Red, Blue, Me, and You

Sports Day

I'm sitting on my bed feeling like a stalker when Hannah and Olivia walk into my room.
"Your mum let us in," Hannah explains as the two sit down on my bed. I raise my head from my phone for a split second before returning to what I'm looking at.
"Geez Geo, what's so interesting you won't even talk to us?" Olivia asks.
"Nothing," I reply. Hannah reaches over towards my phone, and I scramble out of the way. Unfortunately this gives Olivia the perfect chance to take the phone off me. She looks down at it, and then looks back up at me with a look of shock.
"Geo? Why are you looking at Leah's Facebook page?" she asks. Hannah's face changes to match Liv's.
"Georgia Read!" Hannah exclaims.
"Give me my phone, and then I'll explain."

Liv hands me the phone back. "So why are you spying on your rival?"
"We're not rivals anymore," I admit. I still haven't told either of them about what happened in the museum the other day. Leah and I hadn't won the competition, much to my friends surprise, but they'd decided we must have argued too much to work together properly. "I think we're friends now."
"Friends?" Hannah questions.
"Yeah. We sorta got stuck in a part of the museum we weren't supposed to be in, and we started talking to each other, and I think we're friends now. But, I haven't spoken to her since."
"Still doesn't explain why you're looking at her Facebook posts from two years ago," Olivia comments, "anyway, you'll see her today at school."
"At school?" I question.
"Yeah, Sports Day," Hannah says as if it's obvious, and then I remember a vague mention of that in an assembly I hadn't paid attention in.
"Well, I should probably be in my P.E gear then," I say, as I get up to find it while noticing that my friends are both in theirs. Olivia laughs, and Hannah shakes her head.

A couple of minutes later, we're on the footpath walking to school. I am not very excited for Sports Day. You would think that wanting to play a sport professionally I'd be looking forward to it. Unfortunately, even though I'm a genius at football, I suck at a lot of other sports. I'd bet that I'm probably the most uncoordinated person ever when it comes to catching and throwing a ball with my hands, which is strange because I'm great at passing and receiving with my feet. Everyone knows that I hate losing, but what I hate even more is being the reason a team loses. Let's just hope there's something football related. 

Once we get to school, and the teachers manage to organise us into out year groups, and then sort us into girls and boys (yes, they still stupidly split things as girls and boys, because apparently its "unfair" on us if we have to compete against boys), I am already wondering why I bothered showing up to school today. Then I look across and see Leah sitting not that far away from me, talking to a friend, and the thought of leaving vanishes from my mind. The year 11 girls from my school will be competing against the year 11 girls from her school for the day.

Our first game of the day is thankfully football. It takes forever for the teachers to explain the rules, and set up, but eventually we're out on the field. It's only 7 aside, and we rotate who's on the team after every goal. The aim of sports days is that everyone gets a go, but it's sort of annoying that I'm going to have to spend some of it watching people not know what they're doing, and have to stand on the sideline instead of helping them.

It's my teams turn to start with the ball, so I take it as the whistle blows, passing it back to Hannah. I know Hannah has enough of an idea of what she's doing to pass it in the right direction. I run forward and sideways making space of someone else to be where I was, and sure enough a girl in my class is paying attention. Hannah passes the ball forwards to her, and then the girl passes it through the gap to me. I start to dribble down the wing. I'm hoping someone else will run down the centre line, but am also prepared to have to shoot it myself into the goal. Then I suddenly fall, face planting into the grass. I'm pretty certain there's mud up my nose. I lift my head up, and turn around to sit up. Someone's foot is caught underneath mine. Leah Williamson.

"What did you do that for?" I ask her as I stand up.
She shrugs, "I wasn't going to let you score."
"So you trip me up," I shout, "Leah, you're supposed to be good at this. That wasn't even an attempt to tackle the ball off me. You just wanted to trip me."
"Stopped you from scoring," she replies nonchalantly. That really angers me, so I step forward and push her.
"Oi," she shouts as she pushes me back.
"Ladies, ladies!" a teacher pulls us a part, "both of you off the field now until you've learned how to get along."

I stomp over to the sideline. This is completely unfair. Leah's the one who tripped me over, I'm the one who ended up with a face full of mud, and we're both punished for this. Leah sits down beside me.
"That tackle was fair," she starts, "I knew you could take it."
"Trip," I retort, "you tripped me over. Purposely. There was nothing clean about it."
"Still, I knew you could take it," she almost admits to tripping me over, "you're tough."
"Yeah I am tough," I agree, "and I also play by the rules."
"I'm not a cheater," she protests.
"Never said you were!"
"You basically implied it!"
I try to get up and move away, but she pulls my ponytail as I start to stand up.
"You bitch!" I yell at her. Heads turn towards us, and a teacher's coming over to us again. "Alright girls. I've got a whole bunch of dirty science equipment. You two can spend the rest of the day inside cleaning it, while the rest of us have fun outside playing games," the teacher says, and she turns around to walk towards the school buildings.

Both Leah and I look at each other and reluctantly follow her. She shows us her tote trays full of conical flasks and beakers, and where her cleaning supplies are before leaving us unsupervised. Neither of us make a start on the science equipment, both of us sitting silently trying to ignore the other one. I'm the one to break the silence.
"I thought we were friends now," I say.
"I thought so too," she replies, before a smirk creeps onto her face, "I mean you liked my Facebook post from two years ago, so you mustn't completely hate me."
I internally cringe, and try to hide my embarrassment. "I didn't mean to like your post, I just happened to be, well.. um..."
She lets me stutter like this for a moment before saying, "don't worry. I had a look at your profile too."

We fall into a comfortable silence as we begin the task the teacher set for us. We can't have her coming back and seeing that absolutely nothing has been done. I set a boiling tube back into its tote tray, and turn to watch her try to get an interesting purple mark off a beaker.
"Why are we so bad at getting along?"
"I don't know," she replies.
"Me either," I sigh, "I want to be friends with you."
"I want to be friends with you too," she says, "maybe we should try hanging out sometime?"
"Okay," I nod. I'm surprisingly not opposed to this idea. In fact the idea of getting to see Leah again soon almost excites me.

She finds a small piece of paper and a pen on the teachers desk, and writes down a string of numbers on it.
"My phone number," she says as she hands it to me. I take it from her, my fingers brushing against hers. "You can text me so we can arrange plans."
"Alright then," I reply, "I'll do that."
I return my attention to a conical flask, but I can still feel Leah's eyes on me. I look up at her.
"What?"
"Nothing," she replies, while turning around to pick up another beaker.
"Okay," I say, and look back down at the flask again. I find myself unexpectedly smiling to myself. Something about Leah makes me feel... I don't quite know how to describe it, but I'm really looking forward to getting to hangout with her outside of a school event.