Unspoken Colours

Chapter 1

The ball was coming straight at me.

At once with little thought or effort; I tackled it away from the opponent and whacked it to Tom, who then smashed it into the goal. The cue flew past the goalie and our team cheered. It was a hot day and the game had been going back and forth endlessly with neither team scoring. And I was getting as always, frustrated by it. Conveniently, following the goal it was half time.

Our team leader, who also happened to be Tom, called us over for a 'team chat'.

"So, I think we should pretty much in this second half just stick to the same tac-tics," he shrugged. "You past to him, he passes to Michael and Michael passes to me and we score. Michael, tackle exactly like you just did there, okay?"

"Yep," I said, wiping the damp sweat off my forehead with the only part left of my shirt that was dry.

"Okay, let's own this second-half, boys."

The second half of the match pretty much duplicated the first; I managed to get hold of the cue in the last few minutes, pass it to Tom who scored and won us the game.

"Well played," he panted, when we dragged ourselves back to the changing rooms after (yet again) pulling the short straw and having to pick up all the cones afterwards.

Tom and I had been mates for a long time now, he's like that mate you just always have. He was one of those friends that if I was bored, I'd just call him. We properly became friends through our common sport - hockey, as we both played for our college, and for our local home team. Even my Dad, who was definitely someone to express little more than a subdued attitude to the majority of things, considered Tom okay.

Dad's somewhat 'approval' came in advantage too; it meant that when we were eleven and Tom's family were all going over to Brazil to watch a hockey match in Rio, I was invited to go and Dad was more than happy to let me. It also meant that when we went to Florida a few years ago, Tom went with us then when we went to Australia the year after he came with us too for three weeks.

They thought he was mature, older and I'll even admit he did look it compared to me. I had childish sandy coloured hair that lay naturally to the left, with the sides cut neatly short. I wasn't completely wimpy-looking, my arms and legs had a little bit of muscle naturally from playing hockey regularly; but even I was happy to admit that was my only natural advantage above anyone else. Tom was taller than me, with piercingly dark hair and a mature looking face with harsh stubble and also possessed a much larger amount of muscle than me, which in all honesty came as an advantage when trying to smuggle ourselves into clubs on holiday.

He actually lost his virginity on one of those holiday too. It was around one o-clock in the morning and thanks to Tom's mature-looking face we'd got into a club and that's where it happened. Yeah, that was also a great night for me. Not.

"Cheers," I panted. "I can't wait 'til the league is done and finished so coach will ease off us a bit, though."

Every year in January, all the colleges competed against each other and our coach begins to increase training hours and also forces us to train harder, even now at four months before the first match. It seemed his whole sad fifty-year-old-guy's life depended on our school winning the national league.

"Boys," Coach grunted to me and Tom, indicating for us to go over to him.

We were the last ones left on the field, but still looked around as Coach was not much of a one-on-one talker, but just your typical gym teacher- strict, loud and disturbingly enthusiastic about being out of breathe and sweaty. We walked over to him and some boy stood next to him who I didn't recognise at all, but had our school uniform on.

"Yes, Sir?"

"This is Alex. He's new to the school and is interested in joining the team. I was wondering if you boys being the two least useless players on the team, if you could show him the ropes a little," Coach said, patting the new kids back jokingly. "This is Tom, he's the captain and that's Michael,"

"Hey," Alex said to us both. He looked pretty usual; his hair was a natural mosaic of different caramel colours, short on the sides and floppy on the top, with evenly suntanned skin; what stood out most were his shockingly black, fashionable circular old style glasses. They kind of reminded me of Harry Potter looking glasses, which somehow had been pulled off in a much better fashionable way. The only thing that struck me was that he had a small stretcher in his left ear that had stretched his ear loop to only about a centimetre, but even so it caught my eye, because earrings were forbidden and Coach was definitely one to enforce the rules.

"He's vice-captain," Tom grinned, pointing at me. "Basically below me."
I scoffed. Oh yeah, Tom was a cocky whatever.

"I don't think-" Tom began, but shut up when Coach gave him a glare. "Okay yeah. During training next week, I suppose."

"No, the court hall is free Wednesday lunchtime, maybe have a try out then, right Micheal can you get those cones sorted please, I'll see you all Friday evening, they'll be a practise match."

For some reason the new kid seemed to be staring intently at me like he was looking for something. To avoid awkwardness and to stop his staring, I began a conversation while walking back to the changing rooms to get my bags.

"So, where are you from?" I asked. "Like have you moved, is that why you started here?"

"Yeah, we moved," he replied, cutting dead that conversation. "So you're Michael? Or are you Tom?"

"Michael,"

He nodded to show his understanding. "So what's with the Coach? He seems well stern."

"Yeah well he likes to maintain the status of our school or whatever.Suppose they want it to seem like a quality privately owned college to go, so I guess wants to keep standards up,"

"It is, though," he said. "Should be anyway, with the amount it costs."

"Yeah," I agreed; slightly embarrassed at my ignorance, as I didn't have a clue how much it cost.

I was sweating so much and my hair stuck to my forehead like a hot wet towel and scraping it back with my hands made it no better, as it just make my hands sweaty.

"Here, tie your hair up, it gets it out of the way," he said. We both had that same 90's flock of seagull haircut, but never once had I considered a bobble. He passed one to me then put his own hair up, making a tiny pony on top of his head. It reminded me of my little sister, Rosie's Barbie dolls.

"Err..." I hesitated, the bobble in the palm of my hand.

"What? Have you never used one before?"

I paused for a moment, because the truth was that I had.

I (more than sometimes) did Rosie's hair for her for school, so I had more bobble-experience than I should have, and was extremely proud of the French plaits I could do, but didn't dare admit this to him. Although in fact, it wouldn't have mattered as it was him who was in possession of the bobbles in the first place. Even so, I shook my head and shrugged as if I had no idea what the bobble was even for.

"That's my Mum waiting over there," I said, as Mom's Mercedes-Benz that Dad brought her Christmas last year pulled up onto the school drive. "Er thanks for the... bobble,"

"No problem, hey nice car," he gawped at my Mom's car from a distance.

I shrugged. It was a nice car I suppose, but when you go to private schools like mine, everyone has a nice car.

"See you later," I said steadily, unsure whether you're meant to say goodbye to someone you met approximately ten minutes ago.

"Yeah," Alex said with his arms crossed. "See you later."