Long Shot - Mike Lupica [13]
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.
SEVEN
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