Long Shot - Mike Lupica [7]
“Ned Hancock only thinks he’s the coolest kid in our class,” Joe said. “You actually are. Even though I can’t believe I’m actually saying that to you.”
“You sure are chatty all of a sudden.”
“This is a great idea, even if it wasn’t mine,” Joe said.
“It sounded a lot better when I was the one thinking it,” Pedro said. “Now I’m afraid that if I say it to anybody else, they’re going to fall down laughing.”
“Not Sarah,” Joe said. “Not Bobby. Not Jamal.”
Sarah Layng and Bobby Murray and Jamal Wynne, the center on the basketball team, were the other members of their crew. Usually they all ate lunch together, but today Sarah and Bobby and Jamal were part of a community-service group, serving lunch at the Vernon Home for the Aged.
“Sarah ought to be the one running against Ned, not me.”
“Dude, you can’t unthink this,” Joe said. “You are so doing this.”
Just then the bell sounded, followed by a burst of laughter from the other side of the room. Pedro looked over to see Ned Hancock with the same crew he always had around him. Ned was a head taller than everybody else, almost like he was up in a different atmosphere, always above the crowd.
“C’mon, President Morales,” Joe said, “time for English.”
“Please don’t call me that,” Pedro said. “Especially around normal people.”
“Got a nice ring to it, though, doesn’t it?” Joe said.
Pedro wasn’t going to admit it to his best bud—he didn’t want to encourage him. But one thing hadn’t changed since Saturday morning:
It did have a nice ring to it.
More than anything, more than being a good player or a good teammate or even being the leader that his dad said he was, Pedro Morales thought of himself as being honest.
Prided himself on being honest.
That was his big thing. He was honest about what his strengths and weaknesses were, in school and in sports, with his classmates in the sixth grade and with his teammates on whatever team he was playing on at the time. It was another one of Luis Morales’s big speeches, his dad telling him constantly that if you told the truth in everything you did, then you had nothing to worry about.
“The truth is the easiest thing to remember,” Luis Morales said. “Lies? They’re harder to remember than the hardest homework assignment in the world.”
Pedro was trying to be honest with himself about running for president. He knew how much he wanted to do it, despite what he had said to Joe. He knew he wanted to prove to himself, in his own life, what his dad had always said about being able to do anything you wanted in this world if you set your mind to it.
But, because he was honest, he knew what kind of a long shot he would be against somebody like Ned Hancock, who every kid in school seemed to know already, even if they hadn’t grown up with him.
And yet, despite everything Pedro had said to Joe at lunch, how crazy it all sounded when you said you were running for president, when the words were in the air around you, Pedro could only hear one voice inside his head the rest of the afternoon: his dad’s.
He kept thinking that if his dad could finally open his restaurant, then anything really was possible, because who was more of a long shot than Luis Morales, the poor kid from Mexico?
By the time they were in the bus line at three o’clock, almost like he was reading Pedro’s mind, Joe brought it up again.
“C’mon, dude,” he said. “Let’s do this.”
Pedro gave him a nervous smile. “Maybe,” he said.
Joe Sutter, who sometimes seemed to be half-asleep even when he was wide-awake, immediately said, “Yes!” Then he put his right arm out and pulled it back like he was pulling a lever.
Like one of those voting-booth levers they’d seen on the real Election Day in their town, on a class trip just last week.
“I said maybe,” Pedro said.
“Might be what you said,” Joe said. “But that’s not what I heard, Mr. President.”
Then he nodded as the bus line started to move and said, “This is going to be epic.”
Probably an epic disaster, Pedro thought.
But his mind was made up.
FOUR
For Pedro, Wednesday was going to be a big day, just because