by Holly Webb
Feathers was Fran’s gorgeous Golden Retriever. Fran giggled. “He’d love it, but he’d want to join in, and he’s so dopey I wouldn’t swear to it that he’d be playing for your lot. But you’re practising in the park tomorrow, aren’t you? I’ll come and watch you, and I’ll bring him then.”
“Cool.” Katie nodded. “Tomorrow afternoon we’re meeting in the park just up the road. There isn’t a proper pitch, but we can still practise.”
By the time Fran, Megan and Saima had to go home they’d printed off (and Becky had cut up) 250 tickets, and made six huge posters. Fran and Annabel, who were both brilliant at art, had drawn the outlines and everybody else had coloured them in. In fact, they’d been so efficient they had time left over for lounging around on the triplets’ beds eating jellybeans and listening to some music. Annabel managed to lounge, eat and draw at the same time, and after about quarter of an hour’s furious scribbling she waved her sketchpad triumphantly at Katie and Megan.
“Look!”
Everyone obligingly peered over, craning their necks to see what she’d drawn – a couple of girls in smart purple shorts and lilac shirts with some kind of badge on.
“Cute!” said Megan, grinning.
“Mmmm,” agreed Katie. “What’s it for?”
“Duh! It’s a design for your kit, dimwit! I think it’s really cool.”
“Mmmm,” said Katie again, more doubtfully this time, and darting a “help me!” look at Megan and the others. Saima didn’t seem to see any problem, and Becky and Fran were just giggling, very unhelpfully.
“What?” Annabel demanded, sounding cross. “Don’t you like it?”
Megan smiled in a peacemaking kind of way. “We do like it, lots. It’s just … not very practical,” she finished in an inspired rush, looking relieved.
“Exactly!” Katie nodded furiously. “Lilac would get really dirty, Bel. After ten minutes on our field we’d just be brown. And it’s a bit, um, girly?”
“But that’s the point! It’s kind of like saying, ‘Yeah, we’re girls, and we’re still way better than you!’ See?” Annabel looked disappointed with her sister, and Katie pulled out her last card.
“We do see what you mean, Bel, and it would be cool, but I think we’re going to have to use Manor Hill colours anyway – green and red. Maybe you could do us some green and red ones?”
“Green and red?” Annabel put more disgust into the words than Katie would have believed possible. “Oh, I suppose so. But honestly, how boring?”
Chapter Eight
The triplets slept in on Saturday morning. Katie was exhausted by all the practising and the matches the team had been fitting in, and Becky and Annabel were just keeping her company… Annabel still hadn’t got over her disgust at green and red football outfits, but she brought her sketchbook down to breakfast (when Mrs Ryan had finally tempted them out of bed with the offer of beans on toast for a sort of brunch) and started doodling some more designs while holding half a piece of toast in her left hand, dangerously close to shedding its load of beans all over her drawings.
A hand reached out and removed the dripping toast from hers.
“Hey!” Annabel was woken from her semi-thoughtful, semi-just-sleepy haze.
“We said green and red, Bel, not green, red and beans. Watch it!”
“Oh. Can I have it back? I was eating that.”
Katie rolled her eyes and pointedly put the toast back on Annabel’s plate instead of into her outstretched hand. Annabel rolled her eyes back in a frighteningly identical gesture, then grabbed the toast and shoved it all in her mouth at once, making a “so there” face at Katie which didn’t go well with stuffed-to-bursting cheeks.
“Bel!” said her mother reprovingly. “Don’t you dare spit that out now. Swallow it and behave.” She watched beadily as Bel gulped down the huge mouthful. “OK. What’s the plan for the rest of the day then?”
“Practising,” mumbled Katie, through quite a lot of toast. “This afternoon.”
“Mmm,” agreed Becky. “I’m going too – going to meet Fran and Feathers and watch. It’s in the park.” She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of the ceiling, but Mum understood she meant just down the road.
“Can you talk yet?” Mum enquired of Annabel, who beamed at her in a showing off a lot of non-occupied teeth way.
“Mmm.”
“So are you going as well?”
Annabel gave Becky a sidelong look. Their scrapbook plan was already off to a good start. Dad had emailed back on Thursday morning sounding anxious.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Hello loves,
I know what you mean – I’m worried about her too – Katie hasn’t sounded too happy recently, even though she’s really excited about the team doing so well. I think the email scrapbook idea sounds brilliant, and I can’t wait to see everything. I’ll talk to your mum next time I phone too, she’s probably noticed the same thing. Good luck keeping it all a secret from Katie!
Love Dad
Annabel had got a couple of good photos of Katie practising in the garden, but this afternoon the plan was to tell Katie that they were taking photos of Fran’s dog, Feathers on their camera, but actually to get some good shots of the whole team training together… “Yes. Can I borrow the picnic rug, please?”
“You can’t have a picnic in October,” objected Katie.
“I could if I wanted! But I’m not, I just think it would be nice to put the rug down near where you’re practising and lie there and watch you all running about like mad things.”
“That’s so mean.” Katie was disgusted. “And I wouldn’t do it anyway, because if you do we’ll all accidentally-on-purpose kick the ball at you.”
“Spoilsport.”
“Lazy little so-and-so.”
“Excuse me!” Mrs Ryan broke in. “Katie, go and get dressed. Annabel, clear the table, and stop being so grumpy, the pair of you.”
Becky smiled smugly at both her sisters, and was rewarded with glares. She went on calmly finishing off her beans on toast, until Annabel attempted to whip the plate from under her nose.
“Hey, I haven’t finished!” Becky yelped.
Mrs Ryan turned round from the sink where she was scrubbing beans out of the pan, and gave them a Look.
“You did say to clear the table,” protested Annabel, full of injured innocence, but the Look only intensified, and she gave Becky back the plate, muttering about how unfair everybody was.
By that afternoon the atmosphere had calmed down quite a bit, mostly as the triplets woke up properly and stopped sniping at each other. Annabel had been sitting on the stairs, staring vaguely at her French homework (she was quite good at French, but not because she liked it very much, more because she was terrified of her French teacher). Giving up, she wandered down into the kitchen to find Becky playing with Pixie and looking out of the window. Annabel giggled as Pixie pounced viciously on the piece of string and whipped it out of Becky’s hand.
“Where’s Katie?”
Becky nodded her head towards the garden and Annabel peered out of the window. “Oh, what? She’s practising for her practice?”
“Uh-huh. I know we want her to be busy, but she’s going a bit over the top, I reckon. I don’t feel like telling her though.”
Watching Katie’s fierce expression of concentration as she guided the ball round the stones she’d laid out on the patio, Annabel agreed. “It’s nearly time to go though, I don’t reckon she’ll mind us telling her that.”
But Katie had obviously worked it out for herself. She carefully put the stones back on the edge of Mum’s flower border, and came inside.
“Are you two ready? We should go.”
“Mm-hm.”
They grabbed jackets, Annabel made sure she had the camera in he
r bag, and they yelled “Bye, Mum!” up the stairs to Mrs Ryan, who was in the study on the computer.
By the time they got to the park Fran and Feathers were already there, and the big Golden Retriever raced up to them excitedly, bringing Fran with him – she didn’t have much choice.
Annabel stepped back behind Becky, and grinned at Fran. “It’s not that I don’t like him, it’s just that this is clean and I don’t fancy pawprints all over it.” She smoothed down her lilac skirt complacently.
Becky was wearing some jeans that could do with a wash anyway (she knew what Feathers was like) and had no such worries. “Hello gorgeous! Aren’t you lovely?” She rubbed his ears all over and reduced him to a state of moaning happiness.
“He loves you!” Fran laughed admiringly. “Come on, let’s go and sit on that bench. He’s been dragging me all over the park for the last twenty minutes, so I reckon he’s probably OK to sit down for a bit now.”
The three of them headed for the bench, and Katie went over to the small knot of girls who were doing stretching exercises and arguing with Sarah about how they should organize the practice session. Megan wasn’t there yet, and Katie was surprised when Cara spotted her and gave her a relieved sort of smile, before very quickly wiping it off and looking the other way. She supposed it was hard for Cara – the Year Eights didn’t talk to her much, and Megan and Katie didn’t want to either. Still, she decided firmly, remembering Cara’s nasty comments, one half-smile didn’t make her any less mean. Grovelling apologies would be needed before Katie smiled back. Megan and a couple of others dashed up, and they started the practice, piling up jackets and sweaters for everyone to dribble round.
Becky, Annabel and Fran watched contentedly – it was fun seeing other people working hard – and chatted. After a while Feathers started to whine pathetically – he was desperate to go and join in and he could think of much more interesting things to do with a ball than kicking it in silly patterns.
“Ssssh, Feathers!” soothed Fran. “We’ve got a job to do. Did you bring the camera?”
“Yup,” said Annabel. “Just arrange yourselves so it looks like I’m taking photos of you, but I can actually get the others in instead.”
Meanwhile, Katie was enjoying herself. Practising was hard work, but it was fun, and concentrating on her football was how she was trying to keep herself cheerful. The night before, after the others had gone home, she’d worked out loads of really useful training ideas to suggest for today, and clever new plays they could try out. Then she’d looked down at her diagrams in disgust – she was doing exactly what Cara had accused her of! Trying to take over! Sarah was the captain, and she had to be in charge, however hard Katie found it. She’d torn up her notes, and now she was determinedly keeping her mouth shut.
Luckily Sarah had plenty of good ideas of her own – she started off by splitting the squad up into smaller groups to work on passing, and anticipating what the person passing needed them to do – so that they didn’t have to waste any time when defenders could be nabbing the ball off them. After a few more exercises, they played a seven-a-side game that was really fun – it was good to see how people on your own team played when you weren’t on the same side!
After that they were all pretty worn out, so they pulled on jumpers and fleeces and sat down on the grass to chat for a bit.
Sarah was in a confident mood. “That was a really good session,” she said seriously. “Don’t you think so?” she asked looking round at everyone. There were nods and murmurs in response.
Then Lizzie, the Year Eight girl who’d been a sub for the semi-final, asked, a little bit sulkily, “Who chooses the team for this match? It’s not an official school thing, so is it still going to be Mrs Ross?”
Sarah looked surprised. “Yeah, I’d have thought so, why?”
Katie looked at Lizzie, and the glances she was exchanging with Michelle and Caroline, and knew exactly why. Lizzie was thinking that if Sarah was choosing the team, she wouldn’t pick Katie and Megan and Cara, she’d go for girls in her own year. Suddenly, some of the fun went out of the afternoon – it was like they were Year Eights and Year Sevens again, instead of being a football team. But then Sarah surprised her.
“I know that last year when we were in Year Seven we only ever got to be subs, but Mrs Ross’ll pick the team, and she’ll pick the people who’ve played best recently, in practices and matches – whoever they are.” And she looked round at everybody in a way that made it perfectly clear what she meant – no more snide comments about the “little ones”. It was great! Lizzie just stared at the grass looking cross.
Everybody started to wander off home after that, and Katie and Megan headed over to the bench where the others were restraining Feathers from chasing after everybody.
“That was brilliant, what Sarah said!” Megan exclaimed happily.
“Absolutely,” agreed Katie, “and I bet after the semi-final you’ll get to be goalie, you were really good.”
“I hope so,” said Megan seriously. “It would be awful to miss the final after getting to play on the off-chance like that. Anyway” – she checked her watch – “I’d better go. Dad’s coming to pick me up outside the park any minute. See you on Monday!”
And she dashed off, waving to the others, leaving Katie to trail her way slowly over to the bench, exhausted.
Chapter Nine
After they got back from the park, Katie flaked out on the sofa. Annabel and Becky looked down at her sternly. “You seriously need to slow down,” Becky told her.
“If you keep going like this you’ll be dead before Friday,” Annabel added. “And then what use will you be?”
“And why are you worrying so much anyway?” asked Becky. “I mean, the boys’ team have got Max! You’re guaranteed to win.”
Katie grinned wearily. “I suppose so. But they’ve just been such pains, ’specially Max – I couldn’t bear it if they beat us.”
For the rest of the weekend the pair of them watched her like hawks, pouncing on her whenever she looked like she might be about to do something energetic, and by Sunday evening she admitted that although she could quite happily kill them both, she did feel less worn out.
Annabel and Becky kept the “Cheer Up Katie” campaign going all week, and tried to stop her doing too much as well. They did all her chores for her, and basically made sure that she was relaxed and in tip-top condition for Friday and Saturday’s matches. Annabel even took to timing Katie’s practice sessions in the garden and forcibly dragging her back inside after twenty minutes (and a couple of sneaky photos, the email scrapbook was going brilliantly).
By Friday afternoon, both teams, and anyone who was friends with them, were practically gibbering with excitement. The staff were fairly understanding, although Mr Hatton did lose patience in French, which was first lesson after lunch. The two teams and their supporters had been facing off at each other in the dining hall for most of the lunch hour, and French was far from the first thing on their minds.
“Right.” It was the second time Mr Hatton had found Max and Ben hissing insults at Megan and Katie. “You four! And whoever else is involved in this ridiculous game – out here!”
Katie, Megan, Cara, Max, Ben and David slunk out to the front.
“Anyone else? No? OK. Now, obviously football is the only thing you can think about at the moment, but at least you’re going to do it in French.”
There was an audible groan from somewhere in the middle of the classroom, and Mr Hatton whipped round like a snake. “Did I ask for comments? Who was that? Amy?”
Amy looked flustered. It had been her, and now she had no idea what to say. The rest of the class watched, feeling glad that it was Amy getting one of Mr Hatton’s famous telling-offs rather than them. Besides, Amy was so stuck up, it was fun seeing her taken down a peg or two.
“Not a football fan?” enquired Mr Hatton silkily.
Amy flushed pink and shook her head.
“And you disapprove of my choice of subject for French conversation this afternoon?”
Amy shook her head again, very hard this time, as if to indicate that she wouldn’t dare.
“Good. Well then, this will be an opportunity for you to increase your vocabulary. You can come up here too.”
Amy crept up to the front to join the others, glaring at Katie and Megan who were smirking at her, and avoiding Cara’s eye. Then Mr Hatton dragged the seven of them through a tortuous conversation about their favourite football teams (Amy didn’t have one), and then on to that afternoon’s match. That was where it got more fun, because Amy pretty much dropped out, and the others insulted each other for a good five minutes – it turned out that French was a very good language to be politely horrible in, and Megan and Katie managed to work out some really choice phrases for Max’s football skills. He was scarlet in the face by the time Mr Hatton let them sit down.
Afternoon lessons had been shortened a bit, and the two teams had last lesson off to go and change. Annabel tried very hard to convince Mrs Travers that she and Becky didn’t need to go to geography either, as they were the official girls’ team cheerleaders, but she wasn’t having any of it, and she cruelly proceeded to ask Annabel a lot of really difficult questions about the different bits of volcanoes.
Meanwhile, Katie and Megan and the others were in the changing rooms, psyching themselves up, with Mrs Ross’s help. She seemed to have complete confidence in them, which was great, but Katie found it a little bit scary at the same time – she didn’t want to let Mrs Ross or any of the others down. Looking at Megan, she could see that she felt the same way. Mrs Ross had told them all in their practice on Monday that the team for this match, and for the final tomorrow, would be the same team that had played at the semi-final. Michelle, Lizzie and Caroline had looked furious, but what could they say? Katie and Megan had been playing really well recently – and so had Cara, although Katie hated to admit it.