Football High: Young Gun

by Patrick Loughlin

  ‘Everyone ready for the next round?’ calls Jase. ‘On your mark, get set …’

  The whistle screams in my ear and I sprint towards the ball again. This time, Kane and I reach the ball at the same time but I just manage to get a toe on it before Kane does. The ball goes behind Kane and I rush towards it, but he spins around quickly and attempts a steal. I see my chance and roll the ball sideways, then flick it to my left, creating enough space to get around Kane. From there it’s a free run to the cones. I toe it through easily. 1–1.

  ‘Okay, last round,’ announces Jase after he and Mr Cruz have tallied up the goals once more. ‘Make it count! Cahill are up by three goals.’

  The whistle blows a third and final time. I’m ready and waiting on the balls of my feet. I sprint to the ball and get to it first, but Kane springs back, hoping for the steal once again. He looks me dead in the eyes and, without even thinking, I roll the ball back with my right foot and then pop it up in the air just as he launches himself at it. The ball lands behind Kane and I burst past him, dribble it a few metres, then launch it at the cones. Goal!

  When I turn back around, Kane is glaring at me in disbelief.

  ‘Nice flick,’ says Mr Cruz, ‘but risky. Get the timing wrong and your opponent gets an easy header.’

  ‘Lucky for us he didn’t get the timing wrong … this time,’ says Jase, throwing me a look that says he doesn’t completely approve of my tactics. ‘Warren house wins by one goal,’ he says. ‘And Mr Cruz – you owe me a playground duty.’

  The Warren boys all cheer and Mr Cruz shakes his head and smiles in defeat.

  Kane Kruger, however, is not smiling. He’s still glaring at me. I know I should just walk away but suddenly words are spilling from my mouth before I can stop them.

  ‘You’re right, Kane, it was easy!’ I say, although I notice Jase is shaking his head in disapproval.

  Kane’s eyes pop out of his head like a cartoon cat and his face turns a glowing red. He begins to shudder. He’s a volcano about to blow and I’m the village lying in his path.

  Yep, I’ve definitely made my first high-school enemy.

  Thornberry Station

  Later That Day …

  ‘Hurry!’ calls Bazzo as I bounce up the stairs to the train station.

  I can see Bazzo down on platform four waving at me wildly. The reason he’s waving wildly is because the train is already at the platform and I’m not.

  I make it to the top of the train-station stairs and dart in and out of the arriving passengers till I reach the stairs that go down to platform four. Now my legs are pumping like pistons as I gallop down two and three steps at a time.

  I’m going to make it. I’m going to make it.

  And I probably would have, had I not got stuck behind an old lady with a Zimmer frame. I help her down the last few steps and flash a millisecond smile. She begins to thank me but I take off – and get to the train just as the doors shut.

  Aw, nuts.

  I wave to Bazzo, who’s standing just inside the door, shaking his head and laughing. To really rub it in, he’s eating hot chips. I watch him pile a handful into his gob, then shrug smugly as the train slowly pulls away.

  Argh! It’s all Miss Blasco’s fault! Well, okay, it’s a bit my fault, as well. It seems my reading log for To Kill a Mockingbird didn’t convince Miss Blasco that I had actually read the novel. Maybe it was because my latest entry was about how sad it was when they killed the mockingbird. Apparently that doesn’t actually happen in the book, but how was I to know? It’s false advertising, if you ask me. Anyway, Miss Blasco decided that I urgently needed to meet her in the library at lunch so that we could pick a new book together, but by the time lunch had arrived, I’d conveniently forgotten all about it. When the bell rang to go home and Bazzo and I happily made our way to the gate, there was Miss Blasco waiting for me. And she did not look happy.

  ‘I just don’t understand what’s so hard about picking a book from a list and reading it,’ she said, as she marched me back to the library. ‘You must have read plenty of books in primary school.’

  I didn’t say a word, and that’s when Miss Blasco stopped walking.

  ‘Nick, what books did you read in primary school?’

  I stopped walking as well and gave her my best blank stare, but my silence had said it all.

  ‘Okay,’ she said, and we went inside the library. Miss Blasco took me straight over to a section in the corner with a large banner across it that simply said ‘The Beautiful Game’. On the shelf was book after book and every single one was about football.

  ‘You like soccer, right?’ asked Miss Blasco.

  ‘Football,’ I corrected.

  Miss Blasco rolled her eyes and for a minute she reminded me of my mum.

  ‘You like football, don’t you?’ she said.

  I nodded.

  ‘Who’s your favourite player?’

  ‘Messi,’ I said. ‘He’s –’

  ‘I know who he is,’ said Miss Blasco, and a moment later she handed me a book called The Flea, which was all about Leo Messi. It wasn’t too big, and it even had pictures in it.

  ‘Cool. Thanks, Miss.’

  ‘You have to read it, though. Every word. And next time, you will be reading one of the books from my list.’

  ‘Yes, Miss,’ I said, as the librarian scanned the book. ‘Thanks again.’ And then I was out the door and running all the way to the station.

  I take a seat on the bench. The next train isn’t due for another 12 minutes. What am I going to do for 12 minutes? Then a moment later someone comes and sits next to me and suddenly I’m thankful that Miss Blasco kept me back. It’s Grace Valdez.

  ‘Hi,’ I say, trying not to sound nervous.

  I’m nervous. Why am I so nervous? She’s just a girl.

  ‘Hi,’ she says, then she digs into her bag and pulls out a very, very thick book.

  ‘So … You missed the early train too?’ I ask.

  ‘No, I just like to sit on train-station benches and read,’ she says.

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  ‘I’m joking. I left my phone in my locker so I had to go back for it.’

  ‘Oh. Ha. Good one.’

  Grace begins reading her very big book. I squint hard at the cover, trying to decipher the title.

  ‘Anna … Karina,’ I read aloud.

  ‘Ka-ren-in-a,’ corrects Grace. ‘It’s by Leo Tolstoy.’

  ‘It looks … long.’

  Grace nods and continues reading.

  ‘Actually, that’s sort of funny because I’m reading a book by a Leo as well.’ I pull the Leo Messi book from my bag. ‘Well, it’s about a Leo – Leo Messi. See? His real name is Lionel but his nickname is “Leo” and also “The Flea”. Yep.’

  It’s not night-time but I’m sure I can hear crickets chirping in the background. Clearly Grace isn’t impressed with my conversation skills. She sighs for a second, looks briefly at my book and smiles politely. Next to her massive book, my one looks a bit … well, babyish.

  ‘Normally I like to read big books like your one, but I’m just a really huge Messi fan,’ I throw in. ‘What about you? Who’s your favourite player?’

  ‘Don’t really have one,’ says Grace. This time she doesn’t look up from her book. ‘I’m not that into football.’

  What? How can she not be into football? She plays football. She goes to a speciality football high school. It’s mind-bogglingly, brain-numbingly crazy! Of course, I don’t tell her that.

  ‘Yeah, me neither. It’s stupid!’ I joke.

  Luckily she laughs. ‘No, I mean, I don’t hate it or anything. It’s just not my whole life. I only came to this school because I won a scholarship and I only won a scholarship because my club coach made me apply,’ she explains. ‘But it’s good. I want to go to uni when I finish school and this scholarship will probably help me do that. They like that sort of stuff on your application.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. University? I wasn’t even sure I’d ma
ke it to year eight. ‘Probably a good thing, anyway. You’re a terrible player!’

  She laughs again. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  This is good. I’m making jokes. She’s laughing. I’m laughing. The train is due in a few minutes and we’ll probably sit together all the way home. Everything is going perfectly. Until I laugh a bit too hard and a booger shoots out of my nose and lands on her arm.

  ARRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

  I’m looking down at the booger as she continues to talk. She clearly hasn’t noticed it but it’s all I can look at. A terrible glob of my snot on her beautiful arm.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, nodding in agreement although I have no idea what she’s talking about. I have to do something. ‘So what’s this book called again?’ I ask, reaching across her to point at her copy of Anna Karenina while subtly resting my other hand on the offending booger on her right arm.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asks.

  ‘Oops,’ I say, as I brush the booger from her arm. ‘I … slipped.’

  Slipped? Slipped??? That’s terrible.

  She looks horrified. She thinks I’m a massive, mega-super-sleaze.

  ‘I’m just going to read my book now,’ she says.

  That’s where the conversation ends. Grace goes back to reading her book and I sit there and pretend to read mine.

  It’s awkward with a capital A and there are still four minutes before the train arrives. Suddenly I’m wishing I made that early train after all. Stupid Miss Blasco. Why can’t teachers just mind their own business instead of trying to make us learn all the time?

  NSF Auditorium. In-school Futsal

  Comp Round Three

  Week Six: Thursday

  I’m running down the middle of the court and no one can touch me. I have the ball on a string. It obeys my every command as my feet push it forward, shuffle it left and right, and make it disappear and reappear like a magician’s card trick.

  Now you see it. Now you don’t. I’m really getting the hang of this futsal thing since I’ve taken Jase’s advice to focus on passing rather than trick shots. In fact, I kind of like it. And it’s helping take my mind off my embarrassing snot-blowing moment with Grace last week, which is good.

  It’s our third game and our team is really starting to fire as a unit now that we have the whole rotating-positions thing a little more sussed out. You see, rotating isn’t about giving everyone a go at different positions, which is what I first thought. It’s about confusing the opposition by constantly shifting positions. We’ve worked out a system of calls based on fruit codenames. For example, if I call ‘pineapple’, that means that I swap with Bazzo. If I call ‘peaches’, Maddie and Lexi swap. We’ve got fruits for rotating diagonally or horizontally, too, and it all means that the other team never knows what we’re going to do.

  After reading about tactics online, I also convinced the team to adopt a zone style of defence, which means we look after a part of the court rather than marking a particular player. It’s tricky, but after some practice we’ve started to get the hang of it. It’s working pretty well for us so far. We’re on our way to our second win from three starts.

  Right now, the opposition pivot is on me. He comes in for the tackle but when he looks down, the ball is gone. I smile at him and motion my head to the right. He turns to see Bazzo shoot for the left corner. The goalie, a kid named Tyson, has no chance. He dives hard but by the time he hits the ground we’re already celebrating. 2–0. Our way.

  ‘Way to go, team!’ says Lexi as she lands a stinging high five on my hand.

  And here we go again. Fast play is the key. And I’m talking crazy fast.

  ‘Rockmelon!’ I call. I rotate to my left and Maddie drops back while Lexi slots into the centre target position. She takes the kick-off and crosses to Bazzo on the right while I sprint up towards the goal. Bazzo passes back to Maddie who fires it across to Lexi who has already slid across to the gap left by me. On first touch, Lexi sends a brilliant crosscourt diagonal ball my way that slices the defence in two. All I have to do is line it up and pull the trigger.

  BANG. I fire it straight into the middle of the box, nutmegging poor Marco in goals before he even knows its coming. The ball shoots straight between his legs making it 3–0. We’re unstoppable.

  When Jase blows the whistle for fulltime, it’s 5–0.

  ‘Well done, young gun!’ says Jase, patting me on the back. ‘Keep that up and you’ll be booking a spot in the final!’

  ‘Thanks Jase,’ I say, grinning. But the smile freezes on my face when I notice a strange, cranky-looking old man with slicked back silver hair standing by the entrance of the auditorium and staring straight at me. When he sees me looking he turns away and walks out the door.

  ‘Jase, who was that?’

  Jase looks at me. ‘Mr Antonelli. Rep team selector, remember? He’s been working with the seniors but he must have had a free moment to check out the young talent. You know, he seemed to be quite impressed by you.’

  I try not to smile but inside I feel like I just won the lottery. If I can impress Mr Antonelli, I might just have a shot of making it through the tryouts at the end of term. Maybe things are looking up for me after all.

  NSF Campus

  Week Seven: Monday

  ‘You’re a fake, Young, and everyone knows it!’ shouts a familiar voice across the playground.

  What now? Here I am, innocently enjoying my cream-cheese-and-cracker snack pack at recess, and someone has to go and ruin it.

  I look up and am not terribly surprised to see Kane Kruger striding towards me. Kane’s been niggling at me for a while now, ever since I showed him up in the one-on-one session. Every time he passes me, he has to go fishing, and his bait of choice is my famous footballer dad. The first few comments were subtle enough: ‘So Shane Young’s your dad, hey? You know, I’ve noticed Arsenal have really gone downhill lately!’ and ‘Did anyone see the Premier League match on the weekend? Nick’s dad missed a deadset sitter. My grandma could’ve kicked that goal.’

  Eventually it moved on to other more probing comments: ‘So how come you don’t live in England with your dad? Shouldn’t you be over there trialling with Arsenal Academy?’

  Now he’s back to torment me some more, only this time he’s got a whole tribe of kids following him.

  ‘What do you want now, Kane?’ I say, trying not to sound too interested, although I am quite curious as to why I am suddenly being labelled a fake.

  Luckily Baz is here for backup. ‘I think he found out that you’re not a natural blond,’ jokes Bazzo, and some of the kids behind Kane chuckle.

  I do, too. ‘Oh no, my secret’s out!’

  A few more kids laugh, but not Kane. Instead he gives me a creepy, self-satisfied smile. Then he holds out his flashy, oversized smartphone. ‘I’m talking about this story I saw on the Premier League website.’

  I look down at his phone and see the headline on the website. It reads, ‘Son of a Gun: Arsenal’s Shane Young celebrates the birth of his first baby boy with supermodel wife Bianca Lee.’

  Below the headline is a photo of my dad standing next to his second wife, who is holding a newborn baby. The baby has an Arsenal onesie on.

  I feel my face get hot and go all tingly. I know it must be bright red right now. This is one article I don’t want to paste into my secret scrapbook.

  ‘Funny, it says that it’s Shane’s first child,’ says Kane. He’s enjoying this. ‘No mention of you in this article, Nick. Is that because you just made it all up so that you could win a scholarship?’

  I look at Kane’s face and I want to smile. I want to show him that his words have no effect on me. But they do. So I stand there and say nothing. What can I say? I’ve just been Krugified. Even Bazzo seems at a loss for words.

  Then, like an armoured Knight of Elgar astride a snorting, silver stallion, my hero arrives. Except in this case she’s wearing hot-pink running shorts and a Lady Gaga t-shirt.

  ‘You doofus, Kane!’ says an outrage
d Lexi. ‘Just because Nick has a different mum to his half-brother doesn’t mean they’re not related. Obviously this is Shane and Bianca’s first child together. Big deal! I’m pretty sure you have two stepbrothers from your mum’s second marriage, don’t you?’

  The kids behind Kane again show him absolutely no loyalty. ‘Ooooooh,’ they all moan.

  Kane’s face begins to shake a little and turn a shade of red similar to how I imagine mine to be. Except I think in his case, it’s more a shade of angry red.

  ‘Yeah, but …’ Kane begins.

  He’s confronted by t he unrelenting face of Lexi. She stares him down till he’s shaking his head and looking at his stupid phone for assistance. It truly is a sight of beauty.

  ‘Go back to whatever slimy hole you crawled out of, Kane,’ says Lexi. ‘I think we’re done here.’

  Kane’s face shudders some more but eventually he turns and leaves.

  ‘Thanks, Lexi. That was really …’ But I don’t know what else to say.

  ‘I can’t stand Kane,’ says Lexi. ‘I hope we play his team in the futsal final just so I can see the look on his face when we smash them. Besides, I have to back up my teammates. And it’s none of his business if you don’t know your dad that well.’

  And there it is. Lexi has worked it out and it won’t be long till I’m that kid with the famous footballer dad who doesn’t even know his son exists.

  ‘What do you mean, he doesn’t know his dad well?’ asks Bazzo.

  Lexi and I look at each other. Then I look at Bazzo.

  ‘Oh,’ says Bazzo. ‘So you don’t get cool Arsenal merch at Christmas?’

  I shrug. ‘It’s okay. I’m a Chelsea fan, remember?’

  And somehow, before I even realise it, my eyes are leaking. I quickly push the tears from my face but it’s too late. They’ve seen them.

  Lexi puts a hand on one of my shoulders and Bazzo puts his hand on the other one, and we sit and wait for the bell to ring.

  NSF Campus

  Week Seven: Friday, Period One

  ‘Nick, I’m open!’ cries Elvis as he sprints down the sideline.