The Girl I Could've Been

When I was thirteen years old, I had a plan. I was going to move down south to North Carolina, where I would attend UNC Chapel Hill and major in journalism. I would get a swank apartment near a swank bar where the best Winston Cup racers would go after a long day at the shop. I would graduate and land a posh job at one of the best weekly racing magazines and be their go-to girl for all the "insider" news. I'd be able to crack the hard outer shells of the drivers--even the crankiest, most grizzled of them--and I'd become their best girl. They would love me because I would be the type of girl those types of guys like: in tune with their world, sassy, quirky, smart-mouthed, badass.

I saw myself wearing tall boots and a leather coat. I saw myself driving a red car, something fast, something that would blow my long hair around as I breezed through the North Carolina countryside, on my way to another driver's lakeside home, where a big group of us would sit on the porch and watch the sun set over his yacht. We would barbecue and get drunk and sing Johnny Cash songs until we could see the lights from houses across the lake winking late-night messages to us.

I saw all this because it was what I wanted more than anything. This was, after all, when I was knee-deep in the creating of my most beloved characters, Jessie and Ollie. Originally, I started writing Jessie's saga from the point after she moved to North Carolina from New York. I made her life everything I wanted mine to be. She stood up to her boss, won awards for her journalism, mouthed off (and subsequently charmed) Dale Earnhardt, and drank a lot of tequila. This was before I had the two infamous run-ins with tequila during undergrad, so I didn't yet know that tequila can turn me into a rabid she-monster, someone who ends up hanging her head out her boyfriend's truck and almost vomiting into the Niagara River, or the girl who tries to get lucky with a boy on her friend's dorm room bed while the friend has stepped across the hall to watch a music video. (Tequila and I have since made amends.)

In the story, the character Jessie befriended Brooke Gordon--Jeff Gordon's then-wife--and moved in to watch over him when Brooke went off on some sort of modeling tour. "Watch over" turned into "sleep with," and the story went on through dozens of complicated chapters that chronicled their affair and the eventual dissolution of the Gordon marriage (which, in fact, did dissolve in real life) so that Jeff would be free to be with Jessie. There were obstacles along the way, of course, and one of those obstacles was this guy who popped into my mind--an Oliver Covet. Ollie. He used to work for Jessie's father, for Jessie's race team. When I started writing about Ollie and how attractive and nice and funny he was, I realized a girl like Jessie wouldn't have lived her entire life without kissing such a man, and--poof!--they had history, and I loved the history so much that I stopped writing about Jessie's post-New York life and wrote a prequel to that first book, a prequel that was all about Jessie and Ollie's lives together.

These were the things that consumed me at thirteen. These were the lives I wanted to live. Even if I wasn't like the Jessie Roberts in the story and even if I didn't have my Ollie, I could have the life Jessie Roberts lived after she moved away. I was convinced of it. And when my parents took my brother and I on vacation to Charlotte, I was undeniably hooked. I wanted it, wanted it, wanted it.

I sent away for the literature for the UNC system. I planned and daydreamed and told everyone they should spend all the time with me they could because in a few years I was going to be long gone. After I got in a huge fight with Tammy, I would sit in homeroom each morning and seethe, Just wait. I'm going to go off and make something of myself, and I'm going to be friends with all the racers we love the most. I'm going to marry and have babies with one of them. I bet then you'll feel pretty sad you're not my friend anymore.

I eventually got over the whole idea of moving to North Carolina to become a sports journalist. I'd taken several journalism classes and ran the newspaper before realizing I actually hated writing news stories, that it was boring, that I spent most of my time dreaming up stories about characters who stumbled and were knocked around by life, and that was the stuff that was really interesting.

I haven't really regretted my decision. I haven't ever really looked back and had a big what could've been sigh over my lost swank apartment, my lost racer husband, my lost racer friends, my lost lake house and yacht. But today I did have a moment while I sat grading essays in front of the race at Bristol where I looked at a girl--a very cool, very savvy girl pit reporter--and thought, That could've been me. She has it all: the racing background (father, brother, uncle who raced), the journalism degree, the long hair that would look so good blowing in a fast red car. She probably even has a boyfriend who races. Or she will soon. It's probably only a matter of time. One of those guys must look at her and think, My God, that's one cool girl. Because she is. Because I would be too, if I'd gone that route. But I didn't.

Still, I couldn't quite keep myself from daydreaming a little bit, from drifting away from those student papers for a few minutes to imagine where I would be, what I would be doing, and who I'd be dating if I'd taken that route, if I'd stayed the girl I was when I was thirteen.