Long Shot (13 page)

 

Election Day.

Everybody was scheduled to cast their ballots in their last morning class.

The teachers in each class would then collect the ballots and deliver them to Mr. Lucchino’s office after the period. Then he and the vice principal, Mrs. Connolly, would count the votes while the students were at lunch.

The announcement about which ticket had won, Pedro’s or Ned’s, would come at two o’clock.

“It’s like it’s the end of a game,” Pedro said, “but I don’t get to do anything to decide how it comes out.”

“You already did,” Joe said.

“How do you figure?” Pedro said.

“When you made your speech, to me that was game, set and match,” Joe said. “That’s what they say in tennis, right?”

“Only when the match is over,” Pedro said.

“Trust me,” Joe said, “this baby is over.”

He and Joe and Sarah all voted in Social Studies. Pedro smiled as he looked at his own name, then put a check mark next to it so big and thick he made the little box disappear.

When they got to the cafeteria, Ned was standing there.

Standing right next to one of the posters Sarah had made, this one with Pedro’s class picture from last year on it, the message pretty basic: VOTE FOR PEDRO.

Ned pointed to it.

“I did,” he said.

“Did what?”

Joe was already inside the cafeteria trying to find them seats.

“Voted for you,” Ned Hancock said.

“No way.”

“Way,” he said. “It should be you. It always should have been you.”

Pedro was glad he hadn’t been this speechless at the debate. All he could finally manage was, “Well, thanks.”

Ned said, “I was so afraid I might lose at something that I forgot the way real winners are supposed to act.”

Pedro started to say something but Ned held up a hand. “Let me finish, please,” he said. “At least this is one speech I practiced.”

Pedro waited.

“I finally figured out something I’d sort of known all along, even if I didn’t want to admit it,” Ned said. “Real winners act exactly like you.”

He put out his fist, the way he had before the last play on Saturday against Wilton. Then he and Pedro grinned at each other and twisted their fists like they used to.

Twisting the lock.

“Like both of us,” Pedro said.

 

It was a couple of minutes after two o’clock when they heard the school intercom come on. Pedro, Joe and Sarah were in a free period, the one they always got on Monday, trying to get a jump on their homework.

All day, Pedro had been trying to act as if he didn’t care. But he did. He cared as much about this as anything that had ever happened to him in sports. In this moment, knowing that Mr. Lucchino was about to read the results, he knew he cared that much.

And more.

He sat there and waited along with the rest of the school as Mr. Lucchino said all the votes had been counted and re-counted and they had a result.

Pedro closed his eyes and couldn’t help himself—there was his dad’s face smiling at him, smiling the way Pedro knew he would smile if he could tell him tonight that he’d won.

If he won.

It was very quiet now in Mrs. Fusco’s study hall. Pedro could hear Mr. Lucchino breathing into the microphone he kept on his desk.

Then he said, “I am pleased to announce that the president and vice president for this school year . . . are Pedro Morales and Sarah Layng. Congratulations to both of them.”

And for the first time in his life, even more than when he’d finished his speech the other day, Pedro felt as if he could hear the whole school cheer.

For him.

Game, set, match.

 

 

 

It was the next weekend, Saturday morning, and Pedro told his dad that he didn’t have to play soccer today, that he should rest up for the big opening of Casa Luis that night.

“I don’t need rest,” his dad said. “I need play.”

So they had both put on their hoodies and grabbed their soccer balls and Luis Morales drove them over to Vernon Middle to play. As if it were any other Saturday.

But they both knew differently.

As they stretched on the cold grass, Luis Morales repeated something he’d been repeating over and over again all week.

“I still can’t believe you kept a secret that big from me,” he said.

Meaning the election.

“I think keeping that secret from you and Mom was harder than beating Ned,” Pedro said. “But I did it, Papa. I did it.”

“You’ve done it all,” his dad said. “Including winning back your starting job.”

Pedro had found out the night after the election—Coach Cory pulled him aside before practice. So it was like a double celebration when he’d gotten home, for the point guard and the class president. His mom even bought an ice cream cake for the occasion.

When he’d blown out the one candle on top of the cake, his mom had told him how proud she was, not that he’d won, but that he’d put himself out there the way he had. Then his dad had hugged him hard, tears in his eyes, and said, “This is a week when all our dreams have come true. Even the ones I didn’t know about until today.”

So finally it was the day of the opening, a special soccer Saturday if there ever was one. Tomorrow Pedro would make his first start of the season for the Knights.

As they finished stretching, the sun came out. Like the morning sun was smiling down on the two Morales men, father and son.

Luis Morales began to play with the ball now, one foot and then the other, the ball bouncing straight up off one knee, then the other knee, then off his head.

“The only thing I’m sorry about,” Pedro said, “is that you didn’t get to hear my speech.”

His dad caught the ball out of the air now, put it on his hip, and said to Pedro, “So let me hear it now.”

“Here?” Pedro said.

“Right here and right now,” his dad said. “Think about all the times when you listened to your papa give his speech about America. It’s about time I listened to you.”

Pedro talked to his dad then the way he had talked to his classmates. Talked about doing what was best for everybody, talked about trust, talked about looking for the best in each other.

He remembered every single word.

By heart.

When he finished, his dad hugged him again, then picked him up like he wanted to lift him to the sky. This time he didn’t make Pedro shout out “President Morales” the way he had at the start of it all. He just whispered these two words into his ear:

“My son.”

Then Luis Morales placed his soccer ball on the ground and kicked it as far as he could, as if trying to kick it all the way to the front door of Casa Luis, and told Pedro he’d race him to it.

Father and son took off then, running and laughing at the same time, as if chasing their dreams together, as if you could no longer tell their dreams apart.

 

Mike Lupica, over the span of his successful career as a sports columnist, has proven that he can write for sports fans of all ages and stripes. Now, as the author of multiple hit novels for young readers, including
Travel Team
and
Heat
, both of which went to #1 on the
New York Times
bestseller list, Mr. Lupica has carved out a niche as the sporting world’s finest storyteller. Mr. Lupica’s column for New York’s
Daily News
is syndicated nationally, and he can be seen weekly on ESPN’s
The Sports Reporters
. He lives in Connecticut with his wife and their four children.