Page 3 of Furious

Make sure all the cars are fixed and drivable? As in Mom’s Hornet, too? The keys are locked in Grandma’s safe, but that wouldn’t be the hardest thing to open. It’s a hardware-store bought-on-clearance safe, not some top-of-the-line bank vault I’d need a crew to crack.

To be thought on later, once Grandma is safely several time zones away.

Jingling the Subaru’s keys, I head out front to pull it into the garage. As I’m getting into the car (which is slime green and looks like a giant rusting booger), my phone beeps with a text from CJ, who lives back in Charleston. They still aren’t over me moving, and I miss them dearly. Which is why I haven’t been returning their texts this last week. Because I’m afraid if I tell them how lonely it is here, then I won’t be able to stand living in Dell’s Hollow. Still, though, I click the most recent text open, pointedly ignoring all the videos and messages CJ has sent over the last few days.

CJ: Hello, Sunshine. I know you’re probably doing that thing where you pretend you don’t have feelings, so you don’t have to feel anything, which I’m going to say is cool. Because, ewww, feelings

I laugh at that. CJ wants to be a therapist like their mom, and feelings are literally their favorite thing to talk about.

CJ: But, I’m warning you, if you don’t text me back, I’m going to show up in that tiny town and do something like take out a bill-board and plaster it with your third-grade school picture

CJ: Don’t test me JoJo

CJ: You know I’m capable of this

CJ: Seriously. I have so many pictures of us in third grade

They include a picture of me in third grade standing on the beach in the worst two-piece bathing suit ever, holding up a jellyfish on a stick. My hair is cut into this weird permed mullet I somehow thought was cool. I’m gap-toothed and beaming at the camera. My grade school picture from that year is far, far worse than this one.

I can’t help but text back.

JoJo: You wouldn’t dare

CJ: Ahhhh, there you are. Hello friend

JoJo: Swear I’m not ignoring you. Things are just … weird

CJ: I get it. It’s okay. Just miss your face

JoJo: Here’s my face

I take a picture of myself inside the old Subaru, overwhelmed suddenly by how much my life has changed in the short time since we moved. I should be spending this summer with CJ, playing at the beach and racing at our local track. Instead I’m here, working in my grandma’s garage. I force a smile while trying not to cry.

CJ: Cutie. Why are you in a car? Are you driving? Did your dad finally let you get your license?!!

JoJo: Not even a little bit. Call me tonight and I’ll tell you all about it?

CJ: Done. And seriously, just say the word, and I’ll drive up there to come see you

JoJo: That’s such a long drive. I know how you feel about cars. And highways

CJ’s anxiety leaves them unable to drive on highways, forcing them to navigate the wild, twisting southern backroads between Charleston and Dell’s Hollow. Which is not a great option.

CJ: For you I’d manage. Or get James to drive me

James is CJ’s boyfriend, and we both like him tremendously. Far better than some of the other dirtbags CJ has dated.

JoJo: I’m okay for now, promise. Though Grandma Jolene has a BBQ coming up soon, and she’s requested your presence so she can “introduce Florence to all my friends”

CJ: You know I love the Flo-Jo love story. I’ll be there

A honk makes me look up. From the driver’s seat of her nearly new purple Dodge Charger, Grandma waves at me to get moving. Then she pulls away to go get lunch.

Signing off with CJ, I slip my phone into my pocket and take out the folded picture of Jamie Chadwick—the amazing female British driver who won all three seasons of the W Series (a women’s-only circuit that was meant to help women break into F1 racing)—I always keep handy. Jamie Chadwick is my idol, and, although the W Series was shut down because of COVID and the F1 Academy took its place, I put her on the dashboard of any car when I drive, as a reminder of what I hope to accomplish. The F1 Academy is a way to get noticed in the ridiculously competitive and expensive world of F1 driving.

I’m planning on applying to the F1 Academy this year—I even have an application in my bag, all filled out and ready to send by August 1; it’s just waiting on my dad’s signature—and if I get in, it could change everything. That is, if I can still drive a race car at all. But, of course, that’s half a world away and far outside my grasp at the moment. Before I can even think about F1 or the academy, I have to get my license. And before I do that, I have to find a way out of this volunteer program Dad’s so smitten with. But even before any of that, I have to get this Subaru into the garage and get working on the tires.

Right, time to get moving.