If Ashley had hoped to keep her working as a dishwasher at the Chicago Inn a secret, it was at best a forlorn hope. Chuck knew her well enough to know what kind of a temper she had, so he decided to just let it get out some other way, where he might not get blamed.

There was a ninth grader named Denver Hovis who Ashley had never bothered to take notice of also working at the Chicago, bussing tables and mopping the floor. He really needed the money; his parents were not wealthy and he was saving it for college. He was small, had pimples and thick glasses, and he remembered that Ashley had been nasty to him several times without even really taking notice of him. Worse, his sister had gone out for cheerleading, and Ashley had hounded her off the team the first day, mostly for not being good enough to be a Bradford cheerleader.

While Denver may have been poor, he was no dummy, and almost instantly he saw a way to give Ashley some of the payback that she so richly deserved, more for his sister than for him. Not that there weren’t a lot of kids around school who would like to take a swipe at her if they got the chance.

He also knew enough from stories that had gone around school earlier in the day to put two and two together, realizing that someone in her family had to have leaned on her awful hard. That was about all he needed.

Denver was wise enough to only tell a few people, like his sister and some of her friends, and then shut up about it. He knew that a rumor is better if there’s no way to get at the root of it. He got it all right.

The word was effectively out even before school started the next day that Ashley was working at the Chicago as a dishwasher because she had to pay off the damage she’d done to Chuck Austin’s race car. Among other things, most people considered it to be absolute proof that Ashley had been lying about being wrecked. By noon, the teasing and the rumors that she overheard had her totally in tears. When lunch hour came, she just fled the school, excused or not, to get away from the humiliation. After all, humiliating was what she did to other people, not what people were supposed to do to her. She was Ashley Hitchcock, after all!

She started for home, wondering what to do. One thing was clear – she couldn’t do anything to get back at her tormenters if she was standing at a sink at the Chicago Inn! It would just make things worse to have to go back there again – it would be absolutely intolerable.

Really, there was only one way out. Changing her direction, she started walking down to her father’s bank. She burst into the door, and even though her father was busy doing something with his secretary, she marched into his office, threw her car keys on the desk, and said, “Sell the car, Daddy. I can wash dishes but I can’t take the hassles from the other kids.”

Before he could say anything, she turned and walked out the door. Sure, she was grounded, and without a car or an allowance, but that would heal over in time, and given time she could get all of them back, just by wheedling and whining and begging. He might not even sell the car.

So there was that problem solved, or at least on the way to being solved. Now, about the other one . . . that might not be so easy.

*   *   *

Chuck heard the story about Ashley washing dishes at the Chicago Inn almost immediately, before classes started, and he heard about it several other times over the course of the morning. Mostly, he smiled when he heard it and didn’t say much of anything.

The story was slower to filter over to the Middle School and had more tacked onto it that wasn’t necessarily the truth by the time Telzey, Will, and Kayla heard about it at noon. Kayla made a couple of remarks about it, but Telzey and Will decided to not say anything much about it – partly because they didn’t want to stir the pot, but partly because they had other things to talk about: race cars, of course. That left Kayla somewhat out of the discussion until Telzey made some comment about “my car.”

“Your car?” Kayla frowned. “What, you have a race car now?”

“Well, sorta,” Telzey confirmed. “Will’s dad has a car he’s going to let me use to race with.”

“You’re going to be racing again?” Kayla asked. “Is it that car you drove the other night?”

“No, that was a Chevy Street Stock, a V-8,” Telzey explained. “The new car is a Pony Stock like Will’s, a four-cylinder Dodge Shadow.”

“Is it real fast?” Kayla asked, a little surprised.

“It’s supposed to be, at least for a Pony Stock, but I really don’t know yet,” Telzey admitted. “I only drove it to put it on the trailer the other day. We’ve got to do some work on it yet, but we’re going to try to have it ready for this weekend.”

“We’re going up to M-50 Friday night if we can get Chuck’s new car ready,” Will explained. “But we’ll both be running in the Pony Stock class Saturday night here. That’ll be real racing, not a stunt like the Powder Puff the other night.”

Kayla shook her head. “Wow, I never would have thought that would happen. Race cars and romance, that’s cool.” She let out a sigh, and continued, “I’d even like to drive a car some time.”

“Driving a car on the street and driving one on the track aren’t the same thing,” Will said. “Chuck said that he about gave his driver’s ed. instructor a heart attack.”

“He’s not a bad driver,” Telzey protested.

“No, he’s not,” Will smiled. “I guess the driver’s ed. instructor got a little uptight when Chuck was talking about banging fenders when you pass someone.”

“I can see how that would happen,” Kayla laughed. “Is there a lot of that?”

“It happens sometimes,” Will told her. “Usually it isn’t intentional, though. Things are a lot closer on the track sometimes than they are on the highway. Then usually we shrug it off. That’s just one of those things that happens when you’re racing. That’s why the deal with Ashley stuck out so much, to try to do something like that intentionally is pretty rare and people noticed. I hope that’s the end of that, but somehow I don’t think it will be.”

“I hope so too,” Telzey nodded, “but it’s her own fault. I’ll be glad when school’s out for the summer and there won’t be all that stuff to deal with.”

“Yeah, I’ll be glad for the summer break, too,” Kayla sighed. “It’ll be good to be able to lie out in the sun and hang out with Rachel some more. Since she’s in a different school district we don’t get to hang out together as much as we’d like.”

“Is that what you guys do all summer?”

“Oh, no,” Kayla said. “We’re both serious runners, so we run a lot. Last summer we rode our bikes into Hawthorne for swimming lessons, so we could race a mini-triathlon. Sometimes we’d go twenty or thirty miles on our bikes at a racing pace. But there are times that we hang around our pool or the swimming hole out in back of Rachel’s and just enjoy ourselves. Maybe you’ll have to come over and hang out with us some time.”

“I don’t know,” Telzey replied. “Right at the moment it looks like I’m going to be pretty busy working on cars or working at the track.”

“Oh, it won’t take up all your time,” Will said. “There’ll be time for you to hang out with your girlfriends.”

“Well, then, I might have to. So, Kayla, you’ve got a track meet on Friday, right?”

“Yeah, it’s here,” Kayla told her. “Are you going to come over for it?”

“I don’t know,” Telzey admitted. “I guess it depends if we’re still working on Chuck’s car or not.”

“We’re going to have to get on the grass out at the track, too,” Will reminded her. “Even if we get the car done, we’re going to have to do that, either Friday or Saturday morning. When we get the cars under control we’ll have more free time, though. It’s just that we have an awful lot to do this week.”

“Well, I want to get to one of your meets sometime,” Telzey said. “After all, it’s only fair after you came to the race the other night.”

“Oh, that was more fun than a track meet,” Kayla said.

“Well, I sort of want to see if you’re actually going to kiss your boyfriend in front of everybody like you promised.”

“You don’t know,” Kayla laughed. “I might just do that.”

*   *   *

As it turned out they were busy the rest of the week in their spare time. Not everything went as well as they would have liked and they just weren’t ready to race Chuck’s car on Friday night. It was just as well, since Friday night turned out to be windy and rainy, so they couldn’t mow grass at the track and couldn’t have raced at M-50 anyway. But by working late that evening, they got the car to the point where it could be run on Saturday morning.

Somewhere over the course of the very early hours of Saturday the bad weather moved out, and they awoke to bright blue skies. For a change, Telzey had breakfast at home with her grandparents, but before they were finished Will had dropped by. “We need to be mowing as soon as it warms up enough to dry things out,” he told her, “but Dad says that you and Chuck should be able to test the cars before then.”

Telzey was still in her robe and pajamas when he said that, but went upstairs to dress right afterwards. She remembered back to the previous Sunday when she had worn that nice-looking tank top and it had never warmed up enough to take off the sweatshirt that covered it. It might warm up enough today, she thought; if it did, it would be nice to be able to dress a little more summery. So she put on another snug tank top, then covered it with a hoodie sweatshirt again.

The track was still a little damp, but it was drying nicely. There were still some odds and ends to do to her car that hadn’t gotten done earlier in the week because they had spent so much time working on Chuck’s car, so now she turned to them. They included putting on the peel-off lettering for “Austin Auto Service” and some U.S. Army decals that Ray had picked up from the local recruiter when he had happened to think about it while in Hawthorne earlier in the week. There was one final sticker in the pile that the sign maker had left off for the car, and this one gave her a thrill she hadn’t expected: “Telzey Amberdon” in letters about an inch and a half high, to go right over the driver’s door. Even with all the work that she’d done in the past week, applying that lettering made her really feel like the 24 car was hers.

She did a few other things, like checking the oil – as if she hadn’t done it a dozen times in the past week already, and checking the tires. She topped off the small fuel cell with gas, and was just about as ready to go as she could be. She was working on the polish job on the car when Mel wandered in. “You really want to get out with it, don’t you?” he asked.

“I am so ready,” she grinned. “I’m just waiting for the track to dry off.”

“Why don’t you go ahead and give it a try?” he suggested. “Take it easy and work up to full speed. I think the track will be all right since you’ve got treaded tires, but don’t try pushing it to the limit on the first lap.”

It didn’t take Telzey any more urging than that. She dashed off to the rest room to change into her driving suit; her helmet was already in the car. Mel offered to go up to the track and observe her test run, so she got in the car, did up all the belts, and pulled on the neck ring and helmet. As much as she’d driven the 66 car, this felt like the real thing, even considering the fact that this car would likely run about in the same time range as the 66. A couple minutes later, she had the car fired up and was eagerly following Mel up to the track.

As Mel stood by watching, she turned the Dodge Shadow onto the track and began driving it around at a relaxed pace, just to get the feel of the car at speed. It seemed more nimble than the heavy Chevy trainer car. It didn’t have the acceleration, but it felt as if it handled better. After a few laps she began to push it, not really trying to go all out but trying to figure out where the limits of the car were. The car felt comfortable as far as she pushed it, and she began to get the feeling that it would do what she wanted it to do.

After a dozen laps or so, Mel flagged her to a stop, then came out to talk to her. “Looks like you’re going pretty good,” he said through the open window. “How’s it handling?”

“Pushing just a little, I think,” she told him. “I think I need a little more air pressure on the right, but it’s not bad enough to go to the trouble right now.

“I think the track can stand you going at it a little harder,” Mel told her. “If you’re comfortable with the handling, go see what it’ll do. Try not to overdo it the first time out.”

“I’m ready,” she said. “This car seems like it’s really going well.”

She headed out onto the track again, and this time was trying to run harder, about as hard as she dared to go. Now that she was getting it going better, she could feel when the car was nearing its limit; it gave her plenty of warning. Now, she could quit worrying about where the limits of the car were, and concentrate on her line through the corners, getting her braking and rhythm right.

Normally during a test-and-tune session Ray or Mel would have the scoreboard turned on giving lap times, so that a driver could get a quick look at how fast they’d been running the previous lap before they dove into turn one. They hadn’t gotten around to it this morning. Telzey thought she was going pretty good, considering, but it would have been nice to know just how fast that was.

After several laps, she began to vary her line, running high or low of the correct one so that she could get a feel for how the car would handle when she was in a passing situation, and she alternated that with some hard running right in the groove. Finally, Mel flagged her to a stop again. “Still comfortable with it?” he asked.

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m doing too bad,” she told him. “I need to mess with the tire pressures a little bit, because it seemed like it wanted to push a little worse when I was going real hard. I just wish I knew what kind of lap times I was running.”

“Oh, you weren’t doing too bad,” he said, holding an electronic stopwatch up for her to see. “This was your lap before last.”

It was a 19.72! She had been flying!

“That’s faster than I thought,” she smiled, trying to appear nonchalant.

“That’s just four hundredths slower than Will qualified last week,” Mel grinned. “And about a tenth off of the pole last week. Yeah, I’d say you were going pretty good. It’ll be interesting to see what happens when you’re comfortable with the tire pressures and have a little more time in the car, but that’s one fast little pony. Why don’t you go ahead and park it so we can see how Chuck does in his Sportsman?”

Only then did she look up, to see that Will, Chuck, and Ray were standing on the far side of the catch fence looking over the track, and they all had some serious smiles. “Yeah,” she said, “I probably ought to stretch my legs and catch my breath.”

She pulled the car over behind the track wall and stopped it close to where the three were standing, unbuckled her belts, and climbed out. “Hey, Telzey,” Will grinned, “maybe we ought to think about swapping cars. The Sundance seems a lot more like your kind of car.”

“Nice try, Will,” she laughed. “But it’s not going to happen. It’s already got my name on it.”

“Funny thing about those things,” Ray grinned. “They never seem like they’re going all that fast until you put a stop watch on them. You were going pretty good there, Telzey.”

“I thought I laid down a couple pretty decent laps,” she admitted. “But the real test is going to be how I can do with it in a race.”

“Guess you’ll get the chance to find out tonight,” Ray smiled. “Are you done for now?”

“Yes, if Chuck wants to get out there,” she responded. “If he’s not ready yet, I can go a few more.”

“Oh, I’m ready,” Chuck said, pointing across the driveway to where his Sportsman was sitting. “I’ve just got to get in and go. How’s the track?”

“It seems all right,” she replied. “I thought the grip was pretty good, but it looks a little moist over on the front stretch. You probably need to feel it out some before you try a real hot lap.”

“I think I’m going to feel it out quite a bit,” he said. “This is going to be different.”

“Well, good luck, Chuck,” she grinned as he turned and headed toward his new car.

“Well, Telzey,” Ray asked, “are you satisfied with it?”

“I think it will be just fine,” she told him. “I’m looking forward to seeing how it does against other cars.”

“I am, too,” Ray grinned. “Actually, I’m looking forward to seeing how you do against other drivers who know what they’re doing. That’s going to have to wait for this evening, though. There’s a pot load of grass out there that needs to get mowed, but hold off and do the overflow pit last. It’s probably not going to get a lot of use this week, so we can let it slide if we get tight for time. Chuck is going to be fiddling with that car of his all day, and he’s going to need to do it. You two, however, are just going to have to stand here and watch him until things dry out a little more, and then you’ll have to go crank up a mower. Even though those are open-wheel single seaters, it’s still going to take you two some time to get everything done.”

In only a few minutes Chuck was out on the track getting his Sportsman warmed up. He took his time on the first laps, getting a feel of how the car was handling and running, much like Telzey had done. Getting faster every lap, it wasn’t long before he had the car lapping a couple of seconds under Telzey’s time. That wasn’t real good considering that the Sportsman was much more of a serious racer than Telzey’s little four cylinder. In a couple years she could see herself driving one of those.

It turned out that Chuck only ran a few laps at speed before slowing, turning off the track and heading right back to the shop. “Looks to me like something halfway serious needs attention,” Will commented.

“Yeah, me too,” Ray said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if that goes on all morning and half the afternoon, either,”

“Well, I suppose we might as well get on the mowers,” Will shrugged. “Standing here isn’t getting any grass cut.”

“Yeah, you might as well get started, it’ll be that much sooner when you get finished. You might want to start on the far side of the front parking area. It’s still a little damp, but if you start there maybe nobody will notice as much.”

Telzey drove the Shadow back down to the shop and parked it in the normal location out back. As she headed to the rest room to change out of her fire suit, she could see that the hood was off on the Sportsman, and Chuck was working on something down underneath it. Ray and Will came in as she entered the room and asked Chuck what was happening.

“Something in the front suspension,” he reported. “Something went clunk and it got real, real tight. Looks like a shock mount pulled loose.”

“Oh, boy, it’s going to be one of those days,” Ray sighed. “Well, you kids get out on the mowers. That has to be done, too.”

In a few minutes Telzey was back in her hoodie sweatshirt, jeans, and ball cap, filling up the tank of the tractor before she got started with the gang mower. She knew from the clock inside the shop that the morning had already pretty well progressed, and that it was going to take some serious pushing to have everything ready for the weekly race that evening.

Mowing the many acres of grass at Bradford Speedway was still a new enough chore to be exciting to her. The huge swath that the gang mower took speeded the work up considerably, but it was still a big job. She was familiar enough with driving the tractor that it didn’t take all of her concentration, and gave her a rare opportunity to sit and think about things.

For the most part, things in Bradford had gone really, really well. She’d found herself making some new friends, and the opportunity to go racing was literally opening a door for her. Although she wanted to have her folks back home badly, there was a part of her that hoped that she would be able to get in at least a few races here before it happened. Although from the news reports it looked like the war was pretty much over with after the fall of Tikrit, she knew that didn’t mean that her parents would be home anytime soon, and there had been no word about it anyway.

Telzey had exchanged a couple more e-mails with her parents over the course of the week. They had been both surprised and pleased that she’d won the Powder Puff race the previous weekend, and there had been no response, negative or positive, to her statement that it looked as if she’d have the chance to do some more racing. She didn’t know whether there might have been an exchange of e-mails between her parents and grandparents that expanded on that comment. For the moment she was just going to report what happened, but not go into details about plans too much until she’d pretty well established what she was doing.

She did know that her grandparents had sent a copy of the DVD of the Powder Puff race to Kuwait, but that the mail for some reason wasn’t real fast, and it could be a few days before they got it. It would be fun to know their reactions to that big win. She’d thought of ripping a short cut from the video and e-mailing it to them, but it wasn’t clear whether they had high-speed internet or not, so it might not have gotten to them even if she’d done it, which she hadn’t. Hopefully they’d continue to have a positive reaction to her racing, but that was still to be seen.

It was hard to say if having Will for a boyfriend was a result of the racing, or the other way around, but in any case it was fun to have a boyfriend whichever way it was. He was fun to hang around with, and that she had a boyfriend was a big deal both to her and around school, but she knew right from the beginning that it couldn’t be all that serious, not at her age, and especially considering that she’d be moving away somewhere, sometime. If her parents came back now they were supposed to be at Ft. Bragg for another two years, but they might not come back for a while, and in war conditions their stay at Ft. Bragg might not be as long.

That was one thing about being an Army brat, it was hard to think about doing anything permanent like having a long-term boyfriend – or getting seriously involved in racing, for that matter. It was the sort of thing she’d grown up knowing and understanding, since the kids she knew were constantly changing, someone was always moving in or moving away. Maybe that was the reason she figured that the thing with Will couldn’t last in the long run, but was fun in the short run. She already had the feeling that Will probably wasn’t looking at it that way, but to her knowledge he had never moved, changed schools, or anything like that. It was bound to make him see things a little differently.

Nevertheless, it was fun to have a boyfriend, and already it had changed the way she looked at things. When the time came for her to move on, as she was sure it would, she would probably have to leave Will behind and start over. Even now she had started to begin to understand the reason for some of the things that her mother had been bugging her about – the way she dressed, for example, the need to look a little more appealing, rather than just comfortable. That was why she had the tank top on after all, even though it had yet to warm up enough to strip down to it.

Summer was coming on. She hadn’t brought a lot of summer clothes with her and what she had was almost all from last summer, or even older. Maybe she ought to see if her grandmother would be willing to take her shopping for some summer clothes; she had little doubt that she’d be willing. And she ought to get something that was a little more stylish than more jeans and floppy T-shirts, too. After all, she thought, she was becoming a woman, maybe she ought to look like one.

For that matter, there were only five weeks left of school, and it was probably going to get warmer before school was out. Bradford wasn’t like the schools in North Carolina – there was no air conditioning here, and Telzey had heard kids talking that some days it got really hot. Once again, it wouldn’t hurt to have something that looked halfway decent, rather than just jeans and T-shirts. For the most part, even her shorts were cutoffs, and maybe it was time to look a little more, well, adult.

She’d have to think about that one, and probably for longer than just while riding the tractor out there.