They didn’t have any questions, since I’d practiced my presentation, and went over everything like I was at an auto show and trying to sell the car. Once they left me, I went back to the weather station and chose to make a last minute adjustment to my clutch. Mean Girls 3026 Part 11 Written by Toni Trepasso Edited by Gwen Brown, with my many thanks to her.

It’s dawned on me that I haven’t really talked that much about my social life, or lack there of as the case were. It seems that since word spread that Angela, the life of every party, was kicked out of school because of me, or rather I was blamed by her friends for it, that not a single party invitation came to our door. Not that I mind, since I did my share of partying back in college. But I feel bad for Grace who is guilty by association. The thing that really bothers me, is that she doesn’t mind either. The reason I myself do not mind not going out every night and being a social butterfly is that I just managed to squeak by in college from all the partying. I always said that if I had a chance to do it all over again, I would knuckle down and work my ass off for good grades.

Like I said though, it worries me, that everyone looks at Grace, like she is just as much at fault for Angela leaving as they do me. What these kids don’t get, is that she brought it upon herself. There have been a couple of times that Grace was asked to a party by some of the guys in our classes. The only thing is, that when she asked if I could come with her, they always answered no, so her, being the good friend she is, declined the invite. It does make me feel good that someone as nice as her exists in this world and more over, she chooses to spend time with me over being with our peers.

Life can get pretty dull around our apartment. This is the leading factor in my buying the bikes. I’ve found over the years that a good ride on a motorcycle can help relieve the stress a rough day can cause. Grace has found this out as well. While I usually ride back to the apartment right after I leave the shop, she usually doesn’t get home for at least another hour or so. And the miles on her bike show it. I mean, I knew she was a gear head when we met, but I never would have pegged this cute ‘girl next door’ for a biker. And trust me, that is what she is. She just loves the wind in her face. Much to my chagrin, she ended up buying a half helmet. It is a DOT approved one, but it still offers nothing in the way of protection to her face.

Since I was fifteen years old, back in the day, I’ve never gone more then a month without a job. I guess this is why I have been pouring myself into my school work. It helps pass the time. I’ve always been the type of person that HATES not having something to do. I spent last summer suffering at home, and vowed not to do that again. I did enjoy the time I got to spend with mom, but I found that I would spend the majority of my day in the garage, working on my Cuda. Since it’s already done, this summer I’d either have to find a new project, or go crazy. I also found in talking with Grace, that she’s been going through the same thing. So I started looking around at different racing teams for a summer internship.

As luck would have it, I scored one with one of the teams that runs a nostalgia pro-mod. After a quick call to the team owner, and explaining my project to him, I ended up inviting him to the test session the school had set up for our projects. He seemed interested in an eighteen year old girl building a pro-mod from scratch. I also couldn’t help but mention that I was getting a great deal of help from my roommate. He agreed to come to the test session, and see what we both have been able to build, and he’d talk with us about the possibility of going on the road with the team this coming summer.

Both Grace’s bike and my car, were out of paint by mid semester. This gave both of us time to use the track at the school to dial in our rides. And trust me, we did a LOT of testing. I wanted to make sure we were both ready when Mr. Lang came to watch our passes as they set up a competition with the entire class. I knew some of the other students were going to be modifying street cars, and since Grace and I had built purpose built race cars, the pressure would be on us. As it turned out, the hand porting I did on my cylinder heads gave me more power then I’d seen back in the day. I’d always had an idea about what to do with a set of heads to get the most out of them, but I never had a chance to prove my theory then. Now that I did, I was going to make the most of the chance and was running numbers out of the box that were in the ball park of making the field at any nostalgia pro mod race.

The day finally came. Grace and I met Mr. Lang, or Kenny as he told us to call him at the airport. He was about my height and around the same build, so I started thinking that after I proved to him that my car was as good as anything else out there, I’d offer him a chance to make a pass or two. He picked up his rental car, and he followed the two of us on our bikes to the shop, where we gave him a quick tour.

“And these are the projects the two of us have been working on.” I told him as I pulled the cover off my Sox & Martin inspired car, and Grace pulled the cover off her Screamin’ Eagle inspired bike. He looked them over with the eye of a man who’s done this a long time, and when I saw him smile, I knew we both were impressing him with the quality of the fit and finish of the projects.

“So what shop built your frame?” he asked me. “The placement of the tubes, looks like an old G-Force chassis.”

“Well, truth be told, I downloaded a copy of G-Force’s blueprints, and built it myself.” I said beaming with pride.

“Yeah right.” he laughed. “Come on, where did you find this chassis.”

“I just told you.” I said looking concerned that he didn’t believe me. “Here, look.” I told him as I pulled out my photo album of the entire build.

He was awestruck as he looked at picture after picture of my frame taking shape. Mr. Peterson, our instructor, even snapped off a couple of pictures of me bending the tubing myself. What really impressed Kenny though were the shots Mr. Peterson took of me, the day I built my engine. This caused him to ask me if he could take a look for himself. I had Grace help me pull the front clip off the body, and he just nodded as he closely inspected my work.

“This looks like an old Billis engine.” he said looking at what I’d done with the bare block I’d purchased.

“Actually the block is from World, and the blower is one of Billis’” I told him. “They are the only ones still making a blower for this engine.”

“Yeah, I know.” he said with a sigh. “Damn shame too. But kids want to go faster then these dinosaurs will allow now a days.”

“And what am I chop liver?” I asked him with a giggle.

“No, you are both FAR from that.” he said with a smile. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you girls were born a thousand or so years too late.” If he only knew.

After giving our projects the once over, we took him to meet Samantha for dinner. I had to force myself to not giggle when his eyes bugged out of his head, upon laying eyes on the ravishing head mistress of the school. Over dinner, we talked about the school and Samantha made sure to mention to him every chance she got, that Grace and I were her brightest students. Samantha took him back to her place and put him up in one of her guest rooms for the night, since our senior class shoot out wouldn’t be until the following day. This gave her an opportunity to show Kenny a copy of my project from last year. Again he was impressed that I was able to show such a vast cross section of the evolution of drag racing. Samantha called me right after he turned in for the night, to let me know that he was very impressed by what he’d seen so far, and if our projects turned out half way decent tomorrow, we’d be shoe in’s for summer internships.

Both Grace and I got up early to get to the shop the next morning. We both wanted to make sure everything was ready to go with both our rides. We’d been at it for a couple of hours when the first members of the rest of the class started to trickle in. Mr. Peterson had arrived around the same time Grace and I had, but left shortly after, so he could do some track preparation. It was organized chaos around the shop as everyone was scrambling to make last minute adjustments to their projects. Grace and I on the other hand were simply going over the weather data for the day, to try to set up a game plan on tuneups.

Once at the track I went with what I considered a safe fuel setup, and went a bit soft on the clutch since I didn’t want to blow the tires loose on the first pass. I had just finished walking the track to check the racing groove, when Mr. Peterson started his driver’s meeting.

“Alright, this is going to be a round robin format.” he explained. “Each driver will race everyone else once. The two drivers with the highest win numbers will be in the finals. I can not stress enough that you are being graded on BOTH your on track performance and the fit and finish of your project.” he said, then directing our attention to Kenny. “Mr. Lang from Lang racing is with us today, and he, along with Ms. Hagar, and myself will be judging the concourse portion of the event. Each builder please report to your project and we’ll begin judging.”

Everyone stood nervously by their project, while the judges made their way down the line. Grace and I were near the end, so I was checking the portable weather station to double check my setup. I was so engrossed in my last minute work, that I never heard the judges arrive to my project.

“Are we interrupting anything Amy?” asked Samantha as she tapped me on the shoulder, causing me to jump from being startled a bit.

“Uh, no, I was just double checking the weather.” I told them confidently.

“So can you explain your project to us?” Mr. Peterson asked.

“Yes sir.” I started, as I placed my weather station on the seat. “This is a 1970 Fiberglass replica of a Plymouth Duster. The paint scheme I chose for this project, was inspired by one of the most dominant teams in drag racing history, Ronny Sox and Buddy Martin. The car is classified as a Pro Modified, as would have been seen back in the first part of the twenty-first century. It’s an all round tube chassis, that was designed by G-Force racing out of Tonawanda, New York. With help from my classmate Grace, I built the chassis from scratch.” I told them handing over my photo book from the build. “The engine is a World Industries Big Bore Hemi block. With Billis Racing cylinder heads that I ported and polished myself. BIR Crank, that was balanced with TRE rods and pistons. I went back to Billis for the blower, and the engine is backed by a Linco Transmission. A light weight aluminum drive shaft puts the power to a Curry rear end sitting on a G-Force designed four link rear suspension. Foose Racing wheels finish off the exterior look with a nod to the wheels used by Sox & Martin, wrapped in Goodyear rubber.” I let them look over the exterior of the car before letting Samantha sit in the driver’s seat so I could go over the interior. “A Bullit Racing seat sits within the funny car style roll cage, complete with the foam side padding on the cage to aid in case of severe tire shake. Looking forward, a complete compliment of Auto Meter gauges give me a full read as to what the car is doing. The hand brake is hooked up in redundancy with the foot brake pedal, and the clutch is hooked up to an MSD two step, to help get the car off the line at the right launch rpm.” I said allowing them to look over the inside of the car. “Are there any questions?”

They didn’t have any since I’d practiced my presentation, and went over everything like I was at an auto show and trying to sell the car. Once they left me, I went back to the weather station and chose to make a last minute adjustment to my clutch.

Mr. Peterson announced the first pairings and I got dressed in my fire suit to square off with one of the guys with a street car. I’d never seen one of the new cars run so I didn’t know what to expect, especially when it was announced that it would be a heads up race. If this was back in the day, I’d have been licking my chops at knowing I’d have an easy win, but here, I didn’t know what the other kid had, and we were the first pair up.

I fired my car, with its deafening roar and did my burnout like I’d been practicing. Once I finished, my opponent and I staged our cars. I jammed my foot down on my clutch and planted my accelerator to the floor, causing my two-step to kick in and then waited for the starting signal. Since we were running on what’s called a ‘pro tree,” it means that the three amber colored lights on the tree come on all at the same time, .400 seconds before the green light comes on. Apparently my opponent didn’t know this, and I was already past the sixty foot timing light, by the time he left the starting line. My run went smooth, although I did think I was a bit too soft on the clutch. I pulled my parachutes and I shut it down, allowing the car to coast to the turnoff, leading to the return lane. I’d already set it up with Samantha to have her use her car to pull me back to the pits, since these cars don’t really like to drive anything but really fast in a straight line for short distances. I was already out of my car, when I heard my opponent’s car’s engine cracking and not running right at all finally make it to the finish line. I just stood there shaking my head as I picked up my chutes and hooked up the tow rope to get back to the pits.

On the way back, I did get to see Grace make her run, and like I had, she obliterated her opponent. This made me feel good, since I knew my car was faster than her bike, if she was able to win that easy, then this might bode well for the two of us.

A quick look at my time slip showed me I was right in thinking I was a bit soft on my clutch setup. I kept watching the weather, and adjusting on my car each run, continuing to roll over the rest of the field, until Mr. Peterson announced that Grace and I, were going to meet up in the finals. Since we’d both gone undefeated, we only had each other left to race.. We both did our rituals like we’d been practicing all day, and the weather conditions were perfect. The sun was setting, and the track was nice and cool. So it was going to be perfect to crank of the best runs of the day.

Once the dust had settled, I did beat her, but that was to be expected, since I had four times as much power in my car as she did in her bike. That being said, she did post a time that would have put her bike, with it’s ancient technology safely in the field of a modern day race. I on the other hand, had put up a time in my previous run that was equal to the world record, so I tried to go after it in the finals, since it would be my last shot at bettering it. And I did.

Once we had the projects back at the starting line, Mr. Peterson announced that Grace and I would both be receiving A’s on our projects. He went through and told of the rest of the grades, before he turned things over to Mr. Lang.

“It’s refreshing to see the future of our sport is in such capable hands.” he started. “I’d like to announce that Miss Mangano, and Miss Smith are being offered internships with Lang racing for this summer.” he announced to the class as he turned to us. “You both will be working hand in hand, in our shop with our fabricators, and tuners, then traveling to the track for the races. I’d also like to ask if you’d be willing to race for us Amy? With your car running under the Team Lang banner.”

“Does this mean I have to paint my car green to match that Corvette you guys already run?” I asked with a giggle.

“No, but we will ask that you put our team logo on the quarter panel.” he said with a grin. “I’ve noticed it’s a bit bare back there.”

“I will on one condition.”

“What’s that?” he asked me curiously.

“Grace and Samantha both have to be on my team.” I said looking at the two of them standing next to me.

Grace hugged me tight and Samantha just stood there smiling since she had shown me in her garage that she does know how to work on her own bike. Kenny nodded and shook my hand in agreement, then welcomed all three of us to the team. I nodded to my partners in crime, all three of us ladies opened our jackets and showed him the shirts I had made up for the race, that read ‘You've been blown away by a fast GIRL racer!’ causing him to laugh.

TO BE CONTINUED...