Gone

“And then it was like skrrr! And then we blasted right past him!” Natalie’s hands shot in the air.

“Were you scared?” Irene’s eyes glowed.

“Scared? ‘Course not. I was the one that came up with the idea of racing him.” She boasts.

I sink lower in my chair. The whole class is looking at us. I don’t know if Natalie realises how loud she is, or if she just doesn’t care.

“Natalie!” Mr Ribero’s glasses drop down to the bridge of his nose. “Last warning, turn around and face the front.”

“Come on sir, I was just helping ‘em out with the question.”

“Really? Why don’t you help the whole class out by coming up and solving it?” He extends the whiteboard marker out towards her.

The class laughs, but her smug look refuses to wipe off her face. I don’t know how she’s not embarrassed.

“We wouldn’t make it too easy, sir.” She replies. “Plus, that’s like, ya job as our teacher.”

I really wish she hadn’t practically announced what happened last night to the whole class, especially in this class. Mr Ribero is infamous for calling parents over the tiniest things. If he tells my parents everything Natalie just said, I’m going to be living in Tasmania by tomorrow morning.

The bell chimes, and the room loosens all at once. Chairs scrap, bags unzip. But there’s a certain silence around the tables surrounding me.

Natalie, who hasn’t written a single thing down all lesson, stretches her arms out and yawns. She winks at me before standing up, like none of it just happened.

“Sit down, we are going to have a little chat.” Mr Ribero slams his hands on Natalie’s desk.

“Come on sir, I didn’t even talk much.” Natalie groans as she flops back into her seat.

A light tap bounces on my shoulder, Munirah, still in her chair, leans forward. “Was all that true?”

I glance at Mr Ribero, who is already lecturing Natalie. “There was a lot of exaggeration, but yeah. We did get chased.”

“You should take me for a drive.” Cecelia locks her arm through mine. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with it.

Even though Cecelia sits in the same row as me, we’ve never spoken. She’s part of the crowd Natalie hangs out with.

I stand when she does, without choice, her arm still looped through mine.

“So what kind of car do you have?” she asks, leading me to the door.

“Well, it’s not really—” I scratch my cheek with my free hand. “It’s a MINI.”

“Oh I heard those are cute. Was it expensive?” Munirah appears to my left.

“Uh, not really.”

“How did you afford it?” Cecelia jumps in.

“Good savings habits?”

My answers sound flimsy even to me.

“You guys are asking all the boring questions.” Isabel pushes past them. “How fast did you go?”

I know Isabel by name, and we’ve been in the same class for six years, but I’ve genuinely never spoken to her in my life.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “It wasn’t really a battle of speed.”

“Over two hundred?” Cecelia asks. “My ex says he’s gone over two hundred.”

“That would be a bit hard. The road wasn’t even bigger than this hallway.” I gesture around us, my hands moving wider than I mean them to, before I shrink them in again.

A collective ‘woah’ surrounds me.

Heat creeps up my neck.

“What colour is your car?” Cecelia asks.

“It’s silver.”

“That’s a nice colour,” Isabel adds.

I nod as if I chose it on purpose, even though I think the colour is hideous.

I look over my shoulder. Irene and Munirah have faded off somewhere behind us. It’s just Cecelia, Isabel, and me now.

Cecelia lets go of my arm as we reach the classroom door. Mr Wilson is standing there, arms folded.

“Ladies, was the traffic heavy out there? Class has already started.” He snarks. “Lilliya? I haven’t seen you since year eight. What are you doing here?”

I look past him, at the room he is guarding. It is filled with the wrong desks, wrong faces, and it is in the wrong building.

Late is an understatement. The flap of my bag rattles against the zipper. Every second I spend trying to close it, is a second not spent watching my feet. The spiral staircase twists upward, and with each step my laces unravel further.

If only I hadn’t been so busy lying.

My classroom is in sight, but the door’s shut. I peer through the glass, then push it open. If the attention I got before was bad, this is about to be something else entirely.

“Lilliya.” Miss Miyazawa turns from the board.

Every single person is staring at me.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t going to show up.”

“Sorry.” I walk down the aisle with my eyes fixed on the floor. My bag rattles with every step. I hear something fly out of my bag and hit the ground behind me.

“You dropped this.”

The voice stabs straight through me. Every hair stood on end. A voice I am used to hearing only from a distance is suddenly closer than it ever should be.

My body creaks as I turn.

Carlos is holding my pencil case.

I pinch the very edge of it between my fingers. He lets go, and for some reason, so do I.

It comes crashing down onto the floor again.

I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot.

Carlos picks it up for me and holds it out to me.

I snatch it from his hand and rush to the back row.

I fold myself into the chair, hunching my shoulders, staring at the desk below me. I tuck my arms in close, hoping to make myself small enough to fit in my bag. My heart beats so hard I can feel it in my head, it’s a relentless thud.

I’m screwed. I barely had a chance with him before, and now even that is gone.

I don’t mean to rest my head on my arms. It just happens. My forehead presses into my elbows, warm and familiar.

I breathe in, then out.

Miss Miyazawa’s words blur together until they sound like they are out of reach. My chest still feels tight, but it begins to relax. The buzzing in my head dulls, and my thoughts slip in and out of coherence.

I feel a tap on my shoulder. I shoot my head up.

Miss Miyazawa is standing over me. I flick my head around the classroom, waiting for the roar of laughter. But there is no one else in it.

“Good sleep?” She asks. “We need to have a chat.”

Miss Miyazawa bangs the sheets in her hand on the desk. Turning them to their side she does it again. They align in a perfect stack.

“You’ve been more distracted than usual recently. It takes me multiple attempts to get your attention, you turned up late today, and you slept through the entire class.”

“Today’s the only day it happened.” The words slip past my teeth before I can stop them.

“I know, Lilliya.” She gently places the stack of papers on the desk. “But it’s a sign of a problem. I want to make sure this problem doesn’t spiral out of control.”

As if you could fix any of this.

“I can arrange for the school counsellor to talk with you about your issues?” She continues, as if hearing my thoughts. “I can’t fix the problems that are holding you down, but I can try to make my class as easy as possible for you. So if any of that stress is coming from this class, please let me know.”

She gently pats my shoulder.

***

The sun cast long shadows across the rooftops of the homes in Camden Park. A clicking sound echoes inside a spacious garage. Each ratchet of the socket wrench is longer than the last. A small ground fan hums as it fights off against the heat. Trevor applies one final turn to the bolt with a reassuring click. He pauses, and with a nod of approval he places the socket wrench on the tool infested desk behind him.

A blue Fiesta ST fills the garage, aggressively squating on its alloy wheels. A tall wing towered over the rear, bolted on as proof the car meant business.

Trevor’s sweaty hands latch onto a plastic water bottle, but before he can take a sip, a noise outside catches his attention. With the bottle in hand, Trevor walks out of the garage, and peers his head down the winding road.

A sticker-bombed white Tigra rounds the bend and pulls into Trevor’s driveway, drill music escapes from the car as the window rolls down.

“Didn’t expect to see you here.” Trevor says.

“Where else am I going to be?” Jared steps out of the car and follows Trevor into the garage. “Trev, man, we’ve got a problem.”

“I thought your car was running fine.”

“Nah, not that kind of problem. I was out last night doing some runs of the course.”

“Uh huh,” Trevor sat down on the shredded office chair next to his tool station.

“And I pulled up to the parking lot, and there was this chick and her friend. They start staunching me and shit.”

“Right.” Trevor leant forward. His hair is buzzed short, a white shirt clinging to him, the oversized logo across his chest peeling at the edges. He wore footy shorts, the fabric beginning to fray.

“So I go to do the hillclimb, and out of nowhere this bitch is in my mirror. She starts flashing her lights and shit, honking her horn, and then she starts racing me.”

“Did you win?”

“She was racing dirty, man, I had no chance. But like it’s our territory man. We gotta do something.”

Trevor threw his water bottle across the garage towards a bin, it hit the rim before bouncing away. “Come on man, just admit you came here because you got your ass kicked.”

Trevor moves towards a mini-fridge. It is dented and rusted, the door handle looks barely attached. But upon opening it, the inside hums reliably. “You want a beer?”

“Nah.” Jared shakes his head. “I’m good.”

“So. Is there anyone else that saw you that night?” Trevor takes out a beer from the fridge and settles back into his chair. The rusted metal frame creaks as he leans back.

Jared looks up at the dust covered ceiling. “That Keiko chick was there.”

“A person like Keiko won’t give a shit about people like us. We aren’t operating anywhere near her level.” Trevor took a swig of his beer. “Here’s what we’ll do, we’ll let it slide. But if we see this chick that beat you on our turf again. Then I’ll step in.”

Jared’s jaw tightens. “I was hoping you could ask Seb to help us out.”

Trevor pauses. “What?”

“I don’t think Seb would race her,” Jared forces it out. “But maybe he could put Tristan on this?”

“You don’t trust me?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You don’t think I can win against her?”

“No, it’s not that—”

“Really? Because it sure as shit sounds like that’s what you’re saying.”

Jared rubs a hand over his face. “I just want an easy win against her, we can't risk losing to a nobody.”

“If you want Tristan to race her,” Trevor snaps, “ go ask Tristan.”

“Come on man,” Jared presses, “they won’t take it seriously unless it comes from you.”

Trevor snorts. “Do you think Seb takes me seriously? He thinks I’m a fucking joke, that’s why he doesn’t schedule races for me.”

“You barely won against Dead Air Society’s MX-5.”

“On their home course.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then what is?”

“This MINI girl, we don’t know what she’s capable of.” Jared starts. “Tristan’s the safer pick. His Focus is faster than your Fiesta.”

“You came to me because you fucked up. I’m not going to be your little messenger.” Trevor stands, bottle slamming down hard on a workbench. “If this chick shows up on our course again, she’s mine.”

***

It’s a quarter past two. If I wanted that fabled eight hours of sleep, I would’ve needed to close my eyes two hours ago.

I turn away from the wall and face my desk. It doesn't matter how I position myself, the air is thick and sticky, clinging to every part of my body.

It’s too hot to even put my headphones on. My phone rests beside my pillow, playing music low, but enough to keep my thoughts from turning on me.

I shut the music off. Last time I forgot, and it drained my battery so I had no alarm in the morning. Even worse, no music for the walk to school.

I sit up. My hair spills over the front of the oversized shirt I use as pyjamas.

I can still feel the leather of the wheel under my palms. The weight in the pedals. The way everything narrowed down to just the road ahead.

My stomach burns just thinking about it.

I need it. More than anything I need it again.

The cost of it all creeps back in, there was no way I could keep it up without a job. My head drops back onto the pillow. I press my palm to my forehead, feeling the cling of sweat.

Somewhere across the room are unused resumes, leftovers from when I tried to get a job over the summer holidays. I could look for work after school tomorrow, if I can remember where I shoved them.

The room blurs at the edges. Colours dull. Shapes soften.

Even as everything fades, the feeling doesn’t.

I have to race again. Even if it’s just one more time.