Read Online Winner Takes All by Jenny Santana - Free Book Online

the ground beneath the bleachers. A lot of the faces around now she didn’t recognize; there were people from other grades and other schools hanging out. Maybe the tournament idea wouldn’t boost Laz as much as she’d worried it would—especially once she made her rounds and convinced them all, one by one, to vote for Mari. This fact made Celia want to be even nicer to Raul.
    “Check out Mari and Laz,” she said, trying to distract him from his gloom.
    On the court, Laz was trying to block Mari from throwing, and he was definitely succeeding. Both of them were sweaty and red-cheeked. As Mari went to take a shot, Laz smacked the ball out of her hands, then caught it as it bounced away from her, running it back to the net for a slam dunk. Some of the people in the stands clapped; others booed. After his shot, he dribbled the ball over to her and placed it gently in her hands. Their smiles were just a little too big, their grins just a little too sweet to be between two real competitors.
    Raul, who’d watched the whole exchange along with Celia, suddenly said, “I think he likes her. I don’t know for sure. If he does, it’s going to be a serious problem for our campaign.”
    Our campaign? —she had to stop herself from saying it out loud. Then her next thought: So it’s true. They like each other and I have no chance with Laz—not that I ever did—but now it’s totally out of the question.
    Raul turned quickly to face her and said, “Don’t say anything, okay? It’s just a feeling I have. Promise you won’t tell Mariela?”
    His brown-green eyes were pleading, and she recognized herself in them, a sense of something lost, a crush crushed. Could he like Mari, too? Why was everyone suddenly in love with her best friend? She understood him at that moment, and only because she sympathized with his frustration—the frustration of having your heart squashed—did she say, “Okay. I promise.”
    “I just thought it was better for you to quit while you were ahead,” Celia said to Mari as they walked back home. Mari had wanted to keep playing, but they’d been at the courts for more than an hour and Celia had chatted up every seventh grader there. She’d promised to find each of them on Monday and get them a VOTE FOR MARI sticker and they’d all agreed to wear it. But the bigger reason Celia wanted to get out of there was that she wastired of watching her best friend and her crush flirt with each other via basketball, and she felt even worse about it now that she knew Raul was feeling just as miserable. “Besides, I was getting a weird vibe from Raul,” Celia added as they crossed the street.
    “Really?” Mari said. “Raul? Weird?” Her cheeks were still red from the game, or maybe from blushing. She seemed way too happy for someone who had so much memorizing to do over the next few days.
    Remembering her promise, Celia quickly covered her tracks, saying, “Not weird, it’s just he confessed that the day wasn’t as big a hit as he thought it would be, and I agreed. Most people thought the basketball thing was both candidates’ idea, anyway. So no reason for us to stick around for longer, especially when we have work to do.”
    “That’s too bad about the tournament. It was a good idea. Maybe more people will show up later.” Mari turned and looked back over her shoulder at the park. “Maybe we should go back.”
    Celia couldn’t believe what she was hearing. On the way there, she’d felt guilty for taking up Mari’s time, and now here was Mari, willing togive Laz that time without a fight. But she held it in and just kept walking, refusing to look back as Mari had.
    “He’s pretty cool,” Mari went on. “He even wished me luck on writing the speech for Monday’s announcements. I thought that was sweet, no?”
    “Really sweet,” Celia said, rolling her eyes. Too bad he didn’t wish me luck , she thought, since it’s me who’s writing the speech. That was what she’d be spending the