The Secrets Club (4 page)

By the time Mum and Jade walk down the
street quite a few of us are out there having a kick-around, all of them lads except
me, but I'm used to that. ‘Tea in half an hour,' Mum calls as she
puts her key in the lock.

It's starting to get dark when I
go in and the light is on in the kitchen. My sister's already sitting at the
table, chatting away to Mum who is serving up plates of pasta with Bolognese sauce.
I slip into my place feeling loads better. It must be those endorphins Mrs Waters is
always banging on about which flood your body after you've done some strenuous
exercise. Happy hormones, she calls them, which Tash thinks is hilarious. Or maybe
it's simply the sight and smell of food.

Mum places a hot, steaming plate of
pasta
in front of Jade and me then sits
down with hers beside us. Across from her, Dad's chair sits empty, a constant
reminder of his absence from our family, like a gap where a painful tooth has been
extracted.

They're all around the house these
gaps: a bare display cabinet where his football trophies used to stand; a drying
rack full of dainty underwear, but devoid of boxer shorts or novelty socks; no
shaving foam or razor or unused bottle of Christmas aftershave on the bathroom
shelf; three toothbrushes in the cup, not four.

I start to feel miserable again.

Mum sighs as if she's reading my
mind, or perhaps she's just tired from being at work all day.
‘What's all this about you hurting your leg?' she asks and forks
food into her mouth.

News travels fast when you've got
a mum like mine. The bush telegraph, the jungle drums, Twitter, none of them can
compete with her. Information runs through her faster than the speed of light – she
doesn't just follow me, she knows what's happening in my life before I
do.

At least, she thinks she does.

‘Knocked it playing
football.' I'm aware of it aching now I've been running about on
it
again, but I add quickly,
‘It's no big deal. How did you find out?'

‘Tash was at the surgery with her
mum and the boys. When did you do it?' She sounds only mildly interested. The
advantage of having a mum who's a nurse is that she's seen every injury
and disease under the sun and you have to be on your deathbed before she's the
least bit impressed.

‘Saturday.'

She frowns at me, puzzled, and I
explain. ‘I had a knock-about with some kids in the park by Gran's
house. Got a bit of a bump, that's all.'

She shakes her head. ‘What are you
like? I thought Riverside Academy might have made a lady of you at last. Especially
when you did that fashion show. But here you are, still chasing a football
around.'

‘A lady?' I snort
derisively. ‘It was ace. I really enjoyed it. I'm going to play with
them again this Saturday.'

Jade rolls her eyes and Mum laughs.
‘Football mad she is, just like her dad,' she says, but her voice sounds
a bit wistful. I hesitate, wondering how much to tell her, but then she turns to
Jade
and asks her about school and the
moment passes.

It all began last half term, way before
the fashion show, when Jade and I went over to Gran's on our own for the first
time. Since I started at Riverside Mum's been giving me more rein, letting me
go places under my own steam, encouraging me to meet up with my new friends. The
only proviso is if she's working on Saturdays I have to have Jade with me.
I'm not stupid, she's using me as an unpaid babysitter!

I don't mind; Jade's no
trouble. The first thing we did was go over to see Gran on the train on our own and
that set the pattern for Saturdays ever since, whether Mum's working or
not.

It's not just that I like
Gran's company, which I do. Not as much as Jade does though. Those two are
like a pair of kids when they get together. They love going round charity shops,
poking through piles of unwanted items to find steals in vintage clothing,
bric-a-brac, books … Of course books.

I got bored rigid that first Saturday
and after a while wandered off down the park and let
them get on with it. Some boys were having a knock-around on the
football pitch so I stopped to watch them. One of them hit the ball into the bushes
next to me so I retrieved it and lobbed it back to him.

‘Thanks!' he called. He had
bright ginger hair and looked nice. A bit later the ball came my way again and I did
a big drop kick back to him. He picked it up and this time he said, ‘Wanna
game? We're one short.'

I was really surprised to be asked.
Don't get me wrong, I'll play football every chance I get but since I
left primary school I've only played in the street with the kids I grew up
with. Like, most boys don't want a girl in their team, plus these guys were
pretty good. But I didn't need to be asked twice.

‘All right.'

‘Five-a-side. You're on my
team. You, me, Vikram, Lofty and Marvyn. Against the others.'

I ran over to them and he passed the
ball to me. I trapped it and flicked it from my toe to my knee and back for a few
seconds while I worked out who was who. A boy tried to tackle me so I turned away
and deflected it to a long gangly guy who I was pretty sure must be Lofty.
He sent it straight back to me so I
must've been right. I passed it on to the ginger kid who sliced it high and
wide, but I raced down the pitch overtaking the rest of them and picked up the ball
and lobbed it into the net.

‘Yay!' said the boy,
high-fiving me. ‘Nice work! My name's Ryan. What's
yours?'

‘Dani.'

‘Welcome to the team,
Danny,' he said and turned to the others. ‘I think we've found our
new man.'

I never meant to mislead them. I never
set out to pretend I was a boy.

I didn't even realize at that
point that they actually didn't know I was a girl. When Ryan said,
‘We've found our new man,' I thought he was being funny and I
laughed, pleased they'd accepted me, and then we carried on playing. I played
well, I know I did, my confidence boosted by the goodwill I could feel flooding
towards me. It fired me up and made me rise to the occasion. I'd missed this
standard of play. I was in my element.

Afterwards they crowded round me,
wanting to know who I played for.

‘Well, I was playing for Pengrowse
but I've left now,' I explained, Pengrowse being my primary school.

‘Come and play for us then!' said Ryan. ‘We're getting a
junior team together. My Uncle Terry says he'll train us up and he used to
play for the Wanderers. How old are you?

‘Eleven.'

‘Perfect.'

I couldn't believe my ears.

‘Are you serious?' I knew
that technically girls were allowed to play in boys' teams nowadays, but I
didn't know a single girl who'd ever been asked to play in one. Not at
this level anyway.

They all started nodding their heads and
saying, ‘Yeah, yeah!' and ‘You bet!' and stuff like that,
and I found myself grinning with delight. But then Lofty said, ‘We need lads
like you.'

‘What d'you mean?' I
asked, my smile fading.

‘Lads who are first-class
players,' he said simply. ‘Like you.'

Oh no! The penny dropped. He thought I
was a boy. I looked around at all the faces waiting eagerly for my decision. They
all did! They all thought I was a boy!

Why was I so surprised? Everyone thinks I'm a boy when I first meet them.
Even Lissa said, ‘I didn't know boys were allowed in this school,'
when we started at Riverside. I look like one, let's face it, with my short
spiky hair and freckles and my stocky build. I don't mind, it doesn't
bother me!

I wish I had been a boy. They have loads
more fun.

But now I had the opportunity to have
some fun too. To play the game I loved every week to a respectable standard with a
bunch of guys who were passionate about it. It was my dream come true.

Now was the time to come clean and fess
up that actually I was a girl and see if they still wanted me.

But I hesitated. What if they
didn't? This was the best chance I'd ever had to play football at a
decent level. I couldn't take the risk of losing it.

‘OK then!' I said and a
cheer went up as they all piled on top of me.

What have I done? Now I'm
committed to playing every single week with these guys and
very soon we're going to have
our first actual match against another side. I can't leave them in the lurch
now, it's too late for that.

I don't want to anyway, I'm
loving it.

I'm in this to the
end.

Football is my
raison
d'être
(my ‘reason for being' – we do French at
Riverside, Madame Dupré would be proud of me) but until I started playing with the
Blackett boys it was actually, to my huge regret, starting to disappear from my
life. It was different when Dad was home. We used to eat, drink and sleep it then.
Nearly every day when he came home from work we'd kick a ball around together.
He taught me everything I know about the game. We'd watch it every opportunity
we had on TV and he was forever reading me match reports out of the newspaper. Best
of all, like I said before, we used to follow the Wanderers together.

I can't go and watch them any more
because there's no one to take me and Mum won't let me go on my own.

It's not fair. Parents should think about these things before they split
up.

Now school takes precedence over
everything else. Mum was so proud when I won a scholarship to Riverside Academy, she
went round telling everyone who would listen. I felt sorry for her poor patients
because you could bet your life while she was dressing their wounds and sticking
needles into them she was going on and on about my scholarship. I didn't even
want to go to Riverside but there was no way she or Gran were ever going to let me
turn it down.

I have to say though, she was right; it
is a really good school, even if it doesn't take boys. I'm glad I came.
Most of the time. I like playing hockey and netball (though not so much as football)
and being captain of the hockey team and I'm glad that my PE teacher has
spotted my potential. I like most of my subjects, in fact, and nearly all of my
teachers.

But what I like best is being friends
with Lissa, Ali and Tash.

I'd never had a close friend
before. I just muddled along with everyone at primary school, spending most of my
time in the playground
with the boys. But
now I've got not one, not two, but THREE best mates and, actually, that makes
me feel special. We got to know each other soooooo quickly. I like them all equally
but in different ways.

Girls are different from boys. They talk
more together and do less. Girls like to tell their friends everything about
themselves. We all promised we wouldn't keep anything from each other. Then we
found out that both Ali and Tash had secrets.

Now it's my turn.

The good thing is none of us bears
grudges. Nobody blamed Ali for not telling us about her sister and we could all see
why Tash kept her home life hidden. Now I'm hoping Lissa won't still be
cross with me for snapping at her yesterday. I know I was out of order and I
can't help worrying that it will be a bit awkward between us still.

But when I go into my form room this
morning and see my friends already there perched on the desks chatting, Lissa grins
at me straight away, budging up so I can sit next to her.

‘Wanna sweet?' she asks
indistinctly, popping
another one in her
mouth as she holds out a paper bag to me. She's always eating, mostly rubbish,
even though her mum's a health freak apparently.

I shake my head and say, ‘Sorry I
had a go at you yesterday, Liss.'

She looks blank for a second like
she's forgotten all about it and then puts her arm round my shoulders and
gives me a hug.

‘That's all right, babe, we
all have our off days. I do definitely.'

Ali raises her eyebrows. ‘You can
say that again.'

‘I do definitely,' repeats
Lissa and we all giggle.

‘We've got geography
first,' remarks Tash and now we all groan, even Ali. Geography should be
Ali's favourite lesson because she's into the environment in a big way
but geography means Mr Little. I'm not kidding, that's really his name.
What makes it even funnier is he's not little, he's extremely tall and
thin with long bony wrists that poke out of the sleeves of his cord jacket, the same
grubby jacket he wears every single day of his life. It's like
somebody's told him that's the uniform geography teachers have to
wear.

I don't mind that, I mean you don't expect teachers to be supermodels.
He's younger and better looking than Grumpy Griffiths, our maths teacher,
who's got grey beetley eyebrows and a warty nose. (Actually, the whole world
is better looking than Grumpy Griffiths.) The difference is that Grumpy Griffiths,
despite his name and his appearance, is a good teacher, while Mr Little is
rubbish.

He doesn't know enough about his
subject: he's not a geography specialist, he admitted that to us straight away
which was probably a mistake. He was brought in on supply after half term when Mrs
Jones went off on maternity leave. They should've asked Ali to teach us
instead, she knows much more than he does. Or Lissa. She could control us
better.

Mr Little just goes through the textbook
every lesson and it's dead boring. Because it's boring, people start
playing up and it always dissolves into chaos. You'd think it would be fun for
the class if a teacher can't keep control but it's not, you get fed up
with it after a while. The Barbies run rings around him. Today is no different.

‘Open your books at
Population,' says Mr Little and immediately people start clamouring.

‘Where's my book?'

‘Haven't got one,
Sir!'

‘What page?'

‘What did he say?'

Mr Little clears his throat and tries
again. ‘Page forty-five. Now pay attention everyone. Chantelle, share your
book with Georgia. Chantelle! I said share … Hmm. Now then. Danielle? Can
you read please?'

I hate being called Danielle.

‘The population of the British
Isles rose significantly after the Industrial Revolution,' I begin.

Zadie (in a whisper just loud enough for
everyone to hear): ‘That's because they were all at it like
rabbits.' We start giggling and Mr Little's face turns pink.

Georgia: ‘I reckon England should
have a one-child policy.'

Ali (considering the concept, which she
finds genuinely interesting): ‘Like China, you mean?'

Zadie: ‘What about Scotland? If
England has one, Scotland should too.'

Chantelle: ‘And Wales.'

Georgia: ‘Mrs Jones was from
Wales. Has Wales got a one-child policy, Sir?'

Mr Little: ‘Um, no. No, it doesn't.'

Georgia (with a sly grin):
‘Didn't think so.' Zadie and Chantelle giggle but no one else
does. Most of us were big fans of Mrs Jones, our last geography teacher, who'd
gone off to have her third baby.

‘You're not clever,
Georgia,' says Lissa, sounding bored.

Georgia (looking annoyed, but refusing
to let it go): ‘Sir, d'you think we should have a one-child
policy?'

Mr Little (thinking he's finally
caught her interest at last): ‘Well, yes, it's certainly an interesting
question, Georgia. If you consider that the population has doubled since
–'

Georgia: ‘So are you telling us we
should use birth control, Sir?'

Mr Little (realizing too late it's
a trap, and flushing fiery red): ‘Um, I'm not sure we should be
discussing this …'

‘You're not being funny,
Georgia, you're just being rude!' says Lissa loudly and sternly. Georgia
turns round with a wounded look on her face.

‘No, I'm not, I'm just
asking questions,' she says pretending to be hurt. ‘If I was being rude
I would be saying things like,
Sir, your lessons are boring
or
Sir, your coat sleeves are too
short
. Or
Sir
 …'

‘Georgia, shut up!' says
Lissa, her voice full of command, and Georgia does as she's told.

You don't want to mess with Lissa.
I'm glad she's my friend, not my enemy. I carry on reading aloud to the
now silent class. The door opens and the headmistress pokes her head round.

‘Everything all right, Mr
Little?' she asks and he nods nervously.

‘Everything's fine, thank
you, Mrs Shepherd.'

But I can't help noticing how he
darts a grateful glance towards Lissa as the head closes the
door.