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“You getting a new radio? Que pasa?” Gabe asked as he swung into the passenger seat of Robbie's Neon.
The Neon was Robbie's second car, purchased from a client at the auto shop for five hundred dollars after he'd finished fixing up his first car, a 2002 Chrysler Town & Country, and sold that for three grand. The Neon was a 2003 model—an upgrade. Within the first week of owning it, Robbie had replaced the clutch pads, detailed the interior, and applied fat white racing stripes, the same white-on-black color scheme as the leather jacket he'd sewn stripes on when he was sixteen and still wore regularly five years later. Robbie stubbornly denied that he'd made his car match his clothes on purpose.
Gabe needed Robbie to give him a lift to soccer practice, and he hadn't been in the Neon for several weeks. Several weeks in which Robbie had removed the radio, and—Gabe peered behind him—removed the back seats and installed a crude plywood shelf extending from the trunk into the cabin.
“What?” Robbie said, pulling out of the parking lot in a smooth arc that pinned Gabe against the door with the centrifugal force. The engine had a new, louder fluttering sound, like an irritated honeybee pondering whether to crawl into Gabe's ear canal.
“Radio's gone,” Gabe yelled over the buzzing.
“Si claro!”
“Seats're gone.”
“Can fit two subwoofers back there instead of driving around with the trunk hanging open,” Robbie yelled back. “And it saves weight.”
Gabe personally thought Robbie should just put a tow-hitch on the Neon if he insisted on using it to roadie for punk bands every weekend, but that was just him. And nobody used the back seat. “You getting a new radio?”
“Took it out to save weight!” Robbie was grinning.
Gabe stared at him. “How you gonna play music?” he yelled.
“I won't!”
The engine buzzed and hummed, rattling Gabe's teeth. “What?”
Robbie pulled the Neon to a stop at the junction between Ruckleroad and Hillrock, then revved the engine with an offensive whine, popped the clutch, and sent them rocketing across the road into a left-hand turn. As the Neon slowed, it backfired, a pop like a gunshot from its exhaust system. “I don't need to listen to music,” Robbie yelled once he'd joined the northbound traffic. “I took the speakers out, too.”
“To save weight?” Gabe asked, peering into the empty hole in the passenger door where the bass speaker used to be.
“Si claro!”
“Why?” Gabe demanded.
Robbie gestured with his free hand. “It's just a two-liter engine! I gotta compromise somewhere to get it to performance trim!”
Gabe blinked. “Are you kidding me? This is—” He knew better than to call the Neon a crappy car. “This is a, a little car, it's just a get-there-go-home car!”
“Don't limit it!” Robbie protested. “I know it's never gonna make big numbers, but it's my car! It's got potential!”
“Why's it so loud?”
“Fifty millimeter turbocharger!” Robbie looked delighted with himself.
The turbocharger explained how fast the Neon had zipped across Hillrock Lane, and the ceaseless buzz rattling the interior, but not the gunshot noise. “I meant the banging.”
“Backfire!”
“I know that!” Gabe knew the difference between backfire and gunshots, he just didn't know why the sound had to be coming from four feet behind him. “Why?”
“I installed a rev-limiter and reflashed the ECU to tune it for the turbocharger,” Robbie said. “Now it's running rich. As a side effect, it sounds badass.” He pushed the gas and they lurched forward, then let it off and the exhaust popped again.
“Oh my god,” Gabe groaned. He turned on the air conditioner, aimed the vents at his face, and waited. Waited. “Robbie, the air conditioner's broke.”
“No it's not.”
“It's blowing warm air,” Gabe insisted. “I'm dying.”
“I took out the air-con pump to make room for the turbo,” Robbie explained. “And to save weight!”
Gabe gaped at him. “Put it back!”
“No room. Y ya he vendido por Ebay last week.”
It was September and Gabe was dying locked in Robbie's car. He couldn't imagine sitting in here in May. “You're kidding me.”
“You can take the bus if you want.”
Gabe covered his face with his hands, then rolled down his window. Robbie rolled down his own window, so the changes in air pressure from the wind blowing by wouldn't hurt their ears.
“After soccer practice, we can go out behind the warehouses and do a couple digs,” Robbie said, as if riding in the car while Robbie made it sprint back and forth across the alleyway at full speed would compensate for ripping out the sound, air conditioning, and back seats.
“I hate you,” Gabe yelled.
Robbie downshifted, entirely unnecessarily, and made the Neon scream forward to overtake a nearby minivan. The exhaust popped again as he slowed.
The acceleration was, Gabe had to admit, exhilarating. “Okay,” he groaned.
“Okay?”
“Okay, let's do some digs.”
Robbie grinned the rest of the way to the soccer field.