ALICE Ch 375

Glynda touches her forehead, and her fingers come away damp. Alice and Faye don’t seem to be ill, but Annette is being shifty, the pit crew is up to something, Lora claims that she saw Mio in the city last night, and Lotte is still missing. Glynda has never had the healthiest relationship with alcohol, but this is the first time that she has actually come close to drinking on the job. Her hands shake as she adjusts the volume on her headset and takes her place on the wall beside Lora. She didn’t sleep well, and she’s having difficulty keeping her thoughts straight. Maybe it’s stress, or maybe it’s Long Covid. Either way, she’s hanging by a thread.

FF1

Erica Bruhl gets comfortable. All this excitement, all these unexpected things are happening, yet none of them is more surprising or alarming than her feelings for Valeria Flores. She keeps telling herself to live in the moment. One minute, one hour, one weekend, one race at a time—but the mind of a serious journalist isn’t so easy to quiet down.

Rumors about Irina Orlova.

The party.

Patty’s sudden good fortune, Val’s sudden bad fortune.

Mio Mido’s bizarre behavior.

Rumors that a member of FUTA’s pit crew is cannot be located.

On top of that, the formula has been majorly shaken up: this year of F1 is a melee with plenty up for grabs instead of a boxing match between two leading teams with the rest fighting for scraps.

She manages to stop herself from chewing her thumbnail, but her knee bounces out of control. It’s the best year of F1 she’s ever seen, or maybe the most interesting. But “May you live during interesting times” isn’t something that you say to people you like.

She spends a lot of time thinking about Val, but she hasn’t forgotten Glynda. Erica can’t even imagine what she must be dealing with right now.

FF1

Val is all focus as the formation lap ends.

The weather is clear. This is the most difficult circuit in Formula One, and Val’s weakest by a country mile. She can feel her pulse in her palms as she grips her wheel and watches for the lights.

She remembers terrible, greasy, Gurlberg pizza. Cold Pepsi in a paper cup. A young Alice Wilde pulling up soccer shorts that didn’t fit well because she was so skinny, trying to cover her white boys’ briefs. Val smiles in her helmet, picturing the way that Alice used to stare, slack-jawed, at Coach Riley all the time. She remembers all the kids crossing the street to the Go Kart place, and watching Coach Adella convince the people there to stay open for an extra hour.

She remembers what the Go Kart wheel felt like in her hands.

“Val,” the handler says in her ear, a touch of sternness in his voice. “You are not to fight Patty. Is that understood?”

“Yup,” Val replies, and the lights go out.