vanilla with whipped cream and a lot of chopped nuts
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Jolly Hockey Sticks
Rating: PG
Challenge: Vanilla #5: friendly competition
Toppings/Extras: chopped nuts, whipped cream
Wordcount: 1,451
Summary: A hockey match turns into more than a school competition.
Notes: Takes place in an AU in which the cast are all present-day students in English secondary schools, one private and one public. I don’t really know where this came from... thinking about my own days on the hockey pitch I guess!
It was silent and ritualistic on the pitch that day, the grass soggy beneath their studded boots and their hair scraped back on their heads. The two team captains stood in the centre of the pitch, staring each other down as grey clouds blotted out the sun which was already setting in typical English October style. It was only half-past three; it may as well have been six in the evening for all the light there was.
Captain of the home team, Bruton’s Private School, was Verity Whitehall, blonde hair cut into a sleek bob and kept from her face with a navy blue band. She was exceptionally pretty in an overtly confident and sharp-featured way and snapped gum between her glossed lips as they waited for the referee whistle to sound.
Stood opposite to her and representing the local public school-Wendell Vale School-in all of its shabby glory with mismatched hockey sticks and creased and crumpled polo shirts was Adele Merritt. Her jutting chin was lifted and her eyes filled with distaste as she glared at the wealthy girl in front of her. Both teams were squaring off with their various markers.
There was something about Bruton’s that made the entire match incredibly personal for the Wendell girls. Perhaps it was merely that the wealthier girls were so much more privileged; but it was more than that. It was because the two schools were both on either side of the same town, because they saw each other so much in lunch breaks and because the two schools had been sworn enemies since time immemorial. Even when she had been a lowly Year Seven, Adele had scoffed at the Bruton’s students and their expensive pinstriped uniforms.
The whistle rang out across the pitch and the two girls performed the next stage of the ritual; the taps of their wooden sticks, three rushed clacks bouncing across the field before Adele drove the heel of her stick under the round, orange ball with such force that it left a great welt in the sopping turf, chipping the ball to her left and-hopefully-to a player on her team.
In both teams, girls previously inanimate and fending cold from their knees and fingers as best as they could jerked into action. On both sides, voices began to rise in the skin-stabbing wind as the plastic ball rolled across the neatly trimmed grass.
“Fuckin’ here!” Pia shouted when Taisy Daniels-an agile, tiny girl on their team scooped up the ball in the wooden foot of her stick in the run-up to the top of the pitch. The ref shot Pia a dirty look for cursing-showing Wendell Vale up in front of the posh folks did not please their PE teacher-but said nothing. Taisy gave it a whack with a resounding plastic snap and the ball flew.
Adele couldn’t help but follow Verity Whitehall’s flitting figure with her eyes. She had disliked that girl for a long time.
“There’s a fuckin’ giant on their team,” Pia said-none too quietly, either-at a moment of peace when she arrived next to Adele, nodding towards said giant. Adele had noticed her; it was hard not to. She had Walshe emblazoned across the back of her white polo shirt and was a good head taller than every other girl on the pitch. The girl obviously heard what Pia had said but ignored it determinedly.
It started to rain around half time, which they had all been expecting anyway. It was a whitish, vision-obscuring rain that was absorbed hungrily by the already-sodden earth, turning it into a numbingly cold swamp, each step causing a splatter of rain to trickle further beneath their shin-pads. Each goal was ringed by a lake before too long, the ground dipped in each goal’s mouth thanks to years of goalkeepers boredly frittering away at the ground there with their sticks.
When the two teams swapped sides after half time, they exchanged glares in passing.
“Aren’t they cute?” Verity remarked to one of her lackeys before taking her place in the centre of the pitch to face off against Adele once more. Now, there was a girl with a scary gleam in her eyes. One that needed bringing down a peg. When they both dove for the ball after the three taps, Verity drove hers in at an awkward angle, deliberately tangling the protruding feet of their sticks. Soft, cold rain feathering over the exposed skin of their arms, Adele tore her stick from the mess and was forced to relinquish the ball.
“That’s cheating!” Adele exclaimed towards the referee but she refused to listen; said referee was from Wendell Vale School and apparently terrified of pissing off the private school team. The unfairness of it stung bitterly at the Wendell team and their efforts were redoubled.
It was past half-time and neither team had scored; there had been a fair few struggles over the ball and a couple of corner shots but nothing had come of any of them. The Bruton’s girls were beginning to look less sleek, not that the Wendell Vale girls were faring much better.
Pia wrestled the ball from the dribble of a Bruton’s girl in one pile-driving smash of a tackle that echoed back from the school building on the other side of the field; nobody could tackle like Pia Rees could, she went in with her stick practically over her shoulder and God save anyone that tried to stop her. She had split a fair few hockey sticks in her time, and as much as it didn’t help the Wendell Vale school budget she wore this fact as a badge of pride.
“Merritt!” she shouted before chipping the ball straight at her.
The line towards the opposing goal was clear; Adele tucked the ball neatly ahead of her stick’s foot and let it roll across the grass only inches in front of her feet, keeping it close, pushing it side to side as she made her way over the damp grass, breath turning to fog in her face and knuckles turning to the colour of cauliflower-but victory in her grasp...
Until a solid force of wood made contact with her shin-pad from behind, dragging one leg out from under her and sending her flying to the ground in spectacular fashion. Rainwater exploded in an icy shower as she landed in the waterlogged grass, mud streaking up her legs, her knee-socks, her shorts, her shirt, even her face. It stuck under her nails and covered her hands, her own stick making painful contact with her left knee as she landed. The pain was eclipsed by the force of her anger as Verity Whitehall daintily glided ahead of her, stealing the ball and tapping it one of her own teammates.
Unable to believe that the whistle hadn’t been blown, Adele turned to the referee, hair streaming rainwater down her back.
“Miss Johns! The bitch tripped me!”
“Don’t use language like that on the pitch, Merritt,” Miss Johns snapped, but not without trepidation. “Or I’ll be forced to deduct a goal from your team.”
Mud-drenched and furious, Adele got to her feet with a slap of damp clothing.
“What goal? You mean the goal we would have had if that cheating whore hadn’t tripped me up?”
“That’s it, Merritt, minus one goal for Wendell Vale.”
By now Pia had joined in, always opportunistic for the chance to bicker with anyone at all.
“That’s not fair!” she barked. “Are you fuckin’ blind?”
“Rees!”
Needless to say, their team lost at minus five to zero. Bitter at the injustice of it all, Adele refused even to shake hands with their opponents-resulting, incidentally, in the removal of another of their nonexistent goals for showing bad sportsmanship. As she trudged off of the pitch, she found Liddy Graham knee-deep in bog and pulled the weaker girl out of the water with such force that she nearly dislocated her shoulder.
”This is a bloody joke,” Adele snarled, wanting to throw her hockey stick to the ground in rage.
“I know, right?” Pia said, appearing by her side and spitting onto the grass. “I want to kick that fuckin’ captain’s head in.”
“The only one that can even play is that sodding Walshe girl, and she’s probably a man,” Adele raved, a little unfairly. She was about to continue when she heard jogging footsteps behind her and who would appear at her side but Verity Whitehall, smiling sweetly, hair curling slightly fro the rainwater.
“Good match,” she said, holding out her hand.
Adele looked down at her hand and then back up to her pretty face.
This is war.