Lightning's pretty sure he's got it narrowed down: The look Cruz keeps shooting him is "thinly veiled disappointment worn by someone wholly unused to feeling this way."

Oh great work, Lightning, he tells himself. His one job was to teach Cruz something new, and all he'd managed was disappointment. Granted, it was an artfully specific type of disappointment, so maybe there were bonus points for that. He hopes so, because he's gonna need them.

"How was that?" Cruz pants, as she rounds back into the pit, where Lightning is waiting.

"Over the line. We're talking a one-lap penalty here, Cruz - you gotta nail this, okay?"

"I'll be more careful."

"Don't be careful; just find the reflex. You don't have time to wander down pit road, thinking about your speed or focusing on how you're gonna park in the box! You need to just do it."

"It's one thing to say that," Cruz allows. "But how do I - "

"By doing it again!" Lightning snaps. "Over and over, until you can do it in your sleep. Until this is so deep in your wheel bearings you physically can't do it any other way. Cruz, you know this stuff. I'm sure you've told it to a dozen other racers. Isn't that your job?"

"When I was a trainer," Cruz enunciates, "this was not my job. Because this is a rule, not a skill. You can't just train rules like that! Don't you know the difference? You can motivate yourself to push harder, but you can't really get fired up about parking in a square."

Lightning doesn't see the distinction, and he's not in the mood to ask. "Well, you have to. That's the sport," he says. "If you can get fired up about tires, you can get fired up about your pit box. Name it if you have to; I don't care."

Cruz raises her eyebrows. "Are you making fun of me?"

"None of this is fun," Lightning mutters under his breath. Never in his life has he been bored on a racetrack before today.

It's not a good feeling.

"You know what, let's take a break. We're overtime anyway." Lightning motions toward the green blur already running laps around the track, closing them in. "We'll come back to this once this guy's done."

Cruz nods. And there's that look again: Thinly veiled disappointment. Maybe she's as bored as he is. Maybe it's clear to her now that Lightning has no magic to impart. She opens her mouth, then closes it again.

Then she says, "Hey, Mr. McQueen? I know this is important, and I promise I'm gonna get fired up about Ernesto - " who must be the pit box, Lightning gathers - "but what about the road course? How are we going to prep for the actual race?"

"Just do your best," Lightning replies. It's supposed to be encouraging, but she gives him that Look again.

"Okay, I'll look through the footage. I'll think of something," Lightning promises, though the idea of combing through any more race footage makes him want to short his battery. Then he has an epiphany. "Actually, Cruz, this is perfect. I know of a great road course you can practice on. Radiator Springs has this - "

"Uh, one more thing," Cruz interjects.

It's genuinely perfect. If there's magic anywhere, Lightning figures it's back home - and there's a course through Ornament Valley that's probably wilder than anything OKC could throw at Cruz. Lightning thinks back to their moonshine run, back with Smokey and the rest of Doc's old gang, and yeah - Ornament Valley could give them some of that. And that - Lightning feels it at his core - that was magic. That's their key. And if all this also happens to get him back home, then that's an added bonus. Plus - and Mack's only reminded him of this like thirty thousand times - Mack has some kind of truck family reunion thing in Wisconsin this week. He could drop them off on his way out. He could probably even stay in Wisconsin an extra day, since he'd only need to loop back to Radiator Springs, and could skip the extra haul all the way down to LA.

It's perfect.

Cruz sucks on her lip, teeth scraping metal nervously. "I was thinking - I was hoping I could go see my family. It's just - it's been a while, you know? I haven't seen them since I got signed up to help train you, and then we were in Radiator Springs, and now we've just been on the road all the time - "

Oh no. Nonononononono. Not when he'd just figured out a magic plan. Not now that he's figured out how to get out of this ridiculous training center and get back home.

"We are not going to Texas."

"What's wrong with Texas? I'm from Texas!" Cruz blurts out.

Lightning glowers. "I know. That's why I said - You know what, never mind. I don't care if you're from Texas; I'm from Texas, too. We're still not going there."

"Really? What part?"

"What? Oh. Dallas. It doesn't matter - "

"Well, that doesn't count!"

"Why wouldn't Dallas count?!"

Cruz purses her lips. "It's just so - north."

Lightning stares at her blankly. "What?"

"It doesn't matter," Cruz reminds him. "Because I didn't say I wanted to go to Texas. I said I wanted to go home. My family's in LA now. Or did you think I lived at the training center?"

"I didn't… really think about where you lived," Lightning confesses.

But Cruz doesn't miss a beat. "We have a bye week, right? Which buys us some time. I'm just asking for one afternoon. Just one."

Lightning bites his lip. "Well, we're really supposed to - I was thinking maybe we could go back to - "

"Mr. McQueen," Cruz says, very seriously. "The training center's right here. My family's right here. In town. And I just wanna say hello. I promise you, I'll pit perfectly 100 times in a row tonight!"

If Lightning's being honest, it's difficult to resist when Cruz gives him that face. For once, it's not that Look.

But if they're going to Radiator Springs, they'd need to go now. He knows - because he was told, thirty thousand times - Mack's supposed to be at his family reunion in Wisconsin by tomorrow afternoon, so either they get on the road with him now or they don't get on at all. And if they don't get on at all, that means they spend the week in LA, and Mack comes back just in time for their nonstop to Oklahoma City. On their way to OKC, they bypass Radiator Springs on I-40.

They bypass Radiator Springs on I-40.

"Mr. McQueen," Cruz repeats. "Please?"

"Make it 150," Lightning relents.

He kisses home goodbye.

He should be back at the Center, pouring over the race footage. Attempting math he doesn't know how to do. Designing some kind of crazed master plan that'll make whatever magic happened in Daytona happen again. And again and again and again.

What's costing Dinoco their consistency this season is simple: It's amateur hour over there.

He ends up on a pier in Santa Monica, at the end of the Mother Road. He stares out at the ocean and wonders if he shouldn't just turn around and drive until he hits home. Forget promises. Forget bye weeks. Maybe it's time to disappear for fifty years.

"Sir, do you have a permit?"

"A whuh - " Stirred from his moping, Lightning blinks up at an SUV in police blue.

"An emissions permit. From the sound of you, you're not running a low-emission engine. If you're not street legal, you're going to have to go down to city hall and apply for a permit."

"You gotta be kidding me."

"Well, sir, this is Los Angeles. We have rules. As a visitor, you'll only be allowed to emit a certain poundage of carbon during your stay here. For the environment's sake, you understand."

Which is the last straw. This city is stupid; this whole plan was stupid.

"I don't even want to be here," Lightning points out petulantly, as though this fact should make any kind of difference. He feels like it should. At some point, in some reality, the fact that he does not want to be here - that he does not want this - should factor into something.

"And yet here you are," replies the officer, unfazed.