Two more chapters for you all. I don't want to give anything away, but this chapter is, well, an unexpected tragedy.

Chapter 5- An Unexpected Tragedy

I was shaken up by the sounds I'd heard, but I was tired. So, I managed to go to sleep pretty quickly. I'd forgotten about the crash when I first woke up...

"Fudgie?" Luigi's voice whispered, shaking me awake.

"Hmmm... What?" I mumbled.

"You need to come with me", Luigi informed me gently, helping me out of bed and into my wheelchair.

"I can walk by myself!" I protested. "I don't need the wheelchair."

Luigi ignored me. "Let's go."

He wheeled me out of our hotel room, either not noticing or not caring that I was still in my pyjamas. Something wasn't right. It wasn't just Luigi's behaviour, but the entire hotel was quiet and still. A lot of the Piston Cup racers who were staying there were hanging out in the hallways, but weren't clamouring happily like they often did. Instead, they were speaking in hushed voices. I wondered what they were talking about, but the only tiny tidbit I heard came from Dud Throttleman.

"And to think Piper was..." That was all I heard.

As if on cue, Piper came shooting past me in tears. She was very tough, so it seemed so weird to see her cry.

Behind Piper were Richard and Grace Throttleman, Guido, Lightning... and two police officers. One was a car and a man while the other was a woman and a forklift.

Lightning glanced in my direction as Luigi pushed me towards them. "Oh! Here she is!"

"Am I in trouble?" I questioned fearfully, eyeing the police.

There was a moment of hesitation.

"Fudge, why don't you come with us", the police car broke the silence finally. Only, it didn't sound like a suggestion. "We just want to ask you a few questions."

My heart thumped rapidly in my chest. I hadn't done anything wrong... had I? I couldn't think of anything.

Once I was in a private room with Luigi, Guido, Lightning and the police, the policeman introduced himself as Simon and the woman was Annette.

"Were you at the party that was being held in the Dinoco tent after yesterday's race?" Simon quizzed me.

"Yes I was", I answered, taking a shaky deep breath. Just tell me what I've done! I thought to myself. If you're gonna arrest me, arrest me! Don't keep me in suspense like this!

"What time did you leave the party?"

I tried to remember. "Nine-thirty, I think."

"Why did you leave early?"

"I was tired", I explained. "I've been on medication for the last year and a bit, so I've been tired a lot lately."

Annette nodded and made notes of everything I was saying. "Did you spend any time with Piper Throttleman and Mackenzie Fletcher at the party?" she wanted to know.

"Yes", I replied. "I didn't really want to, but I did."

"Why didn't you want to?"

I told them about how they'd left me in the woods overnight for being a would-be tattletale.

"Did Mackenzie say anything about what she was doing after the party?"

"She told me she was going to another party. I think she said it was at someone named Josh Murphy's house."

"A party?" Simon repeated sceptically.

"That's what she told me", I confirmed.

"Hmmm..." was Simon's only remark. I didn't like the sound of that.

"Is there anything else you can tell us?" Annette asked me.

"She wanted Piper Throttleman and me to go with her to the party", I informed them. "I didn't want to go, though."

"Why not?" Simon questioned.

"Because I was tired", I repeated. "Besides, I don't trust those two. And I don't think they trust me either."

Annette finished scribbling her notes. "No more questions at this point", she announced. "We'll be back in a sec."

The police were about to leave, but I stopped them.

"What's going on?" I wondered.

Luigi, Guido and Lightning looked at each other.

Finally, Luigi took a deep breath and squeezed my hand. "Fudgie", he began slowly, "I am afraid we have some bad news." He looked around at the others. I was fearing the worst.

"Fudgie", Guido continued, talking just as slowly. "(Do you remember how we heard that crash last night?)"

I nodded nervously.

"(Well, there was an illegal street race and a car with a human rider ran into another car and her engine exploded.)"

I gasped.

Luigi swallowed hard. "All... all three of them were killed and... and the human rider was... was your friend, Mackenzie."

"Mackenzie was killed in the crash", Lightning summed up.

What?! Surely I couldn't have heard that right. I was just in shock. I couldn't believe it.

"Fudge?" Luigi ventured as the police left us alone.

I took a deep breath. "I don't know what to say."

Lightning gave me a hug and I noticed he looked quite teary. "I know it's a big shock. I can't believe it myself. You know we're here if you wanna talk, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah." I didn't say anything, though. It wasn't that I didn't want to talk; it was just, like I said, I didn't know what to say.

Lightning kissed me. "You know we all love you, right?"

"Yeah..." I wondered why Lightning was acting like that. He hadn't really known Mackenzie; why was he so upset?

Later that day, I lay on my bed in the hotel, watching TV. They were talking about the crash on the TV. There was a photo of Mackenzie alongside the two other victims. One of them was a sleek black Mustang GT with neon purple flames going up their hood and doors. She had beautiful blue eyes and I assumed she was the racer Mackenzie rode with that night. The other one was an older red and white Cadillac with brown eyes.

"Seventy-three year old David Wheeler, seventeen-year-old Harley Sparks and fourteen-year-old Mackenzie Fletcher, daughter of former Piston Cup rider, Andrew Fletcher, all died in the early hours of this morning, following a high speed collision", the reporter informed viewers. "It was confirmed that Harley Sparks and Mackenzie Fletcher were participating in an illegal street race and going over five times the speed limit when the crash occurred. David Wheeler, a local security guard, was just returning home from work."

The report was pretty hard to watch. There was footage of ambulances, police cars and firetrucks everywhere. They didn't show the dead bodies or anything, but it still looked horrible. Plus, they interviewed some of the victims' relatives and they just sounded heartbroken.

At that moment, Lightning came in and turned the TV off.

"How you feeling, sweetie?" he wanted to know.

I took a deep breath. "I just can't believe Mackenzie's gone."

"I know", Lightning murmured. I couldn't be sure, but I think he was sniffling. "It only takes a second, doesn't it?"

I nodded.

We were silent for a long time before I asked a question.

"Why did the police ask me all of those questions earlier? Did they think I'd done something wrong?"

"They just wanted to make sure you didn't know about the race going on", my brother explained gently. He stroked my hair. "But you didn't. If you did, you could've helped them a little more."

I nodded.

"C'mere." He gave me a hug and a kiss. "You know I love you, right?"

"Yeah", I assured him. "Yeah, I know. I love you too."

Lightning just smiled softly.

Just as I was getting ready for bed, I was thinking about what had happened again. It was affecting me way more than I thought it would. I didn't think I wouldn't be shocked or that I wouldn't care, but I didn't think I would be this upset. After all, I had never considered Mackenzie a friend and, if I'm being honest, I didn't think I would miss her all that much (and I don't).

The other things I didn't expect to feel were anger and fear. I was angry at Mackenzie for putting herself in an illegal street race and how she was probably more worried about getting caught than being killed. Then I was scared because... I didn't know why.

About a week later, I was sat in the back of a church with my family. In front of us were several other Piston Cup racers like Bobby, Cal and Brick, the Throttlemans, Crusty Rotor and quite a lot of Mackenzie's friends from school. Then there were the families of Harley Sparks and David Wheeler; they were each going to each other's family member's funerals to show their support for one another. At the very front were the Fletcher family, looking absolutely heartbroken. Mackenzie's mother, Caroline, wept into her husband's shoulder. Her father, Andrew, held his wife, looking like he was desperately trying to prevent himself from bursting into tears himself. Her eleven-year-old sister, Evie, was just stood there, crying loudly while her nine-year-old brother, Benjamin just stood there, looking lost. It was in that moment, looking at the Fletchers, all of the friends from school and Piper, all sobbing helplessly, that my anger started up again. I wondered if Mackenzie would have even cared about what she'd done. She had friends and a family and she'd just thrown that away with a dumb, reckless decision.

However, my anger was quick to vanish when people began to speak. Her father went up there to talk about his little girl. He remembered how much she loved coming to races with him and aspired to be a Piston Cup rider just like her daddy. He mentioned that she loved to draw and hardly went anywhere without her sketchbook and how she had once tried to flush her younger brother down the toilet. When he was finished, Mackenzie's best friend from school went up to speak. She talked about how good Mackenzie was at science and was always willing to help others in the subject. She was also good at art and gym, apparently. The forklift recalled, with some chuckles, the time Mackenzie had tried to show off while jumping the hurdles and had wound up doing a perfect face plant.

Okay. Maybe she hadn't exactly been nice to me, but it was obvious that she had a lot of friends and a loving family, who all thought of her as kind and high-spirited. It was then I noticed how beautiful she looked in the large photo displayed at the front of the room with auburn hair, hazel eyes and high cheekbones. No matter what she had done to me, she was a human being (Mackenzie Alice Fletcher, born September twenty-first 1999, died August seventeenth 2014). Her death had impacted many people, including me, even though I didn't know why. She had all of these people who loved her for being a kind person.

Maybe she wasn't such a bad person after all.

At the end of the service, Piper approached me with tears in her eyes.

"Hey..." she greeted me softly.

I wasn't sure how to respond. "Hey..."

"Listen", she began, "I... I'm sorry I've been so hard on you, calling you a wuss and stuff. You're not. You just didn't want something like this to happen."

"No", I agreed softly.

"Well, I just want you to know that. And... I'm still gonna race, but I'll stick to professional racing. No more street races. I'm gonna be serious and honour Mackenzie's memory."

I gave a soft smile. "I'm glad to hear that."

I wasn't really sure what else to say, but it didn't matter. Lightning had just approached me from behind and hugged me. "How you doing, sweetie?"

"I'm okay", I assured him.

"I'm so glad you're all right", he whispered.

"But I wasn't-" I began.

That's when it hit me. I knew why Mackenzie's death had hit me so hard because I knew it was the same reason it had hit Lightning so hard: That could've just as easily been me killed in my accident. I'd been in a horrific accident, almost as bad, which had also been caused by racing and Mackenzie had been my age at the time when she died. I knew Lightning would've been devastated if it had been me and he was thinking about how easily it could've been.

That got me thinking. If Piper was going to start being more serious about things, then so should I. I was going to forget about racing for now. Now, I'd seen what it could do to me and even though I never considered Mackenzie a true friend, I was shocked and saddened by her death.

So, after the funeral, I turned my attention to getting Lightning prepared for the rest of the season instead of begging and pleading if I could go with him. I didn't think it was worth it.

Not just yet, anyway.

That's right. I killed off Mackenzie. It seemed like an interesting development. Besides, I wanted to see if I could write that kind of thing. Although, between this and The Last Ride, I feel like I'm getting too depressing in my fics.

I know a lot of you don't like how Lightning's telling Fudge she can't race and I get that, but think about it from his perspective. He thought he'd killed his baby sister; racing is dangerous. That's kind of what I wanted to show here too.