Katie Moore: robot fighter.

I spent practically all of my life inside a car, and to consider myself anything besides a racecar driver took away the one thing I knew about myself. This wasn't only a learning experience in terms of an entirely new skill set, but also what I had inside me.

At the end of the day, who the hell was I? Apparently not a racer.

Sacrilege was a cool ass robot with the single job of bringing chaos and destruction to the enemy, and maybe I could find my lane there.

I stepped into the rest of the house, and the walls of the first room from the door were covered in clocks, both mounted and on the floor. They ticked in unison, and the pendulums on the three grandfather clocks swung together as well.

Maybe the nerds were afraid of running late. That was the only partially logical explanation.

Griffin had one clock in his house, a grandfather clock that he earned as a trophy from a victory at Martinsville, a short track. I never won one, but he always let me dust his for him.

The next room was the kitchen, but there wasn't a wall to separate it from the clock room. I peeked inside, and Annie stood at the counters. They weren't like pretty and shiny Griffin's or mine, but they were just surfaces to cook on, and I sure as hell didn't have an open concept floor plan.

"I'm so sorry. I was going to make some baklava, but we were super busy and understaffed at work the past couple of days," Annie said. She hadn't even looked over her shoulder, but she had probably memorized the sound of Drake and Josiah's footsteps at that point.

My heart sped up at the sound of her calm, smooth voice. "Don't worry about it." God, could she get any more adorable? "Where do you work?"

"Libby's Hobby Shop. It's a small craft store downtown. It must be the yarn sale we're having, because we're getting a ton of business right now." She thought for a moment. "I have no idea what to make for dinner."

"We can get pizza. It's on me," I said. "So is the mural in the garage your work in progress?"

Annie nodded. "I'm not really sure I'll ever finish it though. I started it three years ago, and since then, we've gotten so much busier around here. There's always some tournament to enter or some repairs Josiah and Drake have to make to the bot."

That wasn't too different from the racing life, and God knew I was made for it.

Someone clicked on the TV in the clock room, and I heard some familiar words.

"I'm sorry, but I earned my spot here. Are you just giving it away to another woman, so she can fill my role? Look, I know of everyone in this sport, and I don't know who this Mississippi Queen is."

Not my finest moment.

"So do you take that personally? Is this the beginning of a new rivalry?" a voice on the TV said.

"I do take it personally, but I'm here and she's not. Katie Moore's time is up, and it's time for the Mississippi Queen to show the world that women can win races. It was a Moore problem, not a female problem."

That voice had to belong to Elizabeth Tonkin, my replacement. It was just under sixteen hours before her first start in the ninety-five car for Roger Truscott Racing.

"Where's the bathroom?" I asked.

"Go through the living room, down the hall, and it's the first door on the right," Annie replied.

I checked the television that Josiah had turned on in the clock room as I strutted past. Elizabeth looked several years younger than me, and her bright smile, long blonde curls, and button nose gave her a southern belle vibe, and she was smart enough to wear the Mississippi Queen title like a badge of honor.

I chuckled. "She's in for a rude awakening."

"You were the one talking shit at the beginning?" Josiah asked.

I had just assumed that he and Drake knew who I was, and I nodded. "I didn't quite mean what I said, but it's out there, and I'm not gonna apologize or backtrack."

Josiah bobbed his head up and down. "Good for you."

I left Elizabeth's sweet voice behind on my way to the bathroom, and I shut the door and locked it. A couple white tiles shifted on the flooring underneath me, and I turned to the mirror.

I loved the throw-away lifestyle I had. I could crash cars and party like everything was just perfect. But I couldn't ever escape being the face of women in the sport, and now that the title was someone else's, I wanted it back. It wasn't very sportswomanlike, but who gave a shit? Not me.

My eyes filled with tears. Everything and everyone I loved could never stay for more than a moment, and now Griffin and NASCAR were nothing more than a speck in my rearview mirror with the rest of my life. I had to turn my attention to the windshield, but I didn't know a thing about bots. I didn't even understand how the engineers put together ridiculous racecars.

Red eyes and a snotty nose looked back at me when I checked out my reflection in the mirror. I was an ugly crier, but even the slightest frustration sometimes brought it out of me. Somehow, I kept it all together when I was up in front of the crowd of reporters, but that was only because it didn't hurt then. It hurt like hell now.

Katie Moore lost a shit ton of races and people, but I would find my victory lane somewhere else in the meantime. I had to. There wasn't anywhere else to go.

***

Some people could sleep on couches, but I was never one of them unless I was passed out drunk. Plus, every goddamn second, those clocks ticked like it was their job. I didn't even bother to cover the bags under my eyes before my first lesson in robot combat.

Not a thing I knew about driving cars was applicable to driving Sacrilege/Peanut, since it was a fucking robot, but I had a reputation to uphold.

"Alright, how long do I have to learn everything before the first fight?" I rubbed my hands together and took another look at the bot. I hadn't seen too many fighting robots in my days, but Sacrilege was undoubtedly a beauty. Only the bottoms of the wheels were exposed for protection, the metal bar in the middle would probably crush my skull once it got going, and on the back, Sacrilege was painted on like a tramp stamp in a pretty red script.

"We appreciate the eagerness, but we can't start driving yet. There's a lot of information you need to know beforehand," Drake said.

Josiah handed me a booklet of papers all clipped together. "I printed out a few articles that should help you with the concepts, but when push comes to shove, you either suck at driving or you don't."

I looked down at the packet. There was no way in hell I would be able to read all of it. "Just give me a brief overview of what's in here."

"Well, normally when you have a rookie driver, you wouldn't want them to start with a horizontal spinner, which is obviously what we have. It's hard to control since it carries so much kinetic energy," Drake said.

"So does a racecar, just saying," I replied.

"It's hard to keep the wheels on the ground with a bot like this. Trust me, I know. How many times did I get knocked into the air in the Vegas tournament?" Josiah asked.

"Thirteen," Drake said.

Josiah nodded. "I got shot into the air thirteen times, then we got knocked out. There was a lot of damage, but we think we did a pretty good job fixing it."

I leaned in closer to the robot, and surely enough, there was a dent on the top sheet of armor that I hadn't noticed before. The black and red paint scheme kept it hidden pretty well.

"This really is a good-looking robot. My car was usually black and yellow, you know, for Goodyear, my sponsor, but the red here is just so sexy." I ran my hand across the dent in the top. "If only you guys didn't murder the Corvette over there. That paint color is gorgeous too."

"Annie came up with the color scheme for us. She really did a good job. Reminds me of a black widow," Drake said.

I smiled. "Oh, hell yeah. Now I love it even more."

"If you're done eye-fucking the robot, we still have a bunch of stuff that we need to go over," Josiah said, and I took my hand off Sacrilege.

What could I say? I was sexually attracted to men, women, and destruction.

"Our next tournament starts in a week, and it's a big one. A lot of big names are going to be there, but there's no pressure on you. We'll see how quickly you can pick up the basics, and we'll go from there," Drake said.

I nodded. "Okay."

Josiah handed me a controller, and there were a bunch of switches, knobs, and buttons on it. Every single one of those made a couple appearances in a stock car, but none of the controls meant anything to me on the remote.

"The stick on the left controls a lot of the wheels' movement. The switch at the top starts the spinner, so don't touch that. I don't want anyone to die today," Josiah said. "Maybe we should put some tape over it or something."

"I pinkie swear I won't touch it." I held up my pinkie finger.

"Just trust her," Drake said.

Josiah let out a breath. "Fine, but if she dies, you're paying to ship her body back across Lake Erie."

They definitely shouldn't have trusted me. That switch whispered my name in my ear, and I had never really grown out of a three-year-old's impulsivity.

"I pay for everything around here. I'm the team captain after all," Drake said (even though it seemed that a lot of the day-to-day expenses fell on Annie), then he turned back to me. "But anyway, you'll figure this out eventually. If it's not immediate, who cares?"

"That's different than what I'm used to," I said.

With RTR, it was win now or die. The patience Drake had was almost unsettling, especially since I wasn't the type to just wait around for a win. Even though I never got one for Roger, I still tried my ass off every single week.

I thought back to the last night, when I stared at my hooked nose and small lips in the mirror until I hated them and everything else about me. What a little bitch I was. This opportunity was exactly what I needed, and I couldn't afford to wish for everything back. There was no time for that in the fast lane of life.

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

Hello, and thank you so much for reading! I didn't edit this as much as I usually do before posting it, since I kind of rushed to get it done, so if you caught any mistakes, please let me know!

So what do you think of the Katie-Elizabeth conflict? Is everyone making something out of nothing, or is someone clearly in the right? What about Sacrilege? Will Katie be able to figure out the new driving, or is the team in trouble?