Receiving

Chapter 11

Brent’s POV

Riley’s didn’t come to training on Monday. Coach is furious at her as we are playing our first play-off game this week and he wants his best team which includes her. She has been avoiding all of us so no one knows why she didn’t come. She isn’t talking to me during maths. I have given up even talking to her as I don’t get a response from her.

We had training again on Tuesday. I saw Riley but she was still in casual clothes. Coach walked over to her. She said one thing and then left. Coach walked over to us and I knew that he had bad news to give us.

‘Riley has quit’ he said.

‘What?’ we all exclaimed.

‘She says that it is too hard and she isn’t enjoying it’ he sighed.

‘I can’t believe she quit right before our biggest game’ Austin said voicing all our thoughts.

‘Brent and Thomas can you go and see if you can talk some sense into her and see if you can find Luke at the same time as he isn’t here’ Coach said.

I was too caught up in the business surrounding Riley that I hadn’t noticed that Luke isn’t here. Thomas and I striped off our pads and headed towards school. We guessed that she most likely still here but we had no idea where she might be.

We wandered around the school for ten minutes before we ran into Luke and he was heading to the sports field.

‘What have you been doing?’ I asked him.

‘I had a meeting with my English teacher. What are you guys doing not at training?’ he asked.

‘We are looking for Riley’ Thomas said.

‘Where have you looked?’ Luke asked.

‘The field, the library, basically the whole school’ I said. It was painful walking around the whole school in football boots.

‘I know where she will be’ Luke said. We followed him and stopped outside the hall. I heard music playing before and I had just assumed it was the cheerleaders. Luke led us into a row of seats about ten rows from the stage.

Riley hadn’t noticed us yet. She was dancing on stage. She had pointe shoes on and the only reason I know that is what they are called is because my sister has a pair. The music is sombre.

‘How did you know she would be here?’ Thomas asked in a quiet tone.

‘I found her in here about a year ago and she made me promise not to tell’ Luke said.

‘I never remember her dancing’ Thomas said mystified.

‘She last danced competitively when she was eight’

‘I remember going to the shows’

‘Clearly she kept dancing in secret sometimes’

We crept out of the hall before she spotted us but we didn’t make it.

‘What are you doing in here’ she snapped from the stage.

We turned back around so we were facing her. She jumped off the stage. Instead of just jumping off she spread her legs into the splits before snapping them together to land on a seat in the front row. She jumped through the rows until she was in the last one.

‘We were looking for you’ Brent said.

'And what do you want?’ she asked.

‘Coach wants you to consider joining the team again’ he asked.