The Boy With Wings by Lenny Henry

Author:Lenny Henry [Henry, Lenny]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

And perhaps, though he didn’t know it yet, it did.

The crowd went wild. Who knew that Wilkinson was such a star player? Cheers echoed around the pitch.

‘Come on, Tunde!’

‘Look at Beaky go!’

‘Yes, bruv! Yes, yes, yes!’ (That was Nev, who was waving from the sidelines.)

Quinn Patterson got increasingly angrier as the game developed. His plan seemed to be to cheat and shoulder people off the ball whenever possible. The referee didn’t notice – she was obviously short-sighted – even facing the wrong way when, at one ridiculous point, Quinn tackled Tunde, his own teammate. Mr Grierson slapped his forehead so hard his brains nearly came out the other side.

‘What are you doing, Patterson???’ he yelled. He was beginning to think it wasn’t worth having a wild animal on the team if it kept biting chunks out of his own teammates.

A couple of minutes later, all was forgotten: Tunde scored a totally sick over-the-head, bicycle-kick-style goal and EVERYBODY from St Pritchett’s jumped in the air, whooped, hollered and did a variety of dances.

‘Yes!’ screamed Mr Grierson. ‘Yessssssss!’

But the home team’s joy didn’t last long. St Grayson’s main striker, a giraffe-tall, curly-headed boy called Dunster, managed to score two sneaky goals in quick succession. He celebrated by doing flick-flacks, landing on his hands and then kicking back like a donkey. Everyone just stopped and stared in awe.

The whistle blew and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Half-time,’ said Mr Grierson. ‘Thank goodness.’

He followed behind the team into the locker room. Everyone ate oranges or digestive biscuits and glugged orange squash. They all had their glum game faces on.

Nev hobbled in. Mr Grierson stood in the centre of the room, looking moody as everyone ate.

‘Great play, Tunde,’ he said. ‘Dembe, you too, nice work. But as for the rest of you! What’re you doing out there? Get it together! Focus! Play as a unit! Watch each other’s backs. The whole school’s watching us this afternoon. This is our chance to scrape ourselves out of the relegation zone and hold our heads up high for the first time in ages!’

The team hung their heads.

Grierson rounded on Quinn.

‘Patterson – you’ve gotta get it out of your head that it’s just you out there. Do yourself a favour. Get the ball to Tunde or Dembe – end of.’

There was a pause. Quinn scowled, then Nev couldn’t help himself.

‘Yeah, Quinn, let Tunde and Dembe put in work and stop being a nincompoop, innit?’

Quinn glared at Nev.

‘If you hadn’t tripped on a tiny pebble, we’d be in the lead by now, snake-head.’

Nev shook his head, tossing his dreadlocks.

‘Well, you ain’t got me, y’get me? You lot are on your own. Coach is right – get your head in the game – or we goin’ down.’

Quinn opened his mouth to say something mean, but just then the knock came for the end of half-time. The team filed out. Audley Barton patted Tunde on the back, as did a few others. Dembe got up, glugged squash from her huge bottle and popped the cap back on.

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