While not being NASCAR’s biggest track or biggest event, the two races at Michigan International Speedway are some of the series’ bigger ones. Located in the green Irish Hills of southern Michigan, the races there are the biggest events of the year in Michigan, even putting the annual Michigan/Ohio State football games to shame. People begin gathering days ahead of time to camp out on or near the grounds, partying hearty – but they’re only a mild beginning of the crowd that shows up on race day. Since the track is unfortunately located on a network of two-lane country roads that were never designed for race day traffic, most MIS NASCAR aficionados have learned to leave early for the track and expect to be a while getting to it – the traffic jams are legendary.

Fortunately, Paddington is not far out of the way from Bradford to Michigan International, so it was no great trick for the Austins and Telzey to swing by there to pick up Larissa. Since Larissa was in Paddington on Saturday evening, she didn’t know about the events of the evening at Bradford Speedway. Not wanting to get her worked up, Chuck just said that he’d seen Matt there and left it at that while they were heading to the race. He was relieved that she didn’t say anything.

The Austins were old hands at heading to a race at MIS; Larissa and Telzey had never been there although they’d been to other events. The crowds were, as advertised, huge, bigger than Telzey had ever seen at the races at Bristol, Martinsville, and Rockingham. While there was plenty of room, parking was difficult, and it was a long walk to an expensive, not very good seat high in the grandstands, where the sun beat down heavily and the crowding was even tighter.

Because of the traffic jams, they had to get to the race hours before it started, which meant a lot of sitting around in the stands waiting for something to happen. Early on, Ray wandered off to see if he could find a couple people he wanted to talk to, and not long after that, everyone was getting thirsty. Chuck was always looking to score points with Larissa, and he volunteered to make a run for drinks for everyone, knowing very well that he could be a half hour waiting in the lines. That left Larissa sitting in the stands with Telzey and Will.

There were some other NASCAR fans around talking about one thing and another. Especially in those days, wherever there was a group of NASCAR fans there was bound to be a Dale Earnhardt fan. Dale Earnhardt had been a popular driver up until his death at the Shadow 500 two years before, and there were still a lot of people who sang his praises. He was especially notable for his intrepid driving: hard to stop if he had the chance. Known as “The Intimidator,” it was a well-earned reputation; he was not above using a bumper to put himself past a competitor, and a lot of his fans liked seeing the rough driving as a throwback to the sport’s younger, wilder days. Cheers were common when the Intimidator put some hapless driver into the wall to clear his way. It at least made for exciting racing.

Dale Earnhardt fans and Jeff Gordon fans never got along very well for any number of reasons, probably the most important being that the Earnhardt fans resented a young driver who was more successful than their hero. This could make for some lively discussions in the stands where fans got together, to say the least, and many of those discussions started out, “Do you remember when ol’ Dale spun so and so?” That led, naturally, to a collection of general track rough-driving stories, and the way things were done in the old days when things were really nasty.

Will had never quite been the rabid Jeff Gordon fan that Telzey had been – in general, he liked anyone who drove Dodges – but both he and Telzey had been willing to agree to disagree on that point. So, when the discussion swung around to dirty tricks, Will was ready to join right in. He really didn’t have a big stock of his own stories, but that still left him a big stock available. “My grandfather used to drive midgets, back in the fifties,” he contributed to the discussion. “Boy, they had a whole lot of dirty stuff they used to do back then, like he told us one time about smearing Limburger cheese on someone’s radiator.”

“Yeah, that would stink up the place all right,” a fat guy in a Dale Earnhardt “3” shirt replied. “Back when I raced short tracks, there was this one guy that was a real pain in the butt. Every now and then he’d have a tire go soft, and he’d find a tiny little pebble in a valve stem, under the valve cap. Time it right and it’d go down in the middle of a feature.”

“That sounds sort of like one my grandfather told me about,” Will grinned. “There was a racer they didn’t like, and someone would plug up the vent hole in the guy’s gas cap with a little bit of chewing gum, just enough to plug it without being noticed.”

“Yeah, that’s a good one,” the guy laughed. “Your granddad isn’t the only one that’s pulled that one. The guy gets partway through the feature and his gas gets sucked down to where his fuel pump won’t pull against the vacuum. Unless you get lucky it’s hard to figure out what the heck happened.”

“Boy, there’s a lot of stuff that someone can do to pay back someone they want to get even with,” another Dale Earnhardt fan said. “That stuff about sugar in the gas doesn’t really work all that well, but a little water in the gas will work wonders for not getting the car to start.”

“Darn right,” the first guy laughed. “And you never want to throw away a fuel filter when it gets plugged up. You never know when it might be useful.”

“Loosen a clamp on a radiator hose. It’ll be all right while the engine is cool, but when the pressure builds up it blows all over everything.”

“That’s just the clean stuff,” the Earnhardt fan said. “If you want to try something dirty, try getting a little screw and hot gluing it to the inside of the air cleaner. Things get hot and it’ll fall down into the engine.”

“Grenade it for sure,” one of the other guys laughed. “Well, maybe not blow it up, but it would sure rip up a valve at a minimum.”

“Yeah, that’s dirty,” the third guy commented. “You could just loosen a spark plug or give him a bad wire.”

“Problem with that is he might discover it before he gets started. The idea is to get something to go bad while the green flag is out.”

Over the next several minutes several other dirty tricks and pranks were discussed. Some of them seemed downright evil to Will and Telzey, just not the sort of thing that they would ever consider doing, even though it was fun to think of it having been done to someone. It was an interesting discussion, and neither of them happened to notice that Larissa was listening carefully, mentally taking notes. She thought that anyone who saw her had to be able to see the gears grinding in her head.

*   *   *

Michigan, unfortunately, has a reputation for producing dull races, although not as dull as Pocono. Telzey’s experience at smaller tracks had been that while some of the action was distant, it was still close enough to be made out. However, at Michigan some of the action was so distant that it was hard to make out the car numbers, and that took some of the fun out of it. She reflected that where they were seated they were almost as far from the front stretch of the track as they were away from the far side in the grandstands at Bradford.

Telzey also found that it was difficult to keep track of who was doing what. The scoreboard was indispensable to keeping track of the action. To make things worse, Jeff Gordon didn’t win – in fact, he only ran third, which was another disappointment in what was a disappointing season for him.

The traffic jam heading out of the place was even worse than the one going in. They were a long time getting out of the bumper to bumper, even heading down country roads to avoid the hassles, and Telzey was hot, tired, and a little bored and disillusioned when she got back to Bradford. All in all, she thought she would have had a better time if they’d gone to Moonshine Valley like they normally did on Sundays.

Larissa really wasn’t paying a lot of attention to the traffic or anything else. She was too busy considering more important things. The discussion that she’d mostly overheard in the grandstand had given her some ideas.

Somehow, just walking away from Matt after the trick he’d pulled on her with Ashley wasn’t enough to suit her. She needed to be able to feel that she was paying him back a little more than that. Getting hooked up with that blonde bimbo was a lousy thing for him to do, especially after all they’d been through. It seemed like he was taking her for granted, figuring that she wouldn’t mind. Why had he just not told Ashley to go take a hike? He’d had plenty of chances to do it, but he’d loused it up for a shot at getting belly to belly with that bitch.

He had to pay. How, she wasn’t quite certain yet, but she had plenty of time to think about it.

One thing was clear, though. She was going to have to go back to the track to pull anything on him, and that ran the risk of seeing him, even seeing him with Ashley. She realized that she’d have to control her temper and her mouth if she was going to be able to make something work. It would be difficult, but it would be worth it.

*   *   *

Larissa’s mood had improved considerably since the previous week. They had taken her to Mannheim mostly to get her out of the depression she’d been dealing with ever since she’d discovered Matt with Ashley, but she seemed a lot better after going with them to the NASCAR race the previous weekend.

When the Austins brought her home from the race, she decided to stay at home and go back to work, rather than go and hide out with them in Bradford any longer. It was as if a divide had been crossed – she was no longer as wrought up about things getting loused up with Matt, and appeared to want to move on with her life. The fact that she and Chuck had been spending a lot of time together had something to do with that. It wouldn’t be fair to say that she was going with him, not yet, but it probably wasn’t that far off. The distance between Paddington and Bradford was an issue and was going to remain one, but it was less of an issue than the fact that she often worked evenings. Still, seeing Chuck at race tracks three days a week beat nothing.

Matt was still trying to get hold of her, and he called for the umpteenth time about an hour after she got home. “Tell him I don’t want to talk to him,” she said loudly to her mother, in hopes that he would overhear it.

“But Larissa,” her mother said, “he says he wants to talk to you!”

Larissa walked over to the phone, took it from her mother’s hand, put two fingers in her mouth and let go of a shrill, loud whistle right into the mouthpiece. “That means I don’t want to talk to you,” she yelled, “And don’t bug me at the pizza shop, either.” With that, she slammed down the phone.

Her mother stared at her, wondering again what had happened. “Larissa. . .” she began.

“Matt is history,” Larissa said to her mother. “I don’t want him in my life. Just leave it at that, Mom. I don’t want to have anything to do with him anymore.”

Of course, Matt did try to contact her at the pizza shop, but fortunately for him he stopped in just as the local cops had dropped in for an evening snack. He didn’t much more than say hello before she flew off the handle at him, and finally one of the cops told him it might be better if he left.

Matt still didn’t really understand what had gone wrong, not knowing that Larissa had seen him with Ashley at just exactly the wrong moment. About all he could do is chalk it up to the fact that women were screwy and pretty much let it go at that. Hopefully Larissa would get over whatever had tied her tail in a knot before too much longer, but he had too much invested in his history with her to just walk away. Apparently, she didn’t feel that way, he thought.

What he didn’t know, and what Larissa was keeping to herself was that she wasn’t planning on just walking away. It was pretty crappy of him to two-time her like that, and he needed to be paid back, just on general principles. She’d realized that from the beginning, and now had worked out how she was going to do it. He had wanted it all, and with luck she’d be able to keep him from getting at least a part of it.

The only problem was that there were things that she had to do, and she wanted to be sure it worked the right way. If it did, she’d have a pretty good shot at having her revenge.

*   *   *

If the grass was growing slowly, sometimes they gave a pass to mowing the overflow pit area behind the track since it wasn’t used much. Sometimes, if they had a large traveling show in they’d have them set up back there, rather in the regular pits, just to limit the confusion, but that didn’t happen often; usually there was room enough in the infield for all. This would have been a likely week to skip it; both Telzey and Will were looking forward to wrapping up early so they could go over to Kayla’s for a brief swim before they had to start loading up to head out for the Friday evening racing.

As they were gassing up the mowers, Ray came out and told them to mow the back pit area anyway; it would be needed this weekend.

“OK, Dad,” Will shrugged, “But why? This is the Fourth of July weekend, we aren’t expecting that many drivers, are we? After all, NASCAR is running tomorrow night!”

“Right,” Ray said. “But we’re going to have fireworks, and we’re going to have something special. I’ve been advertising a special surprise for intermission all week along with the fireworks after the race, and I’ve got to have room for it. That means someone has to go out back, and this week we’re going to put the Ponies out there.”

“Well, all right, I guess,” Will said. “That means us, too, right?”

“Right, we’re going to line you guys up out there, so it’ll be too confusing to have you in the infield. So mow the place out good, and when you’re done, haul some extra garbage cans out there. Keep everything up to the south end of the field. I want the north end of it left free.”

“Fine with me, Dad,” Will said. “Just what is this surprise show, anyway?”

“It’s a surprise,” Ray grinned. “If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a surprise, now would it?”

*   *   *

After some discussion the previous weekend they’d decided to head up to M-50 this Friday evening. Going anywhere to race with Larissa was something of a problem, mostly because they were taking five cars when she went along. The Austins had two double trailers that were filled right up with the cars they already had, and of course it took two pickups to pull them. Adding Larissa to the mix meant they needed yet another trailer, and another pickup to pull it with. Finding the pickup wasn’t difficult as the track had another one available, but they only had three licensed drivers for the trucks, and that counted Larissa.

Friday afternoon Larissa drove from Paddington down to Bradford, and they loaded her car onto a single trailer that Ray had borrowed for the occasion, got the other cars loaded and ready to go, and set out in a caravan for M-50. Larissa was towing her car in the middle of the group, alone in the newer of the track pickups, so that part of it was working all right. A few miles out of Bradford, she picked up the CB microphone and announced to the other two vehicles, “We get up to the next town I’m going to stop for a minute. I’ll catch up with you.”

“You got problems?” Chuck asked with a little concern.

“Yeah, I gotta go potty,” she replied. “I shouldn’t have drank that last Coke before we left. See you at the track.”

Before many more miles they came to a small convenience store, and Larissa pulled her rig in while the others went on. She really did need to use the ladies’ room, but there were other reasons why she wanted to stop, as well.

One of the problems she had was with the car down in Bradford it was difficult to work on it, especially if she wanted to do something that she’d really rather no one else knew about. Things happened – for instance, she knew that Matt had a trick computer chip in his Pony Stock that gave him another 500 RPM before the rev limiter kicked in, which had been part of the reason he’d done so well all season. It would be nearly impossible to detect the cheater chip without special testing equipment that a car dealer might have, but that no track would spend the money on. Now it was her turn to do something that she didn’t want anyone to know about, not even Chuck.

What made it complicated was that she wanted to make sure her idea worked, but that it didn’t work too well. The only way to manage that was to do some testing on her own car, and with the car down in Bradford all the time it was difficult to do. This, however, was the perfect chance.

After she was done in the ladies’ room, Larissa headed out to her car. She climbed up on the back of the trailer, popped off the trunk deck which was held down by safety pins, took the gas cap off her fuel cell, and set to work. Inside the gas cap there was a little plastic disc that served as a gasket. She used a nail file to pop it out, then as carefully as she could made a slight modification to it.

Larissa knew that gasoline can be a powerful solvent, so had to do some experimentation to find a glue that would hold up to the gas, yet stick to the metal gas cap. A tube of some special cement her brother had used on his model railroad filled the bill perfectly – it hadn’t dissolved in several days of being stuck to a tin can lid in a small cup of gasoline. To make it even nicer, it was clear, so would be hard to detect. With as much care as she could manage, she worked a little drop of it down into the fuel filler vent of the gas cap.

She knew it was going to take a little time to dry, so she used a plastic bag and a rubber band to put over the filler spout of the gas tank, to keep gas from slopping out and crud from getting in. She took the modified gas cap and put it on the dash of the truck where it could dry out in the sunlight and heat through the windshield, then got back on the road again heading for the track.

A few miles out from the track, she stopped again, removed the improvised fill spout cover and put the modified gas cap back where it belonged. She’d now sabotaged her own car; it remained to be seen if it worked. A few minutes later, she pulled in next to Chuck in the pits at M-50, curious to see if this would work but trying to remain as normal as possible.

Things went pretty normally. They’d arrived a little late, but still had plenty of time for qualifying. Larissa hadn’t been at M-50 much and didn’t have her line down exactly right, so didn’t qualify well. On the other hand, Will did fine, and Telzey managed to be the fastest qualifier of the evening.

Telzey was clearly on a hot streak and won her heat. Ray also won his, but Chuck was third in his heat. Larissa didn’t finish that well, sixth in an eight-car heat, which was about average for her. In truth, she was pleased – her sabotage hadn’t worked, but she didn’t want it to work in the heat race anyway.

A little later, as it was cooling off some, they got around to the Pony Stock feature race. They only inverted the front half of the field here, and Larissa was toward the back. She was actually running pretty well for her, and had passed several cars until late in the race, the car began to run a little rough, sometimes cutting in and out, and many of those cars that she had gotten by passed her back. Finally, the car wouldn’t run at all; she put it in neutral and let it roll into the infield, avoiding bringing out a yellow flag.

The race finished in the next few minutes, and a push truck from the track nudged her back to the pits, where she was able to roll in beside her trailer. As luck had it, none of the Austins had been around – they’d been off watching Will in the Winner’s Circle, even Telzey, who had finished in third. She hopped out of the car, hustled around to the back, and turned the gas cap slightly, to get a satisfying hisssssss for her efforts. It worked! In fact, it worked beautifully! Now all she had to do was to hope that it would work when it was for real.

A few minutes later, the Austins and Telzey filtered back to the pits. “What happened with you?” Chuck asked.

“Stupid mistake,” she snorted. “I went to shut off the alternator to get a little more power and shut off the fuel pump at the same time. I didn’t even realize it till I got back up here.”

“Sometimes the stupidest things will happen to you,” Ray shook his head. “At least you’ll know to be more careful next time.”

*   *   *

With her increasing experience, Telzey had been running better and better all season long. She’d won a few heats, although none at Bradford, and it seemed likely that she was going to break through sooner or later. One of the things that had helped her out was to take it easy on Saturday afternoon, rather than hang around the track in anticipation of the race. A nap helped a lot, too, she’d learned, and after the late night at M-50 the night before it was a good time for one. Even Will considered that a little shut-eye wasn’t a bad idea, so he headed back to his own house for some downtime of his own.

Along in the afternoon, about the time the pit gate opened, Susan took them out to the track. Earlier, they’d loaded their tools and gear on one of the track’s small utility trailers, and with some shuffling got their cars up to the unaccustomed spot in the back pits, where they’d spend the evening.

The track infield wasn’t visible from the overflow pits, partly because of the way the track was banked, so it wasn’t until after they got set up and headed down to qualifying that they saw what was going on in one end of the infield. “Hey, way cool!” Will exclaimed when they got out of their cars to wait out the line.

“What’s way cool?” Telzey asked.

“Dad’s surprise show! They figured out a way for Bert Woodward to fire Big John!”

“Big John?” Telzey furrowed her brow. “What’s that?”