Page 85 of Carrie Soto Is Back

I stand up.

“Are you really sticking around?” I ask.

“Yep,” he says. “I meant what I told the reporters. I think you can win it, Carrie. I really do.”

“I hate,” I say, “how much that means to me.”

Bowe laughs. “Yeah, look, I get it,” he says. “I hate that I care so much what all of you Sotos think of me.”

We are quiet for a moment, and then Bowe begins to speak. But before he can get a word out, I say, “I should go.”

He looks thrown but quickly nods. “Good night, Soto. Rest up.”

—

My father and I are at the practice courts after a sweltering session against a hitter. I’m drenched in sweat, and my father is sitting on the bench beside me, running through his plan for defeating Natasha Antonovich.

I’ve never played her before—only seen the devastation of her speed from the seats.

“She’s quick,” my father says. “The clay barely slows her down. It doesn’t present the challenge for her that it does for others.”

“So I have to be faster,” I say.

My father shakes his head. “No. That is not what I’m saying.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do not lose your temper,” he says, “when I say this.”

“I’m not going to lose my temper.”

My father raises his eyebrow at me.

“I won’t,” I say, shifting my tone. “I promise.”

“You are not as quick as she is,” he says. “Maybe once you were. At your height, perhaps. But not now. Certainly not on clay.”

I can feel my heart start to beat in my chest, my pulse rising.

“You have to be okay with that information,hija.”

My vision narrows; my mouth tightens.

“You are not the same person you were when you played six years ago, in ways both good and bad. Your body is not the same. Your mindis not the same. You have to acknowledge the areas where you are not as strong,” he says. “Even back then, clay was harder for you. We have to accept that. So that we can find another way.”

“Go on…” I say. I thump my racket against my thigh.

“I don’t want you trying to match her speed. What would be a better strategy?”

“I don’t know. Just tell me.”

“What do you have that she doesn’t?”

“Crow’s feet?” I say.

My father frowns. “Dale, hija.”

“Time on the court,” I say. “I have at least a decade of playing professional tennis over her.”

---