(WARNING- DEEPLY UNPLEASANT SUBJECT MATTER.  CAUTION ADVISED.)

August 1999

Just as they were about to start the second half, Isaac looked up at the stands and spotted Mr Forrest.  He hadn’t seen him before, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there- the Ravens Hall pitch was on a big, open field, and the spectators’ stands were right in front of the sun.  Half the time, when you looked in that direction, all you saw was a silhouette in front of a big, yellow burst of light that made your eyeballs ache.

Mr Forrest.  Isaac hadn’t seen him in three years.  He’d been the PE teacher at Ivy Brook Primary, but then he’d left just before Isaac had gone into Year Five.  Isaac wanted to get his attention, maybe get in a little wave before the kick-off, but something made him hold back.  He had a weird, guilty feeling, like he knew Mr Forrest wouldn’t be pleased to see him.

Then the coach blew the whistle, and Isaac had other things to focus on.  The score going into the second half was one-all, so both teams were ready to risk life and limb just to get to the ball.  Isaac managed to get hold of it, at the price of getting his shins hacked to bits by the Mountfitchet boys’ boots, and passed it along to Ben Larson, who got it halfway up the field and passed it to Tommy MacLeod.

Tommy did alright at first, weaving around the Mountfitchet defenders like a pinball.  Tommy was a little bit shorter than most of the boys in the Ravens, but that just made him harder to catch.  If he’d just made it another yard or two, he could have passed it back to Isaac and everything would have been fine.  Instead, one of the Mountfitchet boys moved to tackle him, and Tommy shrank back.

For a moment, Isaac wondered if that was really what he’d seen.  Maybe the Mountfitchet boy had been a bit rough with his tackle, and Tommy had just stumbled backwards?  Maybe the Mountfitchet boy had even fouled him?  But when the coach bellowed across the field, “MacLeod, what are you doing?!?”  Isaac knew what had happened.  Tommy had seen the Mountfitchet boy coming towards him, he’d panicked and jumped back, and that mistake had cost them the ball.  Isaac saw the look of disgust on the coach’s face, and thought about Mr Forrest again.

His memory was a bit fuzzy, but Isaac was pretty sure he’d embarrassed himself in front of Mr Forrest somehow.  Not right before Mr Forrest had left, but at the end of Year Two or Year Three, so that every time Isaac had seen him for the next few years, he’d got that hot, squirmy feeling in his stomach and wanted to hide.

There had been… some kind of game?  Had it been in a PE lesson, or at an after-school club?  Isaac couldn’t remember exactly.  All he knew was that he’d been too much of a wimp to join in, and that Mr Forrest had given him exactly the same look of disgust that the coach was giving Tommy right now.

Isaac didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Tommy or to kick him in the shin.  On the one hand, he knew what it was like to be the person who screwed things up for everyone else, but on the other, he’d worked very hard to stop being that person.  He’d managed to stop being scared of stupid things (spiders, the dark… even escalators, for a while), and to join in and make friends.  For the last few years, he’d barely thought of how he used to be when he was younger.  He’d been too busy living his life.

A cheer went up from the stand.  In barely ten seconds. Mountfitchet had managed to get the ball all the way up to the pitch and into the Ravens’ goal.  Isaac cringed.  He had a feeling that Tommy was never going to live this down.

 

June 1994

Isaac had had a lot of fun finding and eating bits of popcorn people had dropped on the floor, until his mum caught him doing it and got him to stop.

“I can’t believe it,” she snapped, “I thought you were old enough to know not to eat things that have been on the ground.”

Isaac fidgeted.  Mum was right, he’d known it was a stupid idea even as he’d done it… but popcorn tasted really, really good, and he didn’t have any of his own.

Mum and Dad were at one of the metal tables on the upper half of the playground, the ones that were covered in little puddles of beer.  Further down, there were face-painting stalls, a bring and buy, and a bouncy castle, but Isaac had been to all three, and now he was bored.  And now he didn’t even have popcorn to console him.

“If I can’t trust you on your own, you’ll have to spend the rest of the evening sat with me.”  One look at the table told you what a dire threat this was.  The chairs were the metal kind that drained all the heat out of your legs and made you die of frostbite even though it was June, and the table itself was covered in beery grime, so you wouldn’t even be able to lean on it without making your elbows stink for the rest of the night.  “Is that going to have to happen?”

Isaac looked down at the ground, which was covered in popcorn that he wouldn’t get to taste.  “No.  Sorry, Mum.”

“Right!”  Mum gave a nod of satisfaction, and turned back to the table.  Isaac trudged off, doing his best to look trustworthy in case she turned round to check on him.

He wandered towards the dancefloor (really a big patch of tarmac with disco lights flashing all around it), wondering if he should wait for a song he liked and join in.  There was a little stall nearby selling drinks and snacks, but Isaac had mostly run out of money, and besides, they were only selling those weird fruit drinks in the square containers, the ones that always seemed to go down wrong and make you cough and get a sore throat.

He looked around and spotted the fortune teller’s tent.  He probably didn’t have enough money for that either.  Besides, he didn’t think he really wanted to see the future.  He didn’t like the thought of seeing himself and his friends as old people.

“Hello, Isaac,” said a voice, right in his ear.  Isaac jumped, and Mr Forrest laughed.  He was always doing stuff like that, joking around, like the time he’d told Isaac’s class that they’d be doing parachute jumps in PE, but it turned out what he meant was holding up that big red bit of cloth they kept at the back of the hall and jumping under it.  “Keeping busy?”

Isaac smiled up at him.  “Yeah.”

Mr Forrest scratched his nose.  “So I suppose you won’t have time to come out to the swimming pool with me?”

Now, that was interesting.  The swimming pool was in a little building just on the other side of the vegetable garden, and Isaac had never been inside.  “I thought you had to be in Year Six to go in the swimming pool?”

Mr Forrest slapped him on the back.  “Not tonight.  You’ll be with me, so it’s allowed.  Unless you’re too busy…”

“No!” said Isaac quickly, “I’ll come!”  He liked swimming, and he loved the thought of being the only kid in Year Two who knew what the swimming pool looked like.  He could imagine it right now- the other kids wouldn’t believe him at first, but then when they all got to Year Six and were allowed in the swimming pool, they’d look around and realise that Isaac had described it perfectly.  He’d get four years’ worth of respect, all at once.

Mr Forrest grinned.  “You sure?”

“Yeah!”

“Alright, then!”  Mr Forrest slapped him on the back again.  “Come on, I’ll get you some icecream on the way.”

(To Be Continued)