Banging Wheels Read Free Page B

haven’t collapsed by then, I’ll introduce you to your teammate.”
    Her teammate. She felt her stomach tense. This was the great unknown element, and yet perhaps the most important. She’d managed to secure a drive in a good car, but your teammate is your biggest rival. That is who you will ultimately be judged against. After all, you’ve got equal equipment, so there’s nowhere to hide. You can have the best car in the world, but if you can’t beat your teammate, you’ll always be seen as second rate.
    She took the heavy pen and flourished it across one page after another, repeating the same pattern again and again — everywhere there was a cross in red ballpoint. Clauses and sub-clauses, insurance and indemnity. They’d covered it all verbally before and the negotiations had taken serious time, but the truth was that she’d have taken pretty much anything that was on offer to get a drive like this. In the Junior Pro Racing League, you didn’t have time to mess around. It was one of numerous feeder leagues for the big time top-tier televised racing league, where only the most talented drivers made it. You had to impress, big time, quickly, and then move up again. To plateau here was to never make it to the top.
    “It’s a good car,” said Travis’s assistant, a woman in a sharp suit, with an even sharper demeanor. “We expect to win races.”
    Callie sensed some kind of hostility. It was something she’d experienced numerous times — other women seemed to either see her as an inspiration or else resented her, somehow holding the idea that she’d slept her way into getting a drive, or that she was there because of her gender, and not despite it.
    Of course, the men in the industry could be problematic too. Men didn’t like being beaten by a woman — something she’d experienced right from the start. Back in the days when they used to race empty plastic crates down the hill near her home, she beat a local boy and he got called all sorts of names for it by his friends. But once she’d beaten them, too, the whole dynamic would change to one of respect. Indeed, those beaten would often then goad newcomers into racing her, telling them they were pussies if they couldn’t beat her — knowing full well that they were toast. It had been a similar story right up through the various racing formulae — she’d had to earn her respect, and at times it seemed like they raced harder against her than the rest of the field — just out of fear of losing to a woman. But once she’d gotten that respect, her rivals often became her biggest advocates.
    Indeed, it often wasn’t clear whether her being female was a help or a hindrance. Everyone loved the PR, especially the advertisers — without sponsorship, she’d never have even got this far. But the bullshit could be tiring. She wanted to be defined by her driving, not by her gender.
    And perhaps the biggest obstacles thus far came from the most surprising source — home. Her folks had never taken her sporting endeavors seriously.
    “It’s not something for women,” her dad would say. “Or at least not for ladies. Besides, you’ll never make a living out of this. It’s a tough world out there, and you’re wasting valuable time. You could be building a career.”
    This really annoyed her. Motor racing was her career, or at least it certainly could be, and she was plenty good enough. Why couldn’t he see that?
    “When are you going to give up this nonsense, dear?” her mom would ask. “How can you have a baby when you’re driving? You can’t drive a racing car when you’re pregnant, you know. Your Auntie May says—”
    To hell with her Auntie May.
    This wasn’t some idle nonsense Callie was doing instead of having a life — this was her life. And there was plenty of time to have kids. It was all nonsense. But it did have an impact on her. She wanted to pretend that she didn’t care, but she did. She wanted — needed — her parents to support