Motocross Me (Motocross Me 1)

“Oh no,” I slump, letting my phone drop into the shirt I’m supposed to be folding. Molly lifts an eyebrow, looking for an explanation.

“She wants to hang out tonight, but I’m supposed to go out with Ryan.”

“Why don’t you ask her to come over for lunch?” Molly offers. “Dorothy gave me some delicious homegrown tomatoes. I think I’ll make sandwiches.”

“Thanks, I’ll ask her,” I say, grateful for the idea. I do want to see Shelby and squeal and freak out about her new boyfriend, but I certainly don’t want to tell her about seeing Ryan tonight. I type out a reply telling her to be at my house in fifteen minutes. While I wait for her to accept, I get up and gaze out the large windows in front of the scorekeeper’s table.

The track is no longer a twisting trail with jumps, turns and long sweeping berms. It’s still normal on one side but completely flattened on the other. What was once a section of tabletops and doubles is now a pile of loosely packed dirt. My heart catches in my chest. Those jumps had been there since I was a little girl; they were so old they had grass growing up the sides and now they’re gone. I watch as a bulldozer levels a section of whoops, Ash’s favorite part of the track. I wonder if they will be able to rebuild it in time for the races tomorrow. Does my dad know what he is getting himself into?

When lunch is over and Shelby and I have thanked Molly for the extraordinary sandwiches (the tomatoes were delicious), we head to my room where three hours of MTV-watching and gushing about boys ensues. This time I let her lead the conversation because lately, most of our talks involved her twin brother and my insane crush on him. Shelby is the most selfless person I know, besides maybe Ash. I take this opportunity to try to be more like her.

Jake is a real life Prince Charming to Shelby. Even her tanned skin can’t hide the crimson that rushes to her cheeks when she talks about him. He is handsome, Christian, which meant a lot to her, and came from a family of money, which I consider a great quality but Shelby doesn’t seem to care. He isn’t the fastest motocross racer, but that doesn’t bother her. She is most enamored with the fact he teaches Sunday school to five-year-olds at his church every week.

Like any teenage girl, Shelby tells me every minute detail of their dinner date last night. She is an amazing storyteller, able to talk about three minutes straight without using the word like or umm.

I tell Shelby I probably have to work some more tonight as an excuse to have her leave around five. It’s a white lie, the easiest of all lies, but it pains me to look her in the eyes and say it. She doesn’t seem to mind, and instead she apologizes to me for what she considers bad friend behavior on her part.

“I’m so sorry I haven’t hung out with you as much lately.” Her hand grabs my arm and squeezes in sync with the sparkle in her eyes. “I’ve just been so excited to hang out with Jake. I’ll make it up to you I promise.”

Guilt digs an even bigger hole in my chest. She thinks she is the bad friend here… I am the one about to go on a date with her brother’s enemy. We walk to her car a

nd right as I feel like I’ll crack and tell her all of my plans for tonight, Dad drives up next to us on his four-wheeler. Saved by the smell of exhaust.

“It’s all done!” Dad yells to me over the roar of the four-wheeler as I ride with him back to the track. The bulldozers are lined up the way they were yesterday, only dirty this time. Apparently hiring the most expensive track engineering crew was a good move because they worked faster than I imagined.

We ride up to the new section of the track that has jumps several times larger than the old ones. The dirt is new and crisp, without a single tire mark on it yet. It is impressive. The whoops section has been replaced with new whoops that re now about six feet tall instead of the old ones that looked more like speed bumps. I hold on as the four-wheeler lurches forward and Dad shows me each new section of the track while beaming with pride.

“What do you think?”

“It’s nice, Dad.”

He shuts off the motor and we climb off and walk around the fresh dirt. My dad’s satisfied smile stretches across his face as he looks over his masterpiece.

“Hana, I’ll try this out on you.” He points to the long row of jumps that lead to a sharp left turn.

“Try what out on me?” Surely he wouldn’t make me ride a dirt bike over it?

“Say you’re on a bike and you’re about to take off down that section of track,” he says.

I focus on the part he points to and try to see where he’s going with this. There are six huge piles of dirt on the track. I would consider them jumps, but I know smaller piles like that are usually jumped in sets of two or three. Out of the six ahead of me, each of them have a different face, slope, and height. Right before the first jump, I notice the track veers to the left and a large sweeper goes past the first two jumps and connects with the last four. I have never seen the track have two options like this. It’s right about now that I realize I don’t know the first thing about riding motocross.

“Okay…”

“And you want to be as fast as possible now, which may be tricky. A bike can ride on the dirt at a faster speed than it flies through the air,” he explains.

“Really?” Home-schooling myself in physics probably wasn’t the best idea.

“Yes, but sometimes it’s faster to clear a jump instead of ride over it.”

“How do you know which one to do?” I must ask the magic question because my dad slaps his hands together with excitement in his eyes and says, “Exactly.”

“There are two triples ahead of us,” He says, pointing. “Show that to any rider and they’ll tell you, those six hills are perfectly positioned to be two sets of triples which will keep you in the air for a while.” He paces back and forth in front of me, all the while keeping his eyes on the track as he explains. “But, I had this sweeper put in that bypasses the first double which would allow you to race through the sweeper and then jump the remaining two doubles.”

He waits for my reaction. When I don’t jump into summersaults and cheers, he elaborates. “I had it engineered to where not jumping the impressive triple would actually be faster. You spend more time on the ground, but that time on the ground is faster as you will lose speed soaring through the air on an eighty-foot triple.”

This is too convoluted and scientific for me and although I want to stand here and bask in glory with my dad forever, I really need to get back and prepare for tonight with Ryan. I steal a glance at the watch on Dad’s wrist. I only have thirty minutes to wash the dirt off my face and get ready.

“Dad, can we get back now? Ryan will be here soon.” I cringe. Talking to my dad about guys even as innocently as what I just said makes me want to dive head-on into one of those bulldozers.