Free Downers Grove by Michael Hornburg

Silence=death.
    â€œSo how do I learn to race cars?”
    â€œBy driving. You’ll have to get behind the wheel and scrape a few walls to find out what it’s all about. There’s no textbook.”
    â€œCan’t you give me a few tips or something?”
    â€œEvery driver has their own style, their own way of holding the steering wheel.” He shifted in his seat. “On a small track you gotta work the walls, everything gets congested down low, too many inexperienced Joes trading paint and getting stuck in the infield mud. Sometimes I spend half the night joyriding under yellow flags. There’s no fast way through the corners,you just throw the car sideways and try to keep it from sliding out of control. It’s a gut feeling, you have to chase your instincts. Maybe it seems sort of risky, but right now it’s the only hope I’ve got,” he said.
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    He gunned the car forward. “I don’t want to be pumping gas when I’m twenty-nine.”
    I tried to imagine where I’d be at that borderline but then stopped in front of a huge billboard that said DON’T GO THERE .
    â€œYou got any plans?” he asked.
    Most of my plans went no farther than next weekend. I glanced out the window, saw my reflection in the glass, the flaws, the imperfections. “Sometimes I think I want to be an actress,” I said. “A serious actress portraying the heroines of modern literature.”
    â€œHave you ever been onstage?” he asked.
    â€œNot yet.” I tipped my head out the window. “But sometimes I feel like my life is a movie.”
    â€œPG-13,” he said.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œYour rating.”
    â€œHow do you know? You haven’t seen the whole movie yet!”
    Bobby laughed. I could tell he was at ease with me, that we had definitely passed GO.
    â€œSo how’d you stumble into such a glamorous occupation?” he asked.
    â€œDuring Career Day at school I told my counselor that I wanted to be a farmer, maybe take over one of these old cornfieldsaround here. He whipped open some charts and said that in the near future farming would decline by fifty percent, but the need for entertainers would rise by fifty percent. His words of advice were—’Don’t be a farmer, play one on TV.’”
    My mechanic pulled onto the fire road that surrounded the limestone quarry and parked beside some overgrown bushes. “I know a place where you can see the fire,” he said.
    I got out of the car and followed him under the highway bridge. The creek smelled like sewage and there was garbage everywhere. Rusted drums were scattered along the water’s edge, shredded plastic bags laced the dead tree limbs reaching from the bank. We passed a doorless refrigerator spray-painted 6-6-96 and a shopping cart filled with rain-soaked newspaper flyers.
    Bobby carried a green army blanket under his arm. It wasn’t the magical place I always imagined, but it would do. Trudging along the creek bed, ducking under the occasional low-hanging branch, my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. I started feeling a little sweaty and nervous, thinking,
Wasn’t this how all young girls died?
Following his shadowy frame through the thick black underbrush, I tried to convince myself he wasn’t a mass murderer.
    We came to a ridge that overlooked the canal. In the distance was the glowing site of the petrochemical fire. The panic of emergency lights seemed quaint from this viewpoint. My mechanic spread out the blanket, then took my arm and guided me down beside him.
    â€œIt’s not beautiful, but it’s something,” he said.
    It was beautiful in an end-of-the-world kind of way. Emergencylights swept the perimeter. The bridge was a shimmering wake of headlights that wormed over the canal. It looked like some cheap UFO footage for a low-budget sci-fi movie.
    Bobby smelled like grease with a hint of crushed