Long Shot - Mike Lupica [8]
“Tell me again I’m doing the right thing,” Pedro said to Joe on the bus on the way to school.
“No.”
“No?”
“You already know it’s the right thing or you wouldn’t have thought about it in the first place and you wouldn’t be doing it,” Joe said.
So far Joe was the only one who knew Pedro was doing it, because Pedro still hadn’t told the others in his crew.
In the bus now Pedro said to Joe, “What do you think Sarah and the guys are going to say?”
“What I’m saying,” Joe said. “Just do it.”
Pedro grinned. “I think you stole that from somebody.”
When Pedro did tell Sarah and Bobby and Jamal at lunch, Sarah immediately punched Pedro in the arm—hard—and said, “No way.”
“Okay, I’m not rubbing my arm. It wouldn’t be the guy thing to do,” Pedro said. “But that hurt.”
Bobby Murray just reached across the lunch table, pounded Pedro some fist, then decided to put his hand up for a high-five too.
“Can’t believe you’re gonna go one-on-one with the fresh prince of the school,” Jamal said.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was Jamal’s favorite TV show on Nickelodeon, Will Smith being his all-time hero.
“Does Ned know yet?” Sarah said.
“Nah,” Pedro said, looking across the room to where Ned was sitting with his friends. “What am I supposed to do, walk over and say, ‘Hope you don’t mind, I’m planning to take five or six votes away from you.’”
Joe pointed a finger at Pedro and said to the rest of them, “See how confident he is?”
Pedro said, “Just keeping it real. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me?”
“I want to be campaign manager,” Bobby said. “Or does that require actual work?”
Across the room there was one of those huge laughs that always seemed to be coming from Ned’s table.
“See, he’s laughing already,” Pedro said. “Maybe he does know.”
“There’s that no-worries attitude again,” Joe said.
“I want to be the one to second the nomination after Joe makes it,” Sarah said.
“How come you get to second?” Jamal said.
“I’m gonna help him bring in the girl vote, that’s why,” Sarah said.
To Pedro she said, “I’ll be your campaign manager, too.”
“Okay,” Pedro said. It was never a good idea to mess with Sarah, on anything.
“Have you ever said no to her?” Joe said.
Sarah smiled. “The candidate is under no obligation to answer that question.”
Sarah acted older than the rest of them. She also thought older, talked older, probably was secretly older, Pedro had always thought.
After that, it was their table doing most of the laughing in the cafeteria, Pedro’s friends demanding a three-day school week, four free periods per day, and a month off for Christmas, at least.
One night of homework a week.
Tops.
“Just remember one thing,” Jamal said. “If we’re in it, we win it.”
“True that,” Bobby Murray said.
“In it to win it,” Jamal said again.
“I wish,” Pedro said.
“Okay, that’s it,” Joe said. “We gotta get your first campaign promise right now.”
Pedro looked at him, knowing just from his tone of voice that he meant business.
“No more talk, even fooling-around talk, about losing from now on,” he said to Pedro. “Deal?”
Pedro made a face now like he was about to take medicine.
“I don’t know . . . ”
“Deal or no deal?” Joe said, like the guy on the television show.
“Deal,” Pedro said finally.
He put his hand out to the middle of the table, and they all put theirs on top of his.
In it to win it.
FIVE
They held the assembly in the school auditorium. All three hundred kids who had come from the four elementary schools in the Vernon school district squeezed in there, filling the rows of folding chairs that stretched back from the stage.
To Pedro, the place sounded louder than the arena where his dad had taken him last year to watch Steve Nash and the Suns play the Nets—the first time he had seen his favorite point guard play in person.
Mr. Lucchino