Teams | A Jamie Johnson FanFiction

Part 34 - Old Friends

The room was silent apart from a few sniggers from some Kingsmount students; the Westfield lot seemed to be waiting for Zoe to make another remark, but she seemed tongue-tied.

"Anyway," Indira said, breaking the silence, "I was thinking about a name for the team - if you  join Kingsmount and Westfield together, you get: Kingsfield."

The room broke out in murmurs, with the Westfield kids disagreeing and saying that 'Westmount' was much better, which only made the Kingsmount pupils retaliate and back up 'Kingsfield'.

"ENOUGH!" Jack yelled, once again silencing the changing room; I looked at my watch: only a few minutes until the bell would go. Jack better hurry this up or we'd get nowhere. "Look," She said, "if we want this to work all students from both schools need to work together. So back to our kit. Any suggestions?"

I had a suggestion, but Dillon got in there first.

"We could play in bibs." Dillon offered, and it seemed like a sensible suggestion to me, but Jethro didn't seem to think so.

"You're a joke." He stated, throwing Dillon a dirty look, but Dillon retaliated.

"What'd you just say?" Dillon said, standing up at the same time as Jethro as the rest of us moved out the way.

"Stop!" Jack said, coming between them both. "You two are ruining this! Stop fighting all the time!"

"We don't fight all the time." Jethro responded, but Jack raised an eyebrow.

"You did that time at Vicar's Common." I said bluntly, but just as they were about to retaliate, the bell went, and Mr Hansard appeared in the doorway.

"The bell's gone." He said simply.

"Sir I need to talk to you..." Jack began, but she was cut off by Mr Hansard again.

"THE BELL HAS GONE." He repeated, putting emphasis on every word.

The changing room filed out.

_____________________________

"So, you want Hansard to be the coach?" I asked Jack the next morning.

"Yeah." she replied simply, but I could tell something was up.

"Hey, what's wrong? The team's going well isn't it?"

"I could do without you and Zoe having a go at each other yesterday. And Dillon and Jethro." she said.

"Oh, yeah sorry about that. But, I have good news: I know someone who's mum can maybe get us a kit." I said. "Or at least, sew a logo on a few bibs."

"Really?" Jack asked and I nodded with a smile. 

"She lives on the other side of town, next to..." I hesitated. "Next to Thornlake." I said cautiously.

"Jethro's old school?"

"Yeah. But I could go there straight after school, we'd have a kit by our next game."

"Bella, you're brilliant sometimes." Jack said with a huge grin. "And, guess what? I was speaking to Jamie before the meeting - he thinks he can get us a friendly against Foxborough."

"Awesome. Can't wait." But the truth was, I was distracted, because I was dreading what I had to do after school.

__________________________________

My feet dragged all the way there, but I knew that I had to do it to make up for my argument with Zoe at the meeting.

I drew in a breath as I got closer and closer to my old school; there were still students hanging around outside and I prayed that I wouldn't see anyone I knew, and I didn't, for a while. But that was short lived.

"Oi!" a voice shouted as I walked past. "Yeah Bella, you. I know you can hear me."

I knew exactly who it was, but I had no intention of turning around to see him.

"Bella!!!!" he yelled again, and I knew I wasn't going to get round to my friend's house without having to face him at some point. So I whirled around quickly and he stopped short on the pavement; I realised that he'd been following me.

"Alex." I said.

"Bella." he said in the exact same tone.

"Why are you following me?"

"I wanted to catch up! For old time's sake!" he said mockingly, and I continued walking towards my friend's house, him still following. "Come on, Bella. Whatever happened with you and Jethro, I don't care! We can still be mates..."

"Don't pretend like you had nothing to do with it, Alex. I know it was you who shared that video around. Besides, we were never mates."

His smile turned viscous, and he looked at me. "Maybe I did share the video, but maybe they had to know what you did..."

"Jethro wasn't gonna tell anyone!!" I yelled in frustration. "You got me expelled, Alex!"

He scoffed. "You're getting a bit pathetic now Bella. If you didn't want to get expelled, you shouldn't have done it." He said, and walked off with a smile of satisfaction.

It frustrated me how simply he put it. 

And how much he was right.