In the end I signed with Smith Motorsports for the ’99 season and began racing fulltime in the Winston Cup Series, NASCAR’s top-level circuit. I earned my first career pole position for the Daytona 500, but then crashed at the Las Vegas Speedway, finishing forty-first. However, I rebounded with consecutive wins in the Coco-Cola 600 and Pocono 500. All said, it was a breakout season. I won four races, two poles, twelve top five’s, and fifteen top ten’s. I also took NASCAR’s Rookie of the Year—and just like that I became a household name. I was being interviewed by Motor Week Illustrated, Sports Illustrated, SPIN Magazine. The guys on SportsCenter were always talking about me (and cracking jokes about my name). I received two lucrative endorsement deals, I bought a private bus to travel in, a gated house in Vegas, the Porsche. It was all beyond my wildest imaginings.

Then the accident happened, and everything changed.

4

It took me close to twenty minutes to reach the far side of the island, which made the island larger than I’d originally guessed. My beer-filled bladder felt ready to burst, so I unzipped and aimed at a patch of elephant ear plants, careful to avoid the backsplash. My urine was bright yellow due to dehydration. I hadn’t brought any water, and I wondered if anyone else had. Jesus, probably. He was so obsessive compulsive it wouldn’t surprise me if he organized in advance which ties and cufflinks to wear for each day of the week.

I shook, zipped, then slipped the daypack off my shoulders. Mosquitos and other bugs had joined the cloud of flies hovering around my head, all of them buzzing and biting, causing me to repeatedly smack myself. Then a kamikaze fly shot up one of my nostrils. I snorted and waved my arms angrily, my hands striking a couple of the annoying fuckers.

I opened the pack’s main pocket and withdrew a liter bottle of vodka. Yup, I had my priorities right. Forgot the water but remembered the booze. I twisted off the cap and took a small sip, ladylike, to acclimatize my palette. Then I took a long belt. The vodka burned a trail down my throat and hit my stomach with a warm punch. As an afterthought I glanced the way I’d come, to make sure nobody was coming looking for me.

Nobody was.