Burned - Aurora
It was Friday, which meant the Mooresville Drag Strip. A lot of the bigger races happened at Lowes Motor Speedway, but those were the cars with jet engines welded to the back of them. What you had in front of you tonight were fine specimens of street legal rides.
Sex on wheels. Hot hatches, motorcycles, and even a few super cars. This was the place to be if you wanted to watch the fastest cars in the Carolinas compete. Forget the pros, these guys busting their asses at a 40 hour a week job then coming home and building their racers themselves had the passion, and it showed in the cars and bikes.
You could smell the fuel in the air. That chemical odor of high octane fuel. It was a little bit of a cool night. It kinda stung in your lungs, and of course the track was loud. Competing systems, revving engines.
You were there, with your friends waiting on the first race, a Honda CRX and a VW Golf GTI. The GTI won. That wasn't the interesting part. The interesting part was the small group of people standing around a Nissan, another Honda, and a BMW bike.
"You gotta be fuckin' kidding me! Are your retarded?!" One had short, spiky hair, it was done well, fashionable even. His jeans were relaxed and he had one some really nice boots. As he ranted he jabbed the air with a cigarette like it was a conductor's baton.
A guy next to him, with shaggy hair and a beard, cracked up laughing. "Bro' I want my money." The other guys gathered around the two all laughed.
All of them had matching beanies with block letters spelling out: TEAM NOS knit into them. Racing team.
Behind you there were people talking. At first, by the way they were looking, you thought they were talking about you, but after a minute it became clear, they were talking about the crew you just looked at.