So What If I Hog the Ball? Page 5

  I turned to her. “Why not? I’m not that bad.”

  Her shoulders sagged. “I suppose I’m just better with boys.”

  “Well, you did have three of ’em,” Billy muttered.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? That I’m a boy too? If that’s your way of having another go at me for playing footy I’ve got some bad news for you, bro,” I told him, jumping down from the windowsill. “I’ve jacked it in, so you’re going to have to find something else to wind me up about.” I plonked myself on my bed and began peeling off my socks.

  “Eh? But you love football!” Brendan said, releasing Billy.

  I began to pick bits of grass and grit from my socks. “I did love it, but it was never going to last, was it. I’m a Bayliss, aren’t I? And everyone knows that in the end being a Bayliss is the kiss of death to anything decent, isn’t it.”

  “What do you mean?” Dad asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “No,” Dad said, puffing out his chest. “I want to know what you mean about being a Bayliss, because let me tell you there is nothing wrong with being a Bayliss. We go back hundreds of years, we do – unlike half the riff-raff in this country nowadays.”

  I stared at my socks in silence.

  “Jenny-Jane,” Dad said sharply, “explain yourself! What do you mean?”

  Annoying tears pricked my eyes. “I mean they’ve found out the truth, haven’t they? They know what a nasty piece of work I am and don’t want anything to do with me.”

  “Who told you that?” Billy demanded. “Who said you were a nasty piece of work? I’ll do them! Nobody says stuff like that about my sister!”

  “Eh?” I looked at him in astonishment.

  “Too right,” Brendan said. The two of them stood side by side like a pair of scruffy commandos.

  That’s what’s mad about having brothers like mine. They’re clipping you round the head one minute and ready to kill for you the next. No wonder I get confused. I rolled my socks into a neat ball. “Thanks,” I said, my voice too wobbly to talk for much longer, “but you’re all right. I’ll cope. I always do, don’t I?”

  12

  After they’d gone, I glanced round at one of the few things I hadn’t chucked out of my bedroom window – my alarm clock. It was bang on twelve. The match would be over. Everyone would have got into their cars, ready for the next part of their Saturday. Holly would be on her way to the Leicester City match with her dad, Lucy would be going into town with her dad and Nika would be off home to her family, to tell them what a horrible person I was…

  A lump the size of a tennis ball came to my throat. I hated the thought of Nika doing that. Quickly pulling on my jeans and England shirt, I put my Parrs kit in a Tesco carrier bag and trundled downstairs. I felt a bit jittery, but I knew what the next part of my Saturday had to be.

  The walk to the clubhouse had never seemed so long. My legs felt as if they were treading in treacle. Luckily Mandy was outside the main door, just opening up for lunchtime.

  “Hello, sunshine,” she said when she saw me.

  I wasn’t really ready for a chat, even with Mandy, so I thrust the carrier bag at her. “Will you give this to Hannah, please? It isn’t washed – but I only wore it for half an hour, so it’s not that mucky either.”

  “Why don’t you give it to her yourself? She’s still in the changing rooms.”

  “Oh,” I said, taken aback. I hadn’t reckoned on any face-to-face stuff.

  I headed for the changing rooms. I’d just dump the kit and go. No long speeches to Hannah or any of that malarkey. It’d be too embarrassing. What Eve had said about me sucking up to her and Katie was still making me squirm.

  I marched fast, wanting to get the return of the kit over and done with, but I pulled to a halt as I reached the open door. Hannah wasn’t alone. There were loads of voices, all talking over one another. The whole team was in there, from the sound of it. I hesitated outside, not wanting to interrupt the post-match conference. My eyes really stung then, as I realized I didn’t even know what the score had been.

  I was about to chuck the kit by the door and walk off when I caught the end of something Amy was saying, and froze. “… and she wasn’t even ashamed of it. That’s the worst part. My mum’s shop has been broken into three times this month…”

  So this wasn’t a post-match conference; it was a post-JJ conference with Minter as chief spokeswoman. This should be good. I edged as close to the doorway as I could without being seen.

  “Three times! Do you know how much her insurance premiums have gone up?” Minter continued.

  “Enough about your mum’s shop!” Eve told her. “We’re trying to work out what to do about JJ!”

  I nearly burst in and told her not to bother because the attention-seeker had left the building – but I was curious to know what else Hannah Montana had to say before I thumped her.

  “I know! That’s why I’m mentioning the shop!” Amy ranted on. “JJ giving Nika stolen property makes Nika an accomplice in the eyes of the law. You can ask my mum if you don’t believe me. So all I’m saying is I don’t think it’s right to have someone like that on the team.”

  “Cobblers! Nika can’t get into trouble for not knowing the boots were nicked,” Megan told her.

  “It was still wrong of JJ to give them to her,” Holly said.

  “True,” Megan said. “But I reckon she was just trying to be kind.”

  I couldn’t believe that Megan was sticking up for me even though I’d been so nasty to her about the away strip. I should have known, though. Megan had always been there for me.

  Then Nika began speaking. “I think she was being kind too,” she said, her voice still trembling. “And I don’t want JJ to leave the team because of this.”

  I don’t know how I kept still behind that door. Now she was sticking up for me as well! I was desperate to tell Nika I was sorry about the boots. It had never crossed my mind she could get into trouble.

  “But what if she steals something from us?” Amy asked now.

  “She won’t,” Megan said firmly.

  “How do you know?”

  “Simple! She’d have done it by now!”

  I couldn’t help smiling then. Megan knew me well. I owed her – big time.

  “Could I say something?” Lucy asked.

  I craned my neck, curious to hear what Lucy would add. She was one of the “always play by the rules” brigade. I supposed she’d be backing Amy up.

  “Course you can, Goose. That’s what we’re here for,” Hannah told her.

  “Well, this isn’t about JJ, exactly – it’s about Lily Parr.”

  “Lily who?” Amy asked.

  “Lily Parr. The woman the team was named after.”

  “Oh. Right.” You could tell Minter didn’t have a clue.

  “Well, my dad bought me a book about her and the team she played for, the Dick, Kerr’s Ladies…”

  “And?” Eve asked.

  “And Lily Parr pinched things.”

  “Did she?” Hannah sounded surprised.

  “Yes. She had a reputation for it. She nicked stuff from the landlady in the digs they stayed in. She pinched the match ball several times by sticking it up her jumper…”

  “No!” Amy squealed.

  “It’s true. And she smoked and swore and spat a lot, and when she was a kid everyone called her a tomboy because she hated anything girly…”

  “Who does that remind you of?” Eve laughed.

  “So what are you trying to say, Lucy?” Hannah asked.

  “That I agree with Megan. We can’t let JJ leave the team because she thinks we look down on her and her family; that’d be awful.”

  “It would make us snobs, like she said we were,” Gemma added.

  “Hang on, though. This meeting’s not just about the boots, is it – it’s about what Eve said to her at half-time, too,” Holly pointed out.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t mean to cause all this…” Eve said.


  “Don’t back down. You only said what everyone thinks,” Holly said.

  “Exactly!” Amy agreed.

  That started everybody talking over each other again, until Hannah called for hush. “All right, all right!” she said, loud and clear. “We’ll be here all day at this rate. Let’s leave it until training on Tuesday. If JJ comes to that…”

  “She won’t,” Megan said, her voice flat and defeated.

  “Especially as we’re away next week,” Petra said. “She definitely won’t come if she has to wear the pink shirt…”

  “Oh, please don’t mention the pink shirt!” Tabinda groaned. “Every time I close my eyes I see that look of disgust on JJ’s face.”

  My head dropped. What had I done? I seemed to have upset nearly every member of the team one way or another. I’d messed up, just like I’d messed up at King John’s and messed up at the unit. And this time I couldn’t blame our Billy or Mam or being a Bayliss. I’d messed up all on my own, by – as Hannah had said the other day – choosing the wrong battles to fight. Well, I didn’t want to fight any more. Not against these guys, who stood up for me when they shouldn’t, and liked me when there was nothing much to like, and still wanted me in their team after all the mistakes I’d made. If they could do all that for me then it was time I did something for them. Time to become a non-attention-seeking ball-passing pink-wearing ready-to-mix full-on Parr, because otherwise… I grimaced. I didn’t want to think about otherwise.

  Realizing they’d probably be spilling out any second, I knew I had to act straight away. I pulled my shoulders back, stuck my chin out and stepped through the door.

  Everybody turned. My heart was hammering faster than a fox’s trying to cross a motorway, but I knew I mustn’t bottle it. Not this time. “Wotcha,” I said, planting a grin on my face. “I suppose you got thrashed without me?”

  Final Whistle

  I’m not going to tell you everything that happened next. Let’s just say that when I finally arrived back at the house I had two kits in my carrier bag — home and away — plus Nika’s old boots, which she insisted I take back with me. I might also have had wet eyes and a bit of a sniffly nose, but that wasn’t from crying because I was so happy that everything had got sorted. No way! I just had a bit of a cold coming on after sitting on that draughty windowsill, that was all.

  The following Saturday we played the Furnston Diamonds. Now that was the tester — because I knew it wouldn’t be my feet that Tabinda and co. were looking at when I got out of Megan’s car, but my top. Would I be wearing the pink shirt? Does Alex Ferguson chew gum? Is Lily Parr a legend? Yes. Yes. Yes.

  And yes, I warmed up with everybody else, and yes, I passed the ball, and yes, I got a buzz out of it when Hannah told everyone at the end of the match how delighted she was that we were playing as a team. I was less chuffed when everyone started patting my shoulders and ruffling my hair. Just because I’ve got my act together doesn’t mean I’ve turned soft.

  I’m not going to tell you about the unit, either. Let’s just say my days there are numbered. By the time you’ve finished reading this, I’ll have started my placement at a new primary school. Granted, it’s only two days a week to start with, and Mr Upton has to accompany me like some sort of giant hairy babysitter — but, you know, whatever it takes to escape from the nutters.

  In the end, escaping was easy. I didn’t even know I was doing it. On the Monday after the Cuddlethorpe match (3–0 to us, BTW), I stuck a Toblerone under Ronnie’s nose. “It’s a triangular prism,” I told him after he’d stared at it for about a year. “And this,” I said on the Tuesday, producing a roll of fruit pastilles, “is a cylinder.” Wednesday was a packet of Smints (cuboid), and Thursday a Walnut Whip (almost a pyramid). By Friday I’d run out of ideas and dosh, but Mrs Law was chucking points at me left, right and centre, Ronnie was my new maths partner — and Mrs Kelly had called me into her office.

  She went, “Well done on meeting your target, Jenny-Jane.”

  And I went, “What do you mean? I only gave Ronnie a few sweets.”

  And she went, with a smile on her face the size of Switzerland, “Exactly.”

  Strange, but true.

  I’m not going to tell you about home, either. Seriously, I’m not. There’s really no point. Mam’s still Mam. Dad’s still Dad. Billy’s still Billy, and Brendan’s still Brendan. They haven’t changed. I have, though. And that’s all that counts, isn’t it?

  It’s Tabinda’s turn to tell you what happened next, so I’ll pass you on to her. PASS. Gerrit?

  See ya,

  JJ

  Helena Pielichaty (pronounced Pierre-li-hatty) has written numerous books for children, including Simone’s Letters, which was nominated for the Carnegie Medal, and the popular After School Club series. A long-standing Huddersfield Town supporter, there are few who could write with as much enthusiasm about girls’ football. A local girls’ under 11s team helps with the inspiration and tactical know-how, but Helena has been an avid fan of women’s football for many years. It clearly runs in the family: her aunt was in a women’s team in the 1950s and her daughter has been playing since she was ten (she is now twenty-four!). Helena lives in Nottinghamshire with her husband and has two grown-up children.

  The Girls FC series

  Do Goalkeepers Wear Tiaras?

  Can Ponies Take Penalties?

  Are All Brothers Foul?

  Is An Own Goal Bad?

  Who Ate All The Pies?

  What’s Ukrainian For Football?

  So What If I Hog The Ball?

  Can’t I Just Kick It?

  We’re the Dream Team, Right?

  Has Anyone Seen our Striker?

  Do Shinpads Come in Pink?

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. All statements, activities, stunts, descriptions, information and material of any other kind contained herein are included for entertainment purposes only and should not be relied on for accuracy or replicated as they may result in injury.

  First published 2010 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  Text © 2010 Helena Pielichaty

  Cover illustration © 2010 Sonia Leong

  The right of Helena Pielichaty to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, taping and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

  a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-4063-4269-7 (ePub)

  www.walker.co.uk