SO AMERICAN charles leclerc

★. . . one

TEXAS AIR IS STAGNANT, much like the hours in its long, brutally humid days. Life is slow here, yet its weekends are full of life and music. A purebred Texan can be criticized for a million things, but their ability to make a good time of dirt and rocks is not one of them. It's a happy-go-lucky sort of place. Everything is something to be grateful for, and if something isn't, you find a reason it is. Stephanie Donovan is especially good at this.

The first thing is, it's Stevie Quinn, not Stephanie Donovan. God forbid that wretched name pass through the lips of someone besides her father, which is lucky for her, because her father passed away last year. He was probably the last person on Earth who knew her real name was not, in fact, Stevie.

Stevie got her name from her mother. So she was technically a Stephanie Jr., but to be a Jr. was always a thing for sons, not daughters. So Stevie's father came up with her nickname while the two were working in the garage, Fleetwood Mac playing from a cassette player on the bench, both sprawled underneath possibly the most prized car in the state. A deep green 1969 Chevy Corvette ZL1. Only two exist in the world, and one of them is written under Stevie's name. Her father absolutely refused any and all offers for the sports car. In his words, no amount of money could ever equal to true cost of the car.

Even now, Stevie still receives offers for the prized piece of machinery, and even now, she carries on her father's legacy of familial loyalty and absolute stubbornness. She doesn't drive it that much anymore, instead opts for a just as priceless 1970 Ford Bronco, painted in a pale blue with a beige leather interior. Everyone knows Stevie by this car now. She's been driving it since she was 15, when she became the only girl in town to learn how to drive stick.

It's second nature to her, as she drives through the busy streets of Austin, towards the Austin Rock & Roll Car Museum, Bon Iver blaring through her speakers. Stevie had worked at the museum going on three years, and she absolutely adored it. Her best friend, Cleo Sanchez worked at the Dior store just a block away and the two had met for lunch every Wednesday at a small sandwich bar right in the middle for as long as Stevie could remember.

Stevie pulled behind the museum, parking in the designated employee spots and gathering her things. The sun was not as cruel this morning, opting to sneak behind the clouds, as if to hide from the dirty looks of Austin pedestrians. Stevie enjoyed the tolerably warm air until she opened the glass door to the building and was hit with a rush of air conditioning. The whole establishment was kept cooler than 69 degrees, to protect the cars and their engines. Too hot or too cold, and Hudson, Stevie's boss, would sense right away and let the workers have it.

Stevie understood the stress of it all, though. With over 60 million dollars worth of machinery in one place, you'd be pretty bent oir of shape keeping them safe and sound.

Stevie's heels echoed against the white tiled floor as she made her way to the staircase that led to the small offices upstairs, where the giant wall of windows allowed her to overlook the showroom floor. It was the most beautiful sight a girl could think of.

"How you holdin' up today, Mister?" Stevie called out down the hall from her office, but only received a grunt in return. She felt lucky, most days there's silence, or the slamming of a door. Stevie hung her purse and bag up, then leaned back in her desk chair, answering the FaceTime call from Cleo on her iPad.

"Don't you have, I don't know, a job?" Stevie rolled her eyes and logged into her computer, scrolling through the schedule for the day.

"I don't go in until one, today. I wanted to talk about you. Have you heard back about the race?" The girl on the other side of the screen inquired, setting her phone down, and beginning to undo her headless curls. Stevie watched her with a raised eyebrow, but clicked to her email anyways.

"Nothing." She huffed, scrolling down every few seconds to reload her inbox.

"There's no way they can deny you four years straight. I mean, you're Austin's sports car princess. You keep track of the largest collection in the city, and show up at other sports events all the time. Why doesn't Formula 1 want you? Seems snobbish on their part. Makes sense... fucking Europeans."

"Didn't you date a European once?" Stevie questioned her friend, not looking away from her screen as she opened up to her bank account. Her bills were not being attended to fast enough, apparently. She sighed in frustration and shoved her keyboard away.

"What is wrong with you today? Huffin' and puffin' like a longhorn in labor."

"Cleo, you are from Corpus Christi, stop actin' like you got a drawl and have ever seen a longhorn in labor." Cleo scoffed in feigned hurt while Stevie had to rub her eyes, probably smudging her clear mascara (something you can't smudge).

"You look like you've seen a ghost, Quinn." Cleo was one of the few people Stevie knew who called her by her middle name, and thought it wasn't something that particularly bother Stevie, Cleo only ever used it in a teasing matter.

"I got it..." She muttered and Cleo held the phone up to her ear.

"Huh? Say it again, you're mumbling."

"I got in, I- I got the job. At the race." Stevie gasped and heard Cleo begin to cheer and shout on the other line.

"I'm going to the Austin Grand Prix!"

maddie speaks !
god bless merica (maddie published for once)
AND I KEPT IT UNDER 1K WORDS

i actually have inspired for a book for once omg