Earhart & Noonan: An "Us Club" Novel (#1)(NaNoWriMo15)

5. Amateur

Manville

The Next Weekend

For any lifelong Fisher Cat fanatic, the bayside city of Manville is unholy ground. Anybody who watches on TV or dares to take the trek to catch the rivalry games in the academy and beyond know of its evil. It's a soccer city unlike any other. Blood has been spilled, tears shed. All under the cover of the region's infamous soupy fog.

The quiet boy with chill pop on low in his ears for the long bus ride in doesn't just get it, he's felt it. He experiences it at least once a year when the bus pops out of the wooded highway, and the city comes into view.

Good old Manville...

Manville lurks on the upper reaches of the valley, to the east of the capital of Arbourton. It's split into three districts by the main waterfront and its many tributaries. Hillside residential areas and downtown form a crescent around the airport/ferry island gateway. He saw it all from his window seat yesterday evening, manifesting in the dying June light.

Usually, the quiet boy would text a photo of the panoramic scene to that special girl of his to signal his arrival, but not this time. He's not in the mood. An irritated anxiousness constricts every fiber of his being as the week-long heaviness lingers while all that matters should be today.

1. Win [ ]

So, let's not zone out, Stephen. Let's look alive as Coach says!

Knocking out the short-haired Eren Yeager look-alike loudmouth in the black-and-brown Bears uniform is all that matters.

Today, deep breaths get a tad harder to take as tension hangs thickly in the Manville air. Hearts will either beat or break at the end of the next ninety minutes. A gold ticket to soccer's promised neverland and a battle to be etched in the history books awaits the winners while the losers will try picking up the pieces on the year's campaign.

Stepping onto the striped rec field (striped fields are the ugliest kind) to the east of downtown, it feels thick alright. No fog. Still.

I stare down my predatory competition, and to say I'm feeling off is a vast understatement. I'm terrified. I'm always anxious during games. But, this? I can see flashes of number twenty-five devouring me whole. Yeah. He's going to rip my neck open and lick his paws clean.

I've been warming up for the past half-hour, and Jordan hasn't said a word to me. Nothing about my crew cut. Nothing about the eye black. I think it's because he's as focused as I am. What does he even have left to say to me that he hasn't said all year anyway?

Every time we've met in the regional finals, Jordan's beaten me. There was one year I tasted the finals. The Marmots upset the Bears. We beat the Marmots. I remember a pizza and being sacrificed to the Lions and...that's it.