Page 3 of Homecoming

People focused on the Championship titles, on who won the Grand Prix, who had the best deals, and sponsors, which team had won the title the year before...

And yes, all that was important. Claiming that the checkered flag was not only an adrenaline rush and a goal at the end of every race, but there was so much more to it.

We trained hard, even harder than most professional athletes did.

Not only did we have to work out as if we were preparing for the Olympics, but then there was reaction speed training, and the actual driving itself.

For me, there was also training with the pitstop crew, because I wanted to be competent in every aspect. The last one was studying cars.

Every year, it was essential to come out on the grid with better, faster, and safer cars. Every year, a million things changed, not only the parts on the car or design, but also the rules, and safety measures we were obligated to keep. And I was determined to know it all.

It was all to make Mr. Kendrick proud and to prove my mother wrong, I knew that.

Yet, after all the work I put in, and stolen moments with friends or girls, when I could, it still wasn’t enough.

I still didn’t feel like I belonged.

The problem was, I didn’t belong anywhere anymore. I was homeless. Not in the literal sense, of course. But in the one that mattered the most.

I was lonely with the crowd swirling around me twenty-four-seven, and I didn’t know what to do about it.

“Check, check,” Kevin repeated the words, annoyance underlying his voice.

I knew and had worked with Kevin for so long that I could hear every little change in his voice.

He was the only person allowed to talk to me once I was in the car with my helmet on.

Whenever people heard about this little tidbit, they thought it was crazy, but it actually served a point.

Imagine, driving down the track at two hundred miles per hour and a voice you don’t expect talking in your ear. You would end up in the wall. Crashing in our line of business was never good.

I loved to pretend I couldn’t hear him sometimes, just to give him shit, but this was not one of those times, and I needed to focus.

I needed to clear my head, and have nothing in it but the next few hours of tarmac and claiming that flag.

“Yep,” I answered, signaling I heard him loud and clear.

I looked around the grid. It was crawling with people.

Mechanics held heating sheets over the tires so they would be soft and the grip on the asphalt would be better. Some were tinkering around the car—some were even buffing the damn thing.

Drivers sitting in the cars while owners were standing around, talking with their crew chiefs. Some were having their pictures taken by the press who tried to get some scoop or sniff trouble.

What they didn’t know was that no matter how competitive we got, we all respected the track. Too much was riding on it, and not just the podium. Our lives depended on that respect. So there was no way something would go down on the grid.

Girls were standing nearby holding umbrellas to shield everyone from the sun. God forbid someone got a sun tan. No one minded the blistering heat coming from the tarmac, but a ray of sun was not allowed to touch the top of the helmet or ball cap.

I got a slap on the back of my helmet and when I looked behind me, one of the mechanics was giving me a thumbs-up. It was time to go in.

“Okay, one lap and then a minute of waiting before the start,” Kevin said.

It was something I knew all too well. I’d done it a thousand times. But he always said it.

When I asked why he did, in the beginning, he explained it was his way of reminding me he had my back during the race and it was my job to only think of driving and winning. All the other information that I needed to know, he gave me before I even had to think about asking.

I fired up the car, and the vibrations traveled through my body, waking up everything, making adrenaline course through my body, first slowly but then once it got past my waist, on its track to my heart, it became electrifying.

Fuck yeah, that was a good feeling. The only thing better was standing on that podium.