Long Shot (5 page)

And, boy, did he not want to tell you the same thing twice.

After playing a whole season with Coach Cory already, Pedro looked at it this way: Coach wanted you to
play
basketball, but made you work at the same time.

Fine with Pedro.

He’d never been afraid of hard work.

They all got through the weave nine straight times. Now Pedro was back in the middle for the last one before they got to scrimmage. Ned was on his left this time, Joe on his right.

Pass, cut behind.

Simple.

Do it again and keep doing it until the last layup, the one that meant they could break up into teams and
really
play some ball.

The three of them had done the drill so well, so cleanly, that they’d already passed it five times by the time Ned hooked around from the left and Pedro was flying from the right for his layup. Cake. Ned was a dream passer of the ball, whether it was a long pass or a short one, chest or bounce. He’d throw it hard to you but never too hard, always giving you a pass you could not only handle, but
do
something with, pass it or shoot it or just put it on the floor and start dribbling.

Not this time.

The ball came at Pedro harder than he expected, harder than he ever got from Ned, and just low enough that before Pedro could get his hands down, his knee caught the ball just right and sent it screaming so hard off the back wall that it was as if Pedro had booted it there.

“Soccer season’s over,” Coach Cory yelled. “You gotta
catch
that ball, my brother.” He blew his whistle then. “So now we run,” he said.

“How many laps, Coach?” Bobby Murray said, maybe hoping he’d forgotten.

“Ten.”

Groans all around.

As they ran, Pedro heard a voice behind him whisper, “Nice going, Pete.”

He thought it might be Ned. Or maybe it was Jeff. He couldn’t be sure. It was one of them, though. Pedro knew that.

He just put his head down and ran harder, promising himself he’d made the last mistake he was going to make for the rest of the night.

 

Things didn’t get any better when they scrimmaged. If anything they got worse, courtesy of Ned Hancock.

Sometimes Ned would wait a couple of extra seconds when Pedro was open, giving the guy covering him a chance to get back on him. Or he would give Pedro a look the way he always had, but then cut the wrong way, and Pedro would throw the ball away just like he had during the three-man weave.

One time, after Pedro did that and got called out by Coach Cory again, Ned came over and said, “Don’t worry, dude, by next week we’ll be reading each other’s minds again.”

Or maybe I’m reading yours loud and clear right now,
Pedro thought.

During a quick water break near the end of practice, Pedro whispered to Joe, “Are you seeing what’s happening out there?”

Joe said, “Yeah. You’re trying to do too much and it’s messing you up big-time.”

“You think it’s all me?”

Joe grinned and looked back over his shoulder, as if Pedro might be talking to somebody else. “No,” Joe said. “The hoops fairy.”

For the last ten minutes of the scrimmage, Coach Cory decided to mix up the teams, then told them they were going full court, and to forget about running plays, he just wanted them to
run
, to force the action, every chance they got.

“Pressure wins in this sport,” he said. “The pressure you put on the other guy, and then the pressure they start putting on themselves.”

When they started to match up, picking the guys they were going to guard, Ned Hancock raised a hand and said, “Coach, you mind if I play point on our side? I want to work on my ballhandling a little.”

“Knock yourself out,” Coach Cory said. “It’s your team.”

Pedro thought,
Yeah, in more ways than one tonight.

“Thanks,” he said, and then added, “I guess I’ve got Pedro.”

They
never
guarded each other in practice, except if it was on a switch. For starters, Ned was at least a head taller than Pedro. And that wasn’t even the biggest problem, which was Ned’s length—those long arms of his that could swallow up even guys his own size when Ned really went after it on defense.

And, boy, did he ever go after it now.

He smothered Pedro every chance he got, guarded him all over the court, and stayed right up on him even when Pedro wasn’t close to being in the play.

On the last play of the night, he put such a good ball fake on Pedro that he got his feet tangled up and fell down as Ned blew past him on the baseline for an easy layup.

When Coach Cory blew the whistle for the last time, Ned ran over, smiling, and put a hand out.

“For Pete’s sake, dude,” he said. “The fake wasn’t
that
good, was it?”

Pedro ignored his hand and pulled himself to his feet.

Yeah,
Pedro thought.
For Pete’s sake.

And in that moment he knew something as sure as he knew his screen name and his password: He didn’t have to wait until school tomorrow for the campaign to begin.

It had already begun.

 

 

 

After practice, his mom dropped him off at Sarah’s house, which was only three blocks away from theirs.

Pedro was going to eat dinner at Sarah’s and then the two of them were going to study together for a history test they were having tomorrow.

That’s what Pedro told his mom and that much was true, because Pedro didn’t lie to his parents, ever. What he didn’t tell his mom—or his dad—was that after they finished studying, they were going to make their first campaign posters, hoping to get the jump on Ned and Jeff.

Sarah made sure to tell her mom not to say anything to Pedro’s mom, that he wanted to surprise his parents about running for president.

Pedro hadn’t told his mom about being nominated when he got home from school, hadn’t told her on the way to Sarah’s, and frankly wasn’t sure when he was going to tell anybody in his family.

“When are you going to let them in on our little secret?” Sarah said in her room. “I know this isn’t the smallest town in the world, but somebody might mention it to your parents one of these days, right?”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Pedro said.

Sarah saw right through that one like a head fake she wasn’t falling for.

“If it’s not a big deal,” she said, “then why are you treating it like one?”

“I just keep thinking about having to tell them that we lost,” he said.

He remembered something he’d seen once on ESPN, famous athletes talking about how they motivated themselves to win a big game. This one tennis player, Chris Evert, said that she always imagined the same thing: the look on the other player’s face at the net if she beat her.

Pedro was just turning that around now, but with his dad. Pedro just couldn’t bear to think of the look on his dad’s face when he found out Pedro had lost.

“Who said anything about losing?” Sarah said. “You mean my mom and me went to Staples for nothing?”

They were on her bedroom floor, surrounded by poster boards, Magic Markers, even a digital photo of the two of them that Sarah’s mom had taken and had blown up at the copy store.

They were going to put it on the poster with this written below it:

“Pedro and Sarah. A Winning Team.”

Sarah was doing the lettering herself. She was as good and neat with lettering as she was at everything else—soccer and lacrosse and girls’ basketball and playing the guitar. And studying for history tests. If Ned was Mr. Everything at their school, she was
Miss
Everything.

She looked up now from her work centering another picture on another board before she glued it and said, “You want me to change this to
losing team
?”

Pedro forced up a smile. Usually smiling came naturally to him when he was with Sarah. He knew he could talk about stuff with her, open up more than he ever did with Joe, Jamal or Bobby. Even though he’d never admit this to his guy friends, talking the way he did with her didn’t seem like such a bad thing.

“Can I just say I’m trying to keep it real, the way Jamal does?” he said.

“No,” she said. “First of all, nobody talks as cool as Jamal does. And second, you promised all of us that you were going to lose all the talk about losing, and now you’re over here and that’s
all
you’re talking about.”

“Okay,” Pedro said. “I should’ve said
if
we lose.”

Sarah didn’t say anything now. She just put down the glue and stared at him, the way you did when you were trying to get the other person to blink first.

“What’s really going on here?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Something,” she said. “You want to tell me something.”

“No I don’t.”

Sarah said, “Yes, you do.”

“You don’t know everything about me,” Pedro said.

She didn’t say anything now, just raised an eyebrow and gave him a look that said,
Oh, really?

Pedro couldn’t help himself. He laughed for the first time all night and said, “I give up.”

Then he told her what had happened at practice, the way Ned had messed with him, had gone out of his way to let everybody know how well he thought Dave DeLuca was doing at point guard every time Dave was on his team.

The way Pedro thought—no, was sure—he was being punished in basketball for running against Ned in the school election.

When he finished, Sarah said, “What does Joe think? He’s almost as smart as I am on the subject of you.”

“He just said I had a lousy night because I was trying too hard,” Pedro said. “And that the harder I tried the lousier I got.”

“Possible?”

“No,” Pedro said. “I mean, it’s not
i.m
possible. I did have a bad night, and that’s on me. All I’m saying is that I had help. I know Ned’s game and he knows mine, and that’s why I know what was going on.”

Before Sarah could say anything, Pedro added this: “And I know that if this election is going to wreck up my basketball season, I’m not doing it. You can run for president and get Jamal or Bobby to run with you.”

He expected her to get mad. Or throw one of her famous arm punches. Or—much worse—pinch him on the upper arm the way she did when something
really
dumb came out of his mouth.

She gave him her very best smile instead.

“We both know that is the wrong speech, Mr. President,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

Sarah said, “It means we’re in this together, and I’m not quitting and you’re not either.”

“I can’t have him against me at school and in basketball.”

“Listen,” Sarah said. “If you say he’s doing that to you in basketball, I believe you. I always believe you. But you can’t let that beat you. And
we
are not going to let
them
beat us.” Now she pulled her fist back, like she was going to throw a big punch, and poked him lightly in the middle of his chest with a finger instead. “I don’t like to lose at anything.”

“That’s because you never do,” Pedro said. “You really are the Ned of girls.”

“You don’t like to lose any more than I do.”

The next thing came out so loud it surprised him. “Tell me what to do about this!” he said.

“What you always do,” Sarah said. “Work harder.”

“You sound like my dad.”

Sarah smiled again and said, “That is the nicest thing you have ever said to me, Mr. Morales.”

“Sarah,” he said. “Ned isn’t just the best player on our team. He’s the best player in town and the best player in our league.”

“He’s better than you at basketball,” Sarah said. “But you’re better than
him
, especially if he’s acting this way. And you’re going to prove it.”

 

 

 

By the second week of practice, Dave DeLuca was getting as much time with the first team as Pedro was.

Sometimes more.

Coach Cory told Pedro not to get discouraged, he was just “mixing and matching” at this point, and that right now the offense just seemed to be “clicking” better when Ned and Dave were out there together.

Making it all sound like no big deal when they both knew that it was.

“You know you’re still my guy, right?” Coach Cory said.

“Sure,” Pedro said, knowing he sounded about as sincere as he felt. He didn’t feel like the coach’s guy, didn’t feel like the guy he used to be on a basketball court.

“Hey,” Coach Cory said. “You know how good I am at spreading the minutes around.”

Yeah,
Pedro thought.
My minutes.

If you weren’t Pedro Morales, if you didn’t know what was really going on, you wouldn’t have known anything had changed between Ned and him. Or with their team. But Pedro knew. He could see how different Ned was when Dave was out there with him, the way Ned tried to feature him every chance he could and went out of his way to give Dave a chance to shine.

The spotlight that Pedro always felt was trained on Ned? It was as if Ned was turning it around and putting it on Dave DeLuca.

Dave wasn’t as good a point guard as Pedro. He couldn’t pass as well, didn’t see the court as well, really could only dribble with his right hand, and was an even worse outside shooter than Pedro was.

None of that mattered lately, because Ned made sure it didn’t. If you could play at all—and you had to be able to play to make this team—he could make you look good if he wanted to. If he wanted you to look bad? Same.

Now it was as if he had gone ahead and changed the starting lineup without saying a word to anybody about it, not even the coach.

Coach Cory liked to say that there were always five or six plays that could change a game. An open guy who didn’t get the pass. Or make the shot. A rebound that that a defensive guy should have had, but which ended up in the hands of one of the offensive guys. A missed layup. A loose ball that you ended up with instead of the other guys.