Page 16 of Ready to Score

Vonte shrugged, suddenly sheepish. “My auntie Lisa used to bring me when I was little. She still comes too. A lot of people do. So I figured it probably makes a lot of money.”

“You’re right. It does,” Jade said. “And judging by tonight’s turnout, the team is going to make bank tonight too.”

Vonte’s brown eyes lit up in an instant. “Maybe we can get one of them buses West Beaufort has with the TVs on ’em.”

“Let’s focus on making sure we’ve got enough money for gas on the buses we have now first, okay? We can worry about ballin’ out later.”

“Ballin’ out?” He turned his nose up. “Sometimes I forget you’re an old lady.”

“Boy!”

Microphone feedback interrupted them as it screeched through the room and made everyone wince. Landry stood in front of it in a white dress shirt, a pair of black slacks, and a custom Greenbelt Gators tie. The man looked red around the neck as he shoved his hands into his pockets and cleared his throat.

“Can y’all hear me?” he asked. The crowd murmured their affirmatives, their football boys belting out a few hollers. “Let’s get this started, then. I’m going to keep my talking brief because someone more important than me is going to get up here and talk to y’all. But I wanted to start by thanking everyone for coming out tonight. I know this is a little different from our normal fundraisers, but—”

A hand pulled at her arm, yanking her attention away from Landry’s speech. She looked over at the young man next to her. His eyes were bright and shiny, but his expression was panicked.

“I don’t want to, Coach.” His words were hurried. “I mean… I can’t go up there and talk. I can’t do it.”

“What makes you think you can’t do it?”

Sweat started to bead on Vonte’s forehead, and he gulped so big his chest moved with the motion. “What if I mess up? I might say the wrong thing or—” He shook his head. “Somebody else should do it instead of me.”

“Vonte, look at me.” Jade’s voice was quiet but serious. “Tonight was your idea. It wasn’t Coach Landry’s, it wasn’t mine, it was yours. You worked hard on this, you prepared for this—”

“I didn’t even write the speech myself,” he tried to argue. “You did a lot of it.”

That was patently false. “I helped. I looked over your grammar and made sure everything made sense, but you did all the heavylifting. Which is why you should go up there and make sure all these people know it.”

The expression on his young face was so open and vulnerable that she almost wanted to fold to his fears and let him off the hook. And she would have if he’d been showing signs of a panic attack or something similar. This was just good old-fashioned nerves, though, coursing through him with enough energy to make him vibrate. At one point in time, when she’d been younger and less experienced, she’d been familiar with that feeling. Being gently guided out of her comfort zone had served her well, and she thought it might do the same for Vonte.

He didn’t seem so convinced. “What if I throw up?”

Jade bit back a laugh. “You’re not going to throw up.”

“What if people laugh at me?” The words were spoken quietly as his eyes drifted down to his shoes.

There was the meat of it, really. Possible ridicule was the thing he actually feared.

“Everyone here loves you, kid. These are your teammates, your family.”

He winced. “That means they’lldefinitelylaugh at me.”

“How about this.” Jade crossed her arms. “You get up there and do your speech like we planned, and if anybody laughs at you, I’ll make sure they pay for it.”

“Really?”

Jade nodded. She had no clue how she’d follow through with that promise, but she felt pretty confident that his speech would pass without incident.

“Okay,” he said, before taking in a big gulp of air. “I’ll do it, then. As long as you’ve got my back.”

“I’ve always got your back, kid. You know that.”

Landry’s voice grew a bit louder as he introduced Vonte, andJade watched as he shuffled his way up to the stage, shoulders tight and feet dragging. His hands shook when Landry handed him the microphone. The boy sought her out in the crowd of expectant faces, and when he caught her eyes, she screwed up her face and made a show of dragging her finger across her throat in a crude but obvious murderous gesture. When he finally started speaking, he did so with a wide grin.

“I wanted to start by, um, thanking everybody for coming. I honestly didn’t think this many people would show up,” Vonte said, a natural on the mic. “I wasn’t really sure what all to say. I mean, I guess everybody knows why we’re doing this fundraiser. But just in case you don’t, you should know that Greenbelt is one of the poorest towns in the county. That means that a lot of students at our school come from low-income households—that includes me.”

Vonte took a brief pause, looking over the crowd to gauge their reaction to his statement before continuing.

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