The Team // A Formula One AU

Sebastian

"Hey look, a giant football!" I yell to Nico and receive a playful smack on the head from Checo. We tumble out of the pale green bus and the hot air hits me once again.

"Hand-egg, I've told you, it's hand-egg."

"I think you can call it a football when you're in America," Nando says and hands out bags of donuts.

"Where did you even get these?" I ask and he points backwards down the boulevard with his thumb. I look him up and down, he's not even nearly out of breath. "I'm just not going to ask next time."

"Everyone take a map," Tom hands them out and I watch Max refusing, saying he can just use his phone. His group sprints off down the road, Lance in tow, towards their taxis, not bothering with the rest of Tom's briefing.

I squint back to the sunlight. Vegas is the most insane city I think I'll ever see, with the fountains and the gambling and the strange array of people everywhere. Just from here I can see the huge skyscrapers of New York that are actually one big hotel which also houses a roller coaster. Looking back behind us I see another hotel that looks like something from Disneyland.

"Hey Nando look, a princess castle! You should go ask if you qualify for a free room."

"Why would I?"

"Cause you're a princess of course!" He shoves me quite forcefully sideways and my shoulder scrapes a palm tree growing out the pavement. I cannot believe he fell for that. Everyone laughs and Checo says something about Nando being strong for a girl. At least me and Mister Hand-Egg agree about something.

We walk between the huge hotels on the most awesome street I've ever been on, the sun glaring onto us, at least forty degrees hot. We occasionally look inside a hotel, half-heartedly pretending to be guests just to drink in the splendour. In about three hours we've only made a kilometre's progress up the road.

"I'm tiiiiired. Can we go somewhere with air conditioning to eat? I'm hungry," Nando complains as we emerge from a loop of the massive glass Aria hotel.

"Yeah, me too. Let's look for cafes or something," Checo says as he pulls the crumpled map out of his back pocket and tears it a little as he does, further messing it up the more he tries to unfold it.

"Okay, we're here." He slams it against a shady wall and points to a long road. "And there are loads of shops and stuff in that shopping centre place. So if we keep going along this big road we'll get there quickest."

"Right. But won't all the food be really expensive?" I ask.

"Maybe you should've listened to Weird Old Phil when he told you take a packed lunch," Nico jokes and leads the way past a massively tall building that turns out to be the Bellagio hotel. There are people crowding around the lake outside so we crowd too and end up watching a fountain display. We get pleasantly sprinkled with water and Nando takes yet another photo. I would wish I had a disposable camera too, but I don't because I'm not a princess dreamer. 

It's two o'clock now and the heat of the day is maybe beginning to lessen but we're still incredibly hungry. It seems like we walk forever until we stumble across a McDonald's and finally buy some food. Coming out of the building we take a left and continue exploring.

"I think we passed all the really interesting places," Nando says, chomping his trademark salad burger.

"Yeah, me too." Checo pulls the map out of his pocket again and it tears in half, right down the area we're in. "Oops."

"Ugh give it here," I say and snatch the halves from him. I try to fit them together as we walk hopefully-south down a road that looks suspiciously different to the one we were on before. "Right. I think we have to keep going this way and we'll get back to where Tom dropped us off this morning."

"Are you sure it's not the other way?" Nico asks, peering over my shoulder.

"Um... No, not really."

We look at each other and Checo sighs, taking the map back and starting to walk in the opposite direction to what I said. We follow in silent tired obedience until we reach another road that looks the same as every other but larger. Checo leads us along it for an unnerving amount of time until he stops suddenly.

"I think we went the wrong way."

I turn to him slowly.

"Seriously... Seriously?! We have been walking for at least an hour and we've been going the wrong way? I can't... Oh god..." I run my hand through my hair and look at the houses around us. It's half four now and Tom wanted us back by six. Two hours to find the princess castle. Checo reaches for the map again and I sit down on the sidewalk next to Nando.

"We could call Tom, couldn't we?" Nico says as he paces aimlessly in front of me.

"Got no credit," I say.

"Me neither."

"I forgot my phone."

"Yeah, and I'm out of battery. Okay... Maybe we could ask someone?" We look around at the deserted streets. Nope.

"So we're lost in Vegas. Great."

Checo turns back to us. "And we only have half the map. The other half must've fallen out my pocket when we were walking."

I stand up and snatch it from him, done with this whole situation. We need someone with a brain to work this out. "Well here's Downtown. If we can make it to Downtown we can use the map."

"But our location isn't on the map anymore."

"Our hostel is."

Nando checks his watch then looks to the sun. "That way's north. We're definitely south of Downtown."

I stare at him a moment then get up and start to walk north. At least Downtown should be interesting.