1. WEIGHTS OF THE SOUL

- October 5, 2014 -
/Charles/

“While I was racing, he was dying.

What a shitty race, today is the last stage of the championship and they put the two races on the same day even though they usually take place on different days. I don’t even care why, but as soon as I get out of the car I feel a strange atmosphere, someone from the team comes towards me as usual but he’s strangely taciturn and doesn’t look me in the eye. It’s a bit strange, but I don’t pay too much attention.
I head to my garage thinking that I’ll focus on the second race hoping at least to improve even if I don’t have much hope. I recognize bad days now and this is one of them. It’s morning and it’s still early to say, but I understand it. Today everything will suck from start to finish.
When I reach the garage I realize that there is buzz, I notice it right away. They don’t immediately notice that I have arrived. I have a dark and annoyed expression for the seventh position in Race 1 today and about everything I did wrong and how I should have done it, but when they realize that I’ve arrived they all make strange faces. They’re alarmed, they light up and worry at the same time, they push each other and I hear them say: - He has arrived...
Immediately the heart starts to accelerate. The adrenaline for the race just run returns to a notable peak. I can't say what and why, maybe it's the fact that after a race they have never greeted me with those tense and worried faces.
Something happened. I think so immediately.
Then I see my father coming towards me with a strange expression. Lorenzo immediately disappears to talk on cell phone and his face isn’t serene either, not the normal one after the race. I could have had the worst result ever and he wouldn't have cared.
It’s exactly here that the heart rises to the throat and hammers because I feel it, I really feel that what happened is bad. My father has always been crystal clear and now it's so easy for me to understand that he’s shocked.
Before he tells me what happened I know for sure that I’ll be able to live another fifty or seventy years, it doesn't matter, but I will always remember his expression, his eyes and how I felt now.
Every sense sharpens and focuses on his voice in the midst of the chaos that reigns supreme. Voices, noises and sounds act as a backdrop, in particular a screen in some corner of the garage sends back news about some race that is taking place or that has just taken place, I don't register well because it’s truly a great chaos, but this is also strange because while you’re racing, you never look at other things.
He shouts something behind him, I think he tells them to lower the voices, but they don't listen to him and I understand that must be where the news he’s about to give me comes from. Because I know that there’s news to receive, it’s now obvious.
- What happened? - I ask with the helmet, the support and the protection in my hand resting along my side. My father takes me by the arms with great force, the way his hands grab me makes me feel scared because it seems like he's trying to support me, but I'm standing on my own, he doesn't need to hold me up.
I realize I can't breathe.
- Charlie. - he says in the usual way he calls me. His voice is tense and he doesn't know how to tell me.
I don't remember. I don't remember another time he had that expression.
His eyes are even more shocked up.
It's shock, it's really shock what I read.
- It's about Jules.
As soon as he says it my mind transmits to me at the speed of light all the useful information.
Jules is racing in Japan, in F1. Since they’re on the other side of the world we were racing at the same time. I remember yesterday afternoon that we wrote to each other and wished each other good luck. He encouraged me to give it my all in the last two races of my season in Formula Renault that were going to be held on the same day, I told him to think about his because they had bad weather in Suzuka for today.
- He had an accident. - my father continues. I open my eyes wide and fill my lungs with air, continuing to hold it in. This moment is actually very short, it’s not as long as I perceive it, but it seems infinite to me.
I can even hear the heartbeats ringing in my ears.
- It’s very serious. Now he’s in the hospital and we don’t know how he is.
He tells me everything and right away, he knows how to give the news. The important and necessary information right away, before the brain shuts down from the pain, the agitation and the world that collapses.
Because it happens, the world collapses on my thin seventeen-year-old shoulders.
It’s not the accident itself, unfortunately racing in F1 and in general in the motor sector these are things that happen and you take into account, but only when you come up against them with a more or less direct experience and when that experience is serious, you really understand what it means to play with life and death.
What makes the difference, however, is my father and his expression, the way he told me as the first thing as soon as I got out of the car. Not a single word about my race and I don't even remember how it was, I can't do the math to figure out where I am right now in the final ranking, will I be able to be second in the general ranking? I was just a few points behind Matevos. What position did he get in this race? Will I win the junior championship?
None of this is in my head anymore. It's all erased.
There's only my father who looks at me to understand if I've really understood what's happening to my best friend, my godfather, the one who is like an older brother to me.
To the first boy I've ever liked in such a wrong way that I kept my feelings well hidden in my heart, deep down so that no one can ever find out.
- Charlie? - he calls me because he sees me absent, estranged. His hands still on my arms squeeze and I understand that they’re still holding me up. Suddenly my eyes return to see and focus, the smiling, delicate and so beautiful face of Jules fades and overlaps the worried one of my father and I wake up.
- How serious? - I ask immediately to understand better. Serious doesn't mean anything, serious can be more alive or more dead, but there is a big difference between the two states.
For a moment he hesitates, he doesn't know if he should go into details and he's about to do so when he decides to give me a little more time.
- Not much is known, the information is coming in fragmented and inconsistent. I’ll know more when we have a clear understanding of the exact dynamics of the accident and how it is going. Lorenzo and I are in contact with Phil, but he doesn't know anything yet either. He's in the operating room.
My heart is pounding. It's pounding like crazy. It's not clear yet. I want it to be clearer. I need clarity. I need clarity.
- But... but can he die? - I don't know with what force my voice overcomes the throat clamped in an iron grip, but I manage to ask and I point my frowning eyes at my father's. I won't allow a generic and uncertain answer. I need to know.
I've never experienced anything like this, I've had a lucky life surrounded by people who love me and I've never suffered bad things, it's the first time and they say that until you're in it, you don't know how you'd react and what kind of person you are.
Now I know.
Pragmatic. Clear. Exactly. Rational.
I have to know everything there’s to know, only after that can I feel bad or lose my mind, but before knowing what am I losing it for?
- He could die, but we don't know, Charlie. There's no point in thinking about it now. Let's wait for news. Maybe it's better to go for today and withdraw. I don't know how you can do race 2.
As soon as he says it, and this thing is so typical of him that I'm not surprised, I force myself away from his hands and take a step back. I act completely on impulse, I don't even realize it myself, I don't know what I'm saying and doing, but I remain standing straight and I frown staring at him piercingly and badly. I think I'm not seventeen anymore. I think I have suddenly become an adult, as absurd as it may seem, and that I have skipped all the stages of my adolescence and youth.
- No, that’s out of the question. It’s the last race of the championship and I’m not yet sure of finishing at least second or winning the junior championship. It’s important that I win at least that and that I finish second in the overall championship. Jules and Nicolas have been clear about what I have to achieve in this last stage!
My mind repeats the words that my mentor and my manager have explained to me well and at this point I realize that something is happening to me, but I can't focus on it.
- Charlie, you’re in a single-seater, you’re no longer in karts. You have to be lucid and present when you race. Jules is fighting for his life after an accident in a car on the track!
For the first time he’s hard and direct, he’s on the verge of imposing himself with force, but I breathe frantically and shake my head, contracting my jaw and muscles, I feel my nails digging into the flesh of my palms and here I understand what I didn't two seconds ago.
I'm turning into a real driver.
- I have to race. Jules would like this. He believes so much in me, he introduced me to Nicolas and without him I wouldn't be here. He's waiting for me in F1, if I don't run the second race he'll overtake me and I'll be nobody. Today's placing is essential for the continuation of my career and everyone believes in me too much, but above all I believe in it! Racing is Jules' legacy for me, I can't disappoint him. I'm serious here!
I don't know what I'm saying, I don't think I really know. I'm rather going on autopilot, but I have the feeling more and more that I'm already a professional, in my head and in my instinct.
What happens in critical moments? The true character comes out and this is my first critical moment and this is my true character. You don't give up for shit.
Dad is on the verge of yelling at me, he looks around not knowing what to do, for the first time he doesn't know how to handle me and Lorenzo comes to his aid. He gives him back the phone and sighs with a truly terrible look, for a moment my heart stops and I think he's about to say what I fear, but he immediately understands my look and shakes his head.
- Still no news. He got stuck in the crane that was on the edge of the track to remove another crashed car and they couldn't extract him. The length of the rescue was decisive, it could have killed him. If... - but the stern and shocked look that dad gives him makes him understand that maybe he was too explicit with me. Lorenzo shakes himself and realizes that maybe he should have been more tactful, they try to protect me in every way, as if I were made of glass, as if I were the most important one to be handled with kid gloves.
- I'm fine and I'm strong. I want to run race 2, if I don't and then... - for the first time my voice shakes and I realize I'm about to cry, so I stop, swallow and take a breath, looking away from them.
The two look at each other while I try to regain my nerve and I raise my hand showing that it’s steady, but I do it impulsively and I don't know how steady it really is. For a moment I fear that the internal state really reflects the external one, but to my surprise more than theirs, the hand is still.
Good, I can control myself.
- Running will allow me to focus on something other than him. We could wait for news all day. Maybe by the time I get back we'll know that he’s fine and that he’ll survive.
Up until now I have always been optimistic because life has been generous with me and has never given me reason to doubt, even if I have the feeling that this way of being is about to change. But for the moment, yes, I can believe that everything will be fine.
Lorenzo nods immediately and doesn't even try to argue with me.
- I agree, he has to race. It's the last race and it's important that he gets the highest possible score, his career depends on it. If he wants to do this as a job he has to learn to manage his nerves and pressure.
Dad looks at him to see if he's serious and then, realizing that he is, he rolls his eyes and shakes his head in incredulous.
- You guys are brothers! If something happens to you too, Charlie... - but he doesn't end.
- It won't happen. I'll be careful. It's not raining, the track is dry and will be like this all day. We don't race like it's our life here. We don't have serious accidents.
But I really don't know, it's just what it has to be.
Dad leaves and I'm alone with Lorenzo, I still have my helmet and all the gear in my hand. I look at my brother to see if he's hiding something from me but then I realize it's him. He would never do that.
- What does Phil think? - I ask, realizing that he was on the phone with him before. Lorenzo shrugs and shakes his head with a lost expression.
- He prays and cries. I think it's really bad. There are no clear images of the episode, we only know that it was raining, there was an accident before and the crane was still out for that car. Jules ran right into it and got stuck under there, but they couldn't get him out and that's what... - he doesn't finish the sentence.
- He's not dead. As long as we don't know how he is, for us he's alive and he'll make it.
There was a famous theoretical physicist who said something about a cat being both alive and dead. They talked about it at school. As long as you don't open the box and you don't know if the cat is alive or dead, it's both.
Jules is in that box right now and he’s both dead and alive. But I have to think that he’s more alive than dead. As long as they don't tell us anything, that's how it is. I still want to be optimistic for a few hours of my existence, because I know that I’m about to change.
Lorenzo rubs his face with hands in a moment of weakness and I hug him tightly, realizing that Jules has always been his best friend and like a brother to him. It’s thanks to their bond that he has become one for me too.
Jules is not only a friend and a brother, for me he’s also an idol. He has traveled the path that I have always dreamed of and now he cannot stop. He’s about to sign with Ferrari, he’ll go there for sure, he’s good, he’s gifted.
Jules still has a lot to do and to prove, he cannot stop now at the best moment.
He cannot leave us.

Pierre's voice reaches my distant ear, but as he speaks I come back to myself more and more.
He's crying, but I had no doubt that he was.
I focus on the surrounding trucks, I've retreated to the parking lot behind the garages as if to isolate myself for a moment and find myself again. I feel like I'm balanced on a precipice and if I fall I'll be finished as a driver. So I'm here alone, hidden among the trucks in a desperate attempt to stay up and transform myself into the driver I want to be at all costs. For him, because Jules has always seen this in me. A driver, a future champion. He always told me and he always did everything he could to take me there with him, one day. I can't disappoint him. I can't.
- Dude, I don't know how you do it, in your place I would be too out of my mind to run, I'm crying a lot and if I had to race it would be impossible! Luckily my races are next Sunday! - as soon as Pierre saw the accident on TV he immediately called me in tears without considering that I was running too, it's typical of him. I found twenty calls from him.
I smile ironically because in reality I'm the one who admires him because he expresses his emotions so easily. I wish I couldn’t run, I would like to react normally like him by refusing to get in the car, but I realize that my feet would move on their own. There is something that pushes me to continue, but maybe it's like this because until I receive more certain news, for me Jules is still everything and nothing.
- Even if I don't run nothing changes, I have no power over what’s happening to Jules. At that point it's better to keep me busy, if I run I don't think about him. Now I'm not running and I'm thinking about him like crazy, but the more I do it the worse I feel because I can't do anything for him and this feeling of uselessness is terrible.
Only when I finish speaking do I realize what I said. Pierre is always the only one I tell certain things to, I never think I need to vent or that I can do it, but in the end it's always him that I tell everything. Because he's the first to vent, cry, explode and express emotion at full speed. When you're with someone who does it a lot, you know that he'll understand if you do it too every now and then and he won't judge you.
Pierre is my comfort zone and the fact that he's a driver like me means a lot. I have friends outside of racing, but certain things are something no one can understand unless they experience themselves. Furthermore, I'm ashamed to be seen in certain conditions with others, but with him it's not like that, so I always cling to Pierre and I'm not embarrassed to do so.
- I know how important Jules is to you, he's like a brother as well as a mentor. I'm attached to him too and I hope everything goes well. I'm glued to the TV and phone to see if there's any news, but nothing yet.
- Not even his father knows anything yet. It's a very long operation, he'll be inside for hours...
How I wish I knew something. At least the response, whatever it is. To be here and not know, to be suspended in the void, in everything and nothing. He's both alive and dead. He's both good and bad.
That closed box is shit. The more time passes, the more I would like to open it, even though doing so would mean bad news, but it’s not in my power to open that box. The wait is atrocious.
- Are you sure you will really race after that? I understand that it’s the last race, but...
Pierre and I raced together at the beginning in karts and we became friends, but then he took slightly different paths than me, parallel but in different categories. For example, I’m in Formula Renault 2.0, while he’s in 3.5, but we have remained on excellent terms and since we were little we have also gone on holiday together or if one is racing in the other's country we host each other.
If I had to say that I have a friend on the races, it would be him even if we have never really been in the same category.
- I have to race. It’s not just because Jules would like it, nor because he believed in me so much that he did everything in his power to get the help I needed to continue in my dream. It's also because I know myself and I know that I would regret retiring now, I would definitely screw up this championship, I would finish third, I would be nobody and probably my career would end before it even started. Nicolas always said that he would follow me depending on my results and if he leaves me I will quit. - I tell him to remind myself, to organize my thoughts and rationalize. It's what helps me most at the moment to manage the terrible stomach ache that threatens to make me throw up every time I breathe.
- Well, you can't win the championship anymore... - he points out with little tact. Normally I would get annoyed, but it's him and that's fine.
- But Nick is the third year that he's been running this category, it’s fucking obvious he's won everything and has this gap from the second. Let him go to some other category to show off! I would be first and I'm a rookie!
My competitiveness comes out very easily and from year to year, the higher I go in the category, the worse I am.
- I think it's right, you also have to think about your career which is at a key moment now. Now we’re in single-seaters, everything is too important if we want to get to F1.
- Max Verstappen has already signed with Toro Rosso and F1 for next year and he’s my age, he has always raced with me in karts. He only did one year in European Formula 3 and the next one he jumps straight into 1. - the fact that I mention him with my usual fervor makes him burst out laughing.
- Are you still competing with him even if you’re no longer in the same championship?
- He’s just running away from the comparison with me, but I will also get there and I will put him back in his place! The last one we did together he won and I was only second! I have to give him one back!
As usual when my karting nemesis who I can never forget comes into play, I get too caught up and time passes. For a moment I forget about the whole nightmare that is unfolding around me.
For a moment I’m a normal boy again talking to his best friend, also a driver, who knows practically everything about me. He knows it so much that he’s the only one who knows the kind of affection I have for Jules and I was able to tell him this because Pierre had already told me similar things on him.
- I'm sure you'll give them all back to him in F1. We'll all see there in a few years and we'll run around Jules who will already be in red!
He dreams, he always daydreams big. He's a romantic and sensitive dreamer. He's the best version of any 18-year-old boy.
I don't think he's right, I try to be realistic because the optimism of a few hours ago has already faded, but I usually dream too even if not like Pierre, but no one does it like him.
I sigh and the veil of reality reminds me of the uncertainty that life has right now.
- I hope you're right, Pierre. With all my heart.
Pierre waits a bit, swallows the tears that are about to come back and sniffs; he's back down to earth.
- I hope so too.

He wasn't right. We won't be running around Jules in red. Not because they won't offer him a seat in Ferrari, but because he won't race on the track again so easily and maybe he won't race at all.
When I finished Race 2, securing my second place in my first championship with a single-seater, as well as the prize in the Junior, I didn't feel the satisfaction or happiness I had hoped for.
When I was racing I was focused as I expected. I put on my helmet and everything faded away to the point that I felt guilty afterwards; when I raised the visor and the world went back to its nightmare, I realized I had never thought about him.
I did it as soon as I got out of the car.
'How will Jules be?'
I carried out the usual post-race chores and ran to my garage obsessively searching for news, the good ones. The ones that won't come.
As if every time I run something could happen to Jules, my father and Lorenzo's eyes are particularly dark. Before they were tense, but now they are really dark.
- The operation is over, he’s alive but attached to the machines and at the moment he’s in a coma.
I think I will never forget this October 5, 2014. No matter how things go.
They explain to me that to hope for his recovery he should wake up soon and show positive signs within 24 hours or so, but if that doesn't happen we have to prepare for the worst.
They also tell me that if the coma were to last a long time, they wouldn't be able to say when or if he could wake up.
In other words, if tomorrow there are no improvements of any kind, we can consider him dead.
From the exact moment they explain this to me it’s as if they cut the wires completely. I completely detach myself from the old serene and optimistic Charles and welcome the new one, who I don't yet know what he’ll be like, but I know that now, at this precise moment, I have changed.
If I had to decree a moment in my existence in which I changed, a key moment in my life, it’s certainly today, this news about Jules. Because we still don't know how it will be, but a part of me knows, the one that will no longer be optimistic, nor realistic, but only pessimistic. It will go badly, I feel it. I have lost Jules. Today, Sunday, October 5, 2014, I lost my Jules.
I no longer have any races to think about, we’ll work for the next season which will be in another category, Nicolas had told me about our projects, but at the moment I can't remember anything.
My mind is empty, I have no duties, no competitions, no races and not even hopes, except for Jules' improvement which, if it doesn't actually arrive within these damned 24 hours, I could regret having done this race 2 for the rest of my life.
Not for having run it, but because while I was running it I didn't think about him, just like a real professional driver would do.
I erased everything, every living being, every circumstance, every affection. I erased everything in those laps, even him.
I erased him while he fought to survive.
I had reasons and valid ones too, but now they no longer seem so in the face of the possibility that he could die.
They tell me that they will not move him from Japan immediately, but as soon as it’s possible they’ll send him to Nice, home; however these first 24 fatal hours he’ll stay over there, far from everyone, even from me.
I’ll remember him with his splendid smile on the most beautiful face that for me a boy could ever have had.
I’ll remember him like this for all these 24 hours and forever.

All our actions have a weight, even our non-actions do.
The worst is when the weight is not on others but exclusively on us.
Nothing would have changed if I hadn’t run that day, yet the months pass and he’s in a coma and is increasingly distant from me and what I think every hour is this.
I shouldn’t have run. I wouldn’t have done anything for him, not a comma would have changed in his terrible fate, yet I wouldn’t feel so horrible, because this is how now, month after month of this damned coma, I feel.
Horrible.
How is it possible that while he was dying I was running?
Our actions have a weight and they have it on us and this weight weighs on our conscience and one day it will become a hole so big that we'll not know how to fill it.
That October 5th Jules died and now he’s only stuck in that body that doesn’t want to let him free.
I regret every day not having shown myself to be human, as I reflect on the real and profound meaning of life, the real life, as I look at him lying in this hospital bed in Nice, as I rationally reflect on what it would be like for him to wake up after all these months of coma, after the gravity of what he has suffered.
I regret not having been human that hour of my existence and I know it makes no sense, but I feel horrible and I don't understand how much this will weigh on my life from now on.
Life is unfair and I discovered it at seventeen with my best friend, but the worst thing is that perhaps I’m not really human and if I want to overcome this obstacle, I have to accept myself as I am and move on.
I have to succeed because now I have an enormous responsibility more than before. He believed in me as a driver, that's what Jules left me, and that's what I can do for him, to testify that he existed and that he had an essential impact on my life and to truly thank him.
For this I must come to terms with myself and go beyond the weight of my inhumanity.
From now on, everything I will do will be to not disappoint him.”

NOTES: I couldn't help but include this fact, I thought long and hard about how to write it and I looked for all the information I could. Jules is definitely a person who meant a lot to Charles and what happened affected him a lot. I hope I haven't offended anyone's sensibilities with this chapter which was necessary to show and learn more about Charles. Jules did a lot to convince Nicolas Todt to become Charles's manager and without Nicolas, Charles would obviously have had to give up racing, so let's say that in a certain sense he owes him a lot. Then it's well known that Jules was his godfather, mentor and that he was tied to him like a brother. I made a small addition about Charles's feelings for Jules, I hope no one takes offense, it's a fanfic and even though I refer to real things in some places, it's still all invented and fictional. I also started to include Pierre, in some parts he’ll be very important for Charles and the details about how they met and their relationship when they were young, are true. I read about how Charles didn't hesitate to run the race despite Jules' condition, but then in the following months he felt guilty for doing so. The details about the championship I wrote about are true (at least if the info I found is correct). As you may have noticed, this chapter was all from Charles' POV, the next one will be from Max. Thanks to those who follows, reads and comments on the fic. See you next time. Kisses Akane