Page 23 of Hard to Hold

MY STOMACH GROWLS SO LOUDLY I can hear it over the thundering of my pulse in my ears.

Just act normal, Rush. Move slow, look around at the produce, and then thumb through the magazine as if you don’t feel like your stomach is eating its way from your insides out. Don’t think about the biscuits you’ve stashed in your pockets or the banana you’ve tucked in the back of your waistband beneath your jacket.

The lightheadedness hits me again. It’s cruel and unrelenting as it blackens my vision, and I’m forced to grip the side of the shelving so I don’t pass out.

It’s been twenty-four hours—maybe, I can’t remember—since I last ate a leftover bite of protein bar that my teammate offered me. Since then, I’ve had two, three-hour training sessions where it took everything I had to focus on putting on the performance they expect.

The same performance I’m praying will get me out of this bloody nightmare.

Because I’m so close, so very close to winning the only scholarship the Liverpool Academy gives out every year.

The scholarship—a chance—that might change everything for me. Not only would it take me a step further toward playing in the Premier League, but it would also provide me a place to live and an allowance for food. It wouldn’t be much but it would be way more than I have now. Then I’d be able to stop pretending one of those flats on Crestfall Lane is mine. People see me walk up to it, but they never notice the kid in his football kit continues into the alley behind it. No one questions the abandoned post box out front that sometimes has mail in it addressed to a Mr. McKenzie. No one realizes the lock on the little shed back there is mine. That I’ve found a place to keep me out of the rain, that has a sink in it so I can wash my clothes and myself.

So I can pretend that I’m like any other normal teenager in Kirkby—going to school, spending every spare moment on the pitch, drinking a pint on the sly.

But this is what I need to do. This is how I have to live so my dreams come true. So I have a chance.

It’s playing professional football or . . . or nothing.

No one cared when cancer took Maude McKenzie’s life.

Even fewer thought to wonder where her fifteen-year-old son was and what was to become of him.

“Excuse me, young man.” I startle at the voice of a little old lady standing beside me and staring at me with her owl-like eyes. “Can I get in there?” She points to the bags of noodles in front of me.

I’m jolted back to the present. To the hunger pangs and the sore muscles from training. To the hope tinged with despair. To the drive to keep this all hidden. Because if I don’t get the hell out of here, I’m going to faint and then someone will notice the food I’m about to steal.

Then it will all be over.

The dream.

My escape.

Everything.

There’s a reason I’m in this shop. It’s the only one I haven’t been caught stealing from yet. The only one where the shop assistants at the front don’t start following me around to check for any sleight of hand.

“Yes.” I give a quick shake of my head. “Sorry. I was—”

“Thinking about the big game tonight, huh?” she asks and motions to the Liverpool Football Club hand-me-down training gear I have on. “Man U doesn’t stand a chance.”

“They sure don’t,” I murmur before offering a quick smile and hurrying from the shop with my head down, and my arms wrapped around me to ward off the chill of the coming evening.

As soon as I clear the edge of the building, I rip down the peel of the banana and can’t eat it fast enough. My stomach aches and growls. With half the banana gone, I tear open the packet of biscuits with a frenzy only someone who is truly hungry can understand.

You want to slow down, to save some for later, but all you can think about is sating the hunger pangs now. All you know is that you need them to go away for a while, because there’s no way you can go to another training on an empty stomach.

How can you be better than everyone else when you’re hungry?

How much longer can you hold out?

With a biscuit in one hand and the half-eaten banana in the other, I rush around the corner and run smack into someone.

We both emit a strangled cry in surprise, but mine is also because the food in my hands falls to the ground. The banana has broken off and rolled across the dirt and the biscuits have spilled out of their package. I’m so busy silently crying over the food that it takes me a second to look up and see my teammate, Rory, and his dad beside him.

Or the policeman who just stepped up beside me with his intimidating glare and shiny handcuffs.

“Again?” the policeman asks, as tears of humiliation burn in the back of my throat. It’s one thing to be caught stealing again, it’s another to be caught doing it in front of Rory and his very affluent dad, Archibald Matheson.