Katie's Big Match

by Holly Webb

  “We were both OK on Friday,” mused Megan. “Well, you were more than OK, I mean, two goals, Mrs Ross would be mad to leave you out.”

  “Depends on those Year Eights, though, doesn’t it? Michelle and Lizzie were back at practice today. Mrs Ross might give them another chance—” She broke off as Cara Peters caught up with them and walked alongside her. What on earth did she want? It was just possible that she wanted to talk about the fund-raising plan, she’d had an idea, maybe. But then again … this was Cara.

  “Nice idea.” Katie immediately felt guilty, but Cara carried on. “I suppose you’ve got sick of just bossing your sisters around.”

  “What?” Katie felt completely wrong-footed – she had no idea what Cara was talking about.

  “A whole football team doing what Katie Ryan says. Now that’s more like it. Got any more bright ideas? I suppose Mrs Ross has arranged for you to take over training as well?”

  “Shut up, Cara, that’s so stupid!” broke in Megan. “Anyway, you can’t talk, you spend your whole life hanging on every word Amy Mannering says.”

  Cara flushed angrily, but ignored Megan and carried on taunting Katie. “Maybe Becky and Annabel got sick of it? Didn’t want to do exactly what their darling sister said any more? Was that it – you needed a new set of slaves?”

  Katie folded her arms and gave Cara a pitying stare. “Just because Amy treats you like dirt, you think everyone’s the same. Get it through your thick skull – she’s a bossy little madam and you’re a mindless moron.”

  “I’ll tell Amy you said that!” Cara spat out, as if it was the ultimate threat.

  “Sorry, am I supposed to be scared? Grow up, Cara. It’s nothing to do with being bossy. I just like being on a football team. The only thing I don’t like is having to be on it with you, because you’re – well, you’re just a nuisance. Like a mosquito.” And having reduced Cara to the status of an insect, Katie grabbed Megan’s arm and they walked off to the changing rooms, leaving Cara still trying to think of a good answer.

  Megan chuckled. “She’s going to have to hang around outside until we’ve got changed now – she’ll never dare come in, you might start again. She is such an idiot.”

  “Mmmm.” Katie grinned briefly. Squashing Cara had been fun, but somehow, she didn’t feel quite as triumphant as she usually did after dealing with someone who’d been mean to her. People did pick on the triplets sometimes – they were different, and they got a lot of attention, and some people couldn’t cope with that. Normally it was water off a duck’s back to Katie – Becky hated arguments, but Katie and Annabel could give as good as they got and enjoy it. So why was she feeling odd, and worried? She had to snap out of it – first that stupid thing with Megan and her dad on Friday, and now this! But although Cara Peters was a total idiot, Katie had a horrible feeling that for once, she might have managed to notice something important…

  Chapter Four

  Katie was remarkably silent all that evening. She ate her stir-fried chicken and noodles almost mechanically and failed to laugh at Annabel when she twirled so many noodles round her fork that she had a practically tennis-ball-sized mouthful to deal with. She did actually manage to get it in her mouth, but then she was stuck, looking like a hamster that had seriously overreached itself. Mum had been called away to the phone and Annabel had rather been expecting that Katie would shunt into her big-sister mode and forbid her to put it in her mouth, or try to, anyway. She’d been quite looking forward to telling Katie to mind her own business and stop behaving like her mother. But Katie just gazed at her, looking troubled, and definitely not-all-there.

  Becky threw Annabel a worried glance, and Annabel finished choking down her super-sized noodle nightmare and brandished the now-empty fork at her sister. “What’s up?” she demanded, ignoring Becky’s frowned signals, which were supposed to tell her not to make Katie more upset. “You look like Pixie when she’s just missed a really juicy-looking pigeon.”

  “Nothing,” muttered Katie edgily.

  Becky and Annabel gave her sternly disbelieving looks, but Mum came back into the kitchen just then and they could sense that Katie wouldn’t thank them for making whatever it was that was wrong obvious. Annabel gave her a “later” look and started to prattle distractingly to Mum about the boringness of the lessons they’d had that day.

  After tea they watched a bit of TV, but Mum was still very much in evidence, so Annabel’s plans had to be put on hold. Eventually Mum gave them a meaningful look and they sloped off to do their homework – Annabel to her personal study-space, otherwise known as halfway up the stairs, and Becky and Katie to the big desk in their bedroom. “Homework first, then we want the full story,” hissed Annabel as they headed out of the living room. “Don’t we, Becky?”

  Becky grinned sympathetically at Katie. Annabel was very stubborn, and Katie clearly wasn’t going to get away with not telling them what was going on.

  Despite the fact that in theory she had homework to do for French, maths and history, Annabel was upstairs less than an hour later, perched on the edge of the desk and demanding details.

  “But I haven’t finished!” wailed Katie, sounding truly upset.

  Annabel was surprised – this was not normal Katie behaviour. Interrupting her homework (unless she was bored and wanted to be interrupted) would normally get you seriously snapped at, if not shoved off the edge of the desk (and maths textbook) you happened to be sitting on. This was Katie in a tizz – very rare.

  “Oh. Well, OK. Quarter of an hour?”

  “’Kay,” came a muffled answer, as Katie bent over her maths again.

  Annabel raised her eyebrows at Becky over Katie’s head, and Becky responded with a wide-eyed look and the tiniest shrug – no idea. Annabel flounced out of the room to fetch her maths books. If she had to wait for quarter of an hour, she might as well make use of the time to deal with the maths exercise that she had not so much done, as, well, looked at. She slumped on her bed and proceeded to growl at her textbook.

  Quarter of an hour and not very many trigonometry questions later, Annabel was back, though she’d taken note of Katie’s emotional state earlier, and the “Be careful!” look that Becky was giving her, and was employing tact and gentleness – or so she thought.

  “Katie… Have you finished yet? You have, haven’t you? I’ve finished, so you must have done.” Katie was very good at maths, which had the unfair (according to Annabel) effect of making everyone think that Becky and Annabel were, too. People had an annoying tendency to do that sort of thing. There were lots of brilliant things about being triplets, but that was one of the downsides. It annoyed all of them, but particularly Katie, when people really did just assume they were the same in every way, rather than just looking the same. They were doing the best they could to make sure that everyone at Manor Hill knew they were Katie and Becky and Annabel, and not just “the triplets”.

  Katie shoved her books into her rucksack, and Becky did the same. She might have to do a bit of catching up tomorrow breaktime, but she could see that Katie needed help now – even if she didn’t want it.

  Katie went over to her bed and sat down cross-legged, then fossicked around down the side of the bed for the worn, faded and now rather dusty toy dog that she’d had as long as she could remember. Most of the time she wasn’t a cuddly-toy person, hence Horse’s frequent stays down the side of her bed, but occasionally she needed him. (Katie knew quite well that Horse was a dog, but she hadn’t at the time, and she refused to change his name now.)

  Becky and Annabel sat down on the end of her bed, facing her, and Annabel, still being “tactful”, asked, “So what’s up?”

  Katie stared at what was left of Horse’s ears. “Do I boss you around too much?” she asked quietly.

  “Yup,” said Annabel, grinning, but Becky poked her, and wriggled closer to Katie.

  “Only in a good way – we’d sp
end half the time in the wrong classroom with the wrong books and the wrong people if you didn’t get us organized. Look at Annabel messing up that French test when you two weren’t talking before half-term… Why, Katie? I mean, why’d you suddenly ask that?”

  “No reason,” a small, very unconvincing voice replied.

  “You’re a really bad liar, Katie Ryan.” Annabel grinned. “Another reason why we love you. Someone called you a bossy little know-all, didn’t they? Who was it? Only I’m allowed to do that.”

  “I’m serious!” Katie sounded really upset, for her, and Annabel sobered up again.

  “So am I. Who was it? They’re going to be really sorry they were horrible to you.”

  “Tell us, Katie,” Becky persuaded. “They must have said something really awful to make you feel like this, ’cause normally you couldn’t care less what people say.”

  “I do if it’s about you two as well,” Katie pointed out miserably. “It was Cara.”

  “Oh well, there’s a surprise,” said Annabel sarcastically. “Why are you paying attention to anything that poisonous little rat says? She probably had to have Amy write it out on a bit of paper for her! Honestly, Katie, you are an idiot.” Annabel said this very affectionately, and gave her sister a quick hug. Cara had been mean, Katie had stupidly taken it seriously – end of subject.

  Becky wasn’t so sure. Super-sensible Katie seemed really thrown, and come to think of it, she’d been a little bit funny all weekend, ever since the match on Friday. Something was definitely wrong. “What did Cara say about me and Annabel? Exactly.” She fixed Katie with a firm glare.

  Katie sighed. “She said that I was bossing everybody in the football team around – Megan and I told Mrs Ross about my idea to try and raise money for a real football strip, you see – and she said it was because you two had got tired of me bossing you all the time and I’d had to find somebody else.” She sniffed.

  “Katie!” Becky and Annabel sounded disgusted, partly with their sister, and mostly with Cara. Annabel added, “You are such an idiot. If me and Becky thought you were bossing us about, we’d say so.”

  Becky nodded fiercely. “You don’t anyway—”

  “Much,” giggled Annabel irrepressibly, and Becky smacked her round the back of the head, not hard at all, but it was enough to make Annabel howl with indignation, and rub her head as if she’d been knocked into the middle of next week.

  “Shut up, Bel! Honestly, you just don’t know when to stop.” Becky put her arm round Katie, and scowled at Annabel until she came and sat on Katie’s other side.

  “You don’t boss us around, Katie. You’re just way more organized than we are. If we’re about to be late, or go to the wrong classroom, or forget Mum’s birthday, or whatever, you tell us. That’s not bossing, that’s helping. We let you do it too much, that’s all.”

  Katie had been looking as though she desperately wanted to believe what Becky was telling her, but her face fell in the middle of Becky’s little speech. Too much?

  Becky rushed on desperately as she saw Katie’s eyes widen and darken. “I just mean because me and Annabel are lazy. One of these days you’ll be sick or something, and we’ll be in a state – we shouldn’t let you do everything for us, that’s all.”

  “Speak for yourself,” yawned Annabel. “I like having Katie to organize me – she’s good at it and I’m not, so why should I bother?”

  “I’ll thump you again,” Becky warned. “This is important, Bel!”

  “I just don’t get why you’re both taking this so seriously. Cara’s a prat, we don’t care what she thinks, why go on about it?”

  Becky caught her eye meaningfully, and Annabel looked harder at Katie holding her old toy dog, suddenly realizing just how out of character her sister was behaving. “Unless there’s something else wrong as well, Katie? Is that why you can’t just snap out of it?”

  Katie went back to her examination of Horse’s ears.

  “There is, isn’t there? I knew it!” said Annabel triumphantly. “You were a bit quiet all weekend, but I thought you were just grumpy after what I said about you looking silly without proper football clothes.”

  “I got really cross with Megan on Friday,” admitted Katie, unhappily.

  “With Megan?” Becky sounded shocked.

  “You did not, Katie Ryan, or if you did it was the fastest fight and make-up in history,” accused Annabel. “We didn’t notice a thing, and we would’ve done – we were all sleeping in here!”

  “I didn’t tell her I was cross,” Katie explained. “It wasn’t her fault at all. I was jealous.”

  Becky shook her head. “How could you be jealous of Megan? You played way better than she did—”

  “I know!” snarled Katie, remembering the unfairness of it all over again. “I was jealous ’cause she had her dad there, and he was so excited for her, and really proud of her – did you see him, leaping up and down like a mad thing? She didn’t even do anything that special and he was acting like she – she…” Katie trailed off and stared at Horse’s ears miserably, and Becky and Annabel, who’d relaxed their comfort-hug while they tried to work out what was going on, went back into support mode immediately.

  Unfortunately, though, hugging was about all they could manage. What could they say? Katie was right – it wasn’t fair, but there was no way they could magically make it all better. Their dad was always going to be working abroad, as far as they could see.

  “Dad’s coming back at Christmas,” Becky ventured. “Maybe he’ll see you play then.”

  “I suppose,” agreed Katie sadly. “It was such a cool game on Friday, though. And then that night I was thinking about how he used to play football with me in the garden. We did that a bit when he came back at half-term, but it wasn’t the same – it used to be every weekend. And if it was raining we’d watch the football on TV instead. I just really, really hate him not being here.”

  “Me too,” murmured Becky, and Annabel sighed.

  But Katie couldn’t help thinking that her sisters didn’t really understand. Because she was the sporty one of the triplets and her dad was really into sport too, they’d always been close. Becky and Annabel missed him, of course they did – but Katie just couldn’t believe it was the same for them.

  Chapter Five

  On the way up to the school gates next morning, the triplets were shambling sleepily along when a whirlwind suddenly attacked Katie. It was Megan, flailing bags and bubbling over with excitement.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Annabel asked grumpily. She’d nearly slipped off the kerb when Megan threw herself at Katie.

  “Football match!” squeaked Megan, who’d run after the triplets halfway up the road and was now completely out of breath.

  “No, it’s on Wednesday – today’s Tuesday,” replied Katie in surprise – Megan was usually very organized, especially about football. “Oh, you mean we’ve got to go and check the team list?”

  “No, no, no!” Megan was recovering the power of speech now, and started to explain properly. “I mean, yes we have, and I reckon we can dash and look on the board before registration if we’re super-fast, but I’ve had an idea for raising money. I think we should set up a special football match and make people pay for tickets.”

  “Yeah, ’cause everyone’s going to pay loads of money to see you lot prancing around a field,” snarled Annabel, who really wasn’t a morning person, “Can we pay not to have a ticket?”

  Megan gave her a “ha ha, very funny” kind of look. “I haven’t finished, Little Miss Grumpy. The special thing about this match is who we play…” She paused, gathering everyone’s attention, her eyes sparkling and her ginger curls positively twitching with excitement.

  “Go on then,” urged Katie, her interest caught now.

  “The boys’ team!” Megan said, delighted with her own cleverness. “Oh, come
on, we’d slaughter them, it would be absolutely fantastic!”

  “Yeees,” agreed Katie thoughtfully, her eyes lighting up as she considered the idea. “And I bet people would want to buy tickets; all the girls ought to want to cheer us on, and the boys will be convinced we’re rubbish and want to see us get really shown up. I think it’s an ace plan, Megan! Did it just come to you?”

  “Woke up in the middle of the night with it,” nodded Megan happily. “It’s how I always have my best ideas, but normally I don’t really remember them in the morning, or I just have half the idea, you know? Like I know it was something about aardvarks. So I actually got up in the middle of the night and wrote it on the bathroom mirror in lipgloss ’cause I couldn’t find any paper. My mum was furious, and she just wouldn’t understand even when I tried to explain how important it was. So now I have to clean the bathroom at the weekend.”

  “I suppose it would be fun to see those boys lose really badly,” mused Annabel. “Especially if you managed to injure Max somehow. So are you going to sell tickets? When do you think it’ll be?”

  “Slow down!” Megan laughed. “We need to get permission from – well, I don’t know who – everybody, I should think.”

  “And we’d have to check that the rest of the team are up for it – I can’t see why they wouldn’t be, but you never know,” added Katie.

  “Yeah, Year Eights.” Megan shrugged. They were all a bit weird and unpredictable. “I reckon we ought to go and talk to them about it, before we ask Mrs Ross?” She raised her eyebrows hopefully at Katie.

  “You’re right. We’d better go and find them all at break.” Katie made a face – it wasn’t exactly a fun prospect, as the Year Eights were bound to be a bit sniffy. It wasn’t as if they were that much older even – only a year – but they seemed to think it made them special. Suddenly Katie had a horrible thought. Was this the kind of bossiness that Cara had accused her of? Wanting to take over everything? But that was stupid – she just wanted to get things done. She banished Cara to the back of her mind again, and said firmly, “Maybe we’d better find Sarah first. She’s the captain, and she seemed to think us raising money was a good idea. If we can get her on our side, maybe the others’ll agree too.”