Lindsay's Joyride

by Molly Hurford

  Dave gets a huge grin on his face and laughs. “Well, he has other guys who stand around and talk about how great they are at riding bikes,” he says. “But with friends like those…”

  “Who needs enemies,” we finish in unison, and laugh.

  “I hope Sam being a jerk doesn’t mean you think I’m a jerk too,” Dave says suddenly.

  “I think you’re okay. Just jerk-adjacent,” I say, smiling.

  “Cool. I should go over there,” he says, gesturing toward the jump line. “So, see you soon?”

  “You got it.”

  No time for writing, and even if I had time, I would be extremely nervous that someday my mother would stumble onto this log and (a) see a whole lot of curse words about what a jerk (that wasn’t a curse word, I’m just being polite) Sam is, and (b) see me doodle some hearts around Dave’s name. Yeah, I’ve turned into a total cliché, straight out of a cheesy movie.

  Le sigh,

  Lindsay

  (Good flow, but it’s missing a certain something.)

  CHAPTER 21

  “So I hear Dave is going to work with you on your jumps,” Phoebe says as soon as I slide into the van next to her. How does she do that?

  “How do you know that?” I ask. Is there some kind of secret video room she’s watching from? Or does she have me bugged?

  “I have my ways,” she says cryptically. “But that’s not the point. How do you feel about it?”

  “Like I could throw up,” I say honestly. “In a good way, though…I think. What if I fall in front of him?”

  “He’ll think you’re cooler if you do,” Phoebe replies.

  I just stare at her, because that makes absolutely no sense.

  “It’s not about being great at riding the jumps,” she says. “It’s that you’re willing to try them. Being confident means doing stuff that scares you, and being willing to try and fail. Say you go in tomorrow and you just focus on not falling. Sure, you might not fall in front of Dave, but you also won’t get any better, and you won’t impress him, or yourself. You don’t want to take dangerous risks, but you do have to be willing to feel a little silly—or get a couple of bruises—if you want to improve. If you’re not afraid of crashing, you’re much more likely to nail a trick….But if you don’t even make an attempt, you’re never going to jump higher.”

  Huh.

  “Also, that guy Sam is a jerk, just so you know,” Phoebe says. “Between you and me, I don’t think Sam is even that bad, really. He’s just really insecure, and he takes it out on people in a way that stinks. But that cute guy, Dave, who you were talking to—he’s one of the good guys. And trust me, he won’t be laughing at you if you crash. He’ll think it’s cool that you’re trying new things.”

  “Yeah, I just don’t like bullies, and I know for sure Dave isn’t one,” I say…but I admit, while Dave was cool to me, it makes me a little nervous knowing that he spends time with someone as mean as Sam.

  “No, he’s not,” Phoebe says. “Trust me, I have my sources.” She seems secretive, so I let it go.

  “Hey, can I ask you one more thing?”

  “Of course. What’s up?”

  “Why are you trying so hard to make sure I have friends?”

  Phoebe looks over at me. “Linds, you probably don’t remember what I was like when I was your age, but knowing me now, after all these talks that we’ve had, do you really believe that I was ever a super-popular kid at school?”

  I picture Phoebe when I was just a little kid and she’d come over for family dinners, strutting in wearing all black and sitting in the corner with a book and her headphones on. She looked scary but cool. All attitude and confidence.

  “You just seemed really confident, so I bet you had a ton of friends,” I say, and Phoebe looks sad.

  “Linds, I wasn’t confident at all! I was just super shy—that’s why I was reading a book all the time, even when I was at your house. I didn’t know how to talk to people, so I just read and listened to music. I was the exact same way at school—and trust me, the girl wearing weird clothes wasn’t exactly sitting at the cool table. And sure, reading is awesome, but now that I have friends and ride bikes and play music with the Chainbreakers, I realize how much I missed,” she says. “And I don’t want that for you. It sucks.”

  I never really thought of being alone as being a bad thing, but since I’ve started hanging out with Jen and Ali, and since Dave has been talking to me (not much, but still!), I’ve been having more fun than I expected. While it hasn’t been that long, I feel like Jen and Ali and I could really become great friends—especially now that I know Jen and I have more in common than I thought. I wonder if I’ll stay friends with them during the school year, and if I should maybe start making more friends in school. I’m not going to throw away my comic books, but it would be nice to have some people to talk to about them—and bikes!—every once in a while.

  “Hey, Phoebe—one more thing. Why did you start riding?” I ask. I can’t believe I haven’t thought of it before. “And why doesn’t your mom like that you ride?”

  “What makes you say that she doesn’t like it?” Phoebe asks, and I blush.

  “I maybe heard her on the phone with my mom talking about you training with your dad, and your mom complaining that she was really scared that you were training together. I sort of thought she meant supervillain training, but now that I know about the bikes, I figure she means that Tío Carlos rides with you.”

  “You’re not wrong,” Phoebe sighs. “Well, except about the supervillain part anyway. So you probably don’t know, but my dad used to be a pro bike racer in Mexico back in the eighties. He was pretty good, but not really well known or anything. He raced for a couple of years, but he had a bad crash, and while he was recovering, they moved to the US. By the time he had recovered, he already had a teaching job, and since Mom was so worried about him, he stopped racing totally. And they don’t talk about it much because it was so long ago, but Dad still rides a bunch for fun. He talked me into going out on a few rides with him a couple of years ago, and I got hooked.”

  Wow. My uncle was a professional bike racer? That is so cool!

  “Wait, he rides BMX bikes?” I ask.

  Phoebe laughs. “No way. He calls those toy bikes. He was a road cyclist; he rode one of those bikes with the skinny tires—like that one.” As we pull into the garage, she points at the bike that I never see her ride that’s sitting in the corner. It’s white and blue, unlike the rest of her bikes, which are black with flames. “He got that one for me, but it’s not my favorite.”

  Clearly. It looks a little dusty.

  “We still ride together a lot, though,” she adds. “We just don’t always agree on the most fun way to ride. I tried out the BMX bike once on a snowy day a few winters ago and got hooked.”

  “I guess that’s like Mom and I both liking to read, but her not liking comic books,” I say.

  “Exactly.”

  We grin at each other, totally on the same page.

  “And that’s why your mom is so worried about you,” I say, slowly putting the puzzle together. “And you were training to be a cyclist, not to take over the world.”

  “You still kinda sorta think I might be a supervillain, don’t you?” Phoebe asks, but she’s laughing as she says it.

  “Wellll…maybe a teeny bit,” I admit.

  “I can live with that,” she says, looking satisfied. “So, go out there and maybe crash your bike.”

  I laugh, even though I know she’s a teensy bit serious.

  I opened my eyes and for a second had no idea where I was. Then I remembered I was at Phoebe’s, and it was her voice I heard coming from the other room, ranting on the phone.

  “I can’t believe it!” she was shouting, and that’s what caught my attention.

 
This is weird. Normally, she’s quieter in the morning. In fact, that’s kind of a rule of hers. She says that real bike racers “ease their way into their mornings.” That means having some quiet time to let your mind and body wake up, before jumping on the bike and getting started with the day. She doesn’t play loud music, watch TV, or even practice riding until she’s done her meditation and had some breakfast, and since I got here, I’ve started trying to do the same thing. Normally, I’d be meditating in here, but she’s yelling so much right now that it’s sort of hard to get my zen on, so I figured I’d write instead. Or do some detective work—back to superhero basics!

  Superhero Tip: The powers of observation only count as eavesdropping if the person you’re listening to isn’t screaming at top volume.

  This bears investigating,

  Lindsay

  (At least that’s somewhat heroic.)

  CHAPTER 22

  I walk out to the kitchen and sit at the counter so she knows I’m awake, and she nods in my direction to acknowledge me before scowling at the phone. (I think the nod meant, “Good morning. Make your own breakfast because I am ANGRY.”)

  “I don’t understand. What do you mean, there’s no girls’ categories?” she’s saying. “Why don’t the girls get their own categories? What makes them think there aren’t any girls who would want to compete?”

  She looks at me, and I start to get a sinking feeling in my stomach. Before I can shake my head at her, she’s barreling on. “My cousin Lindsay and her two friends want to compete, and they’re going to!”

  I’m shaking my head so hard that I very nearly fall off the stool. I’m sure I’m shouting “NO!” at the top of my lungs, but she doesn’t seem to hear me, so I must just be screaming in my mind. But still—competing with girls was scary enough, and now she wants to showcase us competing against the boys?

  Is she crazy? She is a supervillain. I knew it!

  In fact, she really looks like one now. She’s grinning at me and looking just a little scary—exactly like I imagined her looking as a supervillain who just got the upper hand.

  “That’s right,” she says into the phone. “Lindsay is going to crush the boys’ field if she has to.”

  She clearly doesn’t like the answer she gets on the other end of the phone.

  “Fine! We’ll see you there,” she says dramatically before hanging up.

  She puts out a hand and pulls me to standing.

  “So,” she says, smiling like nothing has happened and she hasn’t just committed me to something even more insane than I already thought it was. She sips her coffee slowly, and I know I’m right to feel nervous. She’s scary when she’s angry. “It seems as though they decided not to have categories for the girls and women who wanted to do this jump competition. But that’s just fine. You three will show those stuffy old guys that you don’t just deserve your own category; you need one so that the guys have a chance to win too!”

  I have goose bumps, and I’m not sure if they’re good or bad.

  “So what does this all mean, exactly?” I ask.

  “It means your field just got a lot bigger, but you’re going to be great,” she says, sipping again. The steam from her coffee wafts around her face, and it looks just a bit more villainous than usual.

  “No, no, no,” I say, but she steamrolls over me.

  “You’d better get changed. We have some training to do if you three are going to crush in the competition. Call Ali and Jen.”

  I’m really afraid they’re going to love this plan, and I have to admit, something about how excited and angry Phoebe was about there being no girls’ competition has me a little excited too. More terrified than excited, for sure, but competing against the boys? Competition in general? The more I think about it, the sicker I feel.

  But at the same time, there’s a little spark in my stomach, something that seems like it’s saying, “This could be really cool.” I mean, it is super unfair—and maybe we can help prove a point.

  After all, heroes are only made when faced with hardship and strife, right?

  Right?!

  As we drive to the gym, Phoebe takes another call from Joyride’s owner, Matt. He’s as upset with the promoter of the competition as Phoebe, but he says he can’t do anything, since he already signed contracts with the companies that are sponsoring the competition. Still, from what I can hear—and Phoebe isn’t exactly being quiet—Matt is totally on board with us competing, and he’s offered whatever help he can give.

  That means Phoebe is asking for keys to the park so we can come early and stay late to practice, which sounds okay to me, as long as I can still get some reading done during the day. Granted, my reading has been swapped out, since on our way to the car, Phoebe handed me a stack of training manuals and BMX magazines “for research,” but this feels like a school project I’m excited about, not just a ton of extra work. (The general theme of BMX magazines seems to be big fonts, bright colors, and really crazy stunts that I don’t think I could ever land in a million years, but they are fun to flip through!)

  And yeah, sometimes I like school projects. Sue me.

  Superhero Tip: I just read about this cool idea of “flow state” that riders get into when doing really intense tricks or jumps. It’s like when you’re concentrating so hard that, suddenly, you’re not really concentrating, just in this state of being awesome and totally into what you’re doing. I’m not sure how to get to that point but the key seems to be “practice a lot.”

  Forever nerdy,

  Lindsay

  (Still accurate, I’m afraid.)

  CHAPTER 23

  Lucky for Ali and Jen, they’re ready and waiting when we get there; otherwise, the wrath of Phoebe might have been a bit too much for any one person to handle—she seems mad enough to break bones, or bike frames.

  She slams the door to the van and stalks toward the Joyride entrance—which would have looked terrifying if the car alarm hadn’t started beeping and she hadn’t forgotten her bike. Once she turns off the alarm and grabs her bike, her stalking slows considerably and her shoulders are a bit more hunched. But she still looks angry as she walks in. As soon as Matt spots her, he throws up his hands like he’s protesting his innocence. Which I suppose he is.

  Phoebe huddles with Ali, Jen, and me in a corner, pointedly not speaking to Matt (presumably because, as a guy, he counts as the enemy right now), and fills them in on what’s happening with the competition.

  “I know it might seem scarier to be up against the guys and in the mix with them, but it’s even more important that you all compete,” she tells us, looking very, very serious. “I can’t believe we’re not getting a category for you girls, but we’re still going to rock it.”

  She brightens up a bit and grins widely at us. “I know you can absolutely, positively, crush the competition, guys or girls or both. So are you in?”

  Jen perks up immediately. “I’ve never raced against boys before,” she says. “Women always have their own categories in bike races—it’s not fair otherwise!”

  “I know,” says Phoebe. “It’s not fair to you girls. But I know what some of the guys in your category are riding like, and I know you’ll do just fine competing against them. And it’s important that we show the event sponsors that women are here and want to ride. You girls are paving the way for lots more girls.”

  To be honest, knowing that the competition matters to Phoebe so much kind of makes me even more nervous—and excited. I figured it would be us, and maybe a couple of other girls our age, but now that I know we’re competing against some really good, really serious guys, it’s more intimidating. But at the same time, knowing that it is unfair that the girls don’t get their own race makes me angry, and that gets me pretty pumped up. It makes the competition matter more, knowing the stakes aren’t just “how well
I finish”—us competing, like Phoebe says, might mean that next time, we do get our own category and get to show that girls are here, and want to stake our claim in biking.

  So I nod, maybe twitching a little as I do it, but of course I’m in.

  I’m not the only one who has a lot more nervous energy pumping. Of course, at the word “contest,” and after being told we aren’t supposed to be able to compete, Jen’s eyes lit up.

  “I’m absolutely in,” she announces, despite not yet actually being able to get any air over the jumps in the small jump line—at least, not without crashing or stalling out. But I think she really, really wants to start being competitive again, and Phoebe’s anger seems to stoke that fire.

  “Actually,” she says, “I think I might like not competing just against other girls—I kind of want to see where I stack up against the guys.”

  “It does kind of take some pressure off in a weird way, doesn’t it?” I say. I’ve been thinking about this furiously: if we compete against the guys as well, it’s less about us against each other and more of a united girl-power front. That’s easier for me to get behind.

  Ali doesn’t perk up as quickly. “I just don’t think I’ll be that good,” she admits. But Phoebe explains that it’s not about racing fast or hitting the biggest jumps in the park.

  “For your category, you’ll be jumping on the same line we’ve been practicing on this whole time. It’s about showcasing your jumps and tricks against a bunch of other beginners—they just happen to be guys,” she says.

  At that, Ali seems a little less nervous, and she bursts out with a huge smile.

  “My brothers are going to freak!” she crows. She mentioned the other night that she has three older brothers—all racers—and I’m realizing just how hard she tries to measure up to them. This might be her chance. With how happy she and Jen look, it’s hard for me to keep feeling like entering this competition is a huge mistake. It might actually be fun.