So What If I Hog the Ball? Read online

  I galloped after it, feeling on top of the world.

  Football, football, football. Love it, love it, love it.

  That was pretty much it for the next ten minutes or so – me going deep when needed, and attacking whenever I got the chance. All credit to them, Cuddlethorpe were really giving us a game. Their number 11 was decent (despite having fat knees), but Holly and Lucy were solid at the back and Megan didn’t need to make a save all the time I was on.

  Midway through the half, Katie swapped me for Gemma and put Nika on for Petra. I didn’t mind too much: Gemma is a class player, miles better than me, and I don’t mind admitting it. Every time she has the ball you know something good’s going to happen.

  And this time was no different. Within five minutes she had forced a few good saves out of their keeper, and then Eve put it wide twice – but by half-time it was still nil–nil. The Tigers had had a couple of corners, but they hadn’t converted either. All in all, we shaded it for quality, I reckoned. We were bound to score in the second half. Bound to.

  Hannah said as much as we gathered round. “Well done, girls! You’re throwing everything at it. Keep doing that and you’ll be rewarded for sure. I’m liking what I’m seeing! Super-confident play from you, Petra, and you two, Eve and Tabs. Awesome. Hursty – magic first touch, and, Goose, your header out from that corner saved a dead cert…”

  “It did.” Megan laughed, hitting Lucy on the back. “I was totally out of position.”

  “And it was good to see the twins flying down the wings!” Katie beamed at Dylan and Daisy, who giggled into their hands.

  “So, all of you, keep doing what you’re doing, OK?” Hannah said before turning to me, a huge grin on her face. My heart began racing in expectation. I wondered what she’d say to me! My speed was usually one of the things she pointed out. Or the way I always remembered to fall back into defence once we’d lost the ball. Maybe she’d mention the way I’d used both feet? I was pretty good at that, even if I did say so myself.

  But no. That wasn’t what she focused on.

  “Apart from you, JJ. Don’t keep doing what you’re doing!” That was what she said to me. Don’t keep doing what you’re doing.

  She didn’t say it in a nasty way. Like I said, there was a smile on her face – but it made a few of the team laugh and that made me prickle. “What do you mean?” I asked grumpily.

  She stayed with the easy smile. “JJ, you know what I mean. You didn’t pass the ball once in fifteen minutes.”

  “Course I did,” I said.

  “No you didn’t!” everyone chorused.

  “I waited ages and ages,” Dylan simpered, “and nothing came.”

  “Well, I thought I’d passed,” I mumbled.

  “No you didn’t, and you know it,” Hannah pursued. “I’m really disappointed in you, JJ. After all we’ve talked about. You should have grown out of hogging the ball by now.”

  “But why? What’s wrong with being a ball hog?” I asked. I wasn’t even trying to be stroppy. I really wanted to know. I’d seen players on telly take the ball from inside their own half, weave round three or four defenders, dummy the goalie and score. They got goal-of-the-month awards for that; I got criticized.

  “Because simply running at defenders like you do doesn’t achieve anything; there’s no end product. Good players spend hardly any time on the ball. They pass it as soon as they can, to build up the move, to push the ball forward,” Hannah explained.

  “Often it comes straight back to them when they do pass,” Katie said, as if that was meant to make me feel better.

  “But I like running with the ball. I like the feeling it gives me… It’s…” I stopped. What was it? I wanted to describe it properly. It was important. I didn’t want people to keep having a go at me. “I… I…” I stammered.

  One or two of the team became restless as Hannah waited for my answer. Amy stooped to pluck her iPhone out of her kit bag and check her texts. It was the same make as the one Brendan had given me the other day.

  “I know!” I said suddenly. “It’s the only time I ever have anything that’s my own.” I paused. That was exactly it! When I had the ball, it was mine. I’d earned it. I deserved it. I hadn’t pinched it or been given it on a plate. I had won it fair and square.

  I grinned at Hannah, dead chuffed with myself, knowing she’d understand – but Eve interrupted before Hannah could speak. “That’s the lamest excuse ever,” she said, with this massive over-the-top sigh.

  I turned and scowled at her. “You what?”

  “You heard. Face it, JJ, you’re just greedy. You always are – on and off the pitch.”

  “What do you mean, ‘on and off the pitch’?” I said.

  “On the pitch you’re greedy for the ball. Off the pitch you’re greedy for attention.”

  “Greedy how?”

  She opened her hands wide and turned her head from side to side. “Er … hello? Look around.”

  I frowned at her. “I’m only trying to explain something. If you give me one minute…”

  “Why? Why should I give you one minute? Why should any of us? We’ve given you enough minutes! You’re such a time-suck, JJ, and it’s tedious! But nobody ever says anything. Nooo! Because it’s JJ, and she’s special somehow, so we all tiptoe round her in case she gets into a strop.”

  I swallowed hard. She made me sound just like our Billy! “I’m not…” I began – but Eve hadn’t finished.

  She began reeling off a list of things on her fingers while everyone else watched. “During the tournament you got in a strop because you wanted us to be England and we got Ukraine. Last week it was the pink away strip. Next week it’ll be something else. Face it, JJ, you are a born attention-seeker.”

  “Get lost!” I said, glowering at her. “Attention’s the last thing I want. Why do you think I always practise on my own whenever I get the chance? I hate attention.”

  “Newsflash! When you practise on your own with your annoying little tennis ball it just makes you stand out more.”

  “It’s not ann—” I began, then stopped. “Does it?” I asked instead.

  “Yes!” everyone chorused.

  “Course it does,” Eve continued, her voice less irritated. “It’s like saying, ‘Look at me. I’m too good to practise with those inferiors.’”

  “What? No…”

  But Eve was on a roll and she wasn’t going to let me in. “And so does the way you turn up fifty hours before everybody else, and so does your getting a lift with Hannah to away games instead of doubling up with some of us… I mean, if sucking up to the coaches isn’t the biggest attention-seeking thing in the world, then what is?”

  I couldn’t believe my ears. “I don’t do that for attention!” I turned to Hannah. “I don’t!” I said, my voice high and desperate.

  “I know,” Hannah said. The whistle blew then, and she scratched her neck. She looked from me to Eve. “It’s time for the second half. We’ll discuss this later.”

  Eve rolled her eyes at Gemma as if to say, “I knew that would happen.”

  That did my head in! “No! Wait!” I cried as everyone began to trudge back towards the pitch. “You lot want to know why I turn up early, then I’ll tell you. I turn up early because I hate being at home, that’s why. And I get a lift with Hannah because I didn’t think any of you would want me in your car.”

  “I think we might need a little more time here,” Hannah said quietly to Katie, who nodded and ran over to the ref.

  “’Scuse me!” Megan said after Katie had gone, reminding me that I’d had lifts with her and her dad in the past.

  “You’re different,” I said to her. “You understand about my family.”

  “What do you mean?” Holly asked.

  Megan began making slashing movements across her throat with her finger, warning me not to say anything – but I didn’t care. If Eve and the rest of them wanted reasons, they could have reasons. “Because my family are all burglars,” I said, “so I tho
ught you wouldn’t want someone like me in your car. I mean, I might pinch your road atlases or something, right?”

  Holly’s eyes looked as if they were going to shoot out of her head. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. That’s what I meant when I said I don’t have anything of my own. Most of the stuff I have has been jacked.”

  “Like Nika’s boots?” Amy asked.

  “Exactly,” I admitted, in a hurry to get back to that light feeling I’d had a few minutes before. “So when I’m on the field and I’ve got that ball, it feels great. Really great.” I breathed out heavily, amazed at myself and turned to Hannah. I’ll start passing, I was going to say to her. I’ll start as soon as you let me. I don’t need to be a ball hog any more, now that I know why I do it. After that I’d thank Eve, because I hadn’t realized about the other stuff, and she was right, dead right, and I’d stop arriving fifty hours early if it annoyed people. I’d even wear the stupid pink girly shirt. I’d… A smile broke out on my face. I’d mix, Mrs Kelly, I’d mix! I meant it, too.

  And if Amy Minter hadn’t turned to Nika that second and said those two words, I could have ended my story here and you lot could have gone on to watch Top Gear or something.

  10

  “Told you,” Amy said to Nika.

  Nika looked at me, then at her boots, then back at me, confused. “Stolen? But you told me they had fallen off the back of a lorry!”

  “It means the same thing,” I explained. “But don’t worry, it was ages ago. Nobody can trace them…”

  “Oh,” Nika said, and her expression changed in the same way the teacher’s at King John’s had when she’d come back from lunch and seen me taking her purse. It was horrible, and my insides felt as if they were being minced.

  I glanced across at Megan, who was shaking her head from side to side and looking at me with an I-did-warn-you expression in her eyes. I glanced at Petra next to her – and saw pity in hers. As for the others, they weren’t looking at me at all. They were looking at the grass, at their socks – at anything but me.

  I had the weirdest sensation then: of icy water slowly trickling down my back. What had I been thinking, opening my mouth in front of this lot? I mean, if even Nika, whose family were as poor as mine, didn’t understand, I had no chance with the rest of them – these nice girls from cosy homes, with parents who kissed them every time they went anywhere and read them bedtime stories and took them shopping for fun… No chance.

  I watched hopelessly as Nika collapsed on the grass and began to shake the boots off, her hands fumbling as she tried to undo the laces too quickly.

  “Don’t,” I said, crouching down opposite her. “I want you to keep them… I just wanted to try and explain why I hogged the ball, but I’m not going to hog it any more. I promise I’m not… I’ll—”

  “No,” Nika said, tears splashing down on the grass. “I cannot keep them…”

  “But you need them…”

  Her eyes flashed angrily at me. “I don’t need stolen things. I’d be ashamed to wear them.”

  The icy cold down my back turned into a burn. “Yeah, you’re right,” I said, straightening up. “Only scum like me would wear stolen boots. Here, have your rubbish ones back,” I spat, levering her comfy old boots off. “And the rest of you snobs can get stuffed too!” I called out for good measure, before turning and belting home where I belonged.

  11

  Mam was mopping the floor when I stormed in.“Oh, Jenny-Jane, be careful! I’ve just washed that bit!” she grumbled.

  “So what?” I told her and plodded right through. “You can always wash it again. You know how you love washing things!” I slammed the kitchen door behind me.

  Upstairs, I turned my TV on. It was some feeble cookery programme. A long-haired bloke was whisking eggs in a bowl. “Make sure you mix them well before folding them into the flour…” he said.

  Mix them well. MIX. I couldn’t stand that word. So short. So loaded. MIX! Everybody tells you to do it, but nobody tells you how, do they? And when you try, it all goes belly-up. “I’ll mix you well,” I told Hairy Bloke and yanked the plug out from the wall. Then I reached up and flung the left panel of the window as fully open as it would go before returning to the telly and heaving it, bit by bit, off the console beneath and up onto the windowsill. Yes! Let’s hear it for the new lightweight plasma screens. Off you go, buddy – and I pushed the TV through the window.

  Down, down it fell, straight onto the patio. I leaned out, disappointed to see it had not smashed to smithereens, just landed face down, intact. Amazing. Maybe the PlayStation would smash better. Like when the box of 3D shapes had flown everywhere. That’s what I wanted – flying bits! Out the PlayStation went, quickly followed by the Xbox and the DVD player. But none of them smashed to pieces and flew like I wanted them to. One or two bits broke off, but that was all. Disappointing or what?

  What next? Oh yeah. The new state-of-the-art just-like-Hannah-Montana-wannabe Amy Minter’s iPhone. What did I need that for? It was useless, just like those boots had been. Expensive, flashy, but useless.

  I didn’t drop the iPhone. I flung it as far as I could, and watched it land with a clunk against the laundry pole and ping off again. Yo! This was the most fun I’d had in ages.

  Mam’s upturned face suddenly appeared in the garden below me. “Jenny-Jane? What are you doing?”

  “I’m doing what you do, Mam! I’m tidying up!” I shouted and chucked the computer screen down at her.

  She darted sideways with a yelp. “You just wait, you little madam!” she said angrily, then disappeared inside. Ha! What was she going to do? Get the hoover out?

  I looked round my bedroom. What other things had fallen off the back of a lorry so that they could now fall off the back of our house?

  Before I could decide, my bedroom door clattered open – and Dad, Billy and Brendan were standing there, looking idiotic in their pyjamas with their sticky-up hair. Typical. Half the day gone and they’d only just got out of bed.

  “What’s going on here?” Billy demanded, a deep frown on his face as he looked round at the mess.

  “Don’t come near me. Don’t you dare come near me!” I growled.

  “Come near you? You’d better pray we don’t!” Dad said, his frown matching Billy’s.

  “You should see the stuff outside!” I heard Mam say from somewhere behind them.

  They all glowered at me, waiting for an explanation. I knew I was in for it. Without thinking I edged backwards and clambered up onto the windowsill. There I sat, with my backside sticking into the fresh air, my hands clasped on the metal frame. I leaned right back and put my head fully out of the window, gazing up at the guttering for a second before feeling dizzy and ducking back inside.

  “Get down from there, you stupid brat,” Billy ordered.

  I ignored him and stayed exactly where I was. Who cared what he – or any of them – did or said to me now? I’d walked out on the Parrs. Nothing could hurt more than that. “Or else?” I said, and laughed. I saw from his blank expression he hadn’t a clue why that was funny. I hitched myself further out of the window. The cool breeze travelled up the back of my football shirt, and the sharp edge of the frame bit into my bare legs. I shivered and almost lost my grip. Mam, standing on tiptoes so she could see above Brendan’s head, looked alarmed. “Oh my God! Jenny-Jane…”

  “Go away, Mam,” I told her. “Go and wash some pots.”

  “Oi! Show your mother some respect,” Billy told me.

  Respect– I hated that word. What did it even mean? Nothing, coming from him. “What? Like you do? You treat her like a slave. All of you do. ‘Fetch me this.’ ‘Make me that…’” I stopped, as I realized something massive and momentous for the second time that day. “That’s why I hate pink!” I cried.

  They all looked blankly at each other.

  “I hate pink because pink means being a girl,” I explained. “And who wants to be a girl in this family when you grow up to be a slave like Mam
?”

  “Who says you’re going to grow up at all?” Billy sneered.

  “Suits me!” I sneered right back and squeezed my eyes shut until Billy was just a tiny speck. “I can’t stand you!” I told him. “You don’t have a job. You don’t have any friends. You don’t have a life – so you take it out on us, you big bully! The only time you’re nice is when you’re drunk!”

  “Oh, you are just asking for it!” Billy yelled and sprang towards me – but Brendan grabbed him.

  “No!” he shouted.

  “Gerroff,” Billy replied, trying to shrug him off.

  You’re not going to believe what happened then. Brendan – our skinny little Brendan – only got Billy in an arm-lock! A tight one as well, from the look on Billy’s face. “Move and I’ll break it,” he hissed in Billy’s ear.

  “As if,” Billy retorted.

  “I mean it, mate. Look at her! Nine years old and about to top herself…”

  I frowned then. Top myself? Brendan, you thicko, I thought, I’m not going to top myself.

  His face was pale and drained as he continued talking. “We’re meant to watch out for her, aren’t we? She’s our little sister. But we don’t, do we. All we’ve done is make her as bad as us.” He raised his head and tried to give me a smile. “It’s all right, Jen. You can come down. Nobody’ll hurt you.”

  “Yeah, right. I’ve heard that one before,” I told him, nodding at Billy. I still couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing.

  “Mam,” Brendan hissed, “do something.”

  Mam looked panicked. Her hand was snatching at her hair as if she were plucking a chicken. “Me? I don’t know what to do. I’ve never known how to handle her.”