Chapter 1
Kyle
Eight Years Later
I am not a Londoner. I want to go home. I’ve wanted to be home for the past eight years.
There are far too many unspoken rules in this city, and it’s exhausting.
Over the past eight miserable years, I learnt very quickly not to stand on the right of the escalators, stop in the middle of Westminster Bridge to gawk at Big Ben or the street performers, and, under any circumstances, take more than a nanosecond to enter a train.
I could probably hack this place a little more if I still had my family with me, but they had the sense to go home. I asked if I had that option, and they said no, I have to make the family proud. I have to get the family out of our squalor conditions with my “amazing gift.”
The amount of pressure I’ve been under with my “amazing gift” has made me more driven than anybody else. And I can’t lie, it feels like it’s my duty, too. It’s up to me to bring the good times to my family. It’s up to me to make the most of my gift.
While my former mates from school partied hard, I hit the field, running with a football until the streetlights came on.
When my mates were getting girlfriends, I hit the gym and focused on my form and my stamina.
I can see it paying off. But my “amazing gift” often feels like a noose around my neck.
If I slip, it’s over for not just me but my family.
So no, my “amazing gift” is not being able to perform open heart surgery with one hundred percent accuracy. Nor is it stumbling upon the mathematical equation to solve world hunger. No. It’s the ability to bang fucking footballs in the back of the net.
And sure, I love football. But I hate it when people say it’s an “amazing gift.” Hell, I hate hearing it, and I hate saying it.
It’s a talent with style at best. Truth is, I haven’t loved it as much since being shunted to London and away from my best friend.
AJ and I have barely spoken in the eight years that have passed.
We started off with great intentions, gaming with each other online during the weekends and such, but then we kinda drifted apart.
And that’s when I started to build up walls around my heart.
I could tell there was a wedge between us, but he kept denying it. Then one day, he finally tells me that he’s been scouted for City. The City. Our rival club. The club we said we would both never play for.
We’d swore we’d play for Union and be the greatest strike partnership ever.
Turns out that dream was only meant to be for one person.
I don’t know how he could betray our childhood promise, which blossomed into a pact.
Surely it wasn't to do with money. His family has enough of it. Maybe it’s a lack of integrity.
If you can’t trust your best friend, the person you care about most in the world, the one you used to look forward to seeing each day, then who can you trust. No one, that’s who.
And that’s why I have my walls up. No one is scaling them.
I’ve built them as high as I possibly can these past eight years.
The only time we speak now is the two times a year we see each other on match day. We exchange a brief hello in the tunnel, which is the rule anyway, and a handshake on the pitch, which is also the rule.
We’re still close in other ways: The scoring charts.
We are both currently tied first in the under 21’s league.
I won it last year, and he won it the year before that.
He has the last laugh, as always, as his club won the league and the cup.
They’re currently doing better than the senior squad, which is no mean feat, as they mostly win everything, which, if I’m being honest, pisses me off and lights a fire under me.
Whereas my club is, well, not doing as great at all.
Sure, the youth squad is fine, but the main squad is at the wrong end of the table and looking at a huge relegation fight.
The manager keeps saying he wants to bring me in, but the main striker is on a huge contract, and the bigwigs won’t let him put a youth player in place of an ageing striker who cost the club north of ninety-five million pounds. I swear this club loves to piss money.
Only on the main team, however. Take my house, for example.
Sure, it’s on the outskirts of London, but it’s a flat.
They call it a “luxury” one, but it’s still a flat—it’s too small and too far away from anything.
It’s far too hot in the summer and far too cold in the winter.
I’m a footballing Goldilocks, but without the joy of things being “just so.” Not that I’m trying to sound ungrateful, because I’m not.
I remember where I came from, the council estate back home.
I remember how some days my mum went without food herself so I could eat.
So, I’m not being ungrateful, it just bothers me that the outside world thinks all footballers are privileged and have infinite wealth.
Like we’ve typed in the “Rosebud” money glitch on The Sims.
Today is a rest day, which means I get to sit in my flat alone and watch Netflix.
That is until Trish, my dietitian, or dietrishen as I like to call her, arrives.
She rolls her eyes whenever I call her that.
It’s my little form of payback for her making me eat shit like kale and beetroot.
“Superfoods,” apparently. I asked her once if we could skip the healthy stuff and binge out on Maccies.
I swear to God, she almost fainted at the thought of that.
I was only half joking. I know all this food and all the Pilates and the yoga and the three hours a day at the gym has helped me become the best striker in the league (suck it, AJ) but it has taken a lot of the fun out of football.
To Trish’s credit, she is more than a dietitian, she’s my fitness coach, life guru, confidant, and I would like to say friend. When she’s not busting my ass, she’s got her nose in a romance book. I swear, one of the stories she reads is going to come waltzing off the page one day.
I know it will be worth it soon. Most of my wage I’m given each week—which is very modest at the moment until I break through into the first team—I send over to my parents, as I don’t need it. The flat comes out of my salary, as does my food and fuel, and my clothes are sponsored.
Despite all the perks I get, I feel like my identity is being stripped away, like I’m a billboard rather than a person.
I’d love to go down the street in a Spiderman pajama set and fluffy slippers.
But I can’t, as “that would ruin my image”—those are the words of my agent.
Everything is micromanaged. Except for on match day.
That’s when I’m free to be who I am meant to be: a goal scorer.
I know I’m the best at it. And if given the chance in the first team, I’ll be the best in the team and the league.
There’s a knock at my door. I head over to open it, and I’m about to say, “Hi, Trish,” as she’s due any moment, but it’s the Coach.
Not my coach, but the coach of the first team.
He doesn’t wait for an invite in, just strides past me with a smile on his face.
I never have visitors—not that I’m complaining at all—other than Trish, and she’s more of a drill sergeant.
“Hello, Thurston. Mind if I come in?”
I’ve no idea why he asks, as he’s already making his way into the kitchen and getting himself a bottle of water from the fridge. My heart rate quickens, and he can definitely see it on my face because he says, “Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
Okay, now my heart is threatening to explode in my chest, right in my kitchen. I put a hand on the counter to steady myself. My anxiety threatens to spike and, like always, a few of my insidious thoughts try to poison this moment before I've even had a chance to assess the situation.
“Is–is everything okay?” I manage to sputter out.
“Our next game, against the Blues. You’re going to be on the bench. So I’m going to need you at the training lodge within the next two hours to go over tactics and get you up to speed with the rest of the team.”
Coach keeps talking, but my world is spinning. The Bench. And in a local derby game too. The Blues are one of our rivals. We take it a lot more seriously than their fans because we’ve not quite achieved what they have over the years.
Regardless of that, it’s a huge game for the fans and the players.
And sure, it’s not like the derbies up north, but it’s still incredible and a huge chance to prove myself.
I get hold of my dark thoughts and shake them away.
I try not to let the anxiety show on my face either.
Instead, I return a smile like I would return a pass on the pitch.
“Yes, Coach,” I say, with more confidence than I thought possible.
“Good, good. As soon as you arrive, Trish will meet you and get you all set up. I thought it would be nice for you to have a friendly face on arrival. And besides, Trish has been working on your fitness and performance, I’d like this to continue, as it has yielded unprecedented results.”
He takes his bottle of water and leaves, just like that, as if he hasn’t swiftly changed my life.
I feel like Beckham must have felt when Sir Alex Ferguson, legendary manager of Union, knocked on his door.
The coach never makes personal visits unless he feels utterly compelled to. This is a huge vote of confidence.
Sure, I might not get off the bench, and sure, it might change again on the day, but this proves that Coach has noticed me. I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and try to steady my nerves, my hands shaking from a mixture of excitement and anxiety.
I saw on social media about an hour ago that AJ’s team had put him in the starting eleven.
It seems that no matter how much time has passed and no matter how far apart we are, we are always intertwined.
Even when something good happens, he is always who I go back to in my mind, and it’s not lost on me that thoughts of him steady my nerves.
I think about reaching out to him by text, wishing him good luck.
Then I remember how he turned his back on our childhood club.
How he now plays for our fiercest rival.
We said when we were kids, no matter how much money we’re offered, we would never play for them.
We even did a blood oath; we thought it was the coolest thing when we saw it in that IT movie.
I also thought that playing for the City was as bad as Pennywise, but what do I know?
So no, I won’t text him. Instead, I get myself ready to meet my first team squad.