Nichols’ car, the woman said.
There’s a roaring in my ears, drowning out all other sound. Someone tries to approach me. I push past them. Someone calls my name. I ignore them. A door opens and I’m momentarily blinded by sunlight. Sunlight and silence. The F2 sprint race was supposed to start after F1 qualifying—a change in the usual order of things, to try to entice more fans to stick around and learn about Formula 2—but right now, the whole track is eerily silent. How long has it been like this? I went into a press conference right after qualifying, but surely I should’ve noticed the silence fall?
My stomach lurches as I remember the end of the press conference. I thought it had ended sort of abruptly, but I hadn’t bothered to wonder why. I’d just been grateful it was over. I even laughed at some smart comment my teammate, Matty, made about it.
I force myself to keep moving forward. The grid is almost empty, and that’s not right, either. I look to one of the big screens, and it’s blank.
Dear god, it’s fucking blank.
The few people left in the pits are huddled in twos and threes, arms crossed and faces somber. No one’s smiling. No one’s laughing. I pass a group of fans on a pit lane tour and they swing their phones around to take pictures of me, but even that reaction is strangely muted, as if they aren’t sure they’re being appropriate.
My eyes seek out a familiar face, finally latching on to a mechanic in Harper clothing. He’s talking to a blond girl whose forehead is lined with concern.
“What happened?” I demand. The girl blinks at me, startled.
“Huge crash in F2,” the mechanic says. “They airlifted, like, six drivers out.”
An icy wave crashes over me, numbing me to my fingertips. Six drivers. There are twenty-four drivers in F2 this year. That means there’s a one-in-four chance that one of them was—
“Five drivers,” the blond girl corrects. “One of them was cleared by the medics here.”
“Who—” The word doesn’t come out right. I swallow and try again. “Who was airlifted?”
“Parrot,” the mechanic says, at the same time the girl says, “Nichols.”
“Yeah, Parrot and Nichols, Costa, Theriot... and McDougall, I think,” the mechanic finishes.
I walk away from them. Stumble away, maybe.
There’s a horrible searing pain spreading through my chest. My lungs won’t work right. It’s like I’ve forgotten how to breathe. No, Ihaveforgotten how to breathe.
For a minute, a full minute, I stand there totally paralyzed. Then a little voice rises in the back of my mind, the same voice that hollers at me when I’ve done something stupid in my car, or when I’ve snapped at the team over something that isn’t their fault.
What the fuck are you doing?the voice demands.Get to the hospital!
I start moving again, pushing back through the doors and pounding through the halls to get to my room. By some miracle there’s no one around, not my trainer, not my teammate, not anyone. I grab my jacket and car keys and then freeze with one hand on the door. I can’t roll into the hospital in race gear. Someone could see—someone could realize—
It takes me two minutes to strip out of my Harper gear and climb into jeans and a gray T-shirt, and it’s only as I’m sprinting through the parking lot and jumping into my car that I realize those two minutes might mean the difference between seeing him alive and seeing him dead. My heart starts hammering even harder, and as I wait for the security guard to let me out of the lot, my brain is stuck on the thought that I might’ve just thrown away my last chance to see him alive, all because I’m terrified someone might guess why I’m there.
I’m out onto the highway before I realize I have no idea where I’m going. My hands shake as I punch in the numbers for the only radio station that might give me some news. Sky1 turns on mid-sentence, and I feel the first words as a thud in the center of my chest.
“—with live updates from Circuit Paul Ricard. Lisa, tell us what’s going on,” says the reporter.
“Well, John, it is very quiet, very quiet here as we try to come to grips with what we’ve just witnessed. Absolutely devastating crash in Formula 2, and as you know, five drivers were airlifted out just over an hour ago.”
Airliftedwhere, I want to scream. A car honks behind me, and I realize I’m driving like a maniac, straddling two lanes as I type “hospital” into my GPS while trying to catch every word Lisa says.I pull over, because I think I might kill someone if I don’t. The GPS is coming up with two—no, three hospitals nearby. Hôpital Aubagne, Hôpital Maisonneuve-Talon, Medical Center Les Oiseaux... god, the further I zoom out, the more hospitals pop up.
“For folks at home who might not know,” the male reporter says, “Formula 2 is the motor racing league just below Formula?1. The cars are slower than Formula 1 cars, but can still reach speeds of nearly two hundred miles an hour, isn’t that right, Lisa?”
“That’s right, John,” Lisa says. “We’ve just heard that two of the drivers at Hôpital Nord have been triaged with only minor injuries, but there’s no word yet on the other three—”
I punch in the hospital’s name before she’s even finished the sentence, and the radio is interrupted by Siri, who tells me to stay straight for thirteen miles. I force myself to look around at traffic before I pull back onto the highway. Hôpital Nord is thirty-five minutes away. I take another breath as Lisa’s voice starts up again. I want to kiss this girl, whoever she is. I want to drain my bank account and send it all her way. Two drivers with only minor injuries.
I force a deep breath into my lungs, then another. The male reporter is asking Lisa to tell us what she saw, and I turn the radio up higher to hear.
“Well, all five cars were quite close coming off the straight. It looked like Parrot locked up just after turn one, then his car was hit by Nichols and Costa, who were wheel to wheel. It looked like Costa was trying to overtake Nichols when they hit Parrot, and then Theriot and McDougall were caught up in the wreckage—”
Thewreckage. I’m gripping the steering wheel so hard, my knuckles are white. In my mind’s eye, I try to imagine the crash. Parrot’s car locking up, then getting hit by two cars going a hundred and fifty out of the straight... he must be one of the driverswho’s in trouble. But if Theriot and McDougall were just “caught up in the wreckage”... if they were coming up behind the crash and had to swerve out of the way... does that mean they were the two that walked away with minor injuries?
