Page 21 of Trading Paint
I gave her everything I could that night by being there and holding her.
That following Monday at school, I had the chance of meeting up with Dylan. I would say this happened by accident but I’d be lying. We didn’t know each other outside of the occasional “Hey” but he knew who I was.
I was pissed that he had the nerve to sleep with Sway and then never talk to her again so I opted for physical terminology. I think he knew exactly what I meant by that one punch to his jaw and never said a word to stop me.
The school had other ideas about this and suspended me for three days. It was fine by me. I had a crispy car to salvage and school was in the way.
This wasn’t the first time I defended Sway’s honor and it wouldn’t be the last. She meant the world to me and I do anything for her. I kept my distance when she showed awareness in other guys at school or at the track in fear I’d hold her back. I did what any best friend would do; I was there when she needed me.
Since moving full time to sprint cars when I turned sixteen, I’d begun racing on the Northern Sprint Tour but I also raced occasionally in USAC races. I was doing anything to get seat time and log laps. I needed all the experience I could get and this once again led me to the Dirt Cup in Skagit the summer I turned seventeen.
It wasn’t hard to make the change between midgets and sprints but there were differences to get used to. The biggest differences were the wings. I preferred running non-winged cars but I raced anything I could and that left me in a 360-Sprint my dad had built over the winter.
The difference between the non-winged and winged cars was the down force. You’d be amazed how much down force those wings produce effectively pushing the car around the track. There was not as much driver ability required once you add the wing. Take it away and you’d better hang on. They slide through corners easily and produce some of the best side-by-side racing around.
I enjoyed the side-by-side racing in midgets and non-winged cars but I also loved the power the sprint cars provided. They were designed to go fast and that was exactly what they did but they could also cause some violent and brutal crashes.
Much like the one I got into that weekend at the Dirt Cup in Skagit, which is a 3/10 clay oval track outside of Burlington, Washington.
I preferred the clay tracks to dirt for obvious reasons such as the higher levels of grip it provided. The downside to clay though was it was an art to get the surface prepared. Too much water and the trackwaspretty much impossible to race on. Too little water and the track turned into a tire-shredding monster.
That night the track had tons of grip and it would be most in the dirt world would refer to as “hookey” meaning the moisture content was just right.
With the surface exactly the way I liked it, I was running fast on the high line but this also meant I was dangerous.
There were a number of ways to get caught up in a wreck in a sprint car but some can be more problematic than others.
I took half the goddamn field out with mine when I was sent into a wheel stand after Cody Bowman moved up the track slightly and made contact with my left rear. My front end lifted and it was over. I tried to correct it with horsepower but it nothing but let the staggered tires end my night.
My car turned hard on the left rear and flipped seven times ending up upside down on the backstretch, only on theotherside of the fence.
Contact with the wall was never a good thing but it was even worse when you’ve had contact with half the field and then the wall after hooking a rut.
Like I said, sprint car crashes are violent and happen so quickly that you blink of an eye and it’s over.
When my car finally stopped flipping and the safety crew helped me to the pits, my mom, Emma, and Sway were huddling around me repeatedly asking me if I was okay.
“I’m fine.” I announced pushing past them to assess the damage to my car.
I wasn’t fine. My head was spinning and seeing double vision was not normal, at least I didn’t think so. Once the adrenaline wore off, I started to feel the pain. My neck was sore and extremely tender to touch, my head was pounding and I was positive I had at least one broken rib or two.
That night on the way home, Spencer drove and Ilaidin the back seat in Sway’s lap. Times like this, it was easy to pretend we could be more than friends. With my head rested against her thighs, she played with my hair and I began to relax.
“Are you feeling okay?” she asked leaning forward to look at my face.
I flashed a quick smile and wink.
It wasn’t long before I sat up. Not only was my head pounding worse by lying down, but I was also aware of what laying with my head positioned at an area where I desperately wanted a part of me buried in was doing to me. Currently my blood flow was being directed to a part of my body that wasn’t allowed to make decisions when it came toSway.
Gauge – Sway
“You need to stay up,” I told him gauging his unsteady demeanor once we made it into his room. Poor guy got his bell rung out there tonight.
“What are we watching?” I asked when he put a movie in and staggered back to his bed, collapsing against me.
I hadn’t slept yet so why not stay awake all night? We did this a lot.More times than I cared for.He usually was so amped after a race that he couldn’t sleep until the wee hours of the morning but now with a head injury he wanted to sleep.
I couldn’t. I was a wreck.
