Cogito Ergo Zoom

We cruised past the closed gas station lot with a glut of hot cars parked on it. Tim shifted his 1967 Pontiac GTO down to second gear and rode the tach right up to maybe five thousand rpm, the 400-cubic-inch engine roaring and snarling like a chained dragon. My Hemi Charger R/T added to the mechanical harmony. As we wailed away in second gear, two cars rolled out into the darkness behind us. The headlights in our mirrors rocketed up Woodward like anti-aircraft missiles turning toward enemy planes.

We signaled into a wide Woodward crossover to the southbound side at Bassett Street. A wildly modified ’65 Buick Riviera rolled in next to Tim, and a crappy ’62 Ford Galaxie stopped beside my Charger. The Galaxie was not a serious street racer, just a poseur. He couldn’t or didn’t want to spend the money it took to be serious. That’s actually a thing in racing.

Speed costs money. How fast can you afford to go?

The timeless jet-black Riviera was box stock on the outside, but in its engine bay growled a throaty, modified V-8 with the kind of spiteful intent never envisioned by Buick engineers. The owner had spent a lot of money on it, and that did not work in our favor.

We shut down all four cars and stepped out into the street, like gunslingers.

“Hey,” the tubby kid from the Riv said. “You guys lookin’ to see what those things can do out here?” He stood with arms crossed, but it only accentuated his thick midsection and made him look defensive.

Advantage ours.

“We know what our cars will do,” Tim said evenly. “We wanna know what yours will do—if you have the balls.”

The Riviera kid laughed like he’d been challenged this way before, and had sent the annihilated challengers home strapped to the hoods of their cars, like trophies of war.

“Yeah man, I got the balls. You got any money?”

Tim reached into his back pocket and withdrew an envelope thick with fifties.

“Well, all right,” the Ford kid said eagerly. He had a gap-toothed grin and an oily waterfall hairstyle, that sort of surf-wave coming over the front and slicked back on the sides. We looked at him like he was a turd—Not talkin’ to you, jerk.

“You got any money, dude?” Tim demanded. The Riv kid reached into the left front pocket of his blue jeans and pulled out a roll of cash, fanning it back and forth in the air. It looked to be all hundred-dollar bills. A shit-ton of them.

“Asshole, I got the money. You got the courage to go with your daddy’s allowance?”

Tim didn’t take the bait.

“Here’s the deal,” Tim said, deadpan. “One grand, one run, no bullshit. Winner-winner-chicken-dinner. We line up over there at Hadsell Drive and race down Woodward to South Berkshire. That’s a bit more than a quarter mile, but I need less than that to put your shit on the fuckin’ trailer. The first car—the first car—to cross South Berkshire is the winner. Agreed?”

Damn, I thought. Who the hell are you, and what have you done with my college-prep pal, Tim?

“Who holds the money?” the Riv kid snarled. He was trying to sound tough now but it just came off as squeaky indignation. “Somebody needs to hold the money.”

Tim laughed an evil laugh.

“Well, it ain’t gonna be you, and this idiot”—he pointed to the Ford driver—“has an IQ about two points above plant life, so he’s out. We will hold the money.” He gestured to the Ford boy again. “Your little girlfriend here can ride with my friend and the cash, if that blows your skirt up. I get to South Berkshire first, we keep the cash. If you get there first, you get paid. But you are losing tonight, my friend. Bad. Your friends will still be laughing at your ass next September when you go back to do your junior year of vocational school over again.”

“Deal,” the Riv kid said. Tim reached out to shake hands on it and the kid slapped it away. “Fuck your handshake, asshole. Let’s race.” He gave me his cash, got back in his Riviera and burned rubber out onto Woodward.

Tim turned to face me.

“Oooooh,” he stage-whispered, “must be a tough guy.” He smiled with confidence, gave me a thumbs up, and went to his car.

Tim lined up next to the hulking Riviera. When the engines sounded like they were about to explode, I blipped my headlights once and they launched.

A smoky blue curtain of shrieks and melted rubber enveloped them, and then the black Riviera lunged forward like it came off the catapult of an aircraft carrier.

A few seconds later, I saw the flashing red lights of two police cars reflecting off the pine trees in the median between north and south Woodward.

Tim was casually driving twenty-five miles per hour in the center lane when I caught up with him. The Riviera was stopped and bracketed front and rear by two Birmingham police cars, and officers who looked angry even in the poor light.

When our cars rolled past him, the kid glared at us something fierce and Tim flipped him the bird. Seconds later, the GTO indeed was the first car to cross the finish line at South Berkshire. We pulled into the Mobil gas station about a block farther on.

“You can get out here,” I said to the Ford kid sitting next to me. “First car won. You can walk back to your little buddy. He’ll be a few minutes yet.” He got out and looked up Woodward to the traffic stop, irritated and bewildered.

We drove a few miles over to our eastside hangout. I got out of my Charger and into the passenger seat of Tim’s GTO, grabbed his right arm in two hands and shook it forcefully.

“What just happened?!”

He chuckled. “‘Situational awareness.’ I saw those cops lurking on that side street, and goaded that Riviera kid into a big-dollar race knowing he couldn’t resist the challenge. We launched hard, but I shut down.”

I looked at my mastermind friend in frank admiration.

“Then, as you saw, I was the first car to cross South Berkshire. We win. Cogito ergo zoom.”

Cogito ergo sum is a Descartes phrase generally translated into English as “I think, therefore I am.” Cogito ergo zoom was an axiom by legendary advertising and car magazine editor David E. Davis.

It means, “I think, therefore I go fast.”

Written by: Daniel Charles Ross
Photograph by: Daniel Vidal

Alone

I never want to die alone, but it seems that’s my fate.

My gramma was found next to her dried up minestrone soup, rotting for three days. Choked on a piece of bread. I guess it was sad and all, but then who’d want to grow old like that anyway and be so withered?

One spring day, Ma overdosed outside a crack house downtown, age 29. It was shortly after Dad blew town, and I went to juvie. I never could resist a shiny red car. Ma was younger, I suppose, and definitely not forgotten, at least by me. But she had her urgent need to sneak out, leaving her with only an empty needle beside her when she kicked it.

Dying alone scares me more than taking my final driving test.

Every spring night, I’m called out to scour the streets freshly lined with fast-food bags from a healthy gale off the Flatirons. Something about that night air and my restless fingers are what tug at me. I become more alert once the heat from the Colorado sun seeps out of the tar roads and the crimson tail lights brighten my night. But I don’t want to be alone.

Tonight, I "borrow" my foster parents’ SUV. Big deal, right? It’s not like they’ll miss the car much, and they definitely won’t notice I’m gone. They’re those “look how generous we are” types who take in “special needs” kids, like me. They feel so bad for the way I was raised that they always forgive me. They’ll definitely forgive me tonight.

Against a beer-soaked bar’s edge, I make two new friends, a couple. Turns out these two lovebirds are college kids. Samantha smells like the spring tulips along the Pearl Street Mall. I didn’t catch the guy’s name. Started with a ‘ch’ sound. The music in the bar is thrumming too loud to hear the rest. When they introduce themselves and their majors, I pretend like I’m someone too, someone they want to know, someone with money and a car. And then, just like nothing’s wrong, we’re friends. They’re so cute together. I want to steal their love and keep it with me always.

They ride around town with me. I put on a great act of not being the teenager I am. We stop at a friend of Chance or Chase or Chad, or whatever. A fraternity party is in full swing, mostly on the perfectly manicured lawn and partially on the roof. Samantha and the C-word guy leave to grab drinks. I hang back like I fit in. My real self reminds me who I am as soon as they leave me alone with a pretty beefy-looking dude who asks my major. I don’t belong here. I’d never belong here. I panic until my friends return with a glowing drink in a martini cup and a shot glass. Once I have that little high from the smaller cup, I sway through the party and pretend I’m someone again. I keep the high going a little by grabbing drinks from the guy dressed in just boxers and a tie who’s cruising around with a serving tray.

I suppose I shouldn’t have had that last shooter. My stomach flips after I pass some guy, who hasn't moved from the juniper bush since barfing. But I can’t let my friends see that I can’t handle the liquor. It might give me away, and I need them.

Samantha asks me for the car keys. She hasn’t drank a drop, she claims. If she has been drinking, she’s a great actress. I can’t think straight, but the hum of the busiest roads aren’t far from Delta Chi and they call to me.

“Nope,” I say, dangling the diamanté-studded key ring just inches from her nose, yanking them back.

The night air cools, and my skin craves rain drops. A spring mountain storm makes every drive a little more fun, a little more dangerous and thrilling. But there are only stars above.

The guy, whose name I now desperately wish I could remember, says I need to walk a line to prove myself. Like I’d prove to him how buzzed I was. There was only one thing I could focus on at the moment, and that was the cherry paint of the foster’s Range Rover.

"Dude, my car. Don’t you trust me?“

“Yeah, come on!” Samantha giggles and hops in back.

After giving me a once-over, he bumps my shoulder and I catch the light, musky smell he applied earlier tonight, now covered over with eau-de-beer. Then, instead of a further fight, he climbs in the back next to Samantha.

He says, "Then let's get this over with. All right?”

I nod. We definitely will be all right. What’s that saying about groups of three? They’re a charm?

The engine grinds a little as I over turn the stupid key. Samantha flirts with the C-word guy in the back. Neither notices anything might be wrong. The tail lights of the car in front of me reflect a feverish glow as I turn on the headlights. I’m so giddy.

All is perfect with the world I realize as I screech out past the neon bar lights where we’d met. We’re out among the cars on Broadway. The smell of newness breezes through the window I’ve opened a crack. These two people, here in this car, are the best friends I’ve ever had, I think. They so trust me.

I cruise faster toward the crossroads of Broadway and Baseline. The green light switches to a warning yellow. I slalom around the cars that slow down and accelerate toward the intersection, light now a glaring red. I’ve finally found two people who can stand me enough to spend more than a few minutes with me, and I definitely don’t want to die alone.

Written by: Leni Checkas

Photograph by: Skyler Smith

The Story of Everything

                                                           Continued from West and This is It

The pump clunked. Dena fought the urge to top off the gas in the rental car. The nozzle trigger went slack in her hand.

The tank can overflow if you do that. Trust the machine to know what you need. It's not the apocalypse, or anything. You can always fill up again.

That's what her dad had said when she was sixteen, before he got sick. He’d taught her to drive, pump gas, check the oil, change a tire. Everything you’ll need to know, he’d said.

But he didn’t know everything. Dena gave the trigger one extra squeeze. She’d learned there was a lot of variety when it came to apocalypses.

On the other side of the gas station parking lot, in front of the KFC-Taco Bell hybrid, Chris paced with his phone pressed to his ear. Even from a distance, Dena could spot the big-eyed, scrunchy-eyebrowed look of irritation he always wore when he spoke to his father. Dena swiped Chris's debit card. She punched in the PIN--1991. The year Chris was born.

What an idiot.

Chris stomped towards Dena, his rage undercut by the squeak of his ratty Chuck Taylors.

"Arghghghgh."

"What did he say?"

"He makes me insane, I swear."

"Did you tell him the new RV fuel pump's going to be way cheaper than paying for this rental car all the way back?"

"Yeah. He knows. He's going to help us out."

"Then why are you all arghghgh?"

"It's just like--now we owe him. He even said so. 'I've invested in your journey, and I want to see you make something of it.' Fuuuuuuck," Chris said, splaying his body over the hood of the rented Ford Fiesta.

Dena’s stomach gave an angry twist. The tornado of emotional options set its whirring path straight for Dena's gut. She could say: At least you have a father. She could say: I realize that my father dying of cancer does not make your relationship with your father any less real or difficult. She could say: Your dad’s right. What the fuck are we doing with our lives?

Instead she said:

"I think we should get some Kentucky-Fried-Tacos now."

Dena had met Chris’s father a few months before when he invited them to dinner. Chris had spent the whole day brainstorming ways they could get out of it and complaining about his father’s expectations.

“What, are you afraid he won’t like me?” Dena asked as they pulled up in his father’s driveway.

"No. It’s not that. But Dad’s going to want the story of everything. Of how we met. Our first date. That kind of crap."

"Seriously?"

"Just--it's important to him. So we're going to say we met on the quad and then I asked you out on a coffee date to Blackbird, okay?"

Dena and Chris had not met on the quad. They had met when Dena's usual drug hookup was low on supply, and he'd referred her to Chris. She grumbled at the inconvenience of it--Chris lived on the other side of town--but she'd spent the afternoon at her dad's chemo appointment, and she just needed to bliss out in her dorm room and stop feeling things.

And there was Chris. He believed in try-before-you-buy. He told her she was beautiful and intriguing. She told him about the shit day she'd had. He didn't try to fix her. He didn't say it would all be okay. He just said, "I think you should maybe stay here," so she did. And then she never really left.

So when they rang the doorbell and Chris's father answered, a salt-and-pepper Chris with nicer clothes, she'd gone with the story.

"He bought me a cup of tea and a muffin, and we just connected."

Chris's father had smiled. He’d poured more wine and told endearing Chris-as-a-toddler tales that involved Chris trying to flush foreign objects down the toilet or dumping an entire bag of flour onto the kitchen floor to make snow angels. He’d told his own stories: backpacking in Europe. Dropping out of school and getting really lucky in the tech boom. Healing from his divorce from Chris’s mom by getting into meditation and bluegrass music.

As Dena bit into her crunchwrap supreme, she decided that his dad’s "make something of the journey" spiel was just more of the same. The importance of the narrative. The story of how we met, the story of how we fell in love, the story of how we drove into the unknown and changed our lives.

But that’s not how our generation does it, Dena thought. "Going steady" begat "dating" begat "going out" begat "talking," and now most of the relationships Dena knew had been formed through a few flirtatious text messages, then hanging out until both parties realized accidental exclusivity had set in. And, so far, the other stories in her life had been just as haphazard.

Chris was three-quarters of the way through a bowl of potatoes layered with Kentucky fried chicken, corn, cheese, and gravy. He stopped to blow a straw paper at her.

Some rules stayed the same through the generations, though: when a person supports you through the death of your father, through the funeral, through sitting on the floor with a lockbox of insurance papers way beyond your comprehension level, that person gets to stay.

"Dude, I think this chicken-bowl-of-death was supposed to come with a cookie," Chris said.

“Short-shifted by the man!” Dena said.

Her phone buzzed.

R we ordering the part, or nah?

“Should I tell Jennifer yes, then?” she asked Chris.

“Word,” he said. “Let’s do it. Long live the Chinook. My dad owns us either way.”

“Trust the machine to know what you need,” Dena murmured.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Go get your cookie. Actually, make it two.”

Yup, order it, she texted Jennifer. She watched Chris approach the counter, then give his place in line to a woman with three little kids. His t-shirt was tucked into his ironic Pokemon-print boxers on one side. He talked to the cashier for a moment, then turned around and gave Dena a double thumbs up.

Long live everything. She gave a thumbs-up back.


Written by: Dot Dannenberg
Photograph by: Rob Gregory

Blue Car

Note: the author would like to dedicate this story to his aunt and uncle, Donna and Donald Creer.

It was the bane of Carl’s existence. It kept him up at night, and when he finally fell asleep, it haunted his dreams. It mocked him. It confused him. It sparked his curiosity and stole his heart.

That. Blue. Car.

Carl’s first memory was of him scaling a chair, getting on the tips of his toes, and looking at it through the kitchen window. Not once did anyone get inside, wash it, or pay it any mind. It drove him nuts.

Through the years he’d grown familiar with the unfamiliar car. He knew how long it was: 159 inches. He knew its exact color: Pantone 14-4481. He knew how the sun made the hubcaps shine like diamonds. But most of all, he knew nothing.

That was going to change tonight.

“I’m going to dinner with some of my girlfriends tonight, Carl. Do you think you’ll be fine by yourself for a couple of hours?” asked his mom.

Carl tried to hide his excitement as he coolly nodded his head. He’d been begging his mom to let him stay at home alone for a few months, and his perseverance had finally paid off. Since the divorce, she didn’t get out much anymore. To Carl, it seemed like she was always at work or at home – and he was right.

With his mom out of the house, Carl had the opportunity to stake out the blue car for longer than he ever had before. When he was younger, he used to sneak into the kitchen late at night to see what the car was up to. One time, his mom walked in on him and immediately burst into tears. He misses his dad so much that he’s looking for him out the window, she thought.

Being older and wiser, Carl was better at sneaking out of his room at night, but with one eye on the car and the other on his mom’s bedroom door, it was too stressful. Besides, other than the car, the only constant in Carl’s life was his relationship with his mom, and he didn’t want to risk making her cry again.

Carl’s mom paced the apartment. She was a tornado carrying debris of excitement, worry and anxiety.

“Don’t open the door for anyone, don’t leave the apartment and don’t stay up late watching the fuzzy channel,” she told him before she kissed him on the forehead and walked out the door. Carl wiped away the kiss residue as soon as he heard the locks click. He usually didn’t mind a good forehead kiss, but this one was a weird mix of sweat and lipstick.

He set off to gather materials.

Binoculars? Check.

Lukewarm liter of Mountain Dew? Check.

Fruity Pebbles? Check.

Go time.

--9:12 PM--

Other than witnessing someone step in the dog poop Mr. Jenkins forgot to pick up, there wasn’t anything exciting for Carl to report.

--10:08 PM--

Having so much Mountain Dew on hand proved to be a bad idea. This was never more apparent as Carl watched his pee stream create bubble islands inside the toilet bowl.

--10:44 PM--

Carl shoveled another handful of cereal into his mouth. He knew his time was running out. His mom could walk through the door at any second. He dug into the cereal box hoping to find a toy inside. The noise managed to drown out the sound of a car starting, but it couldn’t muffle the screeching tires that followed.

Carl’s head popped up just in time to see a blur head down the street. He jolted out of his chair and clumsily watched the blue car turn right on Clark St. through the wrong end of his binoculars.

“Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god-Oh-my-god!” was all he could manage to say. 

To keep up with his mind, he began to pace like his mom. The decision to chase after the car on his bike was easy once he came to terms with what would happen if his mom came home and didn’t find him. 

Just in case, he rushed into his room, balled up some clothes, and put them

under the covers to make it look like he was sleeping. If his mom was preoccupied enough to think Carl was three feet tall with a lopsided head, it just might work. He downed the rest of his Mountain Dew and took off. 

He felt boundless as he sped down Clark St. He had never been this close to solving the mystery of the blue car. He had never felt this free. The cold night air stung his eyes as he scanned the street. He was so focused, so excited, so willing to do whatever it took, that he didn’t mind the pee running down his leg and onto his bike pedals. The Mountain Dew had gotten him this far; the rest was up to him.

He stopped to rest.

He asked himself half-jokingly, “If I were a mysterious blue car, where would I go?”

A familiar noise nudged at his ear, shaking him from his personal interrogation. It was something stronger than a giggle but not quite a laugh. He stood stiff, hoping to hear it again. Then, to his right, he heard it. This time, he knew exactly what it was.

“Mom?” he whispered to himself.

Carl looked across the street and spotted her draped in the arms of some man he’d never seen before. He pulled her close and they began to kiss.

“Mom?!”

This time he screamed it. She jumped back from the man and searched for Carl. She saw him across the street. His eyes were full of tears. His shirt was drenched in sweat. And his shorts were stained with pee.

His mom took a step, but before she could utter a word, he hopped back on his bike. A cocktail of emotions surged through his body as he sped off. He had chased after a mystery only to stumble upon another, more baffling one. He pedaled faster, riding off to nowhere in particular.




Photograph by: Jaemin Riley
Written by: Justin Grady