Streamlined

*All names, events, and places are purely coincidental. This story isn't based on true events.*

The dark street lit up with an arrow of white-blue light. A boy bounded from the couch and raced to the garage. He didn’t have to see the car to know who it was. It was his dad’s car and those headlights, imported from Japan, had a welcoming glow.

A silver Honda Civic droned into the garage, its front bumper barely above the pavement. The boy could barely see his dad over the large scoop in the hood that faced the windshield. All the boy could make out was his dad’s slicked back hair with his silver sunglasses resting on his head. His hair was silver too. Everything was silver.

The driver’s side door opened and Dean climbed out of the Civic. He had naturally pink skin and painting in the sun all day didn’t help Dean’s skin look better. Two outcroppings of slightly pinker skin encircled his eyes where the Oakley sunglasses had been. The white Billabong t-shirt had a montage of paint splatters that the boy would often reach up and touch when he hugged his father. The splatters dried stiff and they were a precise record of how long Dean had been painting in that same shirt.

“What are you doing up at this hour, kid?” Dean said.

“Waiting for you,” the boy said.

Dean gave a slight smile. He knew the boy paid no attention to his bedtime because his mother wasn’t home yet. He would reward him for his disobedience.

“What do you say we go cruise Main?”

The boy examined his father up and down. He couldn’t believe his dad had just asked him to go cruising. For as long as he could remember, the boy had watched his father’s friends come over for a night of cruising. His father’s friends had nice cars too, but everyone came here because his dad’s car was the best. It was the holy grail of street racers. Some would say, “Why it’s only a ’96 Honda Civic,” but the boy knew that the model and year didn’t matter. His dad’s magic is what made it fast. He knew more about the car than the builders themselves, and could drive it better than anyone else. Never in his wildest imagination had the boy thought the day would come when he got to see his dad race, actually be in the car with him.

Races would come and go with Dean’s friends, but races for Dean were a test of manhood. They weren’t to be taken lightly.

“You’ll have to be real still and real quiet when it is time for Dad to go, okay?”

The silver glow of the car had hypnotized the boy. He imagined it revving up past redline and shifting into gear, the tires smoking because his dad gave it so much power.

“Levi? You listening, kid?”

“Yeah, yeah. Sorry ‘bout that. I’ll be real quiet, real still,” Levi answered.

“Okay, good. Now you just wait in the car. I will be back in a moment.”

Levi noticed the faint smell of smoke as he climbed into the car. His dad didn’t smoke, but his friends often got a cigarette by his dad long enough to light up and get a few puffs before his dad would throw it out the window.

The interior of the car was silver. The dash had been black, but it didn’t match so Dean found a silver dash at an online auto parts dealer. Levi’s younger brother had been in Dean’s car more than him, but certainly not when Dean was racing. Eli’s child seat was in the small, worthless backseat. Eli’s seat was the only thing dirty about the car. Not even a small pebble carried in the tread of someone’s shoe had found its way to the floor-mats. The seats were wiped down with a leather-protecting polish, and Dean used Windex on the face of his stereo and the heads-up displays.

Levi could now barely see out of the car because of the scoop in the hood. A large sticker that ran the width of the windshield narrowed the view out the windshield even more. Levi could see just a strip of his dad’s shirt, as he walked over to get in the Civic.

“Ready to go?” Dean inquired.

Dean changed into a white t-shirt that wasn’t splattered with paint, and jean shorts. This was dress-up for Dean. Any article of clothing without paint on it was fancy.

“Let’s go,” Levi replied, trying to hide his excitement and wonder at the site of his Dad at the steering wheel of this car.


Main Street was flooded with cruisers on Saturday night. Oncoming cars sped by with low or high-pitched hums, depending on what kind of engine and exhaust. Dean’s car had a rhythmic, high-pitched sound. The sound was a cross between a weed-whacker and a lawnmower.

Dean had taken the shocks off and this made the ride a little bumpier, but it had made the Civic look much sleeker than before. It was a streamlined car now, ready to take on any cruiser in its path.

Dean weaved in and out of traffic to come even with a green Honda Prelude. Levi had never seen his Dad move so fast in the car. It was as though Dean was now part of the machine. He moved in indescribable efficiency. The light ahead turned yellow and then red. Main Street was a four-lane road and the Civic and Prelude were now the first cars stopped at the intersection.

The driver of the Prelude was in his twenties. The Prelude was a present from his parents for getting his GED. He didn’t know how to become one with his car, and that is why the race was over before it started.

Dean revved the Civic to get it warmed up for the quarter-mile sprint. The Prelude answered back. The light turned green. Levi was thrown against the back of his seat. He had been waiting for this moment for so long and was able to slow everything down to take it all in.

Dean’s eyes were bent on the street ahead and nothing else. The sinews of his muscles tightened on the wheel. He knew how to shift by the sound of the car because Levi never saw his eyes shift as they sped off the line. The tires shrieked and left a streak of black on the asphalt behind them. As Dean shifted into second, the Civic’s turbo kicked in. Air was injected into the car and it hissed for a brief second. Dean was only in second gear as long as it took him to shift to third. The car exploded forward and the streetlights blurred by.

Levi looked right to see the Prelude, but it wasn’t there. It had fallen back far enough that Levi could only see its low profile in the rearview mirror. The quarter-mile mark was a couple seconds away and the Prelude was in too big a hole to make a comeback now.

“That fool had nothing. Look at him…way back there,” Dean exclaimed.

The apprentice had succumbed to the master once again. Levi didn’t think it was possible to be as good with a car as his Dad was. Dean had molded into the Civic for the fifteen seconds the quarter-mile usually took. Levi felt like he was in the car by himself during the race. Dean wasn’t human, he was the car.

“You like that, kid?”

“Thanks so much, dad!” Levi’s smile spread across his face.

“Maybe we will make this a habit now.”

“I’d like that.”


The white-blue light flooded the garage as the Civic came to a stop. The engine hissed as Dean turned the car off. The tires were still warm from the race and Levi could feel the heat rising from the floor as he made his way out of the car.

Levi felt like he had been on a magic carpet ride for the past hour and was still staring at the car when Dean called to him from the door of the house, “You coming, kid?”

Levi didn’t answer and ran to his father.

“You think I could drive that car like you someday, Dad?”

Dean watched the garage door close and shroud the car in darkness until the next race called its driver back to the streets.

“Maybe, kid. Maybe.”