Slammed

by Patrick Jones

  She shrugged, and her voice turned defensive. “You don’t know what he’s really like. He’s so sweet to me,” she said, softening. “He loves me.” I could tell she believed what she was saying. But when I saw her start wiping tears, I headed back inside.

  “Ali, I’ll race you again, but only with some serious stakes.”

  “Problem with that, DeAndre, is you got nothing to lose. Nor do I,” Ali said, all casual.

  I looked at LT, Cal, Michael, and again at LT. Once my dad died, these people became my family and racing became my life. But where had that got me? Maxey and a broken heart. “Here’s the stakes. We race again, and if you win, you get what I know you want.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m gone from here,” I said. “But if I win, then you give up something.”

  “DeAndre, I’m not putting my ride on the table.”

  “No. You lose, you break it off with Nikki.”

  He laughed. “You think she’ll come crawling back to you, you’re wrong.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “I just know she deserves better.” I looked him dead in the eyes. “Deal?”

  Ali returned my stare, nodded, and shook my hand.

  “I want to see it. Wish I could be there,” Jordan said over the phone. His mom had him almost on house arrest. I walked around the closed Kmart lot, too nervous to sit in LT’s RX7 and too distracted to focus on any other car.

  “Don’t risk it,” I cautioned him. “LT’s got a camera in the car. I’ll upload the race.”

  “Too bad she took the other vids down.”

  “He probably made her.” Before I went to Maxey, Nikki had posted lots of videos of me racing, but when I got out, they were all down, replaced by videos of Ali.

  “That chick is whack.”

  I laughed. “I wouldn’t know, I’m not an expert on females like you are.”

  Jordan laughed, but the sound of it got covered up in the explosion of sound from the lot. Engines revved, and seconds later I saw I had a text from LT. He’d found a place. It was time.

  “Nikki’s got about everything,” I explained. “I guess she hangs with us ’cause we got nothing. She needs the excitement. Besides, her parents hated me, which probably helped me.”

  “You think they hate Ali?”

  I paused and glanced at the text. “I don’t know, but I’m sure starting to.”

  When I got back to the lot, cars were pulling out. LT said he’d ride with Ali at the front of the pack, so I waited and waited to be the last car out. We drove toward the river, and as we did, the surroundings started to look familiar. We were outside the Apex Stamping Plant, where my dad had worked. Where my dad died. Why did LT choose this place for this race?

  LT texted to say we’d race around 1:00 A.M. He probably wanted some other people to go first just in case the cops were onto this or some civilians noticed. LT knew all the angles.

  I stayed with people on the sides, shooting vids, snapping pix, and placing small side bets. I had some cash from Dad’s social security checks, but Mom took most of it. She didn’t want me to have enough to get my car out of impound. I should’ve put racing Ali off until I had my ride, but sometimes life didn’t give you a choice. Life said go, and you put your foot to the floor.

  Ali showed me he’d won a few more dollars. “You ready?”

  “Where’s Nikki?” I asked. He scowled like some banger posing for a mug shot.

  “I told her to stay home.”

  I pretended I had a watch on my wrist. “Your time bossing her around is over.”

  “I’m gonna smoke you like a blunt, DeAndre.”

  From behind me, I heard LT. “So, DeAndre, is it the car or the driver that wins a race?”

  “It’s both. But I know this, LT, if I had my ride, we wouldn’t be talking, because I would’ve beat Ali so bad last time, he’d still be home crying to his mama about it. It’s the car and the driver.”

  “How much you got?” Ali pointed at my cash.

  I shrugged. “Maybe a hundred.”

  “Why don’t we do a side bet on our race. I say it’s only the driver that matters.”

  “How you gonna prove that, Ali?” I asked.

  Ali looked at LT, who nodded. Then Ali flipped me a set of keys. “We switch cars.”

  “Ready. Set. Go!” LT shouted and signaled the race to start.

  I slammed the gas, pressed the clutch, and hard-shifted Ali’s Acura just like any other ride. He was off to a better start due to the new fuel injector in LT’s RX, but I knew I’d catch him.

  Until I saw the light. Oil pressure indicator, as bright as the taillights of Ali’s car at the finish line.

  I lost the bet because it was the wrong bet.

  It wasn’t about the kind of car or how good of a driver somebody was. In every race, maybe every lap of life, it was the person behind the wheel. And when you competed against someone who would lie, cheat, steal, or even sabotage, you always lost.

  I thought about crashing Ali’s car, but I wouldn’t go down to his level. I stopped the crippled car, took out the key, and then climbed out. I stood with the keys in one hand and the wad of bills in the other and waited under the Michigan moon for Ali to take everything from me.

  Ali might have said something when he took the keys and the cash, but I couldn’t hear him. I had my headphones on, and I never looked back as I walked away from the lights and action of that life.

  “Nobody?” Jordan asked when he geared his Honda down as we exited I-75.

  “Nobody,” I said, more to the floor mat than to Jordan. I’d told him how after the race, I hadn’t heard from anybody in the racing crew, not even LT. I didn’t hear from Nikki either. I couldn’t figure exactly why she stayed with Ali, the way he treated her. But I knew how hard it is to give up something you love, even when it’s the right thing to do. It was why I’d kept racing.

  “So, you’re sure you’re okay with this?” Jordan asked.

  “I know you don’t want to be back inside,” I answered. “This doesn’t violate my parole.”

  The downriver neighborhood looked a little better than around the east side, where I lived. There were fewer empty homes, less garbage on the street, and even businesses open, including Hautman Import Automotive. Jordan parked a block away. “Go to the back door.”

  I nodded and then took the cash from his hand. I didn’t ask how he got it, but I didn’t think he had a paper route or worked at McDonald’s.

  I knocked on the back door, and a tall white guy let me in. I handed him Jordan’s order, and it took him a few minutes to gather it up. It was all small stuff: air filter, plugs. Nothing fancy. As the guy worked, I couldn’t help but notice the car he had up: a black Civic. It looked a lot like mine, but I knew mine was still at the impound. I checked online every day to be sure.

  “Nice ride. You slamming it for somebody?” I asked. He grunted a yes.

  “You using coilovers and putting it on steelies?” I took a step closer to inspect the work.

  “He wants coilovers and wants rims. Gonna look like—”

  “Garbage.”

  He half-laughed. “I just do what they tell me.” He handed me a bag, and I handed him cash. I looked around this garage but thought about LT’s garage and how I used to be just like that too.

  “I got an idea,” I said when I got back in the car. I put the bag on my lap.

  “What’s that?” Jordan asked.

  “You should let me slam this Civic. It would be off the chain.”

  “No, I’d be on the hook, is what I’d be, with everybody in Detroit giving me a look. You tell me you used to ride around town in your Honda. Man, that’s crazy. That’s asking for trouble.”

  I laughed, but Jordan just stared at me. “What’s so funny?”

  “Riding around Detroit is asking for trouble, period.”

  Jordan nodded and eased the Civic into traffic. His work was mostly under the hood and some detail, but not enough to make it stand out
. Even as he drove, he kept it cool. We leaned back in our seats as the bass pounded.

  “Where you keep it?” I asked Jordan as we pulled off the expressway. “Even if I somehow get my ride back, I don’t know where I’d work on it and store it.”

  “Here,” he answered as he turned down a street in a nice neighborhood. Not quite like where Nikki lived, but nicer than where I lived. “It’s my grandma’s house—she doesn’t mind.”

  “Really?”

  Jordan opened the door and started out of the car. “She doesn’t have one left.”

  “Have one of what left?” I asked out the window after him.

  “A mind,” he said and then opened the garage door. Inside was a temple of tools.

  When he got back in the car, I asked, “How’d you afford to buy all those tools?”

  He laughed hard and shook his head. “Who said I bought any of it?”

  I skipped school and went to see LT, since I knew that Ali wouldn’t be there. Like my mom, Ali’s mom was hard-nosed about him going to class, but LT was older and done with all that.

  “LT, it’s DeAndre.” LT looked up from his chair. He was changing the headlights on his RX when I walked into the garage. I knew he packed a heater, so I didn’t want to surprise him.

  “DeAndre, what are you doing around here?”

  “I want to ask you something.”

  He set the headlight in his lap and wheeled his chair to face me. “I got nothing to say. You made a bet, you lost, and now you honor that bet. You best get movin’.”

  “Honor? Why should I honor a bet for a race that wasn’t fair?”

  “Cry to your mama, not to me.”

  “After all I’ve done for you, all the cars I’ve tuned, and all the races I’ve won for the EPM … and you treat me like this. I just want to know: did you know?”

  “Know what?” His tone was odd because I’d never spoken to him like this before.

  “You know what I mean,” I replied. “Did you know that Ali was going to cheat me?”

  “He won, you lost. End of story.”

  I grabbed his chair so he couldn’t move. I put one foot on the chair, where LT’s right leg would be, if he had one. “It wasn’t fair!”

  “Fair! Don’t talk to me about fair, not when I’m sitting here like this.” His eyes bulged.

  “That’s not what I meant. You of all people should know what happens when you let people do stuff you know is wrong,” I said, almost in tears. “So why you gonna let something this wrong stand? How can you do nothing?”

  “There’s nothing I can do, unless you know how to build a time machine,” LT said.

  I grunted. “No, I don’t know how to build that.”

  “Then maybe you should build something else.”

  “What’s that?”

  LT rocked in his chair and then pivoted the chair in a complete circle. He stared at his RX, the parts in the bins, and the tools on the table.

  “LT, what are you saying?”

  “That you should build a life better than this.”

  It was always hot in LT’s garage, no matter what the weather, yet I felt a shiver. LT looked down where his right leg used to be and then looked at me the same way.

  Then it was clear. “Wait. You? You helped him cheat me?”

  He nodded and then fidgeted with the headlight like a baby with a rattle.

  “Why would you help Ali sabotage the race?”

  He reached into his front pocket and pulled out his wallet. He pulled something out of the wallet and held out a picture—one I’d never seen before. Of him and my dad.

  “I owe your dad this. We went way back, but he never wanted you mixed up in the races. Then I watched out for you once he died, took you into my world. Wanted to give you a shot to get some cash and your ride back, racing the RX7. ’Specially since you took the heat for us. But then I realized that’s just gonna keep you racing.” He was a quiet for a minute. “I’ve got nothing else, but DeAndre, you don’t need this. I knew you wouldn’t leave, so I pushed you out.”

  “Pushed me out?”

  “The race against Ali, the stakes, tricking you into switching, and messing with his car,” LT said slowly. “Ali thought I was just playing favorites, teaming up with him. Truth is, I didn’t want you to end up like me, or worse. I want you to have a chance at a better life than this. There’s more to life than cars, girls, and racing. Now go find it!”

  “Let me see your arm.”

  “DeAndre, leave me alone!” Nikki hissed at me. As she’d refused to answer texts, return calls, or respond to messages, I’d decided I had only one choice: confront her in person. Knowing her dad would probably call the cops if he saw me again, and her friends at school probably felt the same, I did something I hadn’t done for almost a year. I went to church. She was surprised to see me show up at the choir practice, but she had to talk to me if she didn’t want to make a scene. We went outside.

  “Nikki, you deserve better than Ali,” I said. “You deserved better than me.”

  “Don’t say that about yourself,” Nikki said. She looked so pretty. How could someone so tiny have such a big voice?

  “He’s not going to change,” I said.

  “No, he’s just—” she started and then stopped. She tugged at the long sleeve of the choir robe.

  “Don’t make excuses for him.”

  “DeAndre, this is none of your business. You don’t own me. You just—for so long, you weren’t there.” She looked away. “It’s nice to know Ali thinks about me so much. That he cares so much.”

  I knew it was time to tell her the stakes of the race, that Ali was willing to put their relationship on the line, even if the contest was rigged. I never took my eyes off her as I was explaining everything. When you race, even though it’s only a matter of seconds, it’s also like in slow motion. The speed of the car mixed with the rush of adrenaline seemed to slow down time and make every second more vivid, more memorable. I had that same sensation as I watched Nikki process what I told her. She seemed out of breath when I finished.

  “I don’t know what else to say,” were my final words.

  Before she could say anything else, I heard her phone vibrate.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” I asked.

  She wiped her eyes, and the sleeve of her choir robe slipped down. I saw the colorful marks on her arm. I reached out and snatched the phone from her hand. I let it ring and go to voicemail. “Give it back.”

  “Take it back,” I challenged her. “You want something, fight for it.”

  She stood in the evening sun while I scrolled through the phone. There were dozens of texts and missed calls from Ali in just the last twenty-four hours. “Nikki, why? Why do you stay with him?”

  She said nothing. I knew from my time at Maxey this simple rule: if somebody asked you why you did or didn’t do something, not answering didn’t mean you didn’t know. Usually it meant you did, and the answer was just too shameful or painful to say out loud.

  I handed her back the phone and then kissed both her cheeks, damp with tears.

  As I rode home on the bus, I pulled out my phone and the paper with the number I needed. I punched in the digits.

  “You’ve reached the voicemail of Tom Backus, Detroit Juvenile Probation and Parole. I’m sorry I’m not available to take your call, so please leave a message.”

  “Mr. Backus, it’s DeAndre Taylor,” I said and then started fake-coughing. “I’m sick, so I can’t make our meeting tomorrow. I should be better by next Monday.”

  A split second later, I called Jordan and got right to it. “So, you know when we left Maxey we had to say we’d change? I’m not sure either of us did.”

  “Look, DeAndre, all those tools I boosted before Maxey.”

  “In your toolbox, you think you got a pair of bolt cutters?”

  “Why you asking?”

  The bus pulled up to my stop, slowly. “How about one more boost and one more race?” I stood next to the driver. H
is cheap watch boomed in the mostly empty bus. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  The next day, Jordan and I stayed late after school in the auto shop until Mr. Roberts told us he needed to lock up. We got all super-polite and headed toward the front door, but once we lost sight of anyone, we veered to the left and holed up in the bathroom, our feet on the toilets just in case the security guard came in.

  We waited in total silence for a while and then slowly left the stalls and opened the door to the hallway. It was dark, empty, inviting. We made our way slowly and silently back to Mr. Roberts’s room. The day before, I’d lifted his keys first hour. Then we skipped second to get a copy made and then got ’em back in his desk before lunch. He probably never missed them.

  The key worked perfectly. We walked quietly into the garage. I lifted the flashlight from my pocket and pointed it at the spot I’d memorized. Then I flashed the light in front of my face so Jordan could see my crooked-tooth smile, which made him laugh. “Shh!” I said.

  The rest went so fast, I didn’t even have time to think about getting busted. Jordan didn’t say anything as he took off his jacket. I flashed the light at his chest, or more importantly, what he had strapped to his chest: bolt cutters. We got a ladder. He climbed it, while I held the ladder with one hand and the cutters with the other. The flashlight was in my mouth. Jordan tapped his foot on the steel ladder. The sound echoed in the darkness as I handed him the cutters. It was followed by another echo when he snapped the lock on the first try. He handed me back the bolt cutters. I set them on the ground and then focused the flashlight on the shelf that was about to be missing one expensive part: a turbocharging kit. Once Jordan had it in hand, I put the flashlight back in my mouth and took the kit with both hands.

  “Good thing Grandma’s checked out, or she’d have a fit that I skipped school last week,” Jordan said.

  I faked coughing again. “Well, tell her that you had to help a sick friend.”

  We laughed together as we sat in Jordan’s car. It took almost the entire week, but his Civic was slammed and turbocharged. I waited to lay the smackdown on Ali.