Andes’ pov of jess:

I can’t eve believe she’s allowed to keep racing.  I mean, she flat outche3ated at nationals to even make it to Juniors.  I don’t buy her story that that the blonde chick is the one who cheated—she and Danny are friends so she and Steph must’ve been in it together.  And if that’s the only way Briggs can beat us, then she pretty lame and should go back to regionals.

Girls shouldn’t try and race guys anyway.  They’re just not as good as we are.  Driving takes strength—and girls aren’t as strong as guys.  And girls don’t belong here.  This is a man’s sport and a man’s world and we don’t need women coming in and messing it all up.  They think they’re all fe3minist and all equal to us, but they’re not.  Men are better racers and it shows—so the women should just stay on the sidelines and cheer for us and look pretty.

Like Tracy. She thought she could race, back when I was in regionals.  And she got lucky, won a few races, podium for a few.  But always when someone else spun out or crashed. And I can’t count the times she wrecked and took out some of us in the process.  Geez if the girl can’t figure out how to stay on the track or how to turn left all the time, then she should just park it and quit.

But she didn’t know how to quit or when to quit. She kept at it, kept pushing.  And then there was that race in California.  I was winning, I was way out front and I was gonna take the checkered flag—and it was huge for me. Would’ve been my first Regionals win there and would’ve put me out front in the points.  But Tracy’s driving like an old lady, way at the back of the pack—and she’s trying to pass people, but she’s too lousy a driver to pull it off.  And then she gets hit passing a lapped car and loses it=-- and plows right into me.  Shit. I tried to avoid to, to steer around, No luck. She took me out with her and I lost my shot at winning the championship that year.  I broke my leg and my summer was over. Because of a dumb girl who thought she could run with the rest of us. 

She earned her lesson though.  The following week, she crashed big and she never drove again after that hell of it was, she also took out Reid—sent him into the wall with.  Their cars caught fire and he got hurt petty bad. So she trashed her career and his and ruined my summer.

I hate racing with girls. They just can’t keep up, can’t compete.  They don’t have that drive or competitive edge.  They’re all about feelings and friendship and making nice.  There’s no room for nice in racing.  It’s every man for himself out there.  You lift, you get all weepy or worried-d- and you lose.  Period.  No way around that.

Does it matter that her name is Briggs?  Yeah it does, I don’t even think she’d have got this far if it wasn’t.  her old man’s a pretty good driver, too.  But the whole family races dirty.  They don’t exactly cheat, but they take it to the edge and seems like every time my uncle and Briggs’ dad got together out there, Uncle Bryan took the worst of it.   They were always banging it6 out, always racing each other hard.  I can respect hard racing, but Briggs doesn’t know the meaning of the word.  Only way she got this far is by cheating—and by her old man pulling strings for her if her name wasn’t Briggs, she wouldn’t even be here.

And then she goes and bangs into Steve and he dies.  I can’t even deal with that; Steve was a good guy—we’ve been racing each other for a couple years.  He’s a guy I respect. Stand up guy, always in the thick of things, always running hard as he can, always trying to win. Tough to think he won’t ever be out there again.  And it’s Briggs’ fault. If she was any good as a racer, she wouldn’t have hit him and he’d still be with us.  But she took him out and now he’s gone. Damn her. Shows you w2hat happens when girls try to do things they’re not supposed to do.