“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.
