19. Raleigh

Raleigh smelt rubber. She shook her too-large helmet into place and pulled on the chinstrap to make it fit better. The strap pinched and the helmet was still loose, but she figured that was as good as it would get. Eyes forward, she gripped the wheel, counted to three, and pressed the pedal to the floor. Nothing.
"Hey!" The track operator didn't hear her. "Hey!"
"Cool it," he said, running blackened fingers through his ear-length hair. Raleigh thought she caught sight of a tattoo on his forearm.
She looked down the track and wrinkled her nose. The operator waved down someone else's kart and directed them into the pit, then walked over to where Raleigh waited.
"Take it easy out there, willya?" he half-mumbled as he did something to the engine. "Y'r keyed up a bit much."
The engine sputtered to life. Raleigh didn't know what he meant; she wasn't even sure what he'd said. If he said anything else as he stepped aside, she didn't hear it. Someone roared past and yelled, laughing at her. She saw his face, barely: it was Jason Rousseaux, a boy she knew from school. She started after him, but he was a long way ahead. "Take it easy, huh?" she thought. "I'll show you taking it easy."
The kart rocked around the turn and came wide out of it, making Raleigh lean heftily with the momentum. She took a hand from the wheel to wipe sweat from her eyes. Her hand was sweaty too. Focusing on the back of Jason's kart, she saw she was going a little faster on the straightaways. She was catching up, so she drove harder.
"Nice moves!" she shouted above the engines, bringing her kart alongside Jason's after four laps. He looked at her, then back at the road, then back at her. He said something.
"What?" Raleigh yelled. He said it louder and she still couldn't make out the words. Maybe they'd talk when the racing was done, she thought, get a soda at the shop by the side of the track and rehash some of the turns. Then he brought his kart in tightly, and Raleigh tried to get nearer to him so she could hear better. She steered carefully and kept her eyes on the tires, trying to get them close without touching.
He started to yell, and then they were both spinning and bumping as the karts left the road. Grass flew up in rooster-tails from the tires. When they came to a halt, he was in front of her, facing away. She fumbled with her chinstrap and called his name. His engine growled, and the kart did not move. The tires spun. A spray of dirt stung Raleigh's face.

4. Russel

Russel was small by any measure of a man except personality. Whether the fault of genetics or just a lean diet during his youth, he'd never grown taller than five foot one, or heavier than one hundred twenty five pounds. He didn't blame anyone for his being short. That was just facts. For feeling small, though, he blamed the whole world.

When he happened upon the bike at an automotive trade show, Russel knew he had to have it. Russ wasn't much of an enginehead -- he went to the trade show mostly just to look and to try a few pick-up lines on booth girls, worth the price of admission in his mind -- but the bike looked exactly what he'd waited his life for. The cowling was sleek, sharp in places like an ancient weapon, contoured exactly as a body lying supine waiting for his to fill the space on top and complete them both. It promised to dissolve him. "Lethal," he mouthed, tracing the shape of the bike with a hand an inch above its sacred surface. He spread a down payment over two credit cards and a post-dated check.

He fell in love with the anonymity of the helmet, relished the impunity with which he snaked around slower vehicles. He could thread a needle at one hundred miles per. Nothing could touch him. Even the expensive sports cars were clumsy by comparison. They were all too big.

A pickup truck with a broken tailgate got the better of Russ as he tried to blaze past it. When it left him behind, the bike sped on riderless for over three hundred yards, as though it had never really needed him after all.