Long Shot (11 page)

Joe went inside the video store. Pedro told him to go ahead and pick something out, he’d meet him in a few minutes in front of Casa Luis, where Joe’s mom was picking them up.

When Pedro got to his dad’s restaurant, he didn’t walk in right away, as cold as it was outside. Instead he stood off to the side of the front window, snuck a look through it, and saw that his dad was in there by himself, having come right back to work as soon as the Wilton game was over.

Luis Morales was standing on a chair, carefully taking down a huge painting from one of the back walls, the painting almost too big for him to wrap his arms around. Somehow he managed, gently laying the painting on the floor before he hopped down, picked it up again and carried it toward the front.

As heavy as the painting clearly was, Pedro could see his dad smiling.

Just then, Joe and his mom pulled up in her car, Joe calling out and asking if he was ready to go. Pedro told him he’d call him later, for now he was going to stay and help his dad do some work.

He walked through the front door, amazed at how much it was starting to look like a real restaurant, even with boxes still stacked in front of the bar.

“To what do I owe this honor?” his dad said.

“I heard you were short good workers lately,” Pedro said.

“Only for a little while,” his dad said. “Then some friends of mine showed up in their spare time to help me out.”

“Mom says Mr. Miller turned out to be a bad sport.”

Even the mention of Mr. Miller, Pedro saw, couldn’t knock the smile off his dad’s face. Maybe nothing would ever be able to do that inside Casa Luis.

“There are a lot of bad sports in the world,” his dad said. “You just don’t expect it from somebody who was supposed to be your friend.”

You can say that again,
Pedro thought.

“How do you handle it when that happens?” he asked his dad.

“Just keep playing your game, son.” He reached over and mussed Pedro’s thick hair, thick as his own. “Now, are you here to work or to talk?”

“Both,” Pedro said.

It turned out the boxes, packed so carefully, with lots of padding, were full of dinner plates that his dad had ordered special all the way from California. Together they brought them to the kitchen one by one, set them in front of the shelves where Pedro’s dad wanted them stacked, shelves Pedro knew his dad had painted himself after his painter had quit on him.

“I’m so scared I’m going to drop something,” Pedro said.

“Trust it!” his dad yelled, and both of them laughed.

When they were done they moved some photographs around on the walls until his dad had all the walls in the place looking exactly the way he wanted them to. Then Pedro held the ladder in place while his dad climbed up and fixed his big ceiling fan.

Somehow it was work that felt like play, Pedro feeling the way he did when they were on the soccer field together. The only difference here was that he wasn’t seeing the little boy inside his dad, he was seeing the great man that boy had become.

Nobody had been able to stop him, and now his grand opening was less than two weeks away.

When they had finished all their jobs, the two of them sitting at the bar where his dad already had the cash register and computer and credit card machine set up, Pedro said, “I’m proud of you, Papa.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

“Yes,” Pedro said, “you have.”

“It was a long journey to my dream.”

Pedro said, “Everything you had to go through to get here—was it worth it?”

“Look around you,” his dad said, making a sweeping gesture with his arm that seemed to take in the whole place at once. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think, Papa. I
know.
”

Luis Morales looked at his son. Then he placed one hand over his heart, reached out with the other and touched Pedro’s.

“If you know in your heart that you’re right,” he said, “then nothing—and nobody—can beat you.”

He wrapped Pedro up in a hug, the two of them so tight to each other Pedro felt as if his dad had put their two hearts together. Pedro was sure in that moment, as sure as he could be about anything, that nobody was going to beat him either.

 

 

 

They called it a debate at Vernon Middle School, but it really wasn’t.

Both candidates would give their speeches, and then they’d each have the option to respond to the other candidate’s speech for an additional minute—what they knew from Social Studies was called a rebuttal.

“I look at it this way, after the way Ned’s been acting toward you,” Sarah had said at lunch. “At least he’ll be putting the
butt
back in rebuttal.”

That one even got a grin out of Joe. After Sarah said it, he made a motion like he was shooting an imaginary basketball, held the finish and said, “Sarah. From downtown.”

Pedro had spent all last night working on his speech, delivering it over and over again in a quiet voice in his room, not wanting his parents to hear, not wanting to have them find out his secret this close to the election. He kept reading the speech until he felt he had it memorized, then repeated it a few times standing in front of the mirror in his bathroom, finally even managing to look at himself without giggling.

When he felt he had it down cold, he called Sarah and recited it to her from memory, timing himself as he did, proud that he’d brought it in a few seconds under three minutes, which was going to be the time limit.

When he’d finished with Sarah there had been total silence at the other end of the phone, as if the line had gone dead.

“Well?” he said finally.

Sarah said, “It’s perfect.”

“You’re nice, but you’re wrong,” he said. “It’s not. But it’s all I’ve got. Or maybe all I am.”

“No,” Sarah said, “you’re the one who’s wrong. It’s great, it really is.”

“I was waiting for you to say that you couldn’t have done better yourself.”

In her serious voice Sarah said, “I couldn’t have even come close.”

Pedro hadn’t said a word to Ned, not one, since the end of the Wilton game. When they’d seen each other in class, or passed each other in the hall, all they would do is give each other the nod.

Even today, Pedro didn’t say anything when they were up on the stage and had taken their places facing each other from individual podiums. They hadn’t even gone through the motion of shaking hands.

Mr. Lucchino was with them on the stage, holding his own microphone. He produced an antique silver dollar from his pocket, holding it up to the crowd, and told Pedro he could make the call.

He said
heads
into his microphone and Mr. Lucchino picked the coin off the floor and said heads it was. It meant Pedro could decide whether he wanted to go first or not.

“I’ll go second,” he said.

“Then I guess you’re up, Mr. Hancock,” Mr. Lucchino said. “You’ve got three minutes.”

Pedro had been wondering where Ned’s speech was, thought maybe he was keeping it folded up in his pocket until the last possible moment. There was no paper in his hands, no paper on the podium in front of him, no nothing, making Pedro think that maybe Ned had memorized his own speech so well he didn’t even need a copy in case he lost his place.

But as soon as he started, Pedro realized that Ned hadn’t prepared a speech. He was clearly making it up as he went along.

“You guys all know me, right?” he said, not looking at Pedro, turning toward the audience instead. Pedro could see Jeff Harmon and Dave DeLuca in the front row. “And if you do, you probably know that I pretty much have been captain of every team I’ve ever played on.”

He paused for a second, letting that sink in. “I’ve never had to run for captain, it’s just that the other guys on the team always thought
I
was the best guy for the job.”

For some reason, Jeff and Dave applauded now, even though nobody else in the auditorium did. Ned smiled at them and made a time-out gesture with his hands, stopping them.

“I actually feel a little funny being up here,” Ned said, “because I’ve never been very comfortable talking about myself. I’ve always preferred to let my actions speak louder than my words.”

Tell me about it,
Pedro thought.

He was waiting for Ned to talk about what kind of difference he could make as class president, but instead Ned started talking about sports. As if they were in the gym and not in the auditorium, as if being a difference-maker in a basketball game made him the best guy for the job. So he talked about some of the games he’d won and the teams he’d played on, almost like someone reading stuff off the back of his own baseball card.

As he did, Pedro checked the runners’ watch his parents had given him on his last birthday, one he hardly ever wore but had put on today. He planned to take it off and just put it down in front of him when he started speaking, not wanting Mr. Lucchino to have to tell him he’d run over his allotted time.

Still a minute to go for Ned, he saw.

Only Ned was wrapping things up, coming up on what he must have thought was going to be a big finish.

There wasn’t one.

“I’m not here to talk bad about Pedro, or talk up myself,” he said. “I’m just looking to be captain of the school this time. Everybody else seems to think I’m the
man
.” He paused there, and smiled, like that was one line he
had
prepared. “The man for the job, I mean. I hope you guys do, too.”

Jeff and Dave stood up, clapping their hands hard. Everyone else applauded along with them. But Pedro noticed that Jeff and Dave were the only ones standing.

Mr. Lucchino said, “Your turn, Mr. Morales.”

He got out of his chair now, because it was finally time to say everything that needed to be said.

This had been Pedro’s plan all along. He wasn’t going to say what needed to be said in the gym.

He was going to say it here.

 

All he changed from the night before was his opening line.

“I’ve never been the
man
,” Pedro said. “Just a team man.”

He was off. Not feeling nervous. Not rushing it. Feeling like he was exactly where he was supposed to be, the way he always had in basketball, at least until this season.

“This isn’t a contest about which one of us is the better athlete, because if it was, Ned wouldn’t just be elected president of Vernon Middle, he’d be elected mayor of Vernon.”

That got a laugh.

From everyone, it sounded like.

Pedro wasn’t looking out in the audience, though.

He was looking directly at Ned Hancock.

“You know who I am,” he said in a clear, loud voice. “You know I never pretend to be something I’m not. That I would never pretend to be somebody’s friend and then act in a way opposite of that.”

He paused again, picked out a face in the audience the way Sarah had told him to. Her face. Then he turned right back to Ned. But as soon as Pedro’s eyes were back on him, Ned quickly turned away, the kid who was supposed to be the coolest in the whole school not looking so cool at all.

Pedro had always thought of Ned Hancock as being so much bigger than he was.

Not now.

Now they were even.

“If I’m on your side,” Pedro said, “you don’t have to keep looking around to see if I’m still there. Because I will
always
be there.”

This time he had to pause because his classmates were applauding. For a moment, he wished his father could be here. Hearing this. Seeing this.

When they stopped, he started in again.

“I will be exactly the same kind of president I am as a teammate,” he said. “I will always give myself up for the good of the team. I will always be looking for ways to make us better. I will never do anything to make any one of you look bad. I don’t just want people to look at us and say we’re one of the best schools in Vernon. I want them to say we’re
the
best. Because we are.”

More applause, like the other sixth-graders were really getting into it now.

He looked into the audience again and caught Sarah’s eye. She smiled at him and he smiled back and didn’t care who noticed.

“I’m not doing this for me,” Pedro said. “Because that’s not me. I don’t think I’m better than everybody else. I just want to bring out the best in everybody else.”

Sarah made a little fist, knowing he was close to the end now.

“I know candidates are supposed to make a lot of promises,” he said, “but I’ve only got one: If I’m for you I’ll never be against you. I’ve never been the biggest star. Just the best teammate you could ever have. Thank you very much.”

Sarah was the first one to jump to her feet, halfway between the stage and the gym doors. Then Joe was up with her, and Bobby and Jamal. Then the whole audience was standing, Pedro noticing that Jeff and Dave were the last two to get up.

When it finally got quiet again, Mr. Lucchino said, “Would you care to rebut, Mr. Hancock?”

Ned shook his head.

“I’m done,” he said.

 

 

 

The next game with Wilton was the day after the debate. If you could even call it a debate, Joe kept saying.

“Looked more like a beatdown to me,” he said.

“I did okay,” Pedro said.

“Yeah,” he said, “like the Spurs did okay in the Finals when they swept LeBron four straight.”

The election would be held Monday. Normally, Pedro would have been all fixed on that, worrying it to death all weekend. But now here came the Wilton Warriors again, in the gym at Wilton High. Here was a chance for them to even the score right away for the way the last game between them had ended, Pedro missing that shot at the buzzer.

He’d worry about the election when the game was over.