Tennis triumph, p.1
Tennis Triumph, page 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Chapter 1: Secrets on the Court
Chapter 2: At Home
Chapter 3: Staying Awake
Chapter 4: No Second Chances
Chapter 5: Almost Caught
Chapter 6: Confessions
Chapter 7: Radical Honesty
Chapter 8: Found Out
Chapter 9: Ace
Chapter 10: A Bit of Help
About the Author
Glossary
Discussion Questions
Writing Prompts
More About the Sport
Explore More
Copyright
Back Cover
Cover
Title Page
Table of Contents
Start of Content
Acknowledgments
Glossary
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back cover
CHAPTER 1
SECRETS ON THE COURT
“Go, go, go, Mira!” Coach Wallace had been watching Mira Ravi during warm-up drills lately. He wanted to make sure she didn’t cut corners in her laps around the tennis court.
Mira’s shoes were starting to pinch and wear. Last week, she’d tried to get away with running a bit less. But that ended up not being a very smart thing to do. She ended up having to do another lap for that. She was careful not to cut any corners today.
Mira was the first seed on Hilltop Middle School’s all-star tennis team. She knew she needed to set an example for everyone else. A lot depended on her. There were plenty of people who would have loved to be in her shoes.
If they had a clue about her life, though, they wouldn’t wish that.
This was also why she didn’t want to be noticed any more than she had to be. The idea of any extra attention sent chills down her back.
Mira glanced over at her best friend Addie, who was whipping along next to her doing laps. Addie played doubles for the team, and Mira played singles. Mira didn’t know what she’d do without Addie. Addie was probably the kindest, funniest and most loyal person Mira had ever met.
Right then, Addie looked worried too. She always showed whatever she was feeling on her face. She didn’t want others to notice Mira more than they needed to, either.
“Don’t cut corners,” she mouthed to Mira.
“Dynamic stretch!” Coach Wallace called, and the girls hurried to the sides of the court.
The first hour of practice was always warm-up drills and stretching. Addie made faces at Mira as they stretched, and Mira tried not to laugh. After stretches, they did footwork and reaction drills. This helped develop their reflexes. Then they moved on to actually hitting the ball.
Mira grabbed her racket and weighed it in her hand. It was too heavy. It was Addie’s mom’s old racket. She gave Mira all her old equipment she didn’t need anymore. That meant that sometimes it didn’t fit. The grip on this racket was wrong and not fitted for Mira’s hand, of course. She had calluses from it already—even more than usual.
She was saving for a new racket right now. Still, it was a long way to go before she’d have enough money. Good rackets—the kind Mira wanted—could be expensive. And she really, really wanted to get one that was fitted to her hand.
She didn’t mention this to Addie. If she did, Addie would tell her parents, and they did enough for Mira already. Plus, Mira wanted to do this on her own.
She tried to make her racket look light and easy in her hand so that Coach Wallace wouldn’t notice anything was wrong.
Coach had them practice their forehands, and then their inside-out and inside-in backhands. He had them do volley-to-volley drills, work on their overheads, and then had them practice pivots and rotation. Finally, they did live ball match play. That was when they played someone else on the team. Mira loved playing the other girls on the team.
Mira felt the energy surging up into her arms and through her legs. Her focus narrowed completely. Soon she was only aware of the ball and her body. She loved the sharp thwack that the ball made when she hit it and when it bounced across the court.
She got paired with Kendra Malone, who was second seed on their team. Kendra was good, but Mira was feeling extra good today. She got a jolt of satisfaction when her serve skimmed over the net, low and fast.
“Go, Mira!” she heard Addie shout.
She sidestepped to the middle of the court after each shot, bouncing on her toes at the baseline. Ready. Her backhands were straight down the line every time.
She wasn’t even getting winded, but she managed to keep Kendra running, tiring her out. Kendra’s face turned redder and redder. Usually she tried not to make Kendra mad. There were reasons you didn’t want to get her mad. But today Mira couldn’t seem to help it.
Toward the end, Mira showed off a little with a drop shot to catch Kendra off guard. Kendra stumbled to go after it, missing it by a mile.
Mira was still buzzing from practice as she walked back to the locker room. Soon, the adrenaline started to ebb. She realized how badly her shoes were pinching her toes. They were really bugging her. She bit her lip. Shoes were expensive. They were the one thing she couldn’t really buy used.
She’d have to mow so many lawns that just the idea made her tired. Maybe if she mowed during the day all weekend, she’d still have time to get in the studying she needed to do at night. Keeping her grades up was necessary if she wanted to stay on the tennis team. She needed an A average.
Mira made sure to shower in the locker room. At least she knew she’d get a hot shower there. When she was done, she pulled her school uniform back on.
She always changed back into her uniform rather than street clothes, even though the other girls usually put on comfy loungewear after practice. Mira didn’t want the others to see her street clothes and start wondering.
“Whose parents are driving on Thursday?” Kendra asked loudly. She was pulling on a pair of yoga pants. They probably cost more than all of Mira’s clothes from the last three years put together. Kendra was one of the girls who lived in a mansion in Bloomfield Hills. Her family had a housekeeper, a groundskeeper, a cook, and a nanny. Every time Kendra traveled, it was to some exotic place like Capri or Mallorca.
Before Mira started going to Hilltop Middle School, she didn’t even know girls like Kendra were real. But they were everywhere here.
“Mine can’t,” Sienna Rigmond said, pulling on her street shoes. “Mom has a meeting and Dad’s traveling.”
“Mine drove last time,” said Makenzie Clare. “And they’re both out of town.”
“Why don’t your parents ever drive, Mira?” asked Sienna. “It’s supposed to be rotating. They’ve never even driven once.”
Mira took a deep breath. “Sorry, they can’t right now … my mom just had surgery.”
Sienna narrowed her eyes. “Two weeks ago you said they couldn’t drive because they were on some big trip. What’s the deal?”
“What’s your mom having surgery for?” asked Kendra.
“I’ll see if my parents can drive,” Addie jumped in. “I know one of them probably can. And I think Brittany said her dad can drive too.” Mira looked at her gratefully. They always needed at least two big vans or SUVs to fit the team members and equipment.
The conversation eased away from who would be driving. Mira let out her breath and bent to pull on her shoes.
That was a close one.
They all filed out of the locker room. Once everyone else had left, Addie gave Mira a look that said: It’s OK, you got through that.
“I’ll text you tonight,” Addie said.
They went out to the front of the school to wait with the other girls. As usual, Mira pretended someone was coming for her. But no one was.
Once everyone had been picked up, Mira grabbed her bag and walked quickly away from the school. She walked four blocks to the bus stop on the corner. She always c
She put down her heavy equipment and sat down to wait for the bus that would take her all the way home.
CHAPTER 2
AT HOME
Mira took her usual seat by the window. She’d been riding the bus alone for years. Home was only about five miles away, but it felt like another world. She watched the huge, fancy school go by. Then went the wide, pretty streets of Bloomfield Hills.
The houses here were like palaces. Many of them were brick and stood way back from the road. They had huge, perfectly tended gardens and circular driveways. She loved looking at their stained glass windows and the huge maple trees in the yards. Addie said they were 1920s style houses.
Before Mira came to this school, she could hardly imagine what went on inside houses like that. Now she’d been inside some of them. She was even shocked by the kinds of after-school snacks some of these kids had. The one time she’d gone to Sienna’s house with some girls from the team, her mom had served them gouda cheese on sticks, cranberries, and coconut water.
As the bus moved toward her neighborhood, the houses grew shabbier. The streets grew dirtier. They were run down, with chain-link fences, peeling paint, broken windows. There was some trash strewn around. Even the telephone poles looked crooked.
It was dark by the time the bus got to Mira’s neighborhood. Once, she heard Kendra talking about how dirty the city buses are and that she wasn’t allowed to ride them. As for Mira—she was so glad the bus existed.
She wouldn’t have tennis if it weren’t for the bus.
The bus stopped just a block from her house. She knew none of the girls from tennis would be here. But she looked around anyway before she jumped off the bus.
She headed for her house. Addie knew where she was from, of course, but none of the others did. She hurried down the street, the way her mom always told her to do once it got dark. In her neighborhood, the streets weren’t always safe at night.
Their little house looked like it had been leaning to one side for what seemed like years. It had peeling, light blue paint. But Mira loved the special shade of blue. It wasn’t quite robin’s egg blue, and not quite sky blue, but something in between. She also loved that she could see the big oak tree out front from their kitchen window.
Mrs. Johnson was in her yard next door, putting her trash out. “I hope school was good today, Mira,” she said and smiled. “Sean’s inside.”
“Thanks.” Mira smiled back and hurried to Mrs. Johnson’s back door. She heard her little brother, Sean, playing a video game in the living room.
Mira came into the room and picked up his backpack. “Time to come home,” she told him.
He stuck his tongue out at her and kept playing.
Their mom was always working. Sean was only seven, so he went to Mrs. Johnson’s after school until Mira got home. To repay her, Mira mowed Mrs. Johnson’s lawn and her mom cleaned her house on the weekends.
Mira’s dad died when she was much younger. Her mom had to start taking care of her and Sean by herself. It was really hard. All their other family— aunts, uncles, and cousins—were back in Hyderabad, India. She’d never even met them.
For a while, her mom worked as a housekeeper at a hotel. But when the hotel closed, she had to get two jobs just to make enough money. She worked at another hotel and at a restaurant bussing tables. That was why she was always gone these days.
It also meant Mira was stuck with Sean most nights.
Mira could tell it made her mom sad. She wished she were home with them. She always told Mira that she was a good sister and a big girl. Still, sometimes Mira just wanted to crumble. Sometimes she just wanted to come home and flop onto her bed and think her own thoughts, do her homework, eat dinner, and go to bed, like Addie got to do. Like all her classmates got to do.
She didn’t tell her mom that part, though.
Sean put down his video game controller with a loud sigh. Then he followed Mira back to their house.
“Did you do your homework?” Mira asked him.
Sean flopped down in front of their TV and turned it on. “No.”
She turned off the TV. “Then you have to do it soon.”
“You’re not the boss of me!” he shouted.
She rolled her eyes. “You’ll do what I tell you. If Mom’s not here, I am the boss of you. Go wash up for dinner.”
He stuck his tongue out again and headed for the bathroom.
She opened the fridge and exhaled. It was empty, except for half a carton of milk. Her mom hadn’t shopped today. She probably wouldn’t get paid until tomorrow. That meant nothing for dinner and probably nothing for breakfast.
Hopefully her mom would get the stuff to make keema samosas and biryani rice. Those were Mira’s favorite Indian dishes. Her mom always said the Hyderabadi versions were the best of both. Mira’s mouth watered at the thought.
For now, though, thank goodness for the Hilltop cafeteria. Mira opened her backpack and pulled out the food she’d managed to sneak out of school that day. She’d gotten two turkey sandwiches, an apple, an orange, a few mini boxes of cereal, two bags of chips, a bag of pretzels, and two cookies.
She put the cereal and fruit away for the morning. She dumped the rest of the food onto plates and called Sean to the table. Sean grumbled that there was no cheese on his sandwich. He ate the whole thing anyway. Afterward, Mira cleared the table.
“Homework time,” she said. She already felt exhausted.
Sean grumbled again, but he got out his reading book. He frowned at it. “What’s this word?” he asked, pointing.
She squinted. “Hea-vi-ness. Let’s sound it out together.”
“I hate homework,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “But we have to do it.”
She glanced at the clock. She hadn’t even started her homework yet. And she had a mountain of it.
Sean bounced up and down in his seat. He couldn’t sit still. He finished his reading homework. But if she didn’t do something to wear him out, he’d never go to sleep.
“Tennis?” she asked him.
“Yeah!” he cried.
She grabbed the old, beat-up racket she’d bought for him at a garage sale, and took him out back. The moon was bright enough to light up the back of the house, part of which was concrete. Their mom hated when they practiced against the house, but they did it all the time when she wasn’t home. It was especially fun at night, when the moon shone down on the house.
“OK, forehand drills,” Mira said. “Only forehand—can’t use your backhand at all for these. Go!”
Sean didn’t have a bad forehand for a seven-year- old. Right now, she was working on his stance. She was trying to teach him to keep a big enough space between the racket and the side of his body to make sure his grip was correct.
He giggled as he bounced on his toes, slamming the ball as hard as he could. He missed half the time, scrambling after the ball in the dark. When he was done, he was panting and sweating.
“OK, that’s enough. Bedtime,” she said.
He was so tired he got right into bed. Then he made Mira stay with him while he told her about the nightmares he’d been having. By the time he fell asleep and she tiptoed out of his room, it was 10 p.m.
She hadn’t even started her homework yet.
CHAPTER 3
STAYING AWAKE
Mira was so tired she wanted to fall over. She’d hoped to stretch some, but homework was more important. She had to read two chapters for social studies and finish a math practice set.
Hilltop was no joke. The teachers assigned a ton of homework. Her mom, of course, thought this was a good thing. She said it meant Mira would get to go to college and wouldn’t have to struggle like she did.
Mira went to her room and flopped onto her bed. She forced herself to keep her eyes open and pulled out her books. She also pulled out the one treasure she had, the phone that Addie had given her for her birthday. Before that, she didn’t have a cell phone at all. Her mom wasn’t sure about it at first. Now, though, her Mom liked it. It meant she could text Mira easily.
There was a text from Addie: Close call today.
Mira answered: Yeah. I watched Sean tonight. I’m only just starting homework. Thanks for covering for me!
Addie: You’re welcome. The social studies chapters are hard.
Mira: I know. I hope I stay awake.
The Meyers had done so much for her. Mira had only met them this past summer, but she felt like she’d known them forever.
Before last summer, she used to take the bus across town to the big, spotless Hilltop Middle School tennis courts whenever she could. She loved to practice her serve whenever other kids weren’t there. She’d pretended she was on their all-star tennis team.
