Time Trials Read Online Free PDF

time in her life, then snapped back to the present. “Now it’s your turn. C’mon, put the pedal to the medal.”
    “Pedal to the medal. How old are you?” Many times over the past couple of years, Regina had felt like the older of the two.
    “Old enough to know you’re poking along like there’s a driver’s training sign on top of this baby.”
    “What is your damn hurry, anyway?” Regina had flown past her level of mild annoyance several miles back.
    “Well, for one thing.” Patricia turned sideways in her seat to face Regina. “This just happens to be the most important day of your life…so far. You get your independence.” She poked Regina in the side, her smoke riddled giggle sounding like the wrinkled old hippy she was. “And so do I.”
    “I can tell we’re really going to have a tearful goodbye scene.” Regina glanced in the rearview mirror to check her makeup, a habit she’d developed the day she got her driver’s license. Before that, any old mirror would do. “I’ll be lucky if I get everything out of the car before you haul ass back to whoever you’re dying to hook up with.”
    “I don’t think you should be talking to your mother like that.” Patricia straightened herself in the seat and feigned indignation.
    “I wouldn’t if you acted like a mother.”
    Why are you doing this now? You know it will only lead…like nowhere.
    Regina’s alter ego often chimed in when a mental timeout was called for. She’d discovered her “other self” as a young child, one of the many times she was sent to her room while her parents held one of their frequent screaming matches. Like that was going to block out the noise. Yet, she liked having an imaginary friend. Being an only child sucked. Her alter ego said her name was Lucy. Even at a young age, Regina had rebelled against what she called an ordinary name.
    Lucy is not ordinary. It’s a great name.
    “Maybe so, but if we’re going to be friends, you need something better.”
    Like what?
    “Let’s see.” Regina had thumbed through some of her storybooks. “Snow White? You know, like and the Seven Dwarfs?”
    Snow White? I don’t think so.
    “The old lady in the shoe?”
    Okay, fine. But just Snow…no dwarfs.
    If it wasn’t for Snow, Regina’s childhood would have been worse than it had been. The fighting had continued between her parents, until one day her dad was just gone. Just like that. Gone. She’d been in seventh grade at the time and didn’t really miss him very much. They’d never been close, and Regina often wondered if he was her real dad.
    About that same time her body had decided to plunge into puberty. She gained fifteen pounds of pure chubbiness, which the mean girls at school had used to their advantage.
    Her mom had started her on a strict diet and exercise program. She would have loved to believe the action was pure motherly affection, but she knew about Patricia’s own balancing act between bulimia and anorexia. She didn’t have a name for those disorders then, but the way her mother tried to disguise the acts pretty much convinced her it wasn’t normal. Regina became way more knowledgeable about eating disorders than most any other kid her age.
    She’d beg her drill sergeant mother for leniency, but the most she got for her cries were doled out cubes of cheese when she felt faint. That was Regina’s first dysfunctional lesson on the issue of self-image. She lost not only the chubby fifteen pounds, but another ten just for good measure. Her mother rewarded her for losing the weight by dying her hair a platinum blonde, a color extremely out of place for a seventh grader, but one that matched Patricia’s perfectly. Regina had then proceeded to join the “mean girls’ club” and taunt the other overweight classmates.
    She had also been blessed with abundance around the chest area, and was further fortunate that these beauties had not shriveled when she lost her excessive pubescent pounds. Developing early