EPISODE TWO (Part One) We all sat in the safe house in silence, our cars tucked safely away in the back. Jay walks over and drapes a thick blanket over my shoulders. He drags a chair over and sits behind me, enclosing me in his arms. “You alright?” He asks, resting his chin on my shoulder. I nod wordlessly. “Did you really mean it?” Ryan asked, “Quitting?” I could feel their stare on me, and I break into cold sweat under the blankets. I tap my fingers on the hood of my Vette that I wanted right next to me and thought about it. Did I really want to quit? “Hell, no.” I say aloud. “I was just . . . scared, I guess.” The safe house remains silent. “Oh, crap, cops!” Ross yells out, quickly pulling down the garage door, everyone else scrambles to turn the lights off. Eddie collapses into a nearby fold-up chair, groaning. “This is ridiculous. We’re street racers afraid of cops.” “Not now, Eddie.” Jay warns. “Not after tonight.” “No,” I shake my head, moving out of Jay’s arms and the blanket. It was now pitch black in the safe house. “He’s right. We can’t keep being afraid of them. I’m a crappy boss. In truth, my mother could be laughing right now. She was never afraid of anything.” The crew neither backed my speech nor objected. “So, what are you planning to do?” Ross asks, hunkered down beside the garage gates, while the cop’s sirens blared into out safe house. “Are there any third tier races in the area?” I ask him. Ross takes out his phone from his pants and accesses the Caliper map. The Caliper map is like the street racers’ private little social networking system. When a crew announces a race, they place it in the Caliper map and it appears as a little bubble over an area, and it carries all the information crews need to know before joining a race. As for tiers, cars are divided depending on their speed. Like my Chevrolet Corvette is considered a third tier racing vehicle because of its top speed. Jay checks his. “These are all old.” He says, “I mean, they’re recent, but they’re kind of boring now.” He says, Races have different types. For example, there are checkpoints, tag races (which are played like human tag except you play it with vehicles), ordinary street races, closed races, drifts, and many more. Unfortunately for us, we’d already participated in everything. “I wish we could start our own little racing craze. Know what I mean?” Eddie suggests, his legs thrown over his chair’s arms. “I mean, I heard back in Crestford that they had closed races.” “What’s so amazing about that?” Jay counters, Eddie leans in. “Using SUVs!” “Isn’t that a little hard?” Courtney asks, “That’s the point.” Eddie says, “I mean, SUVs are naturally bigger, heavier, harder. So it’s like cops can’t even mess with them back in Crestford, it’s almost funny, actually.” “Yeah, well,” I start, “We might as well move to Crestford because Caliper City’s becoming a little stale. As much as I want our crew to get back up, I have nothing.” There’s this thing called rep. And if your city’s boring and if the games don’t change, it’ll affect your crew’s rep. As for our crew, we’ve been on top for so long that we’ve become stale ourselves. Back when we were underdogs, we were the biggest thing that ever happened to Caliper. And now we don’t know what to do with ourselves. I inhale and tip back into Jay’s arms, lifting my feet onto the hood, biting my lips. “We have to figure something out that’s exclusive. That’s smart. Difficult. Dangerous.” Ross turns the light on once it was clear outside, and I spot Courtney and Ryan sitting closely together, brainstorming. Noticing that Eddie wasn’t being much of a gentleman, since Jess was sitting alone by herself, Courtney flicks her fingers on Eddie’s ear. “Ow!” He flinches, and we all laugh lightly, but then the laughter dies down when we all realize we were supposed to be thinking. “How about knock out?” Jay suggests, his voice vibrating on my back. “You purposely try to get the cops’ attentions, get chased, and the amount of cop cars you send off the road will be tallied. Of course, there’s at least two competitors, and a drive-by referee to tally up scores to see who wins!” Courtney nods. “That’s good, but it’s like every other cop chases right after racers get in trouble.” “How about something that mirrors what happened to you just this evening?” Jess adds, I lift an eyebrow. “Certain death?” “No,” She shakes her head. “Something that’s like that.” “I get it.” Ryan claps his hand triumphantly on his lap. “Takedown.” We all direct our eyes at him. “Battling crews will finally have a chance to get back at each other.” He stands up to explain. “One crew, for example, us, throws down the gauntlet. Whoever picks it up is our wanted rival.” “Rivalling street crews isn’t something new, Ryan.” I say. “But here’s the thing. It’s going to be like classic gladiators.” He says, and Courtney covers her face with a hand. Mouthing, “Oh, boy.” “No, it’s good!” He says, “Look, both crews will choose their warrior. They’ll duel, and whoever of the two wins will climb up the ladder. The winners will pick a new fighter and get some cash, the losers don’t.” We all seemed interested. “What kind of battle will it be?” I ask, “Anything, it could be random. Checkpoint, speed counts, or plain old knocking each other off the road. And the fans get to choose.” He says, “Alright, fine.” I said, standing up. “Ross, spread the word. Ryan, you put it up on the Caliper map, and Jay,” He looks over at me. “Let’s form our lineup and race routes.” “Yeah!” Eddie cheers. “Let’s do this.” We turn on all our wall screens that were our personal TVs but also acted as our map. The girls, Jay and I, head over to the back wall, where the biggest screen was placed. Jess claps her hands and it turns on. “Race plan.” She says, and the TV displays the complete view of Caliper City. Each area was displayed and colored differently according to a crew’s main color, meaning that that certain area was theirs, including their insignia placed on the top left corner of that area. I smile at the bright neon green roads displayed on the screen. Because every which way I traced them, I saw our territories colored in black and gray stripes, and our proud eagle logo. I stared up at it as if I was in a museum. I touch the “Create Event” button and start to work. I leave the names and the details for Ryan to make later. We prepare the line-ups. “Who wants to go first?” I ask, “I will!” Eddie pushes through us girls. “Put me up on there.” He nods at the screen. We all stare at him. “What?” He shrugs. I drag his name onto the left side of the line-up, one being at the bottom of the screen. The right side was for the challenging crew. The battling crews will update the information on their smartphones easily. I drag Eddie’s picture over to number one, and I type in his name with my fingers. “Who’s next?” I ask, and Jay raises his hand. “I know it’s ladies’ first, but,” He looks at me. “Not this time.” And he drags his own picture into number two’s slot. I smirk at him. “Ryan! You wanna go next?” I yell over to him as he was busy with Ross, spreading the word through the whole of Caliper. Even the fans of street racing mattered. We were like a sports team to them. Without the fans, there would be no hype, and no one would be cheering anybody on. We actually hove our own little fan base here in Caliper. “What number?” He jogs over to us, his hair bouncing up and down. “Three.” I said, Without hesitation he says, “Go ahead!” Like it was stupid that we hadn’t thought of it earlier. I drag his picture in number three. “Guys, North Star’s willing to battle with us to introduce the race.” Ross yells out of nowhere, looking up at us from his smartphone. “North Star?” My jaw fell. North Star was the second best crew next to us in Caliper, and to be honest, they have incredible rep. North Star was pretty extreme. If you were afraid of The Sopranos, North Star was the next intimidating thing. “Their boss is setting up the line-up.” He says, “How’s tomorrow?” “Wow,” I said in awe. “Of course! Tomorrow, twelve midnight.” He gives me a thumbs-up and returns to typing things in his smart phone. After an hour, we’d finished our line-up, and we were all just waiting for North Star to send theirs. I was huddled in a corner with Jay, looking up at my smart phone. My butt starts to ache, and so I lay on my back, my head on his lap. I studied the line-up anxiously, all our pictures beside our corresponding number. The Sopranos: 7. Birch Soprano 6. Jessica Reed 5. Courtney Baxter 4. Ross Burns 3. Jay Dawson 2. Ryan Hersh 1. Eddie Dublin I look over anxiously to the empty slots on North Star’s side, biting my lip. “They’ve decided!” Ross yells out triumphantly, his phone held above his head while all of us stare at him, startled. I place a hand under me to sit myself up, my hair a complete mess that I didn’t bother to fix. “What?” Jess wakes up, rubbing her eyes sleepily, almost falling off the couch she was sleeping on. Courtney looks over irritably at Ross who ruined her chess match with Ryan. The pieces all over the floor around them. “Fans decided that they want a Takedown between Eddie and whoever North Star puts on for first.” He says, typing away. I stand up, holding my phone in my fist. “Approve it.” As Ross sets the event, we see it happening on the large wall screens. I walk up to it and join Eddie’s picture with his enemy. Below them flashing in a red box was a countdown to the next event which we also decided. Feeling groggy, my phone’s ringtone makes me jump. At the sight of the time, my eyes go wide. Boy, we’re nocturnal. “Hello?” I say as I put the phone to my ear, and the crew cranes their necks to try to hear the conversation. “Here’s your line-up.” The male voice says, and out of nowhere, their pictures start to fill North Star’s empty slots. I gasp and suppressed a wild excited scream. “You’re North Star’s boss?” I ask, “The name’s Damien.” He says, “My men against yours. This is a great honor. Good luck.” He hangs up, and I was left to stare at the screen. “Damien.” I muttered under my breath. His voice was almost robotic, but at the same time smooth and attractive. The crew crowds around the screen, suddenly fully awake. Eddie was clutching Jess’ waist as they looked up his picture next to his to-be rival, Cress Jones. Jay swoops in from behind me and encloses me in his arm, whispering in my ear and laughing lightly, probably because he was anxious and excited for his spot on number three. Courtney play punches Ryan in the stomach. He laughs and bear hugs her, pressing the bridge of his nose on her temple, then pressing his soft lips on her cheekbone. As for Ross, he was on his phone, probably calling his girlfriend, who isn’t in the racing scene and is actually in college. Everyone else was excited, ecstatic and buzzing with anxiety. While I, well, I stared up at the seventh line-up, where I saw the name of my caller. I swallowed nervously, my palm sweating. On purpose, he lined himself up with me. The boss of North Star, Damien Daniels, was right on top of there with me.
Posted on: Sat, 18 Jan 2014 11:48:45 +0000
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