“This is my fault. I should have done a better job checking out the car before you took it out on the track.” Max sounds more than upset. In fact, he’s almost hysterical.
“Not your fault. Mine,” I manage to tell him.
He’s staring at the fluid on the ground. “No, Jasper, it looks like a brake line might have been cut.”
Sirens in the distance swallow my voice, but somehow I manage to beckon Max over. “What do you think happened?”
“Sabotage,” is the last word I hear before my world goes black.
PIMP MY RIDE
Three Years Later
Jasper
LET’S FACE IT—there’s one thing on every boy’s mind when he turns sixteen, and it quickly becomes a passion. For me, though, it became even more. It became an obsession.
I know where your train of thought has gone.
You’re thinking sex.
Well, you’re not wrong, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
It’s something that at times can be even more satisfying.
Don’t laugh.
It’s true.
It’s the need for speed.
That never-ending quest to make a car go faster, no matter how much of a piece of shit it is, or how magnificent it might be.
I can still remember the first time I lined up with dudes like me at a red light. I stared down the other drivers. I tightened my grip on the wheel. With my car in neutral, I revved my engine. I set my gaze on the road ahead and when that light turned green, I put the pedal to the metal—and got smoked.
That pitiful day I learned a humbling lesson. I learned that zero to sixty doesn’t come easy. I learned that I needed to be prepared before I got behind the wheel of someone else’s car thinking just because I knew how to drive fast, I could win. I learned at sixteen I wasn’t ready for anything like that.
However, from that day forward, my mission in life became crystal clear. I had to make a car that was better, stronger, faster.
Pimp My Ride premiered on MTV when I was seventeen.
My days as a street racer hadn’t quite taken off yet, but I’d had a taste of fast cars and I wanted more. There was this never-ending thirst to try it again and a real need to win the next time.
That show drew me in like a moth to a flame. Maybe it was the poor kid in me who wanted a fast car but couldn’t afford one. Maybe it was the glamour of watching a piece of shit go from nothing to everything.
I don’t know.
All I know is the show had a straightforward premise that was beautiful in its simplicity—take a boy with a beat-up car and orchestrate a massive and ridiculous upgrade.
The theme song explained it all in just a few lines. It went something like, “So you want to be a player, but your wheels aren’t fly. You have to hit us up, to get a pimped-out ride.”
It wasn’t the 24-inch spinner rims or plush leather interiors I cared about, though; it was how they made the cars move faster. What they used. Nitrous tanks. Turbo. How they reconfigured the engine. Valves. Pumps.
And at twenty-eight, my attention is still on speed.
Just like I stopped street racing, I stopped watching Pimp My Ride long ago, but that doesn’t mean I stopped wanting to be a player in the speed game.
I still want to be one.
Hell, I am one.
We all are.
It’s hard to believe that four poor boys from the other side of 8 Mile Road are on the rooftop of the super-swanky GM Renaissance Center throwing the party of a lifetime. And that tonight is about us. It’s about moving forward. It’s about Lightning Motors. It’s about finally building a new factory. It’s about the mass production of the Storm.
It’s about a new beginning.
Comerica Park to my right. Ford Field to my left. Joe Louis Arena off in the distance. The river below me. Detroit surrounds me, and she’s never looked so beautiful.
Suddenly, the music erupts. Lights turn from white to red to blue. Freestanding oscillating fans start to whirl to help suppress the midsummer heat. The night is about to begin. Girls dressed in white bikinis with stars on them parade out in sexy high heels, each with a body made to be seen. There are no holds barred tonight. Liquor. Food. Women. And the open sky.
The girls make a show out of walking up onto the stage, and then they take the corners of the blue silk cloth in their hands—the silk that covers the car—and hold tight.
My car.
Our car.
The Storm.
The spotlights anchor it as if it’s a work of art.
It is.
Slowly, my gaze assesses the rest of the stage. Banners with Detroit’s profile on them. vote yes signs. Everything is red, white, and blue. Fourth of July is over, but Detroit’s celebration has only just begun.
Scouting the area, the showman is nowhere to be seen. Everyone is waiting for him. Soon enough, I spot him coming through the door. Tux. Hair slicked back. Straight bow tie. Expensive shoes. The rich boy from Grosse Pointe. You can’t miss him. Although he’s not taller than me, he’s much bigger. Two-forty, I’d say. Football player girth like his father.