Prologue #2
I’m not sure I’ve fully understood him, and I guess the bigger question here is, who in their right mind even packed a Footloose crop top and tiny gym shorts? Why give up such valuable suitcase real estate for those things?
I’m trying not to laugh, but I honestly don’t think Finn would mind if I did. He probably expects it actually. He has the kind of face that looks as though it’s always smiling.
Laughter lines before you’re twenty is serious life goals.
To be so happy that it physically alters the way the world sees you. I bet he looks like that even when he’s relaxed. Resting blithe face?
“Those are empanadas,” I say. “They’re like a national dish here.”
He dumps two empanadas on my plate, pops a third between his lips whole, and talks with his mouth full. “Pasties where I come from.” His accent is so strange.
It’s always so baffling to me how such a tiny country like England can have so many ways of saying the same thing.
“You know that one hundred pesos is only about three or four Australian dollars?” I say.
“What’s that in pounds?”
I shrug. “Probably about two pounds.”
“Ahh, bollocks!” He looks down at his exposed flesh, then bursts out laughing. “McGinty’s such a shit.”
“I’m Aiden, by the way,” I say, even though it says as much on my name tag.
“My name’s Eggs or Eggo or Eggy, whatever you fancy. What do they really call you?”
“Huh?” Oh, he means like a nickname. “Just Aiden. I only joined the team about two weeks ago, so I’ve had hardly any training time with them.” Nobody’s bothered to give me a nickname yet.
“Where d’you normally play?” he asks.
“Perth, Australia. I just got signed to the academy squad.”
“Nice.” Finn looks me up and down again, his gaze resting slightly too long on my eyes. It’s both disconcerting and oddly comforting.
“Ohhh,” he says, like he’s found the missing piece of the puzzle. “You’re that guy. Shit, oh my god, you’re fast. Like, really fucking fast?” He says it like a question.
I answer even if he didn’t mean it that way. “I’m pretty fast.”
“So . . . what d’you play? Winger?”
“Usually. You play lock?”
Finn barks out a huge laugh. “Was it my nine feet of height that gave that away?”
“That might’ve had something to do with it.”
He continues dumping food onto my plate, occasionally asking me if I’m allergic to shellfish or nuts, then sampling it himself beforehand.
We take our grub, including the two plates Finn now has to himself, out of the banqueting hall, down past the rank of WCs, into a staff only area—Aviso, Unicamente Empleados—and into a darkened carpeted corridor.
Fluorescent bulbs flick on overhead as we walk down.
Finn sizes up a scuffed blue door, then sits in front of it.
“Why are we here?” I ask, but I sit beside him regardless.
He chews and swallows, but he still has food in his mouth when he talks again. “Thought you might appreciate a bit of . . . quiet.”
I do, actually. But I’d never have assumed I’d find it here. At an international tournament with hundreds of eighteen- and nineteen-year-old guys. If anything, being away from my family is the peace. This itself is my respite.
“Thanks.” I take a bite of empanada. Finn was right, these are fucking ’ansum, whatever that means. “How old are you?”
“Eighteen. It was my birthday last month.”
“Fuck off are you eighteen! With that beard?”
He strokes his facial hair as though he’s a theatre villain. “What, this old thing?” He laughs so hard that a chicken bone falls from his plate. Honestly, if I could grow a beard as lustrous as that one at his age, I’d be fucking proud of it too. “I’ve literally had it since I was thirteen.”
“No way.”
“My teachers would try to make me shave it off, but it would come back so quick. So you’re seventeen?”
“Yeah, hence the reason I’m the only sober bro here. I can’t believe you’re only eighteen. What part of England are you from?” I ask as though I know any UK geography beyond London.
We continue to eat our buffet food as Finn tells me all about his seaside-ish Cornwall home, his life there, and his rugby team. Every time I call him Finn, he corrects me.
“Eggo’s fine,” he says, even though it feels weird.
Like me, he grew up near the ocean, in a town called Newquay, which he claims is the surf capital of the UK, but just like me, he says he hates surfing.
He tells me he can’t see the sea from his mum’s house, but sometimes in the summer he can hear the lions roaring from the nearby zoo.
He does an impression, which sounds eerily similar to my granddad standing up from his armchair and stretching.
When I ask him what his favourite things from home are, without hesitation he says, “The scran. Hundred per cent. Pasties, cream teas, fresh fish, bread pudding, steak . . .”
When he asks me the same question about Perth, I come up short. I have nothing nice to say, but it’s not the city’s fault. If I removed the people from my hometown, namely my family, I guess I’d have a lot more pleasant things to say about it.
Eggo—still feels weird to call him that—tips all the chicken bones onto one dish and stacks the rest of the plates underneath. “Need a beer?”
“I’m seventeen.” I don’t want to be caught drinking and get kicked out of the tournament already. We haven’t even been here a day yet.
“A Coke, then?” But he says it with a wink.
He doesn’t grab me a Coke, not even one with secret spirits that would pass as a soft drink.
Instead, he takes two beers from the table next to the bar.
“Nobody will care, trust me. It was the same last year in France. My mate Leo got so shitfaced that he took a dump in a bush behind the stadium. As long as you don’t end up that wasted, you’ll be fine. ”
“I promise I’ll use the toilet.”
I take the beer from him and sip it. No alarms sound, no police storm through the doors. Not even one adult looks over at me. Tilly is nowhere to be seen, and I’ve forgotten all the other grown-ups’ names.
“Man, I wish there were girls here.” Eggo glances around the hall at a sea of white shirts and black suit jackets. “Wanna see the pitch?”
“Too right, I do. We’re not here to fuck spiders,” I say.
“Oh my god, I love that. I’m yoinking that phrase.”
“You have to be Australian to say it, though, otherwise it’s cultural appropriation,” I reply.
Eggo leans closer, his chest and bare stomach brush my arm, and his gaze flits to my lips. “Pard, I’m about to appropriate the fuck out of your culture.”
The scent of his oceanic shower gel floods my nostrils, and my pulse quickens. I keep my breath even, my voice steady, and fake a laugh. “What does pard mean?”
“It’s like mate, or buddy. You know? Wasson, pard?” he says with a shrug. “That means ‘What’s going on, my good man?’”
We walk through the building, navigating with the Spanish signs, through the bar area and into a special VIP section, and then out into . . .
“Huh,” I say. “Didn’t think it’d be like this.”
It’s a massive racecourse, like the horses’ variety, and the rugby pitch—pitches, actually—are smack bang in the centre. I’ve played at grounds similar to this, but usually it’s an athletics track circling the field. I’ve never seen anything on this scale before. The stands seem so far away.
“Oh my god,” Eggo says, grabbing me by the wrist and rushing us both forward. My beer sloshes over the edge of the glass.
We’re not the only U20s that have snuck off to find the pitch. Some have even produced a ball from somewhere and are passing and kicking it between each other. Eggo downs his pint and watches them with hands on bare hips.
“Do you think you’ll stay in Cornwall? When you’re old enough. Or will you move to a different team?” I ask.
He shrugs. “No idea. If they offer me a place on the main squad, I’ll probably stay.
If not . . .” He glances up at the sky, but it’s too cloudy to see any stars.
“I’ll go wherever. I’d love to play in the premiership if I can.
Bristol looks nice. They’ve got a good team.
Or France or Ireland, I literally don’t care.
And if I don’t get to play rugby, fuck knows what I’ll do.
My stepdad’s a baker, so I guess I could do that. What about you?”
“Um . . .” I hadn’t thought much about where I’ll go after the academy team, though I know that as soon as I pass my driving test, I’m leaving Perth. “I wanna play rugby for as long as I can. Maybe I’ll move to Sydney. My sister lives there.”
I think about Connor Wilson leaving everything behind to play for a team tens of thousands of kilometres from home.
“Maybe I don’t even want to stay in Australia. It’s a really big fucking world out there and . . .” I let my sentence trail off.
“You should come to Blighty,” Eggo says matter-of-factly. “What’s not to love? Bad food, shit weather, homesickness . . . but . . . beautiful countryside, beautiful beaches, beautiful maids. Pubs galore. You’ll make a new family there. Honestly, you won’t find a better bunch of mates, I promise.”
Where do I sign up?
“You could probably start looking into it next year when you turn eighteen, so long as nothing major happens like World War Three or an international plague or something else that stops you,” he adds.
I laugh. It feels like a weight has been lifted from my chest. I could leave home in as little as a year. The potential is right there.
“By maids, you mean girls, right?” I say.
“Yeah.” Panic flashes behind his eyes. “You like girls? Because if not, that’s cool. There’s some beautiful fellas in England too.”
“Yeah, I like girls,” I say, but I don’t even sound convincing to myself.
I mean, I do like girls. I really fucking like girls. Never stop thinking about them in fact.
But I think I also might like guys. Maybe. I don’t know.
My thoughts must read loud and clear over my features.
“I myself am ninety-six per cent straight and four per cent gay,” Eggo says. He’s not even smirking, like it’s not a joke to him. My pulse ticks faster at the base of my throat.
“That’s a lot of words to say that you’re bi,” I say. “Or pan. I’m still not entirely sure I know the difference.” And I’ve done plenty of googling on the two.
“Nah, fuck that. I hate labels. I just do what feels right, you know?”
I can’t help but laugh at how unintentionally ironic he’s being. “You hate labels, but you still use gay and straight?”
He simply smiles at me. “Are you gonna finish your pint?”
“You have it,” I say, pushing it into his hand.
“Hey, when’s your birthday?” he asks.
“Why?”
“So I know when to expect your company in my wonderful home country. My girlfriend, Jody—well, ex-girlfriend—is pregnant. I’m gonna be a dad. You can meet my kid.” He pauses. “Oh my god, that sounds unreal.”
“Wait, you’re gonna be a dad? For real?” How is he only eighteen?
“Yeah. Baby’s due on the first of September.
Like . . . in a few months.” His eyes go wide and he scrubs a hand through his hair.
I get the distinct feeling that the news, however old it might be, hasn’t truly sunk in yet.
“So, when’s your birthday? I can show you all the cool shit England has to offer.
Wales too. Not Scotland, though, that’s way too fucking far away. ”
“It’s the fourteenth of March. One four oh three. Or if you’re American, three one four, like the number pi.”
Eggo’s thick brows knot together, and he stares at me unblinkingly for what feels close to a full minute.
Oh no, I’ve broken him.
“What the fuck does ‘number pi’ mean?”
“It’s the circumference of a circle divided by its diameter,” I explain.
He scratches his head. Actually scratches it like they do in cartoons. “So, it’s always the same? It’s always three hundred and—”
“No, it’s three point one four. Same as my birthday.”
Eggo necks the rest of my beer. Then he watches me with his head tilted to the side. “Ohhh, okay. I get it,” he says, nodding to himself. “I’ve totally figured you out . . . You’re a nerd.”
I’ve been teased about this before, and it’s usually where people lose interest and make their excuses.
“Guilty, I guess,” I say, holding my breath.
“Space nerd, maths nerd, computer nerd, or dinosaur nerd?” he asks.
I fight a smile. “Are those the only types of nerds? What about gamers? What about comic book nerds?”
“Yes, those are officially the four main nerd groups. All other types of nerds are just nerd subsets. Gamers are filed under computer nerds, and comic books are actually fucking awesome and aren’t even considered a nerd subcategory. That’s how cool they are. Now pick your player.”
Damn, I hate how accurate he’s accidentally been.
I scrunch up my face before answering, as though it’ll make any difference to my cringe levels. “Space nerd, then, I guess and . . . sometimes computer nerd. And well, maths is essential to literally everything and . . . I suppose dinosaurs are pretty cool too . . .”
“You got the full collection there, huh?”
“I . . . actually love collecting things,” I say.
“Bro! I am shooketh by that revelation. Absolutely shooketh,” he deadpans.
I’m smiling now. Stuff kids used to make me feel bad for liking doesn’t feel so awful around him. I don’t feel so weird. “I also really like . . .” Actually, no, that might be the sticking point. I shake my head, can’t quite finish that sentence in the presence of an actual cool person.
“You like what? Go on.”
Fine, whatever. I’ll never even see this guy again after a couple of weeks. “Star Trek.”
“Aha!” He punches the air. “I knew I had you sussed. What floor of the hotel is your room on?”
“Seventeen, why?”
Eggo collects the empty pint glasses from the grass and holds them both in one hand like a claw grabber.
“I’m on fourteen. Let’s go to my room and play on Callum McGinty’s Nintendo Switch.
We figured out how to connect it to the telly.
” He drapes his free arm over my shoulder, and we amble back towards the stands.
“Pi. That’s your new nickname, by the way,” he says. “Spread it around.”