The Hopeful, The Hardheaded and the Homework

Chapter Thirteen: Football and Firsts: Enoch

"Heads! ...Oops, sorry..."

Enoch barely ducked in time to avoid the stray football as it flew by his head, courtesy of Hugh practising on his own in the middle of the oval. It was Enoch's free period and Hugh's last class for the day had been cancelled.
Enoch could have reached over and picked up the ball and thrown it back himself as it struck and bounced off the fence but instead he chose to ignore it, lowering his face back towards the picture he was working on as Hugh started to jog over.

"You know..." Hugh panted, rolling the football back towards him with his foot and kicking it up into his hands as he paused to catch a breath. "You'd probably be good at sport if you tried...probably be good for ya."

"Ya sound like my mum...not my choice of elective." Enoch lifted his head and raised an eyebrow, shielding his page from prying eyes with his body, "I fail ta see what use kickin' a ball 'round a field is ta anyone. Pointless, far as I'm concerned."

"Well, duh, it'd be a bit more painful to kick if it had a point, wouldn't it?" Hugh grinned and tucked the ball under his arm.

Enoch just rolled his eyes and graced the terrible joke with a scoff of derision as he went back to his preferred pastime.

"You could play cricket, everyone can play cricket and you've got a pretty mean swing when you want to. Actually...I'd pay good money to see you swing a cricket bat."

"Depends, are you volunteerin' for the ball?"

Hugh laughed and after a moment Enoch felt his presence right over his shoulder as he craned his head to see what Enoch was drawing. He stepped purposely to the right and trod on Hugh's foot hard. "Mind yeh own business."

"Don't be such a grumpy old git." Hugh prodded but, much to Enoch's relief, left him alone after that and kicked his ball back out into the oval and away from Enoch.

The darker haired boy let out a sigh and shook his head to himself as he tried to focus on what he was doing. He could have been, and should have been, working on his maths work as far behind as he was and it wouldn't take much at all for Mr Barron to send a note back to his parents and give him another detention. But Enoch didn't care, it was his least enjoyed class, slightly surprising perhaps given the close relationship it often had to science, but his work ethic was only getting worse and worse for it.
Stuff the trouble he may get in. He was starting to care less and less about everything lately.

Well, that wasn't entirely true at all. Not everything. Some things, namely one, Enoch was caring about more and more and he wasn't sure he was glad for that or not.
When he was around Olive now it was all he could do to try and focus on anything but her very comfortable presence, never mind how annoyed he got whenever another boy sat close to her instead.

He frowned to himself as he carefully shaded the cheekbones with close precision and deft strokes of the pencil. It didn't do justice to the subject, his impression of whom he was determined to hide from unwelcome, prying eyes, but it kept him busy.

Enoch knew that Olive cared. It had been almost blindingly obvious every time she had tried to start a conversation with him and her never dampened determination to get below the walls he had so carefully constructed. He knew too, or at least strongly suspected that she liked him more than she might want him to know. He wasn't stupid, she'd leaned in the same way he was pretending that he hadn't done on Halloween. So it wasn't for fear of rejection like Hugh might think, that kept Enoch from pursuing anything, he'd get over it and go back into his shell of solitude. It was the daunting and thoroughly unfamiliar idea of taking a great big leap out of his small comfort zone. He wasn't good in a group of people at the best of times, social and Enoch were two things that did not go together and he was still annoyed with his parents for making him go in the first place. Admittedly, having the satisfaction of being Olive's point of support had significantly lessened his annoyance.