Long Shot - Mike Lupica [32]
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.
SIXTEEN
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,