by Liz Miles
“Just ignore the lads and remember what a good player you are.”
“Maybe I’m not,” said Jon, looking down into Davy’s red hair.
“Maybe you’re what?” Davy let out a yelp of laughter. “Jon-boy, you’re the best. You’ve got a perfect footballing brain, and you’re a sweet crosser of the ball.”
Jon was glad of the twilight then. Blood sang in his cheeks.
Davy came round every couple of days now. Mrs. King often asked him to stop for dinner. “That boy’s not getting enough at home,” she observed darkly. But Jon thought Davy looked all right as he was.
Jon’s little sister, Michaela, sat beside Davy at the table whenever she got the chance, even if she did call him Short-arse. She was only fifteen, but she looked old enough. As she was always reminding Jon, girls mature two years faster.
Davy ended up bringing Michaela to the local Halloween Club Night and Jon brought her friend Tasmin. While the girls were queuing up for chips afterwards, Davy followed Jon into the loos. Afterward, Jon could never be sure who’d started messing round; it just happened. It was sort of a joke and sort of a dare. In a white stall with a long crack in the wall they unzipped their jeans. They kept looking down; they didn’t meet each other’s eyes.
It was over in two minutes. It took longer to stop laughing.
When they got back to the girls, the chips had gone cold and Michaela wanted to know what was so funny. Jon couldn’t think of anything, but Davy said it was just an old Princess Diana joke. Tasmin said in that case they could keep it to themselves because she didn’t think it was very nice to muck around with the dead.
After Halloween, some people said Davy was going out with Michaela. Jon didn’t know what that meant exactly. He didn’t think Davy and Michaela did stuff together, anyway. He didn’t know what to think.
Saul King expressed no opinion on the matter. But he’d started laying into Davy at practice. “Mind your back! Mind your house!” he bawled, hoarse, “Keep them under pressure!”
Davy said nothing, just bounced around, grinning as usual.
“Where’s your bleeding eyes?”
“Somebody’s not the golden boy anymore,” commented Peter to Naz under his breath.
Afterwards, Saul said he had errands to do in town, so Jon and Davy could walk home for once.
“Your dad’s being a bit of a prick these days,” commented Davy as they turned the first corner.
“Don’t call him that,” said Jon.
“But he is one.”
Jon shook his heavy head. “Don’t call him my dad, I mean.”
“Oh.”
The silence stretched between them. “It’s like the honey jar,” said Jon.
Davy glanced up. His lashes were like a cat’s.
“I was about three, right, and I wanted a bit of honey from the jar, but he said no. He didn’t put the jar away or anything—just said no and left it sitting there about six inches in front of me. So the minute he was out of the room I opened it up and stuck my spoon in, of course. And I swear he must have been waiting because he was in and had that spoon snatched out of my hand before it got near my face.”
“What’s wrong with honey?” asked Davy, bewildered.
“Nothing.”
“I thought it was good for you.”
“It wasn’t anything to do with the honey,” said Jon, dry-throated. “He just wanted to win.”
Davy walked beside him, mulling it over.
They went the long way, through the park. When they passed a gigantic yew tree, Davy turned his head to Jon and grinned like a shark.
Without needing to say a word, they ducked and crawled underneath the tree. The branches hung down around them like curtains. Nobody could have seen what they were up to; a passerby wouldn’t even have known they were there. Jon forgot to be embarrassed. He did a sliding tackle on Davy and toppled him on to the soft damp ground. “Man on!” yelped Davy, pretending to be afraid. They weren’t cold any more. They moved with sleek grace this time. It was telepathic. It was perfect timing.
• • •
“For Christ’s sake, stay onside,” Saul bawled at his team.
Davy’s trainers blurred like Maradona’s, Jon thought. The boy darted round the pitch confusing the defenders, playing to the imaginary crowd.
“Don’t bother trying to impress us with the fancy footwork, Irish,” screamed Saul into the wintry wind, “just try kicking the ball. This is footie, not bloody Riverdance.”
Afterwards in the showers, Jon watched the hard curve of Davy’s shoulder. He wanted to touch it, but Naz was three feet away. He took a surreptitious glance at his friend’s face, but it was shrouded in steam.
Saul never gave Jon and Davy a lift home from practice anymore. He said the walk was good exercise and Lord knew they could do with it.
“I don’t know why, but your dad is out to shaft me,” said Davy, on the long walk home.
“No, he’s not,” said Jon weakly.
“Is so. He said he thought I might make less of a fool of myself in defense.”
“Defense?” repeated Jon, shrill. “That’s bollocks. Last Saturday’s match, you scored our only goal.”
“You set it up for me. Saul said only a paraplegic could have missed it.”
Jon tried to remember the shot. He couldn’t tell who’d done what. On a good day, he and Davy moved like one player, thought the same thing at the same split second.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance he knows about us?”
Jon was so shocked he stopped walking. He had to put his hand on the nearest wall or he’d have fallen. The pebble dash was cold against his fingers. Us, he thought. There was an us. An us his dad might know about. “No way,” he said at last, hoarsely.
Jon knew there were rules, even if they’d never spelled them out. He and Davy were sort of mates and sort of something else. They didn’t waste time talking about it. In one way it was like football—the sweaty tussle of it, the heart-pounding thrill—and in another way, it was like a game played on Mars, with unwritten rules and a different gravity.
The afternoons were getting colder. On Bonfire Night they took the risk and did it in Jon’s room. The door had no lock. They kept the stereo turned up very loud so there wouldn’t be any suspicious silences. Outside, the bangers went off at intervals like bombs. Jon’s head pounded with noise and terror. It was the best time yet.
Afterwards, when they were slumped in opposite corners of the room, looking like two ordinary post-match players, Jon turned down the music. Davy said, out of nowhere, “I was thinking of telling the folks.”
“Telling them what?” asked Jon before thinking. Then he understood, and his stomach furled into a knot.
“You know. What I’m like.” Davy let out a mad chuckle.
“You’re not …” Jon’s voice trailed off.
“I am, you know.” Davy still sounded as if he were talking about the weather. “I’ve had my suspicions for years. I thought I’d give it a try with your sister, but nada, to be honest.”
Jon thought he was going to throw up. “Would you tell them about us?”
“Only about me,” Davy corrected him. “Name no names, and all that.”
“You never would?”
“I’ll have to sometime, won’t I?”
“Why?” asked Jon, choking.
“Because it’s making me nervous,” explained Davy lightly, “and I don’t play well when I’m nervous. I know my family is going to freak out of their tiny minds whenever I tell them, so I might as well get it over with.”
He was brave, Jon thought. But he had to be stopped. “Listen, you mad bastard,” said Jon fiercely, “you can’t tell anyone.”
Davy sat up and straightened his shoulders. He looked small, but not all that young; his face was an adult’s. “Is that meant to be an order? You sound like your dad,” he added, with a hint of mockery.
“He’ll know,” whispered Jon. “Your parents’ll guess it’s me. They�
��ll tell my dad.”
“They won’t. They’ll be too busy beating the tar out of me.”
“My dad’s going to find out.”
“How will he?” said Davy reasonably.
“He just will,” stuttered Jon. “He’ll kill me. He’ll get me by the throat and never let go.”
“Bollocks,” said Davy too lightly. “We’re not kids anymore. The sky’s not going to fall in on us. You’re just shitting your shorts at the thought of anyone calling you a faggot, aren’t you?”
“Don’t say that.”
“Touchy, aren’t you? It’s only a word.”
“We’re not, anyway,” he told Davy coldly. “That’s not what we are.”
The boy’s mouth crinkled with amusement. “Oh, so what are we then?”
“We’re mates,” said Jon through a clenched throat.
One coppery eyebrow went up.
“Mates who mess around a bit.”
“Fag-got! Fag-got!” Davy sang the words quietly.
Jon’s hand shot out to the stereo and turned it way up to drown him out.
Next door, Michaela started banging on the wall. “Jonathan!” she wailed.
He turned it down a little, but kept his hand on the knob.
“Get out,” he said.
Davy stared back at him blankly. Then he reached for his jacket and got up in one fluid movement. He looked like a scornful god. He looked like nothing could ever knock him down.
Jon avoided Davy all week. He walked home from training sessions while Davy was still in the shower. In the back of his mind, he was preparing a contingency plan. Deny everything. Laugh. Say the sick pervert made it all up.
Nobody else seemed to notice the two friends weren’t on speaking terms. Everyone was preoccupied with the big match on Saturday.
At night Jon gripped himself like a drowning man clinging to a spar.
Saturday came at last. The pitch was muddy and badly cut up before they even started. The other team were thugs, especially an enormous winger with a mustache. From the kickoff, Saul’s team played worse than they’d ever done before. The left-back crashed into his central defender, whose nose bled all down his shirt. Jon moved like he was shackled. Whenever he had to pass the ball to Davy, it fell short or went wide by a mile. It was as if there was a shield around the red-haired boy and nothing could get through. Davy was caught offside three times in the first half. Then, when Jon pitched up a loose ball on the edge of his own penalty area, one of the other team’s forwards big-toed a fluke shot into the top right-hand corner.
“You’re running round like blind men,” Saul told his team at half-time, with sorrow and contempt.
By the start of the second half, the rain was falling unremittingly. The fat winger stood on Peter’s foot, and the ref never saw a thing. “Look,” bawled Peter, trying to pull his shoe off to show the marks of the studs.
The other team found this hilarious. “Wankers! Faggots!” crowed the fat boy.
Rage fired up Jon’s thudding heart, stoking his muscles. He would have liked to take the winger by the throat and press his thumbs in till they met vertebrae. What was it Saul always used to tell him? No son of mine ever gets himself sent off for temper. Jon made himself turn and jog away. No son of mine, said the voice in his head.
Naz chipped the ball high over the defense. Jon was there first, poising himself under the flight of the ball. It was going to be a beautiful header. It might even turn the match around.
“Davy’s,” barked Davy, jogging backwards toward Jon.
Jon kept his eyes glued to the falling ball. “Jon’s.”
“It’s mine!” Davy repeated, at his elbow, crowding him.
“Fuck off!” He didn’t look. He shouldered Davy away, harder than he meant to. Then all of a sudden Jon knew how it was going to go. He wasn’t ready to meet the ball; he didn’t believe he could do it. He lost his balance, and the ball came down on the side of his head and crushed him into the mud.
Jon had whiplash.
Saul came home from the next training session and said Davy was off the team.
“You cunt,” said Jon.
His father stared, slack-jawed. Michaela’s fork froze halfway to her mouth. “Jonathan!” appealed their mother.
Above his foam whiplash collar, Jon could feel his face burn. But he opened his mouth and it all spilled out. “You’re not a coach, you’re a drill sergeant. You picked Davy to bully because you know he’s going to be a better player than you ever were. And now you’ve kicked him off the team just to prove you can. So much for team-fucking-spirit!”
“Jonathan.” His father’s face was dark, unreadable. “It was the lad who dropped out. He’s quit the team and he’s not coming back.”
One afternoon at the end of a fortnight, Davy came round. Jon was on his own in the living room, watching an old France 1998 video of England versus Argentina. He thought Davy looked different—baggy-eyed, older somehow.
Davy stared at the television. “Has Owen scored yet?”
“Ages ago. They’re nearly at penalties.” Jon kept his eyes on the screen.
Davy dropped his bag by the sofa but didn’t sit down, didn’t take his jacket off. In silence they watched the agonizing shootout.
When it was over, Jon hit rewind. “If Beckham hadn’t got himself sent off, we’d have demolished them,” he remarked.
“In your dreams,” said Davy. They watched the flickering figures. After a long minute he added, “I’ve been meaning to come round, actually, to say, you know, sorry and all that.”
“It’s nothing much, just a bit of whiplash,” said Jon, deliberately obtuse. He put his hand to his neck, but his fingers were blocked by the foam collar.
“You’ll get over it. No bother.”
“Yeah,” said Jon bleakly. “So,” he added, not looking at Davy, “did you talk to your parents?”
“Yeah.” The syllable was flat. “Don’t worry, your name didn’t come up.”
“I didn’t—”
“Forget it,” interrupted Davy softly. He was staring at the video as it rewound; a green square covered in little frenzied figures who ran backwards, fleeing from the ball.
That subject seemed closed. “I hear you’re not playing, these days,” said Jon.
“That’s right,” said Davy, more briskly. “Thought I should get down to the books for a while, before my A-levels.”
Jon stared at him.
“I’m off to college next September, touch wood.” Davy rapped on the coffee table. “I’ve already got an offer of a place in Law at Lancaster but I’ll need two Bs and an A.”
Law? Jon nodded, then winced as his neck twinged. So much he’d never known about Davy, never thought to ask. “You could sign up again in the summer, though, after your exams, couldn’t you?” he asked, as neutrally as he could.
There was a long second’s pause before Davy shook his head. “I don’t think so, Jon-boy.”
So that was it, Jon registered. Not a proper ending. More like a match called off because of a hailstorm or because the star player just walked off the pitch.
“I mean, I’ll miss it, but when it comes down to it, it’s only a game, eh? … Win or lose,” Davy added after a moment.
Jon couldn’t speak. His eyes were wet, blinded.
Davy picked up his bag. Then he did something strange. He swung down and kissed Jon on the lips, for the first time, on his way out the door.
Pencils
BY SARA WILKINSON
“WHY D’YOU HAVE all those pencils anyway?” Trace demanded in her loud, playing-to-an-audience voice. “It’s not like you even use them. Who in their right mind needs seven identical pencils?”
A titter ran round the room and all eyes watched for the inevitable action that would follow.
Trace jabbed at the pencils so that they scattered out of line and skidded across the desk.
“It makes me mad to just look at them!” she announced and swept them off the desk. They flew helter-
skelter over the wooden floor and rolled under the desks. Trace glowered at me defiantly.
Like a trained monkey I did what was expected of me and collected them silently, sweating all down my back and trembling in case the lead had broken inside one of them. I sat down in front of the desk and pulled my chair in as far as possible and slowly wiggled each lead. Luckily none of them was seriously damaged, but I had to sharpen them again as one had lost the tip of its point—I needed them all to be the same length, exactly.
Pencil sharpening calms me down, although it obviously has the opposite effect on Trace. I get agitated easily and I’m not considered quite “normal” (although I think the definition of “normal’ is often quite abnormal). For instance, I like to put everything in place and have routines to feel secure and I don’t like people much. They don’t understand me and I certainly don’t understand them.
“Ergh!” Trace groaned in exasperation and flounced off with her little group of chosen friends. The drones—the useless males—just stand about looking on with bored, expressionless faces. Out of lesson time they stick to the wall day after day doing nothing and hoping that some desperate girl will fling herself at them, wanting to get laid. I have no contact at all with the drones.
Ed on the other hand is a different kind of male, the kind that all the girls fancy—big, blond, beautiful and brainless—and is geared up to becoming a professional footballer. And he is going out with Trace. Everyone wants to be in the alpha group with Ed and Trace. I am allowed on the very edge of the group “just for comedy value.” I know this because I can hear them discussing it and laughing at me (for some reason, they think that because I wear glasses and keep to myself that my hearing’s impaired). I know what “comedy value” means, of course, but I have never found anything funny or comic in my life. Why do people laugh?
“Oh, let him sit at our table,” said Trace. “He’s so—like—weird. Though he makes me mad, I like him ’cos he’s different. I like to try and wind him up till he doesn’t know what to do. Mostly I can’t get a reaction but sometimes he explodes and then boing! He’s off like a manic spring.”
“Well, he just pisses me off,” said Ed, “but we’ll keep him just for comedy value. (There’s that expression, you see.) He fancies you anyway; he’ll do anything you tell him.”
