Boy Meets Ghoul Page 10

  ‘Alton – heir to the Towers, right, Fred? Life a roller coaster with you, is it?’

  ‘I’d say it’s fun and fair,’ Freddie answered, holding out his hand for a high five.

  God, he was so cool. One day, it was going to stop being amazing that we were somehow becoming friends, but today definitely wasn’t it.

  Chidi went on through the names in the lower part of the register, until he got to ‘Dylan Ker—’

  ‘Dylan Kershaw was late,’ a voice cut in.

  It was Laurie Deering, Jez’s occasional assistant, now becoming a pretty constant bane of my life. Right on cue, Jez strolled out on to the pitch.

  ‘Why doesn’t that surprise me? I’d have you running laps again, Kershaw, but I’m naming squad positions later, and right now the only position I know you’re good for is running for the tea.’

  He laughed, a deep grunt, with Laurie’s high-pitched giggle raised over the top. Laurie was my biggest competition for centre forward, the position I knew I played best in. I could still pull off some good moves in the midfield or on the wing, but I was a natural scorer. It made sense to put me as close as possible to the goal.

  Jez took a sip from the cup of coffee he’d brought out with him, #1 COACH emblazoned on the front. ‘Anyway, we’d better let you have some play this morning, or I’ll get your mummy whining to me about how it’s not fair. We’ll stick you in front of the goal.’

  I breathed a sigh of relief. This was perfect – now I could really start to show what I was capable of.

  And then Jez tossed me a pair of goalkeeper gloves and smiled.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Keeper really, really wasn’t my position.

  I made a great striker. Before I’d left the school team, I’d been their number one, with the most goals scored in any local school season in history.

  I wasn’t too bad in most other positions, either. I was quick on my feet, and if I got down the pitch fast enough, sometimes I could even break out from a position at the back and get the ball to our end. It wasn’t too much of a boast to say I was good with my feet.

  My hands, though? I was useless with those.

  Laurie had spent the whole practice match aiming the ball directly at my head, and I had to admit, he didn’t exactly have terrible aim. As I stood praying for the full-time whistle to blow, I rubbed my cheek and wondered how long it would take for my face to turn as black and blue as it felt.

  The worst part was, I hadn’t managed to stop any goals. Even the shots that hit me somehow rolled right off my nose into the corner of the net. Jez had split us into two teams and mine was 8–0 down. It didn’t even matter that one of those was an own goal (Leroy had jumped the wrong way into a header), I was still the one who let it in.

  Still, at least I was getting to watch Freddie play. He was a total natural. It didn’t seem to matter where on the pitch he was, the game suddenly started revolving around him. He was a certain bet to be made captain after this.

  And he was heading my way.

  As the winger for the opposing team, so far Freddie had been responsible for getting the ball into a clear part of the pitch before opening up a chance for Laurie to shoot. But as I scanned the pitch in a panic, I could see Laurie and Chidi had collided with each other and were now trying to get untangled from a knot of limbs.

  Azi had found some space just ahead of the goal, and I silently prayed for Freddie to pass it to him, but we both knew Azi kicked like he was wearing two left boots with their laces tied together.

  Freddie looked up at me, his blue eyes set on mine, and I knew he was going to have a go at goal.

  I centred myself.

  I bent my knees the slightest bit, keeping my feet loose, ready to spring up or crouch down if I had to.

  I watched Freddie like a hawk, looking for any slip of body language that might tell me which way he was going to go. His gaze flicked up to the left side of the bar. Left. He was going to go left. I was going to save the last ball of the match and redeem myself (almost) totally in front of Jez and the rest of the camp.

  Freddie’s toe flicked the ball. It went left. I went left. My hand stretched out to the side, bulky glove ready to break the impact of the ball and send it bouncing harmlessly back out of the goal. It made contact. I had it. I had it.

  I had somehow flicked it straight back into my own face.

  My yell of victory became a yelp of pain as I took yet another blow to the nose, but I could still save this. The ball dropped down. I scrabbled to catch it, but somehow, impossibly, it slipped through my hands.

  My head dipped to see where it was going, just as it bounced up and straight into my face again.

  I could hear someone laughing on the terraces.

  It only got louder as the ball bounced one more time, then, as I was clasping a protective hand over my nose, rolled between my legs and into the goal.

  The final whistle blew: 9–0.

  Somehow, I didn’t think I’d make man of the match for this one.

  ‘Sorry.’ Freddie winced as he jogged up to me, checking to see what kind of mincemeat I’d made of my own face. ‘I didn’t mean for you to—’

  ‘Completely humiliate myself?’ I asked. ‘It’s not your fault. Apparently I’m just really, really good at it.’

  ‘Goalie’s just not your position, is it,’ Freddie said. ‘I was trying to feed you an easy one, that’s all.’

  He was taking pity on me, and I still messed it up. Just when I thought I’d dug the deepest humiliation pit possible, it turned out there was a trapdoor of shame to fall through underneath.

  ‘LUNCH,’ Jez yelled from the centre line. ‘You can go and nurse your wounds, Kershaw. Just get back on time, yeah? Anyone not here when I hand out team places doesn’t get one.’

  I wasn’t even sure I wanted to know any more. He’d probably put me in goal just so I could be laughed at by an entire crowd of strangers. I trailed miserably off the pitch, trying to ignore the variety of sympathetic or mocking looks I was getting from the rest of the team.

  ‘Sandwich for lunch, Kershaw?’ Chidi asked, as I walked past him. ‘Need someone to hold it for you?’ He mimed taking a big bite of something invisible that immediately fell out of his hands, then he dropped and rolled on the ground, flailing about as he tried (and failed) to catch it. His talents were wasted on football, really.

  I stalked off into the changing room while he was busy wiping invisible egg mayo from his shirt.

  Leroy caught up with me. ‘Bad luck out there. I don’t know about you, but my game always improves under pressure. Maybe you’ll play better on the big day?’

  ‘Maybe I’d play better in literally any other position on the pitch,’ I replied, trying not to meet his eyes. Leroy was probably the weakest player in the group, and it felt more embarrassing than comforting to be getting sympathy from him. If I hadn’t been such a disaster between the goalposts, Leroy’s own goal would have been what everyone was laughing at.

  Maybe it was unfair to wish that had happened, but I couldn’t help it. Football was the one thing I was really good at. Being put in a position where I wasn’t allowed to prove that felt like having something stolen from me.

  Maybe Dad was right when he talked about football being in my blood, after all. I definitely felt like I’d taken an injury worse than a few bruises round my nose.

  My pride was stinging just as badly.

  ‘OK.’ I turned round to face Leroy once we were alone in the changing room. ‘So we just need to find Kayla, make sure she’s got everything set up, and then wait for Freddie to—’

  ‘No time to wait for anything!’ Freddie burst through the doors, Kayla behind him looking unusually flustered. ‘She’s early! Lacey Laine is already on her way!’

  TWENTY-THREE

  There was no opportunity to ask questions. We all sprang into action. Freddie bounded back down the hall the way he’d come to catch Lacey on her way to make her daily delivery of Jez Dutton’s fancy artisan lunch �
� and to somehow talk her into taking a scenic route down one of the training centre’s back halls.

  Me, Kayla and Leroy had to get ready to give her the shock of her life.

  Kayla’s whole plan for making her video go viral was to use the celebrity factor. She was going to make Lacey Laine think she was trapped in a haunted hallway (thanks to some ‘special effects’ operated by us) and catch her reaction on camera. Even if the final result wasn’t as spooky as some of the other entries, if even a tiny fraction of Lacey’s three million social media followers decided to watch it, she’d crush the competition easily.

  We just had to make sure this worked.

  There wasn’t much time to listen to Kayla’s instructions about timing or coordination. It seemed like it would be easy enough – most of the effects were operated by tugging on a rope or pushing something over. With Lacey’s high heels clicking down the hall towards us, we were just going to have to trust to fate.

  ‘Break a leg!’ Leroy whispered to me, as he wedged himself behind the set of lockers I was clambering on top of. I was still a bit worried he had ambitions to take the starring role. Maybe that pre-school Visit Wales video had gone to his head.

  I didn’t have a chance to check. I dragged myself along the tops of the lockers on my stomach. At the other end of the hall, Kayla was shutting herself inside one, ready to film through the gaps.

  ‘I’m sorry, Miss Laine – it looks like there’s nothing down here after all,’ Freddie was saying.

  ‘Oh, call me Lacey – everybody does. I’ve been thinking about dropping the last name, anyway. It’s more unique. You don’t meet a lot of Lacies, do you?’

  I peered over the top of the lockers to get a look at her outfit: a fluffy yellow puffball skirt and top with yellow feathers in her hair – it was like she was dressing up as a different character from Sesame Street every day.

  Freddie cleared his throat. When he spoke again, I noticed his voice had gone a little . . . squeaky. Almost muppet-like. ‘No. No, you don’t.’

  ‘But you say people have heard noises down this hall?’

  ‘That’s right. One of the lads said it was almost like crying. We thought a stray cat might have got in somewhere, and I read in CLASSY magazine that you’re an animal lover . . .’

  Freddie Alton reads CLASSY magazine? I’d seen it in the newsagents. It was mostly soap operas and real-life stories with titles like ‘Possessed by Princess Diana’ and ‘Help! My Dog’s Addicted to Online Dating!’

  I was almost too distracted to hear Freddie giving me my cue: ‘Maybe if we’re quiet for a minute, we’ll hear something.’

  I scrabbled to type Kayla’s number into my phone. Last night, she’d changed her ringtone to the sound of a ghostly child we’d recorded from one of the horror movies on TV. As I hit the call button, the sound started echoing out of the locker she was hiding in.

  Below me, I watched Lacey tilt her head. ‘I do hear something. But I don’t think that’s a cat . . .’

  Next, it was Leroy’s turn. He shook the locker he was hiding behind until the door slowly creaked open by itself. Inside, Kayla had decorated the locker with candles, flowers, and a black and white photo of one of the current England Under-21s squad I’d happened to have tucked into the pocket of my kitbag. I’d been carrying it round with me for ages, so it looked tattered and worn. (He had really amazing arms, and he could pull off the best double lunge I’d ever seen. For some reason, Kayla didn’t believe me when I told her I carried the picture for luck.)

  ‘Isn’t that . . . Marcello Marquisa?’ Freddie said, managing to sound a little bit surprised.

  ‘Who?’ Lacey asked.

  ‘Oh, he was a star player once. Tipped for glory. But that was before the . . . accident.’

  Freddie was playing his part well. Leaning over the top of the lockers for a better look, I could see Lacey wrap her arms tight round herself, as though there were a chill in the air.

  This might actually be working.

  ‘The accident?’

  ‘They say it happened back here, actually. No one knows the whole story, only that Marcello was carried out in a sheet soaked in blood and—’

  ‘And?’ Lacey was leaning in towards Freddie now, their heads almost touching.

  I felt a small, strange twist of jealousy.

  ‘And he was never seen again.’

  There was silence.

  Freddie cleared his throat. ‘Never, ever again.’

  Wait, that was another cue! Snapping out of the spell Freddie’s voice had put on me, I slowly rolled the first football off the locker next to me. Lacey jumped as it hit the floor next to her and bounced down the hall.

  Behind the lockers, Leroy ran his nails down the metal, making a screeching, scrabbling noise. Then he tugged the knot free on the rope that held up a banner along the hallway. It folded and fell to the floor at Lacey’s feet, the words IMPROVE YOUR SKILL TODAY becoming simply KILL TODAY.

  Lacey yelped.

  I rolled another football off the tops of the lockers. Then another. And another. Soon, the hallway was filled with Freddie’s mum’s faintly glittery footballs, creating chaos. Now I just had to release the goal net Kayla had strung up over the hallway, and the plan would have gone off flawlessly.

  Except, Leroy was really getting into his role, rattling the lockers as if they were all full of ghostly footballers trying to scratch and shake their way out. He’d moved along from the one he was stationed behind and was shaking the one next to me. It kept almost making me lose my balance as I reached up to grab the end of the net.

  ‘Stop it,’ I hissed back at him, hoping my voice would be covered by Kayla’s crying child. ‘Stop it – I’m going to fall.’

  Leroy didn’t hear me. I don’t think he even knew which locker I was balancing on. He stepped behind my locker and gave it a shove, tipping it forward.

  Tipping me, standing right on the edge, forward.

  I grabbed the goal net and yelled ‘GET OUT OF THE WAY’ as the locker went down.

  Lacey looked up for one – brief – moment, then grabbed Freddie and made a dive to the left that would have saved any goal in history.

  The locker fell forward, bouncing safely and almost silently on the raft of novelty footballs that filled the hall, and I came down after it, wrapped in the goal net, breaking my fall on something soft and warm and . . . blond and swearing quite loudly.

  Slowly, I unwrapped my arms from Freddie Alton’s waist.

  ‘Sorry, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to. I was trying to land on . . .’ Anything – literally anything else. I took a deep breath, trying not to give in to panic. ‘My face?’

  He groaned. ‘Well, I’m glad you didn’t manage that. But could you get up, please? Your leg’s wedged somewhere really uncomfortable.’

  I was already trying to stand up, obviously. I’d just clotheslined the best-looking boy in my school, probably in my town, right when we were starting to become sort of friends. Of course I was trying to get up.

  ‘I will. I definitely will. It’s just.’

  There was something stopping me. Well, us.

  In the flailing moment of panic as I landed, I’d got Freddie and me completely tied up in the net.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ‘So you’re trying to make a movie?’ Lacey Laine asked, looking up at Kayla. She was sitting on my legs because I was finding it too difficult not to squirm while she cut me and Freddie out of the goal net using her pastel-pink nail scissors.

  ‘A viral video,’ Kayla told her. She’d pulled up a chair and was observing the rescue process at the same time as scrolling through the footage on her phone and directing Leroy on where to put all the mess he was clearing up. ‘They have to be short and exciting – they’re for people with no attention spans who can’t follow a plot.’

  ‘Like cats playing the piano,’ Leroy said, folding the KILL TODAY banner up and hauling it into the office.

  ‘Or a job interview,’ Freddie added, ‘where the
window’s actually an HDTV screen showing footage of the world ending right outside – ooof – thank you.’ Freddie was finally free enough to move the lower part of his body out of such close contact with my knee.

  ‘Or people eating every single item on a fast-food menu. Or demonstrating how to wrap gifts.’ I tried to think of the strangest videos I’d seen.

  ‘I watch those! Sooo soothing.’ Lacey clapped her hands. ‘But what I don’t understand is why you didn’t just ask me to be in it.’

  ‘Because we wanted it to be spontaneous,’ Kayla said.

  ‘And you’re really famous,’ put in Leroy, arms full of footballs.

  ‘Basically,’ I said, ‘we just assumed you’d say no.’

  Lacey nodded, snipping the last of the netting loose so that Freddie could finally roll out of my arms. I tried to look just as relieved as him when he did.

  ‘So you’re trying to win the chance to meet this band you really like –’ Lacey nodded at Kayla – ‘who you could probably meet anyway, because they’re, like, staying right down your hall, but you want to win this contest and meet them as a fellow creative?’

  ‘An auteur,’ Kayla agreed, obviously delighted by being so understood. ‘It means the same as creator, but only creative people know that,’ she added for my – uncreative – benefit.

  ‘And this video you’re making could end up being seen by thousands of people, which would be super good for my profile,’ Lacey finished. She scratched her chin with one glittery manicured nail. ‘So . . . OK.’

  ‘OK?’ I asked, shaking my head. ‘You want to help us? We almost dropped a locker on you.’

  ‘Right, so about that part,’ Lacey said.

  Kayla leaned in, nodding furiously.

  ‘I’ll star in your video, but we’re going to have to reshoot the end.’

  In the office, Leroy let out a long, tortured groan, and started dragging the banners and balls back the way he’d come.

  Surprising everyone, Lacey Laine turned out to be a pretty good actress. The second time around, she let out a shriek that made the hairs on my arms stand on end when the balls started filling the hallway around her, and we kept in the part where she heroically shoved Freddie out of the way. She even helped us (or mostly Leroy) tidy up again when it was all done, before giving Kayla her email so she could send her a copy of the final edit, retrieving the bag she’d brought with Jez’s lunch and heading briskly off towards the indoor pitch.