Just before we had to leave for Madrid for my very first robot fight, I got a call from Griffin. I picked up my phone and hoped he wouldn't ask me anything about the race from a couple days before, since I hadn't even bothered to watch it.

"Hey Griffin," I said.

"You would not believe what happened to me last night," Griffin said.

"You slept with Elizabeth, and now you're looking to be NASCAR's power couple, when even my dysfunctional relationship with Tyler Bailey was better than that shit," I said.

"No, but I wouldn't exactly be opposed to that." Griffin paused, and when I didn't reply, he continued. "Kate, I'm fucking kidding. She's cute, but she's not you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I know you don't like her, and I couldn't do that to you—"

I interrupted. "I don't even know her. The first time I ever heard of her, it was because she was taking my job. How does everyone expect me to react to that?"

I was supposed to be poised when things weren't going my way, but it never worked out like that. Poison spewed from my mouth instead.

"You know I'm on your side for this mess, Katie. You're not perfect, but you're better than perfect. You're human. But anyway, like I was saying before you made this conversation all about you, I was—"

I interrupted again. "Remember when we met?"

It was a rainy September afternoon when I woke up in a hospital room with a stranger in the doorway. I couldn't see that far, thanks to the meds I was on, but there was no way in hell anyone besides Paul was going to visit me.

I asked him who the fuck he was, and he told me that I didn't know him, but I knew of him. And he wasn't wrong; everyone in my line of work knew about Griffin Gallagher, the rookie sensation who drove like he had nothing to lose. He got better finishes out of his car than he should have, and that success put RTR in a spotlight and handed them a truckload of money. And Griffin Gallagher apparently knew who I was.

I was just a kid from Akron who broke her neck in a wreck at fucking Talladega.

I remembered exactly what he told me. Or, at least I thought I did. Those drugs didn't fuck around. "I think you're doing great things for this sport. You're competitive as hell, and you're gonna make it big. You have to get back in that car once you heal up."

A revenge tour and a championship later, I got my (piss-poor) chance with RTR. But more importantly, I had someone who cared about what I was doing.

Griffin chuckled. "Do you remember? You were pretty drugged up."

"Of course, I do. If I didn't know you, I would have never signed with Truscott in the first place."

"Don't say that. It makes me feel like it's my fault that shit hit the fan. Why did you bring it up anyway?"

I paused. "I don't know, I just miss you. I miss you like hell, and it hasn't even been a week since I left."

"I'll tell you what, if you tell me when your first race is with your new team, I'll do everything I can to be there. I promise."

I grimaced. "Well, what if I told you it wasn't exactly a race with cars?"

"What the fuck did you get yourself into this time?"

"I fight robots now. Isn't that cool?" I smiled, even though he couldn't see it through the phone.

Griffin didn't reply.

"I swear, it's cool. Well, I haven't actually fought yet, but the robot's name is Sacrilege, or Peanut for short, and I get to go to Spain for my first tournament, and—"

This time, Griffin interrupted me. "What the fuck, Kate?"

"I know, I know. I'm just as lost and confused as you are, but where else do I have to go? This is my only opportunity, and I'll be damned if I ruin this one too."

"Someone could sign you for next season. You'll be back in a car where you belong in no time."

"And what'll I do until then? Sit around and drive myself crazy?" I shook my head. "I don't think so."

I spent a large portion of my time during the offseason with Shannon, my friend who happened to be a therapist, and even then, I couldn't keep myself from spending the rest of my time wishing I had somewhere to be.

As much as I loved Griffin, he didn't get it. He didn't understand that I couldn't sit in one spot and keep a smile on my face. I couldn't be happy alone with my thoughts. Most of them were stupid, anyway.

"But next season, you'll be back. Someone's gotta take a chance on a former champ," Griffin said.

I wasn't so sure, since there was no glory in former, and everyone seemed to think that I couldn't handle the pressure of such a high-stakes world. And maybe I couldn't, but no one ever gave me the chance to prove that I could.

***

From Sonoma to Miami, from New Hampshire to Daytona, I had almost seen it all in the grand old US of A. Racing was a business (and Roger reminded me of that fact too many times to count), and traveling was an inevitability. But that didn't require me to leave America all that frequently, and even though I had relocated to Canada, I never even thought of the possibility of being on the move even more than that.

We landed in Madrid, and a few days later, it was finally my chance to see if I could drive a fighting robot. I still didn't know much compared to everyone else set to compete at the tournament, but I wasn't scared. Nothing scared me.

In an old arena-type building with the lights turned down low, sixteen robot teams were to fight for a cash prize, and it certainly couldn't hurt to have that. I wasn't stupid enough to think that I was going to win, but I didn't have it in me to think that I couldn't win.

Drake, Josiah, Annie, and I were all dressed in matching t-shirts with our last names on the back, and as we huddled in our corner before our fight, Drake tightened a few screws on Sacrilege and made other last-minute modifications.

"So what can you tell me about the robot I'm about to fight?" I asked.

"Not a damn thing. There's really no one worth noting in this tournament besides Megha Ratti and her robot, Amazon," Josiah said. "Everyone else sucks."

"But we suck too, so that's why we're here," Annie said.

I smiled, and Drake looked up from his work.

"Annie, I swear to God, if you don't stop talking shit, we'll leave you here," Josiah said.

"Eh, don't take it personally. We do suck, and maybe with a complete noob at the controls, we'll suck less," Drake said.

I nodded. "It's been a while since I won something. I'm due for a victory."

"That's the spirit." Annie clapped her hands together. "I feel a positive energy coming from you, Katie. This could really be a new beginning for Sacrilege."

There was no energy in the arena whatsoever, but I smiled anyway. "Thanks. So who is this Amazon robot?"

"Amazon is insane. It will tear anyone to shreds, and the captain and driver, Megha Ratti, is a freaking genius. It's like she's allergic to losing," Drake said.

"And Drake just thinks she's the most wonderful person alive, even though she's a bitch," Josiah said.

Drake held up a finger. "She's not a bitch. She just knows that she's good at what she does. Game respects game."

"You'd have to have game in order to respect it then," Annie said.

Drake and I both laughed.

But, of course, humorless Josiah didn't. "That's it. Hope you learn to speak Spanish, because you're stuck here."

Annie gasped. "¡Qué lástima!"

I had no idea what the fuck that meant, even though I took (and failed) a year of Spanish in high school, but I laughed anyway. School was never my thing, but girls roasting their boyfriends was my goddamn religion.

Josiah got up and brushed off his pants. "I'll be back. I'm going to go scout the competition."

"Who are we even fighting?" I looked around the arena, and if I had to guess based on my luck, we were going to have to fight this Megha person or some other scary-looking bot.

"Whichever one is SBSP. With a name like that, I don't know what kind of robot it could be, but it doesn't sound too threatening," Drake said.

Josiah pointed over to another team. "That's them. It's a flipper." He shook his head. "Fucking Christ."

A flipper? Like, it'd flip me over? Fucking Christ, indeed.

I looked over there and thought for a minute. The robot was painted a bright yellow, but I couldn't make out any other noticeable features or threats. "Oh, it's SpongeBob SquarePants. I get it."

Annie laughed. "Oh my god, that's creative. Why didn't we do something cute like that?"

"Because we actually want to win," Drake replied.

"I hate those damn flipper bots, though. You can tear them apart, and all it takes is one flip, and you're upside down and can't continue." Josiah looked over at me. "Have fun, Katie. That's all we can hope for at this point."

"So you don't think I have a shot at this?" I asked.

Josiah shook his head. "For your first time, no. Only good drivers can pull off a flipper."

"But I thought you said that everyone here sucks. Maybe they suck worse than me," I said.

What did I have to lose besides all faith in myself? Not a damn thing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello, and thank you so much for reading! Today is actually my first day back in class, so in honor of that, I'm going to tell y'all a story that brings me an immense amount of joy every single time I think about it.

So at my college, there is a hammock club, and when I was doing my freshman orientation, the older students told us all about it. It's surprisingly exclusive, and they don't like it when non-hammock club members lounge around campus in a hammock. I figured that they were exaggerating, so I carried on with my life, like any other normal person would.

One day in early autumn that year, it was a glorious day, so lots of people were outside with their studying (or entertainment). I walked past one group of friends that all were relaxing in a hammock, blasting Africa by Toto through their speakers. I was pretty much like, "What a goddamn mood." But then two other guys walked up to them and asked to see their official hammock club membership badges. This poor group of friends were not official members of the hammock club, so they had nothing. So the two hammock club police flipped their hammock over, and the others went falling to the ground.

"Don't fucking disrespect the hammock club again, got it?" one of them said. And I was uninvolved, but I was like, "Got it." And I have no idea how it's still a thing here. It's the most divisive thing I've ever seen, and we have people who yell at us about having premarital sex and using the Lord's name in vain on campus.

So that's the story of how hardcore the most relaxing club at my school is. They will fucking yeet anyone out of a hammock if they aren't in the club. It's absolutely wild.

But anyway, I'd love to hear any stories you have that don't sound real, but they're completely legit. That's gonna be our question for the week.