Free Bulletproof by Maci Bookout Page B

you have to travel. Most people who show real talent for racing, and have the means to pursue it, are homeschooled from middle school onward. There’s no other way to get an education when you’re always on the road, traveling from state to state to compete. All of this plays into the culture surrounding motocross, by the way, and the kind of people who are drawn to it.
    Back when I was about nine and my brother was in his early teens, our family spent a lot of time at the motocross tracks in and around Tennessee. Over time, my parents made friends with a few other families that were always at the same tracks. They were always around each other and hanging out. One of the boys my brother hit it off with was a guy named Kyle. I saw a lot of him when I was a kid. Of course, we weren’t friends. He was my brother’s friend, and I was just “Matt’s little sister.” As we all got older, my brother and I both got heavily involved in school sports. I was totally committed to softball, and he was serious about wrestling. Eventually he quit racing, and we all stopped spending so much time at the track. We still saw Kyle and the rest of the motocross people once in awhile, but not nearly as much.
    One day when I was in high school, Kyle and I started chatting on MySpace out of the blue. I never had anything but a friendly impression of him, so I was happy to talk to him and catch up on what we’d been up to since I stopped coming to the track so much. The small talk led to more talk, and before I knew it we were becoming really good friends. Long-distance friends, but still.
    After I’d been talking to Kyle for a few weeks, I brought him up with my brother. “Do you remember Kyle?” I asked him, very casually.
    “Yeah, I remember.” My brother gave me a weird look. “We basically grew up with him.”
    Right. “Is he cool?” I asked. “Or is he a douchebag?”
    My brother laughed. He knew exactly what I was talking about. The money-and-homeschool combination that’s common with serious motocross kids doesn’t always result in the best personalities. It’s a well known stereotype of people who grow up deep in that world that they basically know nothing about life. But my brother said, “He’s cool. He’s not a ‘bro.’”
    It was good to hear, but I already knew that. It wasn’t like I was short on good friends, even guy friends. If I didn’t see something cool about Kyle, I wouldn’t get so much out of our conversations. But I loved talking to him. Kyle was really funny. He had a sharp wit, and not a mean one. He was the type of person who was always in a good mood. It was a strange relationship we had, spending so much time together on MySpace and on the phone, but he became my best friend.
    Still, even though neither of us referred to it outright, the “friendship” between Kyle and me quickly turned into a kind of long-distance romance. Or at least it would be hard to explain how that wasn’t basically what we were doing, at least in teenager terms. We talked all day, every day. And I mean constantly. Obviously neither one of us was spending significant time with other people in that way, considering the amount of attention we were paying each other. And so it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that part of the reason I wasn’t interested in dating was because Kyle’s friendship was already satisfying any need I might have had for a close connection with a guy I liked.
    The fact that neither of us came out and labeled it as romantic was part of the appeal. In fact, what I had with Kyle was perfect for my personality and the way I liked to go about my life at that time. It was easy. Since he lived in Nashville and we never saw each other, getting physical wasn’t an issue. Not that I didn’t find him attractive, but I was younger then, and any relationship between a girl and a guy is simpler when sex isn’t a factor. Not seeing each other also meant that we never had a chance to get on each other’s