Long Shot - Mike Lupica [14]
“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.mpossible. 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