He’d written the words the day his father left for Australia. He read them again now, as he did every week.
Beneath that he’d written the things he would do when he started earning lots of money.
Stevie was the only one who actually knew about Noah’s ambition to be a professional footballer, but Noah had never told him the reasons why. It wasn’t because Stevie couldn’t keep a secret, he could, he was the most loyal friend in the world, but for some reason Noah found it impossible to talk to him about this.
The rest of the notebook’s pages were filled with the names of football clubs from all over the world. Noah was in the process of writing to every single one of them, telling them about his skills and talent and asking for a trial.
He was still waiting for an invitation, but he’d only written to one hundred and fifteen clubs so far. There were thousands left. He knew the chances of getting a trial this way were slim, but he wasn’t despondent. Even if the scout who’d watched him today decided against recommending him, he knew there was a great chance of being spotted at the World Cup qualifying tournament. In just over six weeks’ time, he could be signing a contract with a professional club. Then things would be the way they were meant to be. He’d have enough money so Dad could quit his mining job and come home and Simone could tell Jacinta Hegarty where to shove it. The idea of it all working out made him excited.
Which is why he was so upset when everything went badly wrong the next day.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I didn’t really want to be involved in a normal football club’
Eric Cantona
The tired and mostly miserable pupils of St Killian’s Boys were arriving for another day of school and the corridor had begun to hum with the sound of one hundred and fifty different conversations. Noah, who’d been up at dawn to practise with his weaker left foot, was in the middle of a huge yawn when Stevie ran up to him, wheezing a little.
‘I got the analysis done,’ Stevie said, as someone barged past, knocking him into a locker. ‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologize – he bumped into you,’ Noah said. ‘What analysis?’
‘On yesterday’s match,’ Stevie said brightly.
‘Great.’ Noah smiled. His best friend was the only person who thought about football more than Noah did, and he didn’t even play the game.
Stevie took the tablet from his school bag and switched it on just as a sudden hush fell over the crowd of students. It takes a lot to get a couple of hundred teenagers to shut up all at once, but that’s what happened. They all froze for a moment, unsure of what to do, until someone made a move and the rest parted like a shoal of fish that had spotted a great white heading in its direction. The sense of fear was palpable.
‘McCooley,’ Little Stevie whispered.
Kevin McCooley was the toughest person anyone in the school had ever had the misfortune to encounter. He was the youngest of three brothers and, by reputation, the meanest of the lot. His older siblings, a set of twins, had left St Killian’s the previous June, just months before Noah had started in the school. There was a rumour that there’d been a party in the staff room to celebrate their departure and it had only come to a halt when one of the teachers remembered that another McCooley was starting at the school the following September.
‘He shouldn’t be called Kevin. It’s too misleading. Kevins are nice, normal people. Not like him,’ Stevie had said the first day they’d seen him in school.
It was almost impossible to believe that McCooley was the same age as Noah and Stevie. He looked a lot older. His hair was wild and stuck out from his head in seven separate clumps. His face was permanently set in a scowl and he exuded a sense of menace that made every last pupil and teacher nervous of him.
‘It was like being trapped in a room with a psychotic lion,’ Mr Moran had been overheard saying when he’d spent an hour after school giving Kevin McCooley detention. It was a mistake no teacher would ever make again.
Most people weren’t foolish enough to mess with the McCooleys, not with their reputation. There had been a report in the local newspaper about Kevin’s mother being sentenced to six months in jail for beating up two of her neighbours when they complained about the loud rap music she was playing at four in the morning. One of them had been forced to give up his career in the army after the assault.
‘It’s the twenty-first century and we’re still scared of bullies. It’s ridiculous,’ Stevie whispered.
Kevin McCooley slowed his swagger and his head swivelled in their direction. His eyes narrowed to black beads and he growled. A low rumble at the back of his throat. It wasn’t very loud, but it was definitely a growl.
Noah focused on his shoelaces as if they were the most important things in the world. McCooley stared at him. Noah couldn’t see him staring, but he could feel it. The wild-haired teenager’s eyes were burning into him with a laser-like intensity. McCooley muttered something to himself, then walked on.
‘Imagine what he’d be like if we’d actually done something to annoy him,’ Stevie said, his voice a little squeakier than it had been a few moments earlier.
‘There’s something seriously wrong with him,’ Noah said as he watched McCooley shove a little kid out of the way.
The contents of the younger boy’s bag spilled all over the corridor’s floor, but nobody dared move a muscle to help him. As McCooley disappeared round a corner, the bell rang, calling them into class.
‘I’ll show this to you after school,’ Stevie said, putting his tablet into his bag. ‘Those punches you wanted to see have been captured perfectly. When the blood gushes from your nose you can put the video on slow motion and it’s like watching one of those BBC nature programmes. The red is really deep and rich.’
‘You know when I said yesterday that I’d watch it later, Stevie? I actually meant I’d never watch it.’
‘Oh, right, well, not to worry. The stats are good. Your passing percentages were by far the highest. Over ninety which is excellent on a wet, muddy pitch.’
‘Great. How long did it take you to do all that?’
‘Oh, not that long. Between the analysis, creating the database and reading the data from the monitor I’d put on your arm it was only about three or four hours.’
‘Three or four hours? You’re mad. If you spent that long studying . . .’
‘I’d be top of the class? I am top of the class, Noah. I always am. And I spent three hours studying last night. See you at lunch.’
Noah headed into his classroom, two doors down from Stevie’s. He took his usual seat just in front of Michael Griffin. An hour later and Noah was struggling to keep his eyes open during a Geography class when a voice crackled over the ancient PA system.
‘Can Noah Murphy make his way to the principal’s office at once.’
His first thought was that it was a family emergency and his heart began to thump wildly. He couldn’t face that again. But then he remembered that the principal came to the door in person for emergencies. No, a call on the PA meant one thing: Noah was in some kind of trouble. He just couldn’t figure out what it was that he was supposed to have done.
The office wasn’t huge anyway, but Mr Hegarty’s bulk made it look even smaller. He was a big man, far too big to be healthy, and the chair creaked beneath his weight, the sides of his bottom slipping over its edges like silly putty. Mr Hegarty fought back the urge to belch, scratched his nose instead and pretended to read a file on his cluttered desk. He set the file down and opened a bright red packet of Grudz, a sweet that Noah had never seen anywhere other than in his headmaster’s hand – they certainly weren’t stocked in any of the local shops. He popped three of the brightly coloured sweets into his mouth before he glanced at Noah.
‘Mr Murphy,’ he said between chews that turned his lips a pinkish red. ‘You know why you’re here, of course?’
‘No, sir.’
Hegarty sighed. ‘I have a report on yesterday’s match. What have you got to say for yourse
lf?’
‘About what, sir?’
‘About the fight you started.’
‘The fight I started?’ Noah was astonished. ‘I didn’t start anything. I was the one who was attacked. Look at my face.’
He pointed to the blue-black bruise and the scratch on his cheek. Hegarty shifted in his seat trying, and failing, to get comfortable.
‘That doesn’t prove anything,’ he said. ‘It may suggest that you’d be a terrible boxer, but being beaten up doesn’t mean you didn’t throw the first punch.’
‘Anyone who was there will tell you that I wasn’t the one who started it. Ask them, sir.’
‘I’ve spoken to the people I need to speak to and I’ve made my decision. You dragged the school’s good name through the mud.’
‘But, that’s not right, I—’
‘Are you questioning my authority, Mr Murphy?’
‘No, sir,’ Noah said.
‘Good. Now, I can’t have my pupils going around attacking others whenever they feel like it. We’re not animals, after all. There are consequences to your actions and in this case the consequence is a punishment. Since you disgraced yourself playing football, I’ve decided that the punishment should be football related.’
That didn’t sound good. That didn’t sound good at all. Noah was trying to think of some form of protest, something he could say to change his principal’s mind. Detention he could handle, extra homework he could handle, but a football-related punishment?
‘You’re banned from playing for the school team until the beginning of the next school year,’ Mr Hegarty said.
Noah’s world collapsed in a single moment. His heart sank to his stomach with a great whoosh, then continued its descent until it hit the floor. Noah was so shocked that he wasn’t even sure if he’d heard his principal correctly.
‘W-w-what?’ he stuttered.
He didn’t hear Mr Hegarty’s reply. He saw the man’s lips move, but the sound that came out made no sense to him. It was like listening to someone speak while you’re underwater.
Noah grew light-headed. He felt extremely odd. As if all this was happening to someone else, as if it wasn’t real. He shut his eyes. For a moment, he thought he was having an out-of-body experience.
He opened his eyes again and everything came back into focus.
‘. . . It gives me no pleasure to do this to you,’ Mr Hegarty was saying with a smile. ‘But your behaviour hasn’t given me any other option. When you wear the St Killian’s crest on your jersey, you’re not only representing yourself, you’re representing every pupil and all this school holds dear. Attacking Clydeabbey players does not form part of our core values and furthermore . . .’
Banned from the school team for something I didn’t do, Noah thought.
It was so unjust it couldn’t be true. All that extra training, everything he’d sacrificed had been for one reason: to get to the World Cup qualification tournament.
And now Mr Hegarty was going to take his chance away. Just like that. Because he’d decided he could. Noah couldn’t let it happen. He wouldn’t let it happen. He found his voice again.
‘That’s not fair,’ he said, just about holding back the urge to shout the words.
‘I never said it was fair. I said that it was a punishment,’ Hegarty said.
‘Well, give me some other punishment.’
‘Sir,’ Hegarty sneered.
The way he said it reminded Noah of Jacinta, Hegarty’s daughter, the previous evening.
‘Give me some other punishment, sir. Please. One that hasn’t got anything to do with football. I need to play in that tournament. I just . . . could you change it to something else? Anything else?’
‘Of course I could,’ Mr Hegarty said, ‘I just don’t want to.’
It was an enormous effort for Noah to remain polite. The shock had worn off completely now and it had been replaced by blood-boiling anger. He wanted to pick something up and smash it into little pieces.
‘But . . . but, you can’t ban me,’ he spluttered. ‘I’ve told you I didn’t start the fight.’
This has to be some kind of pathetic joke, he thought.
‘My report says that you did and my decision is final.’
‘But . . . but . . . but –’
And then it hit him and he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it earlier. He had an escape route.
‘I can prove I didn’t start it. I didn’t even throw a punch,’ he said.
The headmaster’s eyebrows knitted together. Suddenly, he didn’t seem as certain of himself. He shifted uneasily in his seat.
‘You can? How?’ he asked.
Stevie nearly had a heart attack when he heard his name being called out over the public-address system. Every pair of eyes in the classroom zoomed in on him. It made him feel threatened, like a cornered animal. He hated being the centre of attention.
‘Woooooooooo, Li’l Stevie’s in trouble,’ Hawk Willis said.
Hawk Willis always has to have something to say, Stevie thought, plunging his hand into the depths of his schoolbag to retrieve his asthma inhaler. He found it and took a couple of steadying puffs.
‘C’mon, Stevie, man. Time to face the music. We always knew the law would catch up with you one day,’ Hawk continued.
Even the teacher smiled a little at that one. Stevie had never been called to the principal’s office before. He’d never been called out of class. As far as he could remember, he hadn’t ever missed a single second of school. Even when he needed to go to the bathroom, he’d hold on until lunch or break-time.
‘Steven, you’d better not keep Mr Hegarty waiting,’ the teacher said. ‘And don’t forget to take your school bag with you. He requested that you take your bag.’
Stevie stood up. His legs wobbled.
‘Are you OK, Stevie?’ the secretary asked a few minutes later as he waited outside the principal’s office.
He nodded briefly then took another puff of his inhaler.
‘Can I get you a glass of water? It’s not any of your allergies, is it?’
‘No,’ Stevie gasped.
When she was satisfied that he wasn’t going to collapse in front of her, the secretary told Stevie he could go through to Mr Hegarty’s office.
‘Steven Treacy. How much trouble have you got yourself in this time?’ the principal said as Stevie took his first tentative steps into the office.
Noah thought Stevie was going to burst into tears.
‘It’s a joke, Mr Treacy. The humour is derived from the fact that you’re never in trouble, unlike your compatriot here.’
Until that moment, Stevie hadn’t even noticed Noah was in the room. His best friend looked in worse shape than he did. All the colour had drained from Noah’s face.
‘I’ve been told that you may possess some footage of yesterday’s football match, specifically the part of the match that descended into a disgusting display of violence,’ Mr Hegarty said.
‘Y-y-y-es, sir. I have it on my tablet.’
Stevie opened his bag, took out the tablet and switched it on.
‘Can I have that, please,’ Mr Hegarty said.
His use of the word ‘please’ suggested he was asking politely, but his tone indicated it was a command. Stevie passed it across without another word. It looked much smaller in Mr Hegarty’s huge hands. The principal switched it off immediately, the red light at the top blipping three times before fading out.
‘Hey, aren’t you going to look at it?’ Noah asked.
‘No, Mr Murphy. I’m confiscating it. Tablets that have been used for non-school purposes are subject to one week’s confiscation.’
Noah looked at Stevie. If there was one person who knew the school rules it was his best friend. And Stevie never broke those rules. He wouldn’t risk it. He wouldn’t have brought a tablet to school if there was any danger of getting in trouble for it.
Stevie seemed reluctant to speak, as if he was torn between being loyal to Noah and not daring to disagr
ee with his headmaster. Eventually it appeared that friendship had won and he nervously spoke up.
‘Mr Hegarty, sir, ahm, the tablet is used for school purposes. I’m doing a project in Mr Moran’s class.’
Mr Hegarty stared down at Little Stevie who shivered under the man’s gaze.
‘Well, Mr Treacy, we’re talking about a football match and that’s not a school project, now, is it?’
Noah was stumped. He looked at Stevie who stayed silent for a moment as Mr Hegarty leaned back in his chair. There was a creak and a flash of concern crossed Hegarty’s face as the chair sounded as if it was about to snap in two. He slowly edged it forward until all four legs were safely on the floor again.
‘Now, if you gentlemen—’
‘If you don’t mind, sir, it was used for school purposes. At the football match, I mean,’ Stevie said in a voice barely above a whisper. His eyes were as wide as a couple of buttermilk pancakes.
‘Are you saying I don’t know the rules, Mr Treacy? The rules of my very own school?’
‘N-no, no, of course not. Definitely not,’ Stevie stammered. ‘Well . . . what I mean, ahm, what I’m saying is . . .’ He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his sleeve as Hegarty continued to glare at him. ‘. . . I think there’s been a mix-up, sir. The match was a school match and, you know, for insurance purposes the players were considered to be at school. And I was filming it for the benefit of the school team.’
Mr Hegarty glared at Stevie with a look so terrifying that Noah had never seen its like before. Stevie withered right in front of his eyes.
‘But, of course, that’s just my personal opinion, so, heh heh, what do I know?’ Stevie gulped.
‘Exactly,’ Hegarty said. ‘What do you know?’
He opened his desk drawer and placed the tablet inside, then slid the drawer shut.
The Mighty Dynamo Page 3