Chapter 198 Upside Down
Talladega was Case’s kind of race track. Loud, fast, and bordering on out of control. After the week he’d had fighting with his mom, he was ready to get some aggression out on the track.
Rhonda had left a day after the fiasco with the video. After Case had tried to convince her to be nice to Andrea so that, if they ever had children, she wouldn’t have any issues seeing them, she’d done her best to change courses. But it was a challenge for his mom to admit she was wrong, and she’d gone home the day before he and Andrea had headed to Alabama.
Now, he was sitting behind the steering wheel, following the cars in front of him around the track, getting ready for the green flag to drop and the pace car to pull off of the track so they could finally go racing.
This track was a lot like Daytona. There would be lots of racing in close proximity, some bump drafting, and probably at least one wreck that would take out a large portion of the field. As long as no one got hurt, and it wasn’t him, he didn’t mind that at all.
The race went green, and the cars took off. Soon, Case was going a little over two hundred miles an hour, inches from four other cars on all sides of him as he tried to make his way around the car in front of him. He felt alive again, his blood pumping through his veins. There were a lot of things in life that made him happy—especially Andrea—but there was just something about racing that gave him purpose and sent his heart racing, reminding him that this world was a wonderful place to be.
Before the race was halfway over, he and Charlie had worked their way to the front of the pack. There was some back and forth between their two cars who were primarily in the outside lane and other cars that were working together on the inside to get around them, but for the most part, they were able to hold the other drivers off by drafting together.
Case didn’t have much time to think about anything other than driving the car, but as the laps were coming to an end, he was strongly considering finding a way to let Charlie around him. His friend’s car was just as good as his was today, and he deserved to win a race. He had the feeling that Charlie could’ve passed him if he wanted to, but he knew the other driver wouldn’t do that since it was sort of understood that Case was the star and Charlie was there to help Case win.
He’d never been a fan of teamwork that wasn’t quite fair and really wanted Charlie to win a race. He’d been so close lately. It was his time for the limelight. But Charlie would never just pass Case, no matter how easy Case made it. So, they’d have to continue in tantum the way that they were, which meant, if they were still ahead of the other cars when the race was over, Case would win, and Charlie would come in second.
He didn’t like it, but what could he do?
With twenty laps to go, things really began to heat up. Several cars had teamed up to try and go around them, and they were gaining ground. It was Case and Charlie against the world!
And then everything went terribly wrong….
They were entering turn two, something they’d done together over a hundred times that day as the laps counted down. Both of them knew never to bump each other in the corner. Most of the time, it would be fine, but there was always that chance that it would send one of them out of control. As they started to come out of the corner, Case felt a bang in the back of his car, like he had so many times before, but because they were in the corner, their bumpers didn’t line up correctly, and the next thing he knew, Case’s car started fishtailing.
That wasn’t the worst of it, though. No matter how hard he fought to regain control of his car, at those speeds, he just couldn’t keep from spinning. As the nose of his car came around toward the middle of the track, Charlie’s car hit him hard in the driver’s side door, sending Case’s car up into the air.
For a moment, he looked out the windshield at the upside down world and marveled at the rush of air and adrenaline parting with gravity sent pulsing through him. He imagined this is what baby birds must feel like the first time they launched from the nest, though they were probably not upside down….
His next thought was, “This is gonna hurt.” What goes up must come down, and when Case came down, he landed on the top of another car first before he began to tumble. His car was spinning so quickly, he lost count of how many times he flipped. As the roof of the car lost its integrity, and only the roll cage was there for protection, Case hit his head hard enough to feel it through the helmet, and then, everything went black.
The last thing that registered was his team members shouting his name.
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