ALICE Ch 5

Alice plays along.

She doesn’t feel like talking about herself or telling her story, but nothing would be worse than spending the night along with her thoughts, thinking about how mad Glynda must be, how bad FUTA Racing looks at the moment, and whatever must be getting said about her on social media. Erica might have an agenda, but Alice doesn’t care. She’s glad to have company.

And Erica doesn’t ask her to talk about herself. She’s only interested in the qualifying results. Alice is interested too, although she suspects that the letters DNF will probably be traumatic to her from this day forward.

“Freedom and Aston Martin standing out quite a bit on this list,” Erica is saying.

They’re in the glossy, unnecessarily fancy hotel restaurant. Dinner is dragging out because Alice has no appetite, but Erica doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. She’s on her third glass of wine, and she stopped the server from taking the dessert menu away. She’s keen on local food, but Alice isn’t so well-traveled. Well, not yet. She’s just grateful that these nice hotels always offer plenty of western dishes.

Erica is right. People expect Max Verstappen to take pole, and McLaren’s been steadily getting better. But Bottas in third in an Aston Martin is shocking enough that it’ll make FUTA’s poor start seem like small news in comparison.

And then there’s Freedom. Freedom Racing is new like FUTA, and that’s an incredible showing: P4 and P8. Glynda would’ve loved something like that.

Alice pushes her food around her plate. Of course, that’s Val in P4. She remembers the dark-eyed, dark-haired, serious girl from soccer in Gurlberg, Florida more than ten years ago. The two of them were always out of sync as racers; never in the same leagues for carts and cars at the same time. Alice hasn’t seen Val face-to-face since their karting days. P4 in the first qualifier of the season.

Alice doesn’t know if she’s more envious or happy for the other girl. They always got along on Coach Riley and Coach Adella’s soccer team.

That had been a simpler time. And without Coach Riley, neither of them would’ve gotten into racing.

This is probably the sort of thing that Erica would love to hear about.

Alice snorts.

“Alice?”

“Nothing. I promise to tell you about me and Val sometime,” Alice tells her. “Just not tonight.”

“Valeria Flores? I look forward to it. Tell me what you think about Lewis’s lap.”

“I think Mercedes has another slow car this year,” Alice replies.

“Agreed. And your start tomorrow. Leclerc will be right next to you. What happened there?”

“He wiped out on the same corner I did,” Alice replies. “I think there was debris from Danny’s wing.”

“That’s possible. You know that you were on track for P9. If you’d kept that pace,” Erica says, peering at her over the top of her wine glass. “You were having a better lap than Checo. That should mean something to you.”

“Don’t remind me,” Alice moans. Today could’ve been so different. It really hurts.

“Aston Martin has a fast car.”

“Aston Martin has fast drivers,” Alice counters. She notices how Erica just pulled the conversation away from the hurtful stuff. It’s not lost on her how hard Erica is trying to help her out. “You’re trying to make sure I get good rest tonight. You aren’t just writing down what happens, you’re trying to affect the story,” she accuses.

Erica shrugs. “And?”

“Isn’t that like wrong?”

Erica shrugs again. “According to who? I’m passionate about this sport.”

Alice is skeptical.

“Speaking of which,” Erica says, accepting a refill on wine from the server. “Someone should have a look at you tonight. Just to make sure you don’t have any injuries that might’ve gotten missed.”