Taking My Penalty

6: 25 Hours

REECE

It had been a day since I last saw the angel. Twenty-five hours if I had to be specific.

As expected, I felt good enough to come back to school the following day so there I sat, supposedly doing A Level maths, in the back corner of the classroom, staring at the back of a phone. Not my phone, the angel's phone.

Couldn't bloody tell you if you asked why I still call her an angel.

I knew she was a real person since I had her phone in hand and was helplessly looking at the blurry Polaroid photo of her. It just felt comfortable to call her an angel because that's what I met when she was there with me.

I know. I'm going fucking mad.

I don't know why that was happening either.

I don't care about shit like this. Girls. Fucking angels.

It didn't help taking my mind off it when the football team were all asking me if I was okay and if I got to know the 'fit' girl who was carrying me away.

It wasn't until Felix told them all off at break that they stopped, or so that's what I heard.

I didn't go to break because I was doing some work I missed from my Business class and was yet to collect some work from Spanish during lunch. I had to cram everything into my school hours because after school was just as busy with training.

Yesterday, Zoey made me cancel the day's gym session with my PT so I could lay in bed and rest. I absolutely despised it if I'm being honest. I hated not training. It felt out of order and made me feel slobbish. I felt fucking lazy.

Dad would agree with me on the hate for laziness, in fact, he'd be livid that I didn't go to the gym for my session. He hated when I slacked. He would hate that I even got injured so much that he would take it as that I am unfit and don't train so I was easily knocked down and concussed. He'd make me work ten times harder for the next month with the belief it would bring back the strength I lost when missing a day.

It was exhausting being his son.

Luckily, Zoey had promised she wouldn't tell Dad about what would happen if he asked, to save me from the scolding.

Besides, I was already terrified enough he was coming home tonight from his trip to Switzerland. He'd been gone for two weeks for work: the very shit pharmaceutical company.

Okay, okay, I'm not just battering my Dad's company because I feel like being horrible. The company was actually shit; it was bankrupt and Dad was barely keeping it alive. He was earning enough just to keep me in school, which was the only thing he was willing to support at the moment.

If you couldn't tell yet, Dad was my number one motivation to stay in football. With that came his push for being nothing less than perfect.

After perfect SATs in year six, I needed straight nines on my GCSE when they came around and best believe had to do the same for my A-Levels. As I got older, things got more serious, and so did Dad's anger so I could not mess this up.

Dad had been like this for a while now.

Mum died when I was eight and Zoey was nine from the same cancer that Zoey had. Only in Mum's case, it was worse and took her away too fast.

Losing Mum had ruined the family before it had even grown, especially Dad.

As if we didn't have enough of all the shit, five years later, of course, Zoey got diagnosed with cancer too. Dad got worse.

The pharmaceutical's bankruptcy was what did it for him. He became completely fucking broken to the point I couldn't even see him as a Dad.