Drift Read online

  Text copyright © 2013 by Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. International copyright secured. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc., except for the inclusion of brief quotations in an acknowledged review.

  Darby Creek

  A division of Lerner Publishing Group, Inc.

  241 First Avenue North

  Minneapolis, MN 55401 U.S.A.

  Website address: www.lernerbooks.com

  The images in this book are used with the permisison of:

  Cover and interior photograph © Maxmitzu/Dreamstime.com.

  Main body text set in Janson Text LT Std 12/17.

  Typeface provided by Linotype AG.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Jones, Patrick, 1961–

  Drift : Nissan Skyline / by Patrick Jones.

  pages cm. — (Turbocharged)

  Summary: “New kid comes to town. Things get off to a rough start with the local teenage tuners. His only shot at acceptance is beating the local top dog (who buys his cars rather than builds them) at a drifting showdown on a legendary local road” — Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978–1–4677–1242–2 (lib. bdg. : alk. paper)

  ISBN 978–1–4677–1667–3 (eBook)

  [1. Drifting (Motorsport)—Fiction. 2. Muscle cars—Fiction.

  3. Automobile racing—Fiction. 4. Racially mixed people—Fiction.]

  I. Title.

  PZ7.J7242Dr 2013

  [Fic]—dc23

  2013000977

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 – BP – 7/15/13

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-1667-3 (pdf)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-7102-3 (ePub)

  eISBN: 978-1-4677-3355-7 (mobi)

  THANKS TO BARRY O. AND WILLARD R. FOR A GREAT RACE

  Kekoa Pahinui tried not to cry as his mom passed through security at Hilo International Airport. She was on her way to the mainland to live with some guy named Ted she met online. Kekoa would live with his biodad’s mom, his kupuna wahine, in Honolulu. He was moving from the big island to the big city.

  Kekoa had been an outcast in Hilo as a half-black, half-Hawaiian kid. He couldn’t imagine how he would’ve been treated in Ted’s snow-white home of Bath, Maine. Instead, Kekoa was going to stay in Hawaii and finish his senior year. He and his mom would figure out the rest in June.

  “You okay?” someone asked as Kekoa walked toward the airport parking lot.

  “I’m fine,” Kekoa mumbled, head down.

  That’s how he lived his life: head down. It hadn’t helped him at his old school. Maybe because of his funny name or his biracial background, he was a bully magnet. Although he could’ve turned himself into an athlete or a popular kid if he had tried hard enough, some older friends from his block had shown Kekoa something far superior to sports or school success: drifting.

  As he drove his light blue Nissan Skyline 350 toward the booth, Kekoa couldn’t help but notice the empty parking lot on the airport’s east end. He wasn’t that good in math, but this was an equation he understood: his Nissan plus open pavement equaled a drifting opportunity.

  Making sure no cops were around, Kekoa accelerated quickly toward the corner of the lot, where he’d need to make a sharp left turn. Before he reached the turn, Kekoa dropped to second gear while revving the engine close to 4,000 RPMs. When Kekoa released the clutch, the surge in power made the back wheels spin so fast they lost traction with the pavement. The car’s back end swung into the turn. But rather than spinning widely, Kekoa held the drift through smart steering and speed control.

  Only in drifting did Kekoa experience an adrenaline surge, a sense of achievement. Before falling asleep at night, he’d fantasize about becoming a drift champion in Japan.

  He earned a dirty look from the woman at the booth. That didn’t surprise him. His mom didn’t like drifting either. He’d done it for fun because none of his friends had any money. Like Kekoa, they lived in near poverty. Unlike people who drifted in Japan or on the islands, Kekoa couldn’t tune his car’s body, suspension, or even tires with new gear. He could only tune up its engine with his hands and hard work. In his wallet, he kept an article he’d printed off a school computer about ten steps to creating a drift car. He didn’t know why he held on to it, since most steps took cash, but he’d memorized every word:

  1. Strip the car

  2. Tighten the suspension by installing stiffer springs and struts

  3. Add anti-roll bars

  4. Buy performance tires and wheels

  5. Adjust the camber

  6. Increase the engine power

  7. Add cold air intake

  8. Add cat-back kit

  9. Add a turbocharger

  10. Modify engine to improve horsepower and torque

  After leaving the airport, Kekoa drove the few miles to the apartment building he’d been sharing with his mom. They’d lived in the cramped space since they lost the house. As he left his car, his glasses steamed in the August heat. He wiped them on his long white T and headed up the stairs. The warped wooden steps creaked, but not loud enough to drown out the booming rap music and the nearby roar of jets. He knew that his grandma had a nicer space for him, but better yet, she had a garage for the Nissan.

  He entered the apartment and went straight to the window. It faced east, not just toward the mainland but toward his drifting paradise: the closed Lanakila Homes housing project. The homes where his childhood friends had lived were vacant, and the streets were empty. Kekoa was tempted to take one last spin, but he had to finish packing, then get to the boat that would take him and his car to Oahu.

  He laughed as he thought about his drift-car list: first, strip the car. Get rid of excess weight. A good rule. He dropped two full trash bags into his car and drove off.

  Billy Cain couldn’t stop laughing as Tucker and Ryan held Keiichi Yamada’s head still. “Let’s cut his hair,” Billy said. He nodded at Shane, who left his post at the bathroom door and handed Billy scissors. With one snip, Keiichi’s pink ponytail fell from his head to the floor.

  Billy pointed the scissors at Keiichi’s crotch. “If you tell, it won’t be your hair next time. Understand?”

  When Keiichi didn’t answer, Tucker and Ryan forced him to nod.

  Shane moved from the door and allowed Keiichi to exit, which also allowed Mr. Steel, headmaster of White Sands Prep, to enter.

  “What’s going on here?” Mr. Steel asked. Everybody went silent. All eyes were on Billy. “Why is there a clump of hair on the floor?”

  “Must be from one of my horses,” Billy said. Mr. Steel looked at Billy like he didn’t believe him. Billy flashed his student body president smile brighter.

  Mr. Steel stared not at Billy but at the floor. He picked up the hair. “Get rid of it.”

  “Anything you say,” Billy said as he picked up the ponytail. As Mr. Steel left the bathroom, Billy added, “I’ll hang it on my rearview.”

  His pals laughed. “What happens if he tells your dad about this?” Shane asked.

  Billy waved his hand, heavy with a gold senior class ring. “Steel won’t talk. He knows my dad’s one of the school’s leading donors.”

  His friends fell in line behind Billy as they headed outside to wait for their rides home. The parking lot looked like a gathering of VIPs and CEOs. Black limos and Beemers lined the winding, mile-long driveway of White Sands Prep.

  “You did what?” Adam Cain bellowed at his son across the dinner table. It was a rare sight. Normally Billy’s father traveled to oversee his various businesses, mostly to China, where he w
as opening new enterprises almost every month. “You cut a student’s hair?”

  “That’s not true,” Billy said. He wiped the sweat from his brow with the linen napkin.

  “Keiichi Yamada’s father called one of my people directly,” Billy’s father said. The words came out slowly—Adam Cain was, as always, distracted by his iPhone.

  “It’s not true.” Billy looked at his mom. She said nothing.

  “When I close a deal, I don’t expect it to be broken. You stay clear at school, and I look the other way on your hobby. I can’t pay off school officials and the police. So which is it?”

  Billy bit his tongue so he wouldn’t laugh. His family had enough money to pay off the school, the police, probably the entire city. But his dad seemed serious. “Okay.”

  “Okay, what?”

  “I’ll keep it together at school, and you’ll look the other way on my drifting,” Billy said.

  “Deal done.”

  “Also, I need to take the Toyota in again. It’s carrying too much weight, and I need new tires.”

  Billy’s dad shook his head. “I don’t understand you. You have just about everything—”

  Billy tuned his dad out and looked out the big windows of their mansion in the exclusive Hawai’i Kai community. He didn’t want just about everything. He wanted it all.

  “Hu’ihu’i!” Kekoa shouted in joy as he steered his Nissan along Tantalus Mountain. Awesome. The mountain’s winding roads, with stone walls on one side and a steel guardrail on the other, were famous to drifters all over Hawaii. Driveways lined the mountain at irregular intervals, with houses growing bigger and nicer closer to the top. He’d seen hundreds of videos of cars like his performing amazing drifts on crazy hairpin turns. Since this was the first time, Kekoa took it slow, just to get the feel of the road. Drifting was about talent and timing more than speed.

  He was drenched with sweat when he arrived at his grandma’s place in the Kalihi neighborhood. It had been years since he’d been there, not since his grandfather’s funeral four years earlier. He could tell that things had gone from bad to worse. Large industrial streets lined the way to his grandmother’s house. Streets almost sure to be empty in the evening. A drifter’s dream.

  Kekoa took a deep breath as he parked his ride in the pitted driveway. Across the street stood a vacant house with overgrown grass and a knocked-down For Sale sign. On one side of it stood another house for sale, boards over the windows. On the other side was a house with broken steps, children’s toys littering the front yard, and a Rottweiler chained at the neck on the porch.

  It hadn’t always been like this. Kekoa’s grandparents had owned a nicer house in a nicer part of the city until Cain Low-Cost Auto Super Store invaded the island and crushed their small auto parts store. Rather than closing or selling out to Cain, his grandpa hung on until there was no money left in the business. Out of work, out of options, the man took his own life.

  Kekoa’s grandma lived simply. Kekoa was grateful she’d taken him in so he could stay in Hawaii. But as he knocked on the door, his stomach knotted up.

  “Grandma!” Kekoa shouted when she greeted him. His grandma threw her skinny, heavily tanned left arm around his neck and held him tight. A lit cigarette dangled from her mouth.

  “Kekoa, you look so different,” she said.

  Kekoa shrugged. He knew he looked pretty much the same. Only a little taller, and with a small scruff of a beard to help him look hu’ihu’i.

  “Can I help you bring in your things?” she asked.

  Kekoa broke the hug, went back to his car, and grabbed the two trash bags. “This is it.”

  His grandma looked puzzled. “Let me show you to your room. It’s not that big, but—”

  “Actually, Grandma, I’d like to see the garage. I don’t own much because everything I’ve ever earned went into my car. I’d feel safer if—”

  “I’d hoped to hire someone to clean it out, but …” She sounded ashamed. “I haven’t been in there since your grandfather … died.”

  Kekoa knew why: the garage was where he had left her. “I’d be happy to do it.”

  “That man never threw anything away,” she said. “Before he lost the store, he took home as much inventory as he could. He said he would sell it, but then he couldn’t let any of the parts go.”

  Kekoa nodded like he understood, but he didn’t. He’d never had much, so he had nothing to hoard.

  “Let me see how bad it is,” Kekoa said.

  He tried to open the door, but it was stuck. He kicked it hard, and it finally gave, but no light came on, and if there were windows, they were covered. He reached around the door, his hand knocking down spiderwebs until he found the light switch. He clicked it on and sucked in his breath. The garage was packed from floor to roof with boxes of auto parts, mostly imports.

  Kekoa rubbed his eyes making sure it wasn’t a mirage. It wasn’t. It was a gold mine.

  “Awesome, brah!” Billy shouted into his phone. He tossed his book bag onto the floor of his house’s foyer with such force that a vase crashed onto the tile. Still listening to Shane on the phone, he waved for Lei, one of the maids, to clean up his mess.

  “DJ and dancers. Awesome!”

  Billy walked the long distance from the front door to the main kitchen. He motioned to the cook to make him something to eat.

  “What would you like, William?” the tiny cook asked, almost in a whisper.

  “What did you say?”

  “What would you like, sir?”

  “You’re the cook, you figure it out. Isn’t that what I pay you for?” Billy headed over to a cabinet and pulled out four energy drinks. He stuffed two in each pocket, still talking to Shane.

  “Bring it to me in the theater!” Billy shouted at the cook. He listened as Shane outlined the evening’s entertainment. For Billy, the lot action was sizzle. Tantalus was the steak.

  “So, normal time and place?” Shane asked.

  “Right and right. Later, brah.”

  A huge movie screen filled the south wall of the twenty-seat theater in the east wing. Windows showing some of the best views of the island dominated the east and the west. Billy opened an energy drink with one hand. With the other, he pressed a button to close the blinds.

  Before he opened the second drink, he grabbed another remote, dimmed the lights, and started The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. This wasn’t a movie; this would be his life. Next fall, he’d go to Harvard, like his dad had, but this summer, Billy would travel to Japan.

  “I can’t believe your dad supports this,” Tucker said. Tucker was new to Billy’s clique.

  Billy didn’t like Tucker, but he had designs on Tucker’s maid’s daughter, a pudgy but pretty Kenyan girl named Adila. Billy, Shane, and Ryan had a thousand-dollar bet on who could hook up with her first.

  “I get this if I don’t get in trouble at school.” Billy started to laugh. “Well, bad trouble.”

  “And the police?” Tucker shouted over the music. The DJ who Shane had hired pounded out beats through the parking garage of the White Circle Mall, owned by Cain Inc.

  Billy explained how his dad let him, his friends, and select others use the garage. Billy told his dad they didn’t race; they just showed off their cars. His dad kept the cops away with cash.

  “He said he would build a real racetrack, but he didn’t,” Billy said. “My dad lies.”

  “You ready, champ?” Shane asked. He tossed Billy his racing helmet. Billy hated wearing the helmet, but he did just in case.

  “Go easy on me,” Shane said. “I need a new anti-roll bar, but they’re hard to find.”

  Billy grunted. He never went easy on anyone. Fifty kids from White Sands Prep moved to the side as Shane and Billy started their cars. Shane drove an orange Toyota Supra. Billy climbed into a bright red Toyota Altezza, the best drift car in the world.

  With a roaring of engines and a cloud of exhaust, Shane and Billy started racing through the three-story garage. At the first
corner, Billy tapped the brake with his right foot, which transferred the vehicle weight to the front wheels for traction. He turned the wheel right. With his left foot, Billy pressed down the clutch and then pulled the emergency brake for a second, which locked up the rear wheels. While the car slid, Billy turned the wheel hard to the left and then punched the accelerator pedal. He knew everyone watching was in awe of him, which made perfect sense. Billy knew he was perfectly awesome.

  “You drift?” a skinny haole kid asked Kekoa in the school parking lot.

  As Kekoa unlocked the door to his Nissan, he wished he could reverse his decision to drive the car to school. The first thing he had installed was a new anti-theft system, but as Kekoa knew from his friends back in Hilo, if you wanted a car bad enough, you could always steal it.

  “Just curious, my bad.” The kid flashed the all-purpose shaka sign. “Da kine, brah.”

  “What’s your name?” Kekoa asked. Normally he didn’t like white kids who adopted Hawaiian signs and words, but something about the guy seemed real.

  The kid extended his hand. “Sonny.” Kekoa noted the dirt under his nails, maybe grease. He shook the kid’s hand. Sonny was strong. So was the stink from his clothes.

  “I just asked ’cause I see you got the 350. That’s one of the best drift cars. Maybe not the best. I’d say that the best cars are all Toyotas, starting with the Altezza, then the Corolla, then—”

  Kekoa put up his hand like a stop sign. “So, which do you drive?”

  Sonny pulled out his pockets. “No cash means no car.”

  “I know how you feel,” Kekoa said out of habit. The truth was he had money on the way. He’d made a deal with his grandma. They’d sell the parts in the garage on Craigslist and split the proceeds. Grandma entered the parts into the computer, and Kekoa met the customer after school. Kekoa guessed anyone with enough money to buy parts to mod their car wouldn’t venture into Kalihi at night.

  “I’d like to build a car from scratch, but that’s hard to do, especially without a base,” Sonny said.