>... .< NEW MISSION ALERT!>

‘Racetrack Reconnaissance!’

07:30 am - 1 day to Race Day

Blake Autumn, and Stevie Quentin J R Jr. the 14th

South Pigeonburg, Tennessee. . . //// / / / /

“I feel stupid.”

Stevie turns around annoyed by my bitter tone, “Whaddya mean dude?! We look badass!”

I look down at my grassy, dark green legs, as we plod through the piles of damp fall leaves. The ghillie suits don’t even match the autumn scenery around us, so we look like two green dots walking through a brightly colored fall forest.

“More like dumbasses.” I mutter under my breath.

Despite looking like an idiot, this ghillie suit does a decent job at keeping me warm, which is nice. The sun above us may be bright, accentuating the orange-colored trees around us, but it’s still the cold Pigeonburg from when I was younger. Without these suits, I’d be freezing in my thin hoodie and pants. I can’t say the same for my feet though. It rained last night, so trudging around the muddy backwoods has already soaked my feet to a chilling dampness.

As I follow Stevie, he turns around to face me while still walking backwards. “We’ve got a short walk, before we reach the tree line next to where the track would be. Once we get there, it’s very important we don’t do anything to draw attention to us. We don’t got the advantage of the dark, so we gotta make sure we don’t get caught.”

I nod, somewhat paying attention, “Sounds good Stevie.”

As we march on, I find myself rapidly blinking. I shake my head, sighing. Not sleeping for a whole night does wonders for disabling basic motor function.

Here I am, learning the hard way.

I get an optimistic feeling inside though. Now that Stevie is here, I feel like I can confide in him about my whole Tia situation.

“Oh! Stevie, I need to talk to you about something.” I eagerly say. He turns back around, intrigued.

“What’s up?”

“Well, last night me and Tia ate dinner together. Oh, and we watched anime again.”

His response is delayed, as we step over a log.

“Sounds like you guys had a night.” he says encouragingly.

“Yeah. I ju-...”

Stevie stops me, aggressively shushing me as he pulls us to the ground. I slip, falling. I struggle not to groan.

I haven’t gotten to the part I needed to talk about, and on top of that I’m now soaked in mud.

“Look…” Stevie whispers, pointing in front of us. It’s literally a pile of dirt. A long, tall, mound of dirt laying across the field in front of us. We’ve entered the clearing where the racetrack used to reside, but I don’t remember the curve being so… tall.

“Do you know what this means?” he asks bewildered.

“What? Stevie, I ne-”

“Let’s get a closer look.” he says, cutting me off once more, as he starts sneaking forward. I roll my eyes in contempt, before following behind. My face has turned red with an embarrassed frustration. I need to talk to Stevie, and he isn’t listening.

I begin making my way up the steep incline of the hill, struggling to catch up to Stevie at the top. My irritation rises the higher I get up this stupid mound. Crawling with this ghillie suit on makes me feel like a damn Navy Seal.

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As I reach the spot next to Stevie, I get a glimpse of the site in front of us.

What was once a flat clearing of balding grass, and rickety bleachers has been turned into a professional looking racetrack. The long dirt circle spans out over what feels like a football field’s length, and it’s even wide enough to accommodate a pitstop in the middle. It must be two, three times as big as what Pigeonburg Speedway used to be. The sun above bounces off the numerous puddles of mud spread across the dirt.

We’re stood atop one of the two turns, which have been sculpted into massive banks. To the right of us, rest a large set of bleachers, as well as a small building where a group of Cloaks seem to be congregated. Me and Stevie look on from our perch.

Stevie adjusts his goggles, looking out over the bank.

"Look at how they fixed her Blake, doesn’t she look so pretty."

I tug Stevie’s ghillie, trying to get his attention again.

"Hey, I wasn’t done talking earlier.”

“Affirmative, I’m listening, just lemme take some notes." Stevie whispers as he whips out a small note pad, and begins sneaking around, jotting notes.

Unconvinced, I follow him, continuing anyway.

“So last night, me and Tia were sitting together on the couch, eating food, watching some TV right? At that moment, I got really happy, and I was like: “Man, doesn’t this take you back to our high school years Tia? Good times right?”

Tia gave me a weird look, before looking down at her empty to-go box. She didn’t say a word, but she looked frustrated about something.

“Mhm, wait, something don’t feel right here…”

See that’s what I was thinking, so I asked her what was wrong, and Tia got really annoyed, and was like: "High school wasn't all fun and rainbows y'know."

I didn’t really know how to react, so I tried to lighten the mood.

"I mean, yeah I know right? Remember Ms. Sutton's math class?"

And Tia looked away, clearly upset about something, "You just don't get it do you."

After that it got really quiet, like, awkward-silence quiet. At this point, I'm barely paying attention to the show, trying to figure out what’s wrong. After a few more minutes, Tia gets up and starts going to bed.

“No, no this isn’t good at all.” Stevie mutters in disbelief, jotting something down.

I got really confused at her attitude, so I stopped her. She looked over and I told her: “Tia, if you need to talk, I’m here for you.”

Well, she looked away, and just shook her head, as if she were angry. before walking into her room.

"I'm just not sure why she's being so cold. What do you think?" I question, looking at him.

"I think this is ridiculous," he mutters under his breath, "I mean of all the things, they had to take that off the menu?"

"What are you talking about?" I ask annoyed.

"They took hotdogs off of the menu, that's just disrespectful."

Looking in front of us, I see the menu for the Pigeonburg Speedway concessions. I dart my eyes around in a moment of realization. I was so enveloped in my story, I didn't realize we'd snuck all the way across the huge racetrack, ending up right at the concessions stand.

"Gotta be honest, everything was goin' fine until I saw this. You can't just get rid of the Speedway hot dog like that." Stevie shakes his head, clicking his tongue in disapproval as he begins jotting something down. I look down, seeing that his notepad is filled to the brim.

"Stevie, have you even been listening?!' I shout, calling him out.

“Hm?" He looks up at me, his eyes lighting up in clarity, "Oh sorry Blake, what's up?"

Baffled, I look away.

"I've been trying to talk to you, and you're just ignoring me."

"Blake, I don't know if you've noticed but we are in the middle of an important mission here. You think your little Tia situation can wait until we get back to base?"

"Oh my God," I face palm, "You've got to be kidding me!" I shout.

Stevie presses his index finger to my lips, shushing me.

"We are on a stealth mission you idiot. You know, behind enemy lines? We have to be quiet, or we'll get caught." Stevie whispers, a certain aggression seems to linger in his voice for a moment.

"Hey!"

Me and Stevie look to our right and see a large group of Cloaks staring at us, Mitch in the middle. There's about three seconds of awkward silence until Stevie belts out a guttural, "Retreat!" before booking it. I follow his lead, as we head for the treeline. I hear the incoherent shouting of Cloaks behind us, which only causes me to run faster. I feel adrenaline spiking my veins, the fear of getting caught only causing me to pick up my pace.

As we enter the treeline, I hear the faint voice of Mitch shouting, but I can't make out what he says. I turn my head around, giving one quick glance before continuing on.

I'm not sure why, but I'm thanking God that the Cloaks didn't follow us this far into the woods.

In fact, they never chased us at all.