Read Checkered Flag Cheater for Free Online Page B

didn’t know you had a roommate.”
    â€œLinda doesn’t live here,” his dad said sharply.
    â€œShe seems pretty well at home,” Trace shot back.
    â€œHey, I need a life, too,” his father said. “Your mother and I—”
    â€œI gotta go check on some things,” Trace said. “I’ll be back later.”
    â€œWait, don’t go!” his father replied, reaching out, but staggering.
    Trace brushed off his father’s hand. “Don’t!” he said—his voice loud and sharp, just like his dad’s. Within a minute, he was speeding down the driveway.

4
    Trace headed back toward town. He wanted to stay off the main drag—if Beau saw him, he would think Trace had ditched him—and there was no future in going back to the high school. He made a pass down Main Street, looking for Mel’s car. As if she’d be cruising tonight. With nowhere to go, his steering wheel turned him east, toward Headwaters Speedway. He knew this short drive by heart, and it felt strange heading that way without his old Street Stock swaying on a trailer behind.
    The speedway was dark except for pale moonlight, which created shadows on the huge humps of dirt, and on heavy dirt-moving equipment—scrapers, bulldozers, and graders. As track manager for her dad, Johnny Walters,Mel had been talking about upgrading the track for two years—her goal was to bring back sprint cars, the kind her father used to drive—but Trace and most other drivers never thought it would actually happen.
    The speedway gate was open; he drove inside. Quietly closing his car door, he walked across the torn-up parking lot to the old wooden arches, and then into the grandstand. Inside, there was just enough moonlight to see the track—which was clearly wider now, and its corners taller. He stepped onto the dirt. Reaching down, he gathered up a clump and sniffed it: earthy, soft clay that squeezed into a ball. No more sand. No more stones working up through the gravel to break a steering rack or ring a driver’s bell when they spun up and whacked him in the helmet visor. Car counts had been falling every year at Headwaters because of the increasingly rough track. He pitched the clay ball toward the new, high-banked turn 1.
    Which was when he heard something.
    He looked around.
    There was only silence.
    He listened longer. A small, swallowed sound came from up in the grandstand, near the announcer’s booth. For a moment he thought it was a night bird—an owl of some kind—but then he realized it was a hiccup. Someone trying not to hiccup.
    â€œHello?” he called into the shadows. He headed up the worn wooden steps toward the announcer’s booth. Mel was sitting there in the dark.
    â€œWhat are you doing here—” she said, finishing with a hiccup.
    â€œI’m not sure,” Trace said.
    She was silent. He could see the white side of her face and her silvery ponytail and lots of white papers on the desk. It looked like she had been working, and then turned out the lights when she heard a car. Her prom dress was gone, and she was back in normal speedway clothes—jeans, sweatshirt, and racing cap. On the road, whenever he thought of her—which was every day—she looked exactly like this.
    â€œWell, I can tell you one thing for sure: you made a complete ass of yourself at prom,” Mel said.
    Trace was silent. “It was really stupid—I mean, not letting you know I was coming.”
    â€œThe whole prom thing was stupid. I will never put on high heels for a boy again in my life,” she said.
    There was a long silence. A really long silence. “I know how to get rid of hiccups,” Trace ventured.
    â€œLike what—scare me? Well, you don’t—
hiccup!
—scare me, sorry.”
    â€œNo, not that. You have to get the air out of your stomach. It’s sort of like that Heimlich thing, but