Ice and asphalt [Charles Leclerc]

1.

"Are you all packed? Toothbrush? Clothes? How about your passport?" Mom interrogates as Pierre and I load our bags into the car. "Yes, Mom, I've got everything," I reply, my patience waning. "And your lithium? Do you have enough?" Her tone is grave, her gaze piercing. "Yes, Mom," I assure her, meeting her stare to convey my sincerity.

You might be wondering, lithium? Yes, it's the medication I need daily to stay balanced. Diagnosed with bipolar I disorder at fourteen, I've always been the reserved type. So, when I suddenly shifted from being highly energetic and impulsive to feeling profoundly depressed, it raised alarms for my parents.

The diagnosis introduced me to lithium, which helps stabilize my mood swings. My mom's insistence on my medication stems from an episode when I was eighteen; I quit my meds.

Back then, figure skating was my life. I soared to the top, clinching the European championship and securing second place at the 2018 Winter Olympics. However, lithium seemed to dull my edge as I aged. At eighteen, believing my medication hindered my performance, I stopped. My reasoning was flawed. My peak performances were actually manic episodes.

I had already injured my hip, but my manic state allowed me to ignore the pain and continue. Predictably, it worsened. Training relentlessly, I fell again, causing irreparable damage to my hip, ending my skating career at that level.

Post-recovery and high school, I persuaded Mom to let me travel with Pierre my brother and now also, a Formula One racer for Red Bull. I claimed a desire to explore the world and its art. Reluctantly, she agreed, swayed by Pierre's promise to oversee my medication adherence. Secretly, we knew I wasn't planning to return to school.

"Come on, Louise, we're going to be late," Pierre shouts from inside the car, so I give my mom a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. "Fais attention," be safe, she says as I get in the car, and we drive off to the airport.

At home, we are with six siblings, and I am the youngest and also the only girl. Pierre, who is twenty-three now, is the one I'm closest to. We all say it's because we're the youngest and also have both the same mom and dad. As our brothers are two from an earlier marriage from our mom and the other two are from our dad's earlier marriage.

I'm nineteen now, and growing up with five brothers wasn't something to complain about, as I always had someone to have my back. But it also had its downside, as girls at school wouldn't play with me because I had ''boy germs'' all over me. So, I had to make friends somewhere else, and I did at the go-karting track.

Every time I could go there if I didn't have skating practice, I would play with this boy who was a bit younger than me but was also three years old, who also happened to be a younger sibling who was there to watch his brother. The only difference was that he also did karting, so sometimes I just had to watch him, which was fine as I would just draw or write songs that were completely horrendous. But what do you expect from a child

There was also a little girl sometimes there at competitions, and she also did figure skating, so we would play with the boy whose name is Arthur while our brothers would race each other. The girl's name was Victoria, and she was Dutch. Even though we couldn't really speak English that well yet, we somehow made it work. I can still call Victoria one of my best friends to this day, even though we don't see each other that often. But since I'm joining Pierre for the whole season, and he's teammates with her brother Max, I'm sure we'll see each other more often, if she doesn't have a skating competition and has time to come and watch her brother.

For Arthur, it's a different story, as Pierre and his brother Charles became best friends as well. And since they are from Monaco and we're from France, we didn't have a language barrier between us or a million miles. But sometimes I hoped that there would be a million miles between us and Charles, as he and I just don't work together; we never did. Even as kids, we would get into fights all the time. It even got to a point where when I would stay at their house in Monaco, they made sure Charles was in France at our house.