The Million Dollar Race

by Matthew Ross Smith

  Minutes later, I’m magically whisked away to spooky Grantsylvania. Franny puts on headphones and gives me a thumbs-up. “Action!”

  “Hey, guys!” I say. “My name is—”

  “Cut!” Franny yells. “Come on. The ‘hey, guys!’ thing is so played out. Start again. Just talk from the heart. See if you can make yourself cry. Do you want me to squirt some lemon juice in your eye?”

  “No,” I say.

  “You sure? This is how the sausage is made.”

  “Just push the stupid button.”

  He pushes it. Pling.

  “Hey,” I say. “My name is—”

  “Cut! Run it again!”

  It takes like forty tries to get one usable two-minute take. It makes you wonder how much reality it takes to make one episode of reality TV.

  * * *

  It’s a horrible feeling to watch something you’ve poured your heart into vanish into the cold indifferent void of the Internet.

  It’s pretty clear right away:

  No one cares.

  The #Grantsylvania hashtag doesn’t trend. Even the views for the video are way low by Franny’s standard—like two thousand in the first hour.

  “I don’t get it,” I say. “All your other videos are huge. Maybe we shouldn’t have made it so sappy.”

  He’s by the window in his room, arms crossed, chewing the inside of his cheek.

  “Close the door,” he says.

  “Huh? Maybe if we—”

  “Close the door. I don’t want Mom and Dad to hear this.”

  It’s weird to see him so frazzled.

  “It’s all fake,” he says.

  “What is?”

  “My channel. I use a hacker tool to artificially inflate my numbers. The only legit video was you at the Penn Relays. That thing blew up. But that was just dumb luck.”

  Dumb luck? Funny way to think about the worst moment of my life.

  Franny stares out the window so he doesn’t have to look at me. “You can’t come out of nowhere anymore. Not without some serious corporate cash behind you. I’m just like every other invisible kid out there, blabbing into the void. I don’t know what else to say. I thought this would catch on. I’m really sorry. You want me to juice the numbers?”

  I close my eyes.

  Is it really such a big deal? To change a few numbers on the Internet? Who cares? Who would it really hurt? What does it matter how I get into the race?

  On the other hand…

  This country is me.

  Do I really want to cheat? Is that who I am? I feel like if I take a shortcut, I’ll regret it forever. “No,” I mumble. “Don’t do it.”

  I look again at all the fake awards on Franny’s wall. I’m fighting the urge to scream (How could you do this?) with the urge to hug him. He’s built his whole life around his YouTube channel. To think that all these years he’s been spending hours and hours making those videos for… no one? Wow. He must be the loneliest kid in the world.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “It was fun while it lasted.”

  “Grant?” he says.

  I turn back, hand on the doorknob. “What?”

  “Can you… not tell anyone?”

  I can actually see the shame radiating from him.

  He hates what he’s been doing.

  But it’s all he has.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night.”

  26

  Ilie awake for hours, mind racing.

  It doesn’t matter anyway. You would’ve choked. You’ll never be anything.…

  I get into downward spirals like this where it feels like my brain is spamming itself. I wish there were an option in my preferences that said To opt out of negative looping thoughts before bed, click here.

  But there isn’t.

  This is real life.

  So what do I do?

  I reach for my phone. I need the most boring thing possible—the Internet equivalent of a sleeping pill. The bright light floods my eyes and right away I feel better. Or rather, I feel less. This is our phones’ secret, built-in function—they numb us. I search “Babblemoney” and scroll through all the product reviews.

  Beneath an avalanche of five-star reviews I find one titled “Is Anyone Reading This?”

  My uncle works at the factory in Vietnam. He has this tingling in his hands and these dizzy spells. I said maybe the factory’s not ventilated? He’s breathing in all kinds of dust and stuff? The doctor says no, he just needs rest.

  Sitting up in bed, I bookmark the page.

  I scroll and scroll until I’m seasick from it. Screensick.

  I feel like my bed is spinning.

  Finally—exhausted in every way, but still awake—I sneak out of the house and take the only medicine that ever really works for me.

  I run.

  * * *

  Because it’s so late, I run straight down the middle of the street. My reflection jumps along windows of the parked cars. Above, the streetlights cast their shabby orange halos. When I finally get back—sweat drenched—the light is on in Mom’s office.

  “Little four a.m. jog?” she says, standing by the window, arms crossed. Now that she’s done worrying, she’s just mad. She’s wearing baggy jeans and a blue flannel.

  “Sorry,” I mutter, head down.

  I want to tell her everything. How the Grantsylvania launch was a disaster.

  How all this time Franny was basically using Internet steroids to prop up his whole “empire.” But I promised. I promised Franny. Even in this upside-down family my word has to mean something.

  Mom waves me over. I mope across the tiny office and—I can’t remember the last time I did this—I fall into her. I totally stop resisting and let her hold me. I’m sweaty from my run, but she doesn’t care. She hugs me tight and smells my hair like she must’ve when I was a newborn. It must be weird to be a parent, to know another human for literally every single second of their life. “Does it still hurt?” she asks, pulling back slightly, squinting.

  “Huh?”

  “Your chin.”

  “Oh.” When I fell at the Penn Relays, little bits of the track embedded in it. They almost look like little glowing embers. “Nah. I can’t even feel them.”

  “Why don’t you get some sleep,” she says. “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “Okay.” I move toward the door. “You stayin’ up?”

  She smiles tiredly. “Work, work, work.”

  This is the part of a public defender’s life that no one sees. She hates to “go in blind,” to speed-read a client’s file right before their trial. So she gets up before dawn to review her cases. She could make ten times as much money working for a private law firm. I asked her about it once when we were back-to-school shopping.

  “Why would I trade my time,” she said, pushing the cart, “my life, for money?”

  “Because we need money,” I said. “We all do. Or we couldn’t buy this school bag. We couldn’t buy these pencils. We wouldn’t even have a house to live in.”

  “That’s true. And we’re lucky. We have enough.”

  “But wouldn’t it be nice to have a bigger house?”

  “I like our house.”

  “Come on. You don’t fantasize about it?”

  “About what?”

  “Being rich.”

  “Of course I do. Don’t we all?” She stopped pushing the shopping cart. “You ever stop and wonder why that is, though? Why we all fantasize about it?”

  Until that moment I’d never realized that our dreams aren’t native to us. They don’t just spontaneously appear. They’re uploaded from the world around us. Even my own fantasy of breaking the world record had its seed in watching something on TV.

  Standing at the bottom of the staircase, foot on the first step, I look over at Mom in her office, half-buried in case files. Her hair is pulled back, deepening the
bags beneath her eyes. She sips her coffee and gets to work. This is the race she’s chosen.

  THE MIDNIGHT SHOW!

  Excerpted from ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary, “Crossing the Line: The Incredible True Story of the Million Dollar Race.”

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  After I talked to Mom that night, I went upstairs and took a long shower. I made it extra hot and was just kind of staring into the steam, lost in my thoughts.

  I was remembering that horrible day at the Penn Relays, when I tripped. And as I played it back in my mind, I realized something. I wasn’t seeing it through my own eyes. The video of the event had overwritten my own memory. I was watching myself from above.

  Weird, right?

  I got out and dried myself off, still thinking about the video. I grabbed my phone and scrolled back until I found the e-mail I’d gotten from The Midnight Show! with Jaime Freeman, back when the meme of me falling was still blowing up. That was, like, seven lifetimes ago in Internet time, but it was worth a shot.…

  Robert Chum, Intern, The Midnight Show!

  So yeah. I get this e-mail. From this kid. It was a reply—honestly, I’d forgotten I even wrote the first e-mail. [Laughs.] But then I rewatched the video, and, yeah, it all came back. I mentioned it to Jaime in our production meeting, and he was like, “Didn’t we have a bit in mind for that?” And I was like, “Yeah, we were gonna do the Second-Chance Time Machine thing, remember?” And he was like, “Ahhhhh! I loved that! Tell the kid to come up here! Let’s do it!”

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  They wrote back the next morning. They asked if we—our whole family—could come up to New York. I was freaking out. I showed Mom and Dad the e-mail. It took a little convincing, but there we were again, the four of us, back on the Discount Rider bus to New York.

  Franny Falloon, Brother

  We got there early and were waiting in the greenroom. I thought it was funny that the greenroom was actually painted green.

  Dave Falloon, Dad

  So we’re waiting and one of the show’s assistants, this curly-haired woman wearing a headset, came and took us to meet Jaime.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  You have to understand, Jaime Freeman is a massive star.

  Dave Falloon, Dad

  Oh, the kids were over the moon. Soon as they saw him, they floated up and bobbed on the ceiling like they were balloons. [Laughs.]

  Diane Falloon, Mom

  He couldn’t have been nicer. He had this jittery vibe like he’d just drunk six coffees. Very sweet man. We all went behind his desk and took a picture.

  Grant Falloon, Track Star

  I sent the pic to Jay with no explanation.

  Jay Fa’atasi, Track Star/Best Friend

  I was at the track, training with my brother. I didn’t get it right away. But then I was like, “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?” I think that was my actual reply. [Laughs.]

  Franny Falloon, Brother

  Our segment was prerecorded. Jaime went to wardrobe and came back wearing these hilarious gym teacher shorts and a headband.

  Diane Falloon, Mom

  They were going to race.…

  27

  At midnight we all gather around Franny’s laptop. He puts it on the coffee table and makes it full screen.

  “And now, your host, Jaime Freeeeeeeeeman!”

  Cramming popcorn in my mouth, I’m both nervous and excited. We left New York right after the segment. We have no idea how they cut it together.

  Jaime Freeman emerges through the famous Midnight Show curtain He smiles. He waves. He clasps his hands. He does his monologue. “We’ve got a great show for you tonight! Stick around everyone. When we come back, we’re debuting a brand-new segment—trust me, you won’t want to miss it!”

  The crowd cheers.

  Cut to commercial.

  Dad’s pacing behind the couch. “I feel like I’m in a dream. Is this real?”

  Jaime Freeman’s dancing as the show returns. He acts surprised, like the cameras have just showed up in his living room. “Welcome back! So, I think a common fantasy we all have is that we could go back in time and change the past. Right? We think, oh, I could just go back and say this. Or do that. Then everything would be different. Well, we thought it’d be fun to redo some moments in history… but not the ones you’d read about in stuffy history books. Moments like… this.”

  They show the viral video from the Penn Relays.

  They slow it down when I trip.

  I spill forward, arms wheeling.

  My chin skids along the track.

  The studio audience goes “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

  Cut back to Jaime. “Yeah. Ouch. Now let’s try that again. Ladies and gentlemen, we present Second-Chance Time Machine!”

  Cut to me and Jaime stretching in a corporate-looking hallway. We shake hands and wish each other luck. Way down the hallway, a production assistant yells, “Go!”

  Jaime’s surprised by how fast I am. You can see it in his eyes.

  He never has a chance.

  I cross the line—a piece of string held by two interns—and celebrate like I’ve just set the world record. Jaime jumps around with me. When the segment is over, they cut back to Jaime at his desk. I’m sitting in the plush chair beside him.

  “So,” he says, “I think we’re all wondering, how does it feel to be one of the biggest memes of the year?”

  “Well,” I say, gripping the arms of the chair tightly. “Not great.”

  He laughs.

  Everyone laughs.

  I start to loosen up. “To be honest, I don’t even remember it that well,” I say. “I guess I just lost concentration for a split second.”

  “What’s going through your mind when you’re moving that fast?”

  “When I’m at top speed?” I pause to think about it. “It feels like… nothing.”

  “Your head is just totally empty?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow. That must be nice. To just… disconnect for a few seconds.”

  “Yeah. It is.”

  “And are you still racing?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean are you still competing?”

  “Oh. Yeah. There’s actually this huge race this summer. I qualified… but they wouldn’t let me in.”

  “Who wouldn’t?”

  “The race people.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t have a birth certificate and—”

  “Hold on. Wait. I have so many questions. First of all, why don’t you have a birth certificate?”

  “It’s a long story. Basically, my parents aren’t big on paperwork. I never got one. I’m sort of a free agent, I guess.”

  “And because of this you can’t race?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well that stinks.”

  “I know, right? But then I thought—well, actually this was my brother’s idea—he was like, ‘If you can’t represent America, why not just represent yourself? Why not be your own country?’ So I’m actually starting my own country. It’s called Grantsylvania. It’s a sovereign province of the Internet.”

  “Wow. And can people like… join your country?”

  “They can!” I say. “We’re going to be putting out new videos every day, so find us on YouTube! Become a citizen!”

  “Awesome! Everyone go and check out Grantsylvania! We’ll be right back!”

  Cut to commercial.

  28

  Next morning we have seventy-five thousand subscribers, aka citizens. They’re pouring in from every part of the world. I want to start making a new video right away, but Franny calls an emergency Family Council in the kitchen. “Sorry,” he says. “I know we have a lot to do. But I need to say something. It’ll only take a minute.”

  He turns to Mom and Dad, obviously pained by what he’s about to say. “So you know how I’ve been making my videos for a few years?”

  “Of course,” Mom says, dumping the water into the coff
ee maker. “We’re so proud. You’ve built that whole thing up from nothing.”

  “Well that’s the thing,” he says. “I kind of… didn’t. I mean, I tried.”

  Mom looks at Dad, confused.

  “You guys probably forget,” Franny says, “but for like the first six months my videos got like no views. It didn’t matter how hard I worked. I couldn’t get any traction. So, what happened was… basically, I started juicing my numbers. Just by a little at first. I felt bad about it… I really did… but then I got addicted. Part of me felt like I was pushing back, fighting for the little guy, like I’d leveled the playing field. But I was still lying, and that’s messed up, and I’m sorry. Now that this is blowing up for real, I want everything to be out there, no secrets, total trust.”

  For a few seconds, the gurgling coffee maker is the only sound in the sunny kitchen.

  “You know what really bothers me about all this?” Mom says, leaning back against the counter. “That you even feel that pressure at all. That you have to judge yourself by… views. What is that?”

  Franny turns to me. Eyes pleading.

  “He’s right,” I say. “You guys are old. You don’t get it.”

  That addiction he’s talking about—I feel it too. In my case it’s even more complicated, because, while I have this powerful need to be liked, I also hate everyone looking at me.

  “Anyway,” Franny says. “Now that that’s out of the way… I feel really strongly about what we need to do next. You all might not like it at first…”

  I stop buttering my bagel. Oh no. What now?

  “But just hear me out. Let’s rewind. Go back to the start. What is the point of all this? Why did we even start this country in the first place?”

  “To get into the Million Dollar Race,” I say.

  “Right. Exactly. And how do we do that?”

  “We build an online presence so big that Babblemoney sees the PR opportunity and lets me in.”

  “Or the opposite,” Franny says. “That she sees a potential PR nightmare coming and lets you in to avoid it, not wanting to be the bad guy. Either way, we need big numbers to make this work. The boost we got from The Midnight Show!—it’s huge. But it’s not enough. We have to get to the next level… and fast. We only have these eyeballs on us for a split second, and we can’t let people look away.”