suspiciously like Kill-kill-kill.
Mom looks at them and then at me. “They’re awfully big, aren’t they? Are they really all under fifteen?” It’s true, the only thing separating these boys from oxen is their opposable thumbs. I tell Mom they’re the older guys who play in the senior team. The juniors are even bigger.
I leave Mom and find William on the field below the stands, five rows down from where his parents and younger brother are sitting. His mom and dad are rocking matching green and orange sweaters today. William’s brother is similarly dressed. He’s too young to know the rule: never let your mom choose your clothes. William’s escaped being trapped in this vortex of fashion suicide by the school rules, which force him to wear school uniform at sports matches.
William’s got the first aid box at his feet. He doesn’t play rugby on account of his asthma. But his status as the team’s Dr House gets him off the hook where all boys who don’t play God’s favourite sport hang. Boys like Tsietsi, whose mom got him a special exemption on the medical grounds of: “There’s no chance in hell I’ll allow Tsietsi to play rugby. And here’s a fat cheque for the overseas tour.” For this, Tsietsi gets to run along the field with bottles of water during matches and does litter duty after school every Friday.
William folds the bandages and ensures the ice packs are kept cold in the cooler box. He nervously eyes the Voortrekkers (Kill-kill-kill) and adds more ice to the cooler box. “The guys are in the cloakroom. Sir’s getting them all revved up,” he says.
I glance over at the side of the field to check on our school mascot. Frank the giant mountain tortoise is snoozing. The wedges of cabbage and fresh lettuce placed at the entrance of his shell to tempt him out are untouched. William shakes his head in despair. “Frank refuses to poke his head out.” The team oracle will not pronounce on today’s games. Not a good sign.
I make my way to the cloakroom, and find our players seated with lowered heads revving up to pray. Things are going from worse to disaster. I bow my head and Sir intones: “Father god, be with us today. Let us play in the spirit of love and fairness and let your will be done.” There are tears in Sir’s eyes. As we raise our heads he says, lips twisted in a snarl, “Now get out there and crucify those pansies. Win at any cost.”
The captain of our senior team is a boy called John. See, some parents get the first part right. It’s the second part that gives guys like John a ball ache. His surname’s Thomas. I’m not going to spell it out for you, but we’ve all learned the hard way to call him Tank. Or Crater-face, as he’s sometimes called by people who can run faster than him. Because Tank has more than his fair share of zits. The thing with Tank’s zits is even his zits have zits. Every part of his face is covered in them. Even his eyelashes have them.
Mom says zits are a common malady among teenagers. “If you wash your face twice a day and don’t eat too much sugar, this unfortunate condition will pass with time. Just try not to scratch and definitely don’t squeeze them, and they won’t spread,” she says. I’m not sure the boys in the senior team have heard this advice. Lately, they seem to be scratching and squeezing and forgetting to wash their faces a lot.
I sit below the stands with William as the senior team plays and wait for Mom’s stats to kick in. At half time the score is 21:9 to the Voortrekkers, and we are four players down. They’re lying on the side of the field attached to William’s ice packs pretending to be out cold so they don’t have to talk to their moms, who are conducting a masterclass in embarrassing scenes.
I pretend not to be enjoying the view. This being a bunch of St Anne’s girls, kitted out in tanned thighs and pom-poms, leaping about at the side of the field cheering their throats raw. Helen’s not one of them. She says she would rather hammer a ten-inch nail into her eye-ball than ever be a pom-pom girl.
My sister didn’t come to the match either because she says rugby’s too tame a game for her to bother with. She’ll stay home and play Candy Crush, where there’s more chance of blood and guts. That’s my sister Helen for you. She’s violently ironic.
“Any sign from Frank?” Tank says as he wrings a litre of water out of his shirt, then mutilates an orange with his fist and swallows it down, peel and all.
William glances at the sleeping tortoise and tells Tank that our oracle hasn’t moved an inch. “He’s being less than Frank,” he says. For this attempt at humour, Tank kicks a hole in William’s cooler box.
Tank is not one of the most sweet-tempered of guys. Lately he’s been known to lose his rag at the smallest provocation. For example: “Good morning, Tank.” Punch.
Mom says mood swings are common among teenagers: “It’s your hormones, which are secreted from the pituitary gland.” In Tank’s case, his gland is pouring hormones like a busted water pipe.
Before Tank can brain William with an ice pack, the whistle blows and he’s back on the field. And gets sent off again after he grabs the whistle and feeds it up the back of the ref’s shorts. Tank sits on the benches, his Adam’s apple trying to batter an escape route out of his neck. For sure, the guy’s hormones are raging today.
The whistle blows and the game starts up again. I’m too busy watching the bits and pieces attached to the pom-poms, committing crimes against the laws of gravity, to see what actually happens. But ten minutes into the second half, William and Tsietsi run onto the field with a stretcher. They run off carrying Adrian, the first team prop.
Adrian’s injuries appear to be beyond William’s skill-set. I’m guessing Adrian’s going to escape getting back problems later on in life. Because his lips are blue and he’s not doing a lot of breathing.
Sir’s face looks like a kidney failure. “Get the doctor,” he yells. “Call an ambulance.” He leaps onto Adrian and, in between kissing him the way every guy at St David’s has dreamed of kissing a St Anne’s girl, beats him on the chest gorilla-style. The paramedics from Linksfield hospital take over and pack Adrian into an ambulance.
When I go back to the cloakroom to get my stuff, most of the gang from the junior team have already left. It’s only the older guys mooching around with expressions like roadkill. To say team morale is low would be an understatement. No one’s flicking wet towels or cracking bend over and get the soap jokes. Everyone’s gutted about losing the game to the Voortrekkers. “That useless tortoise. We should get a decent mascot. Like a dog,” George says.
Before I can offer up our beloved Terror to the team, Tank pipes up. His voice is mighty shrill for such a tough guy. “I told Adrian not to overdo the vitamins. But the dumb retard wouldn’t listen,” he says.
Tank grabs Adrian’s tog bag out of the locker, and a bottle of pills falls out. I pick it up. But before I hand it over, I check the label. And it’s not the multivitamin word on the bottle of pills I’ve got in my bathroom at home. It says Methyltestosterone. It sticks to my brain like a wad of chewing gum on Terror’s fur.
“It’s just Adrian’s vitamins. OK, buddy?” Tank says, his fist tattooing a bruise on my upper arm.
I move away from Tank’s fist and look around at the faces glaring back at me in the cloakroom. “Hey, we all take vitamins, don’t we?” I say, and give them my most eco-friendly grin.
I leave the guys popping their zits in the mirror and catch Mom in the parking lot. As we drive home she says, “I hear your friend Adrian had a heart attack. Unbelievable in someone so young and fit.” She’s tapping her fingers on the steering wheel, trying to work the percentages. The stats aren’t making any sense. “It’s
