Cars With Stripes Go Faster.

What sometimes seems a fantasy can be much more then expected.

“Vrooms, Vroom….” My hot wheel is warm in my hand as I run it up and down the pavement of the almost quiet street. It would  be completely silent, except that the two of us--my cousin and I have turned this street into our own private world of fun.  The sounds, though created from my lips are loud in my ears, practically real. Almost as real as the car is in my imagination. In my head, its silver stripes contrast the deep blue of the car’s paint perfectly. Its wheels are brand new, and the number fifty-five shines brightly on the top of the car’s hood. In my imagination, I am not pushing a tiny blue and silver hot wheel over aged pavement, I am holding onto a steering wheel and turning the corner of a race track like a pro. The fans in the stands are blurs of colors as I flash past them; the deafening roar of the engine of the cars fills my ears. The fence that lines the opposite side of the street is the fence that divides all races from the spectators, and the mass of grass and trees just past it are my adorers. Directly in the middle of the street is the racetrack. Only professional drivers are allowed here, we decide. And behind, only a few hundred feet away is home--in fantasy land that is base camp. We store out brilliant race cars there, when the day was finished but that will be a long time from now. The sun is still shining too brightly--too warmly--and this race only just begun. 

There isn’t a cloud in the sky. I am wearing this really great Pocahontas shirt and pair of now dirty jeans because I went from sitting in the dirt, to sitting on the road. My mom and my aunt are just a hundred feet away, and it seems so far. They’re perched on lawn chairs and talking so fast I know they’re on the latest neighborhood gossip. 

“I’m winning,” my cousin Noah announces to me. He says rather matter of factly, just enough that it makes me pause fantasy and shoot him a look only  a five year old can muster. Did he really think that just because he is a year older than me, he automatically wins all games? 

“Nu-uh,” I argue. “My car is in first, so ha.” 

We both know that the blue car is faster. Hello, it has stripes. His is solid red and isn’t a new as mine. How can his hot wheel even compete? This isn’t a new situation. It’s something we ever take seriously. Yesterday we had argued about which transformer was cooler, and the day before we had argued over who had better mud pies. I always liked that he didn’t always let me win at games. Being a girl has no relevance when you’re five and close cousins. At least it doesn’t between us. We’re just kids. Noah and Adelie.  It’s no surprise that I spend more time playing with action figures and hot wheels then tea cups and barbies. The two of us--he and I--we’re like to monkeys in a tree. 

The sun today day makes my hot wheel all shiny. This is no ordinary hot wheel and I am no ordinary driver. No, I am doing flips and mad curves and tricks Jeff Gordon would turn green with jealousy for.  The sound of my car’s engine echoes against my cousins own vrooms and with each turn of the toy, my fantasy becomes more real. “I can feel it.“ I can really feel the road shake under me. The roar of the engine is real in my ears. It consumes the sounds around me and roars so loud it echoes in my head; bouncing off the walls of my mind, but my grin only grows wider as I push that piece of plastic and wheels over the road in front of me.

 It’s so real, I keep thinking. So real. It’s so real, in fact--too real that even my young mind knows something is not right. It was like I was stuck in invisible jello. My head turns at that precise moment in time--just slightly to the left--enough to catch the view of a large blue truck growing bigger and bigger. This is no fantasy. Not even my deepest fantasy can etched such perfectly detailed scratches along the front bumper of the blue truck as it roars straight towards the two of us. It moves with no intention of stopping. Wide eyes suggest so much more fear that our tiny bodies let on, yet we do not move. We are frozen statues, there on that street. Perfectly frozen, so precise and unmovable for those seconds that we may be be carved out of stone…then…as if an invisible hand is pushing the play button on a vcr---everything now lurches forward and my cousin and I fly backwards to lie down. Its almost funny. Neither one of us make a sound. Not a peep. He just pulls my hand and I follow him as we both lay in the street and brace ourselves. There are three possibilities. One, this truck will stop. Two, it will go right over us. Or three, we will die. 

 I can’t quite understand what is going through my mind in those few seconds. My body acts on its own, but my head is blank of any thought. We watch, my cousin and I, as the blur that is the black underside of the truck goes over us and then past us, eventually racing down the street like we don’t even exist. 

Author's Note

Okay, so a few things. The amount I wrote was the max I was allowed to make it, otherwise it would have been much, much longer. Its supposed to be read as a voice over on a very short digital story. Also, it was previously written in past tense and my teacher asked me to modify it to present tense, and also to adjust it closer to the point of view of a five year old. That includes description and wording, so I had to take out a lot of complex sentences and bigger words. Let me know what you think, as it was written for a grade and to be presented on video. Also, tell me if you think I did an okay job of staying in the moment. I felt like some sentences were good, but took me out of the moment and analyzed the situation instead of experiencing it.

Lastly, these are true events that happened to my cousin and I when we were five.

Reviews

[Haunzwürthe]

Don't you just hate boundaries? I think it may take it up a notch if you wrote it how you originally intended to. I didn't get the feeling like I was five either because I have yet to grow up, or I didn't think about what I sounded like when I was five. I think writing in the present tense is much harder than past and you did a good job of not falling into the pit of "I'm doing this, I'm doing that." Either way, the imagery is very good and you tell your perspective very well. Besides, who doesn't like Hot Wheels?