Oh-No, Tito

Everybody in the gym knows what's coming when Tito Vega steps to the line.

Tito has handles. He plays lockdown defense. He's lights-out from three. The kind of player who makes the hard stuff look easy - until the ref hands him the ball for a free throw. Then everybody in the gym gets loud, all at once, in one voice: *Oh-no, Tito. Oh-no, Tito.*

A hundred voices. Fifteen feet. A whole gym that has already decided how this ends.

Tito cannot explain it. His shot is fine at practice. It falls apart the second it counts, and it has been getting worse all season. Everybody has a theory. Nobody has a fix.

Then Coach Davis pulls him aside with something nobody else has offered: not a fix, a routine. A way to answer the noise instead of freezing under it.

Tito does not carry this alone. There is the soccer star who never stops moving and never stops taking notes. There is the teammate buried on the bench who would do anything for real minutes. There is the rival who guards him like it's personal, every single possession. And there is the kid behind the camera, quiet, who somehow sees the whole season before it happens.

One brutal season. One shot Tito has to learn to take with the entire school watching and waiting for him to miss. And a question that outlasts the final buzzer: what happens when you stop letting the crowd take the shot for you?

*Oh-No, Tito* is Book One of the Cross County Schools series, quick, sharp, and built to hook even the most reluctant reader by the second chapter. It's fiction, but it's built on the stories you've lived. For the player who's ever missed the shot that mattered. For the parent who's watched it happen from the stands. For the coach still looking for the right thing to say afterward. This one's for you.