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eyebrows with that slight grin I loved. Clearly, he was amused by my weirdo writing mentor.
    “It was a way of offering their hearts, literally and figuratively, to their country. Forever.” Matthea sighed. “Macabre practice, if you ask me. But I like it as a metaphor. You give your country—which, in this case, is your story—your heart.”
    “Oh,” I said. “Okay.” No wonder I hadn’t written the Great American Novel yet. My heart was still firmly planted in my chest. Wasn’t it?
    “Be patient,” Matthea said gently. “Keep writing, but keep dreaming, too. Remember that inspiration struck the brilliant mathematician Archimedes when he was in the bathtub.”
    And inspiration struck the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman when he was in a strip club
, I thought. (I may be failing AP physics, but I did learn a thing or two.)
    That’s pretty much how the rest of the conversation went. We didn’t ponder the unpredictability of love or the mysteries of the universe, but since we touched on everything from the mummified hearts of European kings to Einstein’s theory that creativity was more important than knowledge, I felt like it was time well spent.
    After a fourth piece of lemon cake, though, Robinson excused himself, saying he needed to get a bit of fresh air. I watched his retreating back, feeling a vague sense of unease. My body gave an involuntary shiver, and Matthea looked at me piercingly. We continued our chat, but later, as we were leaving, she put her hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right?” she asked.
    For one tiny millisecond, I wanted to tell her everything. The real reason behind what Robinson and I were doing, which I hadn’t even wanted to admit to myself this whole time. It didn’t actually have anything to do with me escaping my boring life in Klamath Falls. But I couldn’t tell her.
    “I’m great,” I said.
    “And your friend?” She squinted toward Robinson, who was leaning against the car, staring down the hill toward thebay. He brought his arms up and almost seemed to hug himself, as if he were cold. Or as if, for a moment, he felt the need to reassure himself about something.
    “He’s great, too,” I insisted.
Why are you lying, Axi?
    Matthea picked a yellow flower from one of the vines around her door and tucked it behind my ear. “Give your story your heart,” she repeated.
    It sounded reasonable enough. But when I looked at Robinson, I knew I’d already given my heart to something—to someone—else.

11
    I F I DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS MEDICALLY impossible, I’d say that Robinson was born with a wrench in his hand. Or that as a baby, he sucked on a spark plug instead of a pacifier.
    This gearhead gene was why I was taking him to Torrance, California, next—because it certainly wasn’t my kind of place. Torrance breeds NASCAR drivers and semiprofessional cage fighters. (Ugh.) It has a racetrack, a giant rock ’n’ roll car show, and about five hundred stores that sell car parts.
    In other words, for a guy like Robinson, it’s the Promised Land. The kind of place he had to—he
deserved
to—experience.
    When we pulled into the parking lot of the Cal-Am Speedway the following afternoon, Robinson sucked in his breath and gave me his crooked, perfect grin.
    “Axi Moore,” he said, “you are greatest person I have ever known.”
    “You just wait,” I said, smiling back.
    I steered him away from the glass atrium entrance and toward a side door propped open with a rolled-up copy of
Car and Driver
.
    Brad Sewell was waiting for us in the pit. “Alexandra,” he said, stepping forward to give me a bear hug. “Long time no see, kiddo.”
    Robinson clearly wanted to know how this beefy dude with a Dale Earnhardt tattoo and I were acquainted. But I simply said, “Robinson, this is Brad. Brad, this is my friend Robinson.”
    “Nice to meet ya,” Brad said. “Let me walk you through a few things, and then we’ll get you in the cockpit.”
    It was only then that