The Sopranos: Caliper Story

EPISODE TWO (Part One)

EPISODE TWO (Part One)

We all sat in the safe house in silence, our cars tucked safely away in the back. Jay walks over and drapes a thick blanket over my shoulders. He drags a chair over and sits behind me, enclosing me in his arms. 

     “You alright?” He asks, resting his chin on my shoulder. I nod wordlessly.

     “Did you really mean it?” Ryan asked, “Quitting?”

     I could feel their stare on me, and I break into cold sweat under the blankets. I tap my fingers on the hood of my Vette that I wanted right next to me and thought about it. Did I really want to quit? 

     “Hell, no.” I say aloud. “I was just . . . scared, I guess.”

     The safe house remains silent.

     “Oh, crap, cops!” Ross yells out, quickly pulling down the garage door, everyone else scrambles to turn the lights off.

     Eddie collapses into a nearby fold-up chair, groaning. “This is ridiculous. We’re street racers afraid of cops.”

     “Not now, Eddie.” Jay warns. “Not after tonight.”

     “No,” I shake my head, moving out of Jay’s arms and the blanket. It was now pitch black in the safe house. “He’s right. We can’t keep being afraid of them. I’m a crappy boss. In truth, my mother could be laughing right now. She was never afraid of anything.”

     The crew neither backed my speech nor objected. 

     “So, what are you planning to do?” Ross asks, hunkered down beside the garage gates, while the cop’s sirens blared into out safe house.

     “Are there any third tier races in the area?” I ask him. 

    Ross takes out his phone from his pants and accesses the Caliper map. The Caliper map is like the street racers’ private little social networking system. When a crew announces a race, they place it in the Caliper map and it appears as a little bubble over an area, and it carries all the information crews need to know before joining a race.

     As for tiers, cars are divided depending on their speed. Like my Chevrolet Corvette is considered a third tier racing vehicle because of its top speed.

     Jay checks his. “These are all old.” He says, “I mean, they’re recent, but they’re kind of boring now.” He says,

     Races have different types. For example, there are checkpoints, tag races (which are played like human tag except you play it with vehicles), ordinary street races, closed races, drifts, and many more. Unfortunately for us, we’d already participated in everything.

     “I wish we could start our own little racing craze. Know what I mean?” Eddie suggests, his legs thrown over his chair’s arms. “I mean, I heard back in Crestford that they had closed races.”

     “What’s so amazing about that?” Jay counters,

     Eddie leans in. “Using SUVs!”

     “Isn’t that a little hard?” Courtney asks, 

     “That’s the point.” Eddie says, “I mean, SUVs are naturally bigger, heavier, harder. So it’s like cops can’t even mess with them back in Crestford, it’s almost funny, actually.”

     “Yeah, well,” I start, “We might as well move to Crestford because Caliper City’s becoming a little stale. As much as I want our crew to get back up, I have nothing.”