours before Julien can hype himself up enough to do anything.
“Anybody free for a call?” he texts their chat. There are only a few minutes before the stream starts—hopefully he didn’t catch them too late.
Mick
Romeo Dubwah! Good job in quali today
I can chat
John
Don’t quit plz
Kevin
Oh fuck
Ur not quitting right?
Yeah, that’s good enough.
Julien starts a video call and flips the camera away from his face. Even though it’s the whole point, anxiety makes him want to postpone the inevitable for as long as possible.
“Video?”
“Man, even when it’s a video call, he flips it around.”Mick laughs, but it sounds frustrated.“Why are you still hiding from us? We’ve been friends for years.”
Because once they cross this boundary, they can’t come back. Once they know, Julien can’t force his team to forget who he is. After tonight, everything will be different.
It’s normal to be hesitant.
“It’s fine if you’re ugly—we won’t judge.”
“I’ll judge.”
“Shut up, Kevin.”
Nothing left to do but rip the bandage off. Julien flips the camera, and his own face joins his friends on the screen. After a split second of lag, there’s an inhuman screech.
“You’re actually?—!”
“You’re Julien fucking Dubois?!”
Julien steadies his phone, but it doesn’t help the image quality when it’s his friends who are shaking their cameras. “That’s not actually my middle name.”
“You’ve been a Formation 1 driver this whole time?!”
“You were the one who said I wasn’t a real driver, remember?” Julien remembers. “But, I mean, yeah? I’m a lot closer to Formation 1 than you assholes will ever be.”
