Street racing started out as my own little way to rebel, and to rake in some extra cash on the side. It started getting harder to hide when I found myself with $100,000 cash and an eight ball of cocaine after a long weekend. See, I had never meant to take it this far.

Before I left for college at [insert well known Los Angeles university here] I had bought a 1993 Mazda RX-7 in awful shape. I actually gasped when the previous owner pulled the tarp off the hood. The New Mexico winters had not been exactly kind to the body, but it started up.

“$1,200 bucks, take it or leave it,” the man looked tired. I took the car.

After about 100 hours and nearly a year of putting every bit of spare change toward the car it was looking halfway decent. I left for Los Angeles a week after graduation, packing some of my clothes into the passenger seat. My plan was to find work until school started, and maybe get an apartment. That way I could be settled in before the deluge of studying.

Miraculously the car performed wonderfully during the drive. Opening it up in the canyons gave me my first taste of what was to come. I found a job at Rory’s Import Garage. Rory was a greasy, slightly overweight Italian of ambiguous age. He perpetually had an unlit Camel Turkish Blend pinched between his dry lips. I agreed to get paid eleven dollars per hour under the table in exchange for a bed in the storage closet above the garage.

The first day of class came and went. I kept mostly to myself, but found a group of friends in the form of a car club. They were annoying as s***, constantly making references to anime and popular car Youtubers. Don’t get me wrong, they were all incredibly loyal companions, and every single one of them knew their stuff when it came to anything that required a wrench or impact driver.

I was settling into my new home, but I had a slight problem. A $200,000 dollar problem to be exact. I had to figure out a way to pay tuition, and fast. When a fellow car club member, Luis, approached me about the possibility of street racing I laughed in his face. The more he talked about it, the more it made sense. I had a car with nearly limitless modding potential, access to a garage for free, and a group of friends who could make a car fly. I wasn’t even a half bad driver.

My first race was just south of downtown LA. I have no idea how the owner of that Miata thought he could win. He’d slapped a bodykit and an eBay turbo on his car and expected to be able to defend the thousand dollar bet he’d posted. That was the easiest money I have ever made. It was all downhill from there.

I dumped any spare money and time after the cost of tuition into my car. It paid for itself tenfold. After my first semester I had put about $100,000 into my car and was starting to get invited to higher profile races. I’d go to class and work on my car during the week and race all night on the weekends. I probably averaged about three hours of sleep each night.

I finally had a reality check when some clown in a Jaguar F-Type pulled a gun on me after he lost a $15,000 race. He took the other $10,000 I had on me and kicked one of the headlights out of my car. My friends and I slowly edged backwards towards our cars. I never did get that cash.

After that incident I started being much more careful with who I dealt with. I started smoking cigarettes after a girl offered me one at a party. It woke me up, and the stimulation made my life feel real for a few minutes. Cocaine came next. The first time I tried it I was disappointed. It tasted like horseradish and death, and just made my throat a little numb. The euphoria hit me about a half hour later, and I was hooked.

When I went back home to visit my parents over spring break my mom caught me doing a line in the bathroom. She started crying. I left right away. I remember the look in my father’s eyes as he shut the door behind me.

When I got back to LA I couldn’t keep up with school and racing full time. My grades started slipping, and pictures of my car were showing up on local news channels. Other racers were starting to call me “El Implacable,” the Relentless One. I didn’t feel relentless. I felt tired, alone, and out of control.

Rory and I were headed to a car show when we were hit by a drunk driver. One half of my car was completely crumpled. Rory was in that half of the car. I was informed by a lawyer a week later that Rory had willed the shop to me. I flushed the rest of my coke, sold the salvageable parts of my car, and began running the shop. It was a cakewalk compared to my previous routine. I had never asked Rory how he ended up with his shop, but I had some sort of idea now.