Long Shot (3 page)

If he saw an opening on the court, he knew he could make the pass.

When he was open for a fifteen- or twenty-footer, he only
hoped
he could make the shot.

Huge difference.

He was a better passer than scorer in soccer, as well, but even in soccer he knew that if he had the open shot, he was taking it, and burying the sucker. Money, every time.

He wanted in the worst way to be money shooting a basketball.

Neither Steve Nash nor Chris Paul was the best outside shooter in the world, but if you left them alone, they could both burn you from beyond the three-point arc, and that threat made them even better at playmaking.

Pedro wanted to be
that
kind of point guard.

He had been watching a show on ESPN Classic the other day, about Magic Johnson, and they were talking about how even though the Lakers had won the championship his rookie year and he was MVP of the NBA Finals, he knew he had to improve his outside shot if he wanted to be the kind of complete player he needed to be. So he went home to Michigan that summer and shot about a thousand outside shots and when he came back for his second season, he started making bombs if you left him alone, and made the whole league come out and guard him.

“Even though we won the title,” Magic said, “I knew I had work to do.”

Pedro had never been afraid of hard work. So he showed up early for practice and stayed late sometimes to work on his shot, and on weekends he even worked harder.

So after soccer today, after his dad had gone to work at the restaurant, he went outside to the end of their driveway and shot for two hours, shot so much that he had to rest at times because he was too tired to raise his arms over his head.

And today he was making them.

Usually one of his problems was that he thought too much about his shot, worried too much about his form and his technique, instead of just looking at the basket and letting it go, like they told you to do in all the shooting books.

Sometimes Pedro thought it wasn’t just that he was thinking too much, it was that he
wanted
it too much.

Not today.

Today he was on fire, and maybe it was because he was thinking about wanting something else: to be class president. Today he couldn’t get his mind off that, couldn’t get the idea out of his head now that it was rattling around in there like one of his line-drive shots.

The less Pedro thought about shooting from the outside today, the better he did.

For this one day, at least, the long shot was actually making some.

 

He didn’t say anything to his parents about wanting to run for president. Didn’t say anything to Joe Sutter when they went to the movies on Sunday.

Mostly, Pedro kept waiting for the idea to get out of his head.

Only it wouldn’t.

Even though the voice inside his head kept reminding him of one crucial point: Running for president of the school meant running against Ned Hancock.

Who never lost at anything.

He finally told Joe at lunch on Monday.

“Tell me I’m nuts,” Pedro said.

“No can do.”

“You don’t think running against Ned is nuts?”

“Nope.”

“Then
you’re
nuts,” Pedro said.

“Should have thought of this myself,” Joe said. “You ought to be president of this school, even if it does mean going up against Ned.”

“Right,” Pedro said. “Piece of cake. He’s the best athlete our age, he’s the most popular kid in class. And, oh, by the way? He’s probably better in school than he is at football or basketball or baseball.”

Joe said, “Dude, you must be trying to talk yourself out of this, because you’re not talking me out of it.”

“I’m just saying.”

“And
I’m
just saying,” Joe said. “You’re smarter than he is, and not just about school stuff. And guess what else? He probably doesn’t even care about being class president, he just thinks it’s one more thing he’s
supposed
to be. One more honor that’s supposed to be his. Like being captain of every team he plays on.”

“Because he is supposed to be!”
Pedro said.

“Why are you shouting?” Joe said, grinning at him.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

“The more I talk about this, the more I think the one who’d be fooling himself would be
me
,” Pedro said.

“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.

 

 

 

For Pedro, Wednesday was going to be a big day, just because the first official practice for the Vernon town team was scheduled for six o’clock, in one of the gyms at the high school. But now it would be even bigger, because at the end of the school day an assembly was being held at which the nominations for class president would be made.

“Tell me again I’m doing the right thing,” Pedro said to Joe on the bus on the way to school.

“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.

 

 

 

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 finally went up on stage to the microphone and quieted everybody down. He reminded them that this was an assembly and not recess, and officially welcomed them to what he called “this year’s nominating convention.” He instructed them that class elections were something taken quite seriously at Vernon Middle School, not just by the administration, but by past students as well.

“You can look around you today and see how big our school really is,” Mr. Lucchino said. Then he shook his head and said, “And how loud,” and that got a laugh out of the kids in the auditorium.