Taking My Penalty

18: The Star

TALIA

Match day.

I could feel the electric energy of the crowd surging through the atmosphere.

Football was one of the greatest points of pride in Britain, if not the greatest.

Being amongst the stands, people cheered, screamed and threw all sorts of random things they were holding just to celebrate.

I found myself cheering along with everyone too, the girls being painfully loud and knowing every traditional Leland chant.

Watching the game made me realise how advanced Leland was.

How on earth have I possibly missed out on this level of school sport?

In fact, the stands were all full that the girls and I were lucky enough to even get a seat. Well, it's not like we sat down to use the seats at any point of the game.

Wrapped in coats and earmuffs, we all watched the game with full intrigue that I never expected to have.

I didn't spend the rest of my week looking forward to this particular Friday for all the events but needless to say, I wasn't let down.

I became a witness to Reece Kennedy playing football, which gave me far beyond handfuls of proof to support the city-known claim that he was the star.

All the fuss about him made complete sense when he scored two insane goals within the first half of the game and another during the second half. These were three out of the four goals that had been scored by Leland, in fact.

The other goal was from Eli Ferguson with a lucky corner, but with all due respect, he didn't get half the amount of celebratory screams that Reece got when he whacked the ball in the net.

Reece was quick, agile, and absolutely terrifying on the pitch with his size and muscle capacity.

If a complete newbie watching football saw Reece on the pitch, I'd fully bet it would send them into a full-blown spiral.

He had skills that I'd never seen in grown men in all the matches I'd been watching for years with Max.

Reece was a seventeen-year-old star.

A bullet on the pitch.

A fucking prodigy.

I loved it.

This game was against one of the toughest schools to beat in the whole school league, Saint David's Private School from Bath, who followed behind with a tight score of three.

The crowd was tense with time running out, showing loud encouragements that Leland's defence would hold strong to get themselves at the top of the league's table.

"Shit!" Maeve exclaimed as Saint David's scored a goal, putting both teams in a disappointing draw.

"We have ten minutes left," I told as I clasped my hands in anticipation. "We'll get a goal."

Camilla leaned over from sitting behind us with Delilah and grabbed my shoulder. "Let's be glad Scotty isn't there to foul us."

Maeve spun her head around. "Shit, yeah— I didn't even notice."

I looked back to the pitch, inspecting the players after only really paying attention to Reece, realising Scotty was gone.

"Where is Scotty?" I added to the weird realisation we all had.

That was until the intense aroma of several drugstore body sprays wafted into my presence.

"Are you talking about Scotty Weissman?" A pretentious high-pitched female voice welcomed itself into the conversation while standing up from the seat beside me.