Football High: Fire Up Read online

  Problems on and off the field arise as things heat up at Football High!

  On paper, Nick has settled into life at the National School of Football. He’s made the rep squad and is playmaker for the NSF Cannons. However, living in the shadow of his famous footballer father hasn’t become any easier, especially since Nick is struggling to keep a secret from everyone at school: he doesn’t even know his dad! With Kane Kruger stirring Nick at every opportunity, the truth looks set to be exposed and with it his cool, his cred and his footballing ability. To top it off, there’s also the little problem of girls – Grace won’t give Nick the time of day and Lexi won’t leave him alone.

  Can Nick find a way to ignore all the distractions and kick some desperately needed goals for the Cannons in the State Cup Knockout?

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Fan Mail

  It’s Alive!

  Training Day

  Misfire

  Garth to the Rescue

  Super-Snub

  Friendly Fire

  The Principal’s Office

  Green Hill Blues

  Bad Finisher

  Flexi-Lesson

  The Ripple Effect

  Monsters are People Too!

  Total Football

  Fire Up

  Redemption

  London Calling

  Book One Out Now

  Book One Chapter Sample: Destiny Awaits

  Next books in series

  Copyright Notice

  For Lucy and Charlotte, who would much rather read a book than kick a ball.

  With many thanks to Mary Shelley and her monster.

  My Bedroom, 15a Banksia Crescent,

  Green Hill

  Sunday Night

  To: Management, Arsenal FC

  From: Nicholas Arthur Young

  Subject: Sydney FC Friendly

  Hmm … Where to start …

  Dear Dad,

  Long time no see.

  Nope.

  Dear Mr Young,

  I’m a big fan of yours from Green Hill, Australia. Also, I’m your son.

  Nah.

  Hey Shane,

  Waazup? It’s me, your Aussie son from Down Under.

  Nooooo …

  Okay, I officially give up.

  It’s the night before the first day of Term Two and I’m trying to figure out how to ask my Premier-League-football-star dad, who I’ve never talked to before, if he can hook me up with VIP tickets to the friendly Arsenal are playing against Sydney FC in two weeks’ time so all the kids at school – including big jerk Kane Kruger – will think that my famous dad and I are best buddies, not total strangers!

  So how will getting tickets to the game help things? Well, it’s kind of a long story but I might have accidently promised Kane that I could get VIP tickets for the whole school football team. Kane of course told everyone, and I really don’t want to turn up to school tomorrow and have to admit that I lied about everything just to impress people. Kane’s a great footballer but he doesn’t like anyone to show him up – or maybe he just plain doesn’t like me. Either way, he’s had it in for me since day one and he’s obsessed with proving to everyone that I’m some kind of fake. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of being right about me and my dad, even though he kind of is. Right, that is. That’s what makes it even harder to back down.

  So now can you see my problem?

  Maybe I should just go with the truth …

  Dear Shane (Dad),

  It’s your other son, Nick. Remember me?

  I’ve never written to you before but I have something important to ask. If it’s not too much trouble, I was wondering if you could allocate some tickets to my school football team so that we can watch you play with Arsenal in Sydney. I go to the National School of Football. My dream has always been to be a professional football star, so it would be great to watch you play for Arsenal in Australia with all my friends (even though I’m more of a Chelsea fan). But also it would be great to see you because …

  Because why? I think.

  … because you’re my dad.

  Please reply soon and let me know about the tickets, preferably by tomorrow morning, 8.30 am Australian Eastern Standard Time.

  Yours sincerely,

  Nicholas Young (your son)

  P.S. I wouldn’t normally ask for free tickets but I only have one month to live.

  Sorry, guess I got a little desperate there. Who am I kidding? This isn’t going to work.

  I decide to abandon the email just as my mum enters my room to say goodnight. How do parents always manage to turn up right at the moment when you look most guilty?

  ‘What are you up to?’ says Mum, scanning my guilt-ridden face like a Terminator cyborg scanning for humans.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, angling the laptop screen down so Mum won’t see the email. She doesn’t know that I promised to get the whole team tickets to the game and I really don’t want her to find out. She’s only just accepted me wanting to follow in my dad’s football-boot footsteps. She’d really lose it if she found out I was big-noting myself using my dad and making all sorts of crazy promises I can’t keep.

  Which reminds me … Why am I making all sorts of crazy promises I can’t keep? I guess I just want the other kids to like me and I’m afraid they won’t if they know that even though I have a famous footballer for a father, I know him about as well as they do.

  ‘All ready for your first day back at school tomorrow?’ Mum asks, still eyeing my laptop suspiciously.

  ‘Absolutely,’ I say, which is absolutely not true.

  ‘And how’s Garth’s old laptop working out?’ Garth is my mum’s boyfriend. He’s a bit of a nerd and he has a really lame ponytail, but I guess he’s okay.

  ‘Great!’ I say. Again, not completely true considering most of the kids at school have brand-new laptops while Garth’s laptop looks older than me and is covered in all sorts of weird fantasy and sci-fi stickers. But I don’t want to seem ungrateful. Besides, it’s a step up from Mum’s old desktop computer, which has one of those chunky box screens.

  ‘You sure everything’s okay?’ Mum asks, her Terminator scanner working overtime on my face.

  ‘Yep. All good,’ I say, pushing the laptop screen completely closed and hoping Mum doesn’t get suspicious.

  ‘Okay … Get some sleep,’ she says, giving me a final cyborg-mum scan before kissing me goodnight and closing my bedroom door.

  I try to take her advice but it’s a little hard to sleep. I still need a plan for facing Kane and everyone else at school.

  I guess I’ll just have to fess up and tell the truth. After all, honesty is the best policy, right? Yep. I’ll tell the truth and just face the music. Simple.

  So I close my eyes and go to sleep. Except I don’t sleep. I just lie in the dark and stare at the shadows crawling across the ceiling and I can’t help wondering how my life got to be so complicated.

  NSF Campus

  Term Two, Week One, Day One: Monday

  As Bazzo and I walk through the gates of the National School of Football, the April sky is bright and blue and the sun is streaming down in warm friendly rays. Suddenly, the thing I was worried about last night doesn’t seem so bad anymore.

  The sun is part of it, but being with Bazzo helps, too. He was the first kid I met on the first day of school and we’ve become pretty close since then. It also helps that we catch the train to school together and are in Warren house and the same homeroom. His full name is Roberto Augusto Antonio Bazzo, but I just call him Bazzo for short and it’s kind of catching on. As we walk through the playground and say hello to some of t
he 80 year-sevens and 30 year-11s who make up the NSF’s very first group of students, I notice that a lot of kids are saying ‘Hi Nick’ and ‘Hi Bazzo’.

  In fact, things are looking cheerful all round: my least favourite fellow NSF student is nowhere to be seen.

  ‘Hey Young!’ calls a caustic voice and my heart skips a beat. Okay, I definitely spoke too soon.

  (By the way, ‘caustic’ is a word I learnt last term from our Science teacher Mrs Martin. It basically means ‘corrosive’ but it sounds cooler, hey? Who says education is a waste of time?)

  When I turn around, I see the distinctive sneering face of Kane Kruger. It’s as if he’s been waiting all holidays to ask me something. And I know exactly what that something is.

  ‘So did you get those tickets from your dad for the Arsenal–Sydney game or what?’ His eyes are lit up, preparing to explode in glee. Not because he wants to watch the match. He just wants to see me admit defeat.

  Okay, here goes. Just tell the truth, real quick, like ripping off a bandaid. One … Two … Three … GO!

  ‘Of course,’ I say.

  Arrrrgghh! I know! I’m hopeless. I can’t help it. It’s Kane’s smug face. I just can’t give him the satisfaction.

  ‘Really?’ asks a sceptical Kane. ‘Probably just the cheapest ones in the nosebleed section, right?’

  ‘No, they’re the best stadium tickets you can get!’

  Kane looks at me, still sceptical, so I decide to up the ante. ‘Oh, and don’t forget to bring your autograph book. You’ll need it when we meet all the Arsenal players with our VIP passes!’

  ‘I hate Arsenal,’ says Kane. He actually looks disappointed. He was really looking forward to seeing me fail. ‘You better not be lying about those tickets!’

  ‘Why would I be?’ I say defensively.

  He looks me hard in the eye and I stare back at him twice as hard.

  Then the bell goes for homeroom.

  ‘Whatever,’ Kane says, and he slinks off to class.

  ‘Ha!’ I exclaim. ‘I showed him!’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ agrees Bazzo.

  ‘Did you see his face when I told him to bring his autograph book?’

  ‘Yeah, priceless,’ says Bazzo. ‘Except … I’m a little confused.’

  ‘Why’s that?’ I ask.

  ‘Well, didn’t you just tell me on the train that you were going to send an email to your dad asking for tickets to the game but then you didn’t send the email?’

  ‘Yep,’ I reply.

  ‘Oh,’ says Bazzo. ‘So … Hang on, I’m still confused. How did you get the tickets?’

  ‘I didn’t. I just made all that up.’

  ‘Oh. Right,’ says Bazzo. ‘Okay. So you definitely don’t have the tickets?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  I suddenly have this vision of me standing at the airport, waiting for my dad to arrive from England, holding a little homemade sign that reads, ‘Welcome home, Dad! Do you have any spare tickets to the game?’ Only to have my dad and his entourage of managers, assistants and security whiz past me without even noticing.

  I shake my head to dispel the vision from my mind’s eye.

  ‘Don’t know,’ I reply to Bazzo’s question. ‘Go to class, I guess.’

  Later that day …

  Period Five, English

  The rest of the morning went okay, up to lunchtime. You see, while I was dreading confronting Kane, there was someone I was actually looking forward to seeing at school: Grace Valdez. On the last day of Term One, Grace hinted that she might like me. She even touched my arm in that ‘seemingly random but actually not random at all’ kind of way. I thought about that day all holidays (when I wasn’t worrying about how I was going to come up with VIP tickets to the Sydney versus Arsenal game, that is). But when I finally managed to spot Grace sitting alone under a tree at lunch, with a book in her lap, she didn’t even acknowledge me. I waved at her and she stared right past me, then turned away.

  I just don’t get girls.

  Speaking of which, here comes one now.

  Okay, it’s not really a girl. It’s actually the second scariest woman in my life after my mum: my English teacher, Miss Blasco. And she’s heading right for me with something horrible in her hands … A book!

  ‘Hi Nick, I found something I think you might enjoy,’ she says with a particularly evil smile.

  ‘Gee, a book! Thanks, Miss,’ I say, playing along.

  ‘It’s a comic version of Mary Shelley’s classic gothic novel Frankenstein,’ she says, still grinning. ‘I thought you might enjoy it. This way you can still read a classic novel but there are some great illustrations that will make it a little easier to get through.’

  Oh, she’s good. She’s knows I’m not a great reader due to my almost total avoidance of all reading in primary school. And she knows that I’m on a scholarship and that I have to maintain a C average to keep it. Miss Blasco’s worked it out so that I have no excuse not to read this – this comic version of a classic book. She’s actually making it look like she’s trying to be nice to me. Pure, evil genius!

  She walks away smiling to herself while I stare down at the cover of the graphic novel. ‘Frankenstein’ is written in a bright-red, blood-dripping font, while a large lightning strike forks its way down the middle of the page.

  Below the title, a man in a torn science lab coat with crazy white hair is pulling back a sheet to reveal a hideous monster that looks as if it’s been sewn together from different body parts.

  ‘It’s alive!’ screams the man, in a large speech bubble. In a smaller thought bubble are the words ‘In God’s name what have I done?’

  Hmmm … I’m reminded of the lie I told this morning to Kane. What exactly have I done, and how on earth am I going to get out of it?

  NSF Field

  Week One: Tuesday

  ‘There’s no getting out of this, boys!’ says Jase, as we follow him to the back gate of the school. ‘Mr Antonelli wants you all in peak fitness for the State Cup so I’m going to push you hard today.’

  Today is the first training day for the Cannons rep squad and Jase, the Warren house teacher and rep squad assistant coach and trainer, has just kindly informed us that we’ll be starting with five laps around the NSF fields.

  ‘I bet the girls don’t have to run five laps on their first training session,’ moans our centre back Christian Kavanagh.

  I glance over to field two and see that the girls are in fact sprinting around an obstacle course, obviously to work on their speed and agility. It looks more fun than five laps. Maybe their coach, Mrs Waylon, isn’t as old-school as Mr Antonelli.

  ‘Don’t worry about what the girls are doing; they’ll work on their stamina later and we’ll work on our agility,’ says Jase. ‘Besides, I’m letting you off easy. The average elite soccer player runs around eleven kilometres a game.’

  ‘I don’t want to run,’ whines Matti Lewis, our left winger. ‘This is the National School of Football not the National School of Blisters, which is all I get out of running!’

  ‘Stop whining; you’re wasting time. This is a two-hour-long training session so I want you all back within fifteen minutes, ready for some drills with Mr Antonelli,’ says Jase. ‘Oh, one more thing. You’re taking these with you.’ Jase empties a bag of soccer balls on the ground in front of us and they bounce all over the place. ‘One ball between three. Don’t let it stop moving. Anyone whose ball is stationary before the end of the five laps will be doing a sixth!’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you say that at the start?’ says Matti, flicking a ball up with his foot and juggling it from boot to boot. ‘I don’t mind running if it’s with a ball!’

  I agree with Matti. Running’s not so bad with a ball in front of you. It was the one thing that kept me from dying of boredom in the holidays. I spent nearly every minute working on my basics. Most mornings I’d head down to the park and spend an hour on drills, juggling, running the ball
back and forth between my baseball cap and the goal, and shooting. And the whole time there were only two things on my mind: I need to keep my spot on the team, and I need to be better than Kane.

  Matti passes the ball to me and I juggle it on my knees, then pop it up in the air and head it to Bazzo. I guess we’ve got our three.

  The group takes off at a breakneck pace with half a dozen soccer balls going every which way.

  Typically, Kane zooms to the front with a couple of other kids but I make sure we stay back. I want to keep my distance from Kane so he doesn’t ask any more questions about the Arsenal–Sydney match.

  Unfortunately, I hadn’t realised that Kane had already blabbed about it to our fellow teammates.

  ‘Hey Nick, is it true that your dad’s getting us all tickets to the Arsenal game?’ asks Matti as he runs alongside Baz and me.

  ‘Um … Yeah, that’s right,’ I say. What else can I say? No, I just made that up because I didn’t want to give Kane the satisfaction of knowing he was right about me, that I’m just a big Fakey McFake from Fake Street, Faketown.

  ‘That’s so cool!’ says our midfielder Marcus de Souza from behind us. I turn and notice he’s running with Anton ‘Bull Ant’ Ivanonic, and our left back Raymond Guerra.

  Great. Now they all know too.

  ‘Are we really going to meet your dad and all the players?’ Matti asks, as he slices a pass behind me to Bazzo.

  ‘Um … sure. We’ll meet everyone,’ I say, forcing a smile that suggests I’m excited when really I’m about as unexcited as I can get and by that I mean I’m petrified.

  ‘What, even the Sydney FC players?’ asks Bull Ant, who’s already a sweaty, red-faced mess after only half a lap. ‘I’m a huge Sky Blue fan!’