Hurricane [Peterick AU]

➽ [Pete] Prologue: Lifeboat.

[Pete] Prologue: Lifeboat.

(Mid-September, 1995)

“Pete, I’m sure you’re going to get a spot in the team after that!”

“That last kick got me awestruck! How’d you even do that, Pete?”

“For a moment, we reckoned that you were gonna miss that last one—”

“—but you actually scored against the team’s legendary goalkeeper. He’s known for never allowing an opponent ball to get inside the net he’s keeping in his entire football career, except yours!”

“And to think that the game earlier was just for try-outs!”

Grinning from ear to ear, even with beads of sweat rolling down along the sides of my face which had dampened my hair, and even with my wet shirt clinging onto my skin, I couldn’t help but feel proud of myself after hearing all of the wonderful praises and positive comments that my best friends were shooting my way, which was really amazing, as we walked along the stone pathway back to the school campus. They kept on yammering about the try-outs for the school’s soccer—ahem, I mean, football—varsity team that I just got from.

I had no idea why I had waited for the arrival of my sixth year just to finally have the time and guts to join the football team’s try-outs. I had wanted to do it since third year, but schoolwork had always been in the way and was actually the main cause of my plan’s failure.

If ever I would be able to get in this year, it would be nicer to play with the varsity team for a longer period of time, but of course, that wasn’t possible. I only had seventh year left.

And yes, I just called it “football”. European football, to be more precise. After my parents had decided to migrate in England from Chicago when I was eleven years old, the situation had forced me to continue studying in a boarding school (which had greatly helped me to act independently at such a young age) that doesn’t allow mobile phones and other electronic gadgets on weekdays and is filled with British young men and women from the ages eleven to seventeen who weren’t exactly friendly towards Americans breathing the same air as them, and made me understand the culture and history of the new country I was living in.

That last bit was quite unexpected, to be entirely honest, because I had always thought that I would never understand and mind much about the British culture and their language differences with Americans, but in the end, I found out that I was wrong.

After staying in England with my family for nearly six years, I had learned quite a lot of things: British people spell words differently, such as ‘colour’ instead of ‘color’ and ‘criticise’ instead of ‘criticize’; they prefer tea over coffee, most of the time; Union Jack is what they nicknamed their flag, as opposed to America’s Star-Spangled Banner; and people have to bring umbrellas with them at all times since it rains a lot—for approximately two hundred days in a year.

Imagine that.

Another thing that I had learned from the country was that not all Brits snubbed Americans, after all. Apparently, my two best friends, Theodore Fleetwood and Nathan Keegan, whom I had become friends with way back when we were still on our first year since we were assigned in the same dormitory room with two others, had turned out to be just as curious as I was when I first got to England, but instead of wanting to know more about Great Britain, they wanted to know about the United States of America.

I could still vividly remember their ludicrous questions about the country that I came from.

But, I could also remember how they laughed so hard that they started rolling around the grass when we were out in the grounds during our free period on this one, rather unfortunate afternoon and I decided to try imitating their British accent, which was why I swore that I would never attempt to do it again.