Slammed

by Patrick Jones

  Text copyright © 2013 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

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  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jones, Patrick, 1961–

  Slammed : Honda Civic / by Patrick Jones.

  pages cm. — (Turbocharged)

  Summary: “After getting out of reform school, DeAndre lands back in the life that put him there: racing souped-up cars with stolen parts. But in trying to earn back his Detroit cred—and his girlfriend—he’ll learn what it really means to win.”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978–1–4677–1245–3 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978–1–4677–1670–3 (eBook)

  [1. Automobile racing—Fiction. 2. Honda automobile—Fiction. 3. Muscle cars—Fiction. 4. Conduct of life—Fiction. 5. Racially mixed people—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.J7242Sl 2013

  [Fic]—dc23 2013001967

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – BP – 7/15/13

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-1670-3 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-7104-7 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3361-8 (mobi)

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  I stared at the clock in the classroom. Next to the clock was a small window to the outside world, and beyond that window, a tall fence with barbed wire. “When you’re doing time, time moves too slow,” I whispered to Jordan. He stifled a laugh, and the teacher and the correctional officer—CO for short, a fat, middle-aged white guy with an attitude problem—both glared at him. Laughing was something normal, something you did on the outs, not inside at Maxey.

  I pretended to talk with Jordan about this silly worksheet on science. The only science most guys needed to know was chemistry for their street pharms, but Jordan and I were different. We’d met this morning when we moved into the STAR cottage. We got into it over a Super Street magazine but bonded on cars straight off. “What’s the fastest you ever got your ride?” I asked.

  Jordan wrote on the worksheet. 125.

  I nodded my head in approval. He nodded back, and his dreads danced. There were two kinds of guys: guys like Dad, who loved cars, and guys like me and Jordan, who loved to race. The cars were means, and my Civic was my power machine.

  “DeAndre Taylor, Jordan White, focus!” The CO was onto us. “You’re STARs, so act like it.” The teacher, Mrs. T, looked peeved—her normal state.

  “Yes, sir!” we replied automatically. Jordan and I had just started in the STAR program: Successful Transition Averts Recidivism. We were both headed home in a week, and for this last week, we’d do all this stuff to make sure we didn’t reoffend. To me, the letters were right but in the wrong order: we were RATS. Most of Detroit, especially my side, the east side, was a rattrap. Dogs running wild, the police running scared, and people dying a little bit every day.

  Once Ms. T started up again—I wouldn’t call what she did teaching, but I didn’t listen much—I poked Jordan’s bare arm to get his attention. His black skin wasn’t tagged with a green Eastside Power Machines tat like mine was.

  “Why you in?” I asked.

  “Stealing stuff for my ride, and to sell to my hookup.”

  “What’s your ride?” I whispered. On the outs, sure enough he’d show me pix on his phone. Instead of saying anything, he drew a picture on my worksheet. Honda Civic.

  I smiled with all my crooked teeth. “Mine, too, except it’s slammed.”

  “How much it cost?” he wrote on the worksheet.

  I drew dollar signs, but no numbers. “I did it.” Lowering the car myself was the only way I could afford it.

  Jordan looked impressed. “You race too?” he whispered.

  I nodded. I didn’t just race, I was a racer. It wasn’t something I did; it was who I was.

  “I knew all the guys who race downriver, where I used to live,” Jordan said. I’d heard that, but kind of like gangs kept to their own turf, the same was true with racers.

  “DeAndre, Jordan, pay attention!” the teacher shouted in her gear-grinding voice.

  I said nothing back, which was largely how I’d made it through seven months, three days, and ten hours at Maxey Boys’ Reform School. On the outs, I was a show-off, but in here, I kept my mouth shut, ate their garbage rules, and swallowed their disrespect. I looked up at the clock and then stared at the Civic drawing.

  Instead of tick, tick, tick, I heard vroom, vroom, vroom.

  Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

  LT held his hands high at the ready to signal the start of the race, but then he waved them in frantic circles. Ali and I stuck our heads out of our cars—my slammed Honda Civic and his modified Acura Integra—to see four Detroit Police choppers blocking the moon and hovering over us, the other racers, and the crowd. The spotlights shot down on us like lasers.

  The roar of the blades drowned out the bass beats booming from cars lining Industrial Drive. The old Ford factory along this street used to make cars, but now we just raced in the streets in front of it.

  “DeAndre!” Ali shouted and then pointed in front of and behind us. Cop cars descended on us like an invading army.

  “The cops—go go go!” Everyone shouted at once, but nobody shouted louder than LT. It was like somebody turned on the lights in my mom’s kitchen: we scattered like cockroaches.

  The cars lining the roadside split, but Ali and me were at the starting line with LT. We jumped out of our cars and got LT into Ali’s Acura. When I got back to my ride, I saw we were surrounded. Ali floored it, but too little, too late, and two cop cars blocked him. Two more moved closer to me.

  We’d heard rumors that the cops planted a snitch, and this raid proved it. We’d moved the track several times tonight, so the only way the DPD could’ve known was if somebody said something. LT didn’t let many folks into his inner circle, just Ali. I was close, but I still needed to earn back his total trust. I knew he’d blame me for this bust unless I did something.

  I sat in my car, gunned the engine, and watched it go down like a movie.

  “Out of the car!” a voice growled through a speaker. With the sky red from cherry tops, it was like the devil had landed in Detroit. They’d blocked the street ahead and behind with cruisers while cops climbed out of vans to arrest spectators. “Out of the car!”

  I opened the door and took one step out. When the cops got out of their car and were two feet away, I jumped back in my Honda, floored it, and took aim. My bumper snapped the doors off the two cop cars surrounding me, and then, like twigs on a tree, broke off the ones in the cars trapping Ali. The police scampered back into their now-two-door black-and-whites.

  As I led the chase, I knew there was no getaway route here—just a road jammed with attacking cops and retreating street racers. To the east was the rubble of a factory, while west was a fenced-in empty parking lot. I spotted the driveway of the parking lot, spun a circle around the cop cars, and then smashed through the fence. All my icy bodywork was ruined, but I’d saved Ali and LT. I saw red lights behind me and yellow choppe
r lights above me, but in my mind all I saw was a green light that flashed: “Drive, DeAndre, drive!”

  As I raced away, sparks flew from under the car. Being low to the ground made it handle like a dream and race like a rocket, but my slammed Honda wasn’t built for this pitted parking lot. My head smashed hard into the top of the car while my nose filled with the vapors of burning tires, billowing exhaust fumes, and salty sweat. With four cars behind me and a helicopter above me, I was in the center of attention. As the speedometer clocked into triple digits, for a split second I stared at Nikki’s photo on the dash: small brown eyes, wide, painted red lips, and straight teeth. She made my heart beat faster, but as I pushed the pedal to the floor, not even the thought of her made my heart beat this loud.

  “While you look good in that gold shirt, tomorrow you wear what you want,” said Mr. Ryan, my transition social worker. I nodded. As always, I said as little as possible, getting by on grunts, nods, and fake smiles. “You earned that gold.” The clothes we wore at Maxey were blue, except the week before you left.

  “DeAndre, is it okay if we review your discharge plan again?” It was another stupid question from a middle-aged, balding white guy, answered by another nod from me. My entire stay at Maxey condensed into one last one-way conversation.

  “Now, the condition of your release includes a year on probation. If you are arrested again in that year, or violate the other terms, then it’s back inside. Not here, but a state prison, probably. It’s up to the judge. Really, it’s up to you. You understand what I’m saying?”

  My neck hurt from nodding so much. My jaw ached from faking this smile one last time.

  “And what are those terms, DeAndre?”

  I stared at my county-issued Converse-rip-off blue kicks. “I can’t drive.”

  “Or …”

  “Or have any part in races,” I added.

  “Right. But don’t worry, I’ve got something for you.” He reached into the desk between us and searched for something, and I thought how there was a lot more than the desk separating us. I bet this guy didn’t grow up on the east side of Detroit. I bet he’d gone to a good school with a killer auto shop. I bet he’d had all the stuff I never had. People always told you that you got as good a shot as anyone, but it seemed like the people saying that drove Beemers while folks like my mom had busted-up, rusted-out Buicks.

  I didn’t make eye contact, even as Mr. Ryan handed me the small envelope. “It’s a bus pass.”

  I grunted something that sounded like “thank you.” I took the pass from the envelope.

  “The key to successful reentry,” he droned on like a robot, “is avoiding the people, situations, and settings that led to your incarceration. But it is all about choices.” He paused. “You understand?”

  Another nod, head down so he wouldn’t see the smirk that I couldn’t hide. He said these words like it was possible: I was headed back to the hood with the same people, but somehow everything was supposed to be different. He was a social worker. I needed a miracle worker.

  “You can use the pass to meet with your probation officer, Mr. Backus, once a month.”

  I didn’t even bother to nod again. I was out in a day, so the rules they put on me—what I could say, eat, read, watch, and think—they didn’t matter. Only LT’s rules mattered now.

  “Your credits will transfer when you go back to school. Going back to school is what?”

  “Another condition,” I answered. Truth was, it was my mom’s condition too. The only way she said I could come home after this was to stay in school. Nobody in my family had ever graduated, so she wanted me to be the first. I’d messed up so much, I owed her something.

  “Any questions, DeAndre?”

  I laughed inside. I had a thousand questions, but none this guy could answer. I didn’t think Mr. Ryan knew, for example, why Nikki stopped writing or wouldn’t see me on my home visits. I knew he couldn’t tell me how Ali, LT, and the rest of the guys would react when I saw them again. “Do you know what happened to my ride?” I asked.

  “Why would you ask that, DeAndre? If you start racing again, then—”

  “Look, it’s my ride. I put a lot into it. It’s mine, and nobody can take that away.”

  “Well, DeAndre, the county did. It’s impounded, and if you want it back, then—”

  “A lot of bills.”

  Mr. Ryan nodded this time.

  I had a gold shirt but no green.

  Mr. Ryan stood and started to walk away. “Make better choices, DeAndre,” he said as I crumpled the bus pass in my hand.

  Mom and I didn’t talk much on the ride from Maxey. I wanted to listen to music and look out the window of her old Buick to distract myself. I hated how Mom drove: too slow and always braking at yellow lights.

  The second we walked into our tiny apartment, Mom started up. “I bought you a bike,” she said.

  “Seriously, a bike.”

  Mom hung her coat neatly on a rusting hook. I tossed mine on a chair. “Yes, DeAndre, a bike. They took away your license, so you won’t be driving, and I don’t have time to be running you around. This is another consequence of your actions. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

  “Where’s my phone? I gotta hit some people up.”

  “You’re back in this house ten seconds, and already you’re planning on leaving again?” she said, half-angry and half-sad. “That’s going to change too. I don’t want you hanging with those same guys. I’ve transferred you to a new school. And no more late nights.”

  I scoffed and sighed but wanted to spit. “Like you’re one to talk.”

  She said nothing and walked into the kitchen. Mom worked two jobs, but she also partied. How come was she asking me to change when she kept doing the same things? She came out a few minutes later with my phone. She held it in front of her like a gift.

  “After dinner.” She tucked it into her pocket. We talked about nothing much as she heated up dinner—leftovers from the hospital cafeteria where she works.

  “How about Nikki? Can I see her?” I lifted up a spoonful of fake mashed potatoes.

  “I like Nikki,” Mom said, thinking and chewing. “Her father’s a dentist, right? I wonder if she’s still in choir at church.” I grunted and shrugged. “Don’t you know?” Mom asked.

  “Well, she must have went away or somethin’ this summer, ’cause she never wrote back.” I stared down at my food.

  “Probably doing something positive for her community. You could learn from her.”

  Nod, spoon, chew, swallow. Home seemed a lot like Maxey.

  “Anyway, they said your credits from East and Maxey will transfer to Carter Woodson Academy. I think it’ll be good for you. It’s a charter school that focuses on students like you,” she said.

  I looked up. “Like me how?”

  She rushed some food into her mouth and chewed for a minute before answering. “You could study harder.”

  “I don’t care about school. None of it’s real to me. I’m going be a mechanic—that’s the only course I care about. Not other garbage.” I wanted to become a racer, but I never said that part aloud.

  “The school has a program in auto mechanics, so that should make you happy.”

  Mom knew I liked cars but hadn’t known I raced ’em until I got popped. They busted me on speeding, evading arrest, trespassing—a bunch of stuff, but no felonies. They tried to get me to say that I stole cars and parts, but I said nothing. Too bad that the one thing I’m good at—fixing up cars, wherever the parts come from—I can’t tell her about to earn some respect.

  “I’m going to the library after dinner,” I announced.

  Mom almost choked on her food. “That’s a change for the better.”

  “When I was locked up, I read every Super Street, Hot Rod, and Motor Trend magazine at Maxey. Then I started on books. So, I can change. Don’t worry about me, Mom.”

  “That’s what moms do.” She handed me the phone and started clearing the table. As soon as she ran wat
er to wash the dishes, I headed toward my room. Everything was the same. All my racing posters, pictures of Nikki, and car models like I left them. I powered up the phone. The first thing I did was call the impound lot, but it was closed. Next I called LT, then Nikki, but neither of them picked up. Finally I texted Ali to meet me at the library in thirty.

  “Meet us tonight off Industrial and we’ll go,” I shouted at the Asian guy in the Acura next to Ali and me. That guy’s car wasn’t as tricked out as Ali’s, but it looked like it could jam.

  He flipped us off. “C’mon, race me here and now.”

  “You wanna go?” Ali shouted over me, the music, and common sense. I’d told him if I got caught racing with him, I’d be violating my parole and get bounced back. He didn’t care.

  “Don’t do it, Ali!” I warned. But he wasn’t looking at me. Like the guy next to us, he just looked straight up at the red light, waiting for green. “Come on, Ali, we don’t do this. We don’t race ’em daylight.”

  “You never did.” That was true, but about nobody else did either. At least, not since the time Cory and LT raced a hundred miles an hour down a city street in the middle of the day. LT crashed while Cory killed a kid.

  Ali gunned the engine, and the noise exploded inside my head. The second the light turned green, it was on. Ali got the lead at first, but he wasn’t timing the shifts. It’s not just about the ride—it’s about the driver. “Hang on, DeAndre!”

  He shifted into overdrive, but it wasn’t enough. The Asian guy beat us to the next light on Ten Mile Road by less than two seconds. Ali cursed as the guy sped away.

  “I had too much weight in the car,” he said. I laughed, but he didn’t. Ali had an answer for everything. “Don’t you tell nobody about this, DeAndre. Keep your mouth shut.”

  I let it go. “Where we going?” I asked.

  “LT’s, but we gotta make a stop first.”

  “Alright.”

  “So, you don’t wanna race no more?” Ali asked. “You scared straight or something?”

  I laughed. “You know I don’t like running them in the streets during the day,” I reminded him. “I’ll smoke anybody after midnight, but not on the streets like this.”