Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 153946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 770(@200wpm)___ 616(@250wpm)___ 513(@300wpm)
She was pointing right at me.
“Look at that,” Mom exclaimed delightedly. “I think I already see a friend in your future, and she’s right next door. It’s Fate, August. This is the universe telling us we’re supposed to be here. Can you feel it?”
We could all feel it. After that first day, the Rettas and the Hudsons became inseparable. Wade and Morgan. Me and Bernie. Mom and their stepmom, Yvonne. Weirdly, we never met Bernie and Wade’s dad. In the entire time we lived next door, he’d never come home from his trucking job, though Mom said we weren’t allowed to talk about it.
Other than that, we’d all been happy. I’d been happy.
Then, at the not-quite-two-year mark, she’d gotten a job offer back in California that was more important to her than I understood at the time. I was only thirteen. Unions and pay scales meant nothing to me. All I knew was that we were all moving again. At least, I thought we were.
My world was knocked off its axis when Morgan decided to stay behind without us. She was still months away from turning eighteen, but she’d made her case with irrefutable logic and an unbending will that our mother couldn’t find a way to work around. After long discussions and some difficult goodbyes, Mom and I had left and she’d moved in with the Hudsons until she finished her senior year. Then she’d gone to college, gotten her degree and come back to stay.
Morgan had made a place for herself here. Put down roots. Bought a house and gotten married.
Now she literally ruled the school as its principal.
When I came back four years ago, my place in the pecking order hadn’t changed all that much. I’d gone from introvert who read a lot to introvert who talked to herself a lot and wrote story ideas on napkins at the dinner table.
But I didn’t feel the same welcome that I had the first time. I couldn’t seem to find my seat at their table, and I didn’t get any of their inside jokes.
I was pretty sure I was still lame.
I’d become so lost in my memories that I was surprised to notice Jiminy pulling back into my driveway as if on autopilot. However I’d gotten home, I was glad to be back. I’d had more than enough of this emotionally draining day.
Five minutes later, computer on my lap and drink in hand, I was snuggled up on the couch and ready for a much-needed distraction.
24 Hours of Lemons: Racing for Real People
The first page of the website had a picture of a car painted with rainbows, clouds and sparkles. It had a unicorn mane and horn on its roof, and there was an arrow pointing to it with the words “Serious racecar” that made me smile. This was what Gene and his friends had been up to for the last few years.
I skimmed the rules, laughing more than once at each clever turn of phrase as well as the rules themselves. “No whining,” I snickered.
Then I went back to the main page and clicked the link that said in bold lettering: Become a Racer.
“Down the rabbit hole we go.”
3
WADE
“Dalton, could you take a look at Mrs. Kline’s Miata first thing? She needs it by this afternoon to take her mother to bingo.”
“You got it boss.”
The bearded and tatted twenty-two-year-old had come down ten minutes before the shop opened, washed all the cups in the break room sink and brewed a fresh pot of coffee before clocking in. He’d already proven himself to be a hard worker, but he was so grateful to be living in my old place upstairs that he practically tripped over himself to make my life easier.
Unlike my two older mechanics, who were ambling in the back door right before the garage officially opened, clutching their matching insulated cups like life preservers. Bob and Oscar were more likely to give me good-natured shit than free labor, which was fine since they worked their asses off while they were doing it.
I paused and ducked my head out from under the Silverado’s hood to observe as they stopped to lightly haze the young newbie for being a kiss-ass. When Dalton smiled and flipped them off, I nodded and went back to work.
Yeah, he was fitting in fine.
It was August Retta I was worried about.
I couldn’t sleep, so I’d been here before the sun came up, trying to figure out the billing program my niece had installed before giving that up and starting on this ticket. I needed to clear my head and think, and this was the only place I could do that.
August’s CRV was already repaired and parked behind the four-bay garage, waiting to be picked up, though I hadn’t made the call yet. The entire time I worked on it, her vulnerable expression at the airport invaded my thoughts. She’d been sad about her sister leaving, eyes shimmering with unshed tears as she stared at those departure doors. But it was more than that. I could almost feel her desire to run. To hop on a plane and leave her car and the rest of us behind. Since she still wasn’t talking to me, I’d had the entire drive back to her place to gnaw on that bone.