Chapter Seven
Bradley served. He had a fast serve, and she couldn’t immediately get the measure of it. He won the first two points on his serve, and it wasn’t because Abby let him. The other boys were silent. Liam turned his face away.
Abby put the audience out of her head. All that mattered were the ball, the table, and the net.
And the net was where her first service went. It was her ninety mile an hour special. Wasted. She was three points down.
Abby knew that a sensible player would make their next serve a little safer. She did not. She aimed for ninety-two miles an hour.
It cleared the net, and Bradley’s bat. He got nowhere near it. Tom clapped, politely.
If she’d been playing Liam, Abby would now have jumped around and crowed. Instead, she focussed on returning Bradley’s serve. This time she got to it, and managed a decent rally before she hit the ball too hard and lost the point. And she did lose it, Bradley didn’t win it: she was quite clear with herself on that.
Well, she wouldn’t lose another one. She won the next point with a fierce chop. Now he was only four-two up. Tom clapped again, and this time the other boys joined in; except for Liam.
But at least he turned around to watch, with an expression of faint incredulity, as if he could not believe that this silent, intent, crouching tiger of a player was his little sister.
Abby served, and aced Bradley. He returned her next serve, but with such a poor, tame shot that Abby’s eyes glinted. She smashed it into oblivion.
Bradley was taken aback. That was the first smash she had subjected him to. However, it was not the last.
After she’d won the next two points with a smash and her deluxe lob which sailed at least six feet into the air, he flung his bat down on the table.
Tom handed it back. “Come on,” he said. “Don’t throw the towel in yet. You’re only four-six down.”
“I’m not throwing the towel in!” Bradley yelled. “She’s not playing properly!”
“Oh, yes I am,” said Abby. “This is properly. You just don’t know what properly is.” And she put so much spin on her next serve that it was unable to bounce but skidded across the table like a duck on a frozen pond. Bradley missed it by a mile.
“That was properly too,” she said. “That was backspin.”
“Shut up.”
“That was a lob,” said Abby, staring at the ceiling.
“I said shut up.”
“This... is a smash. And so was that.”
“I said SHUT UP!” roared Bradley. The score was now four-ten.
Abby shut up. She only needed one more point to win the game.
Chop. Block. The last point.
“Yes!” yelled Abby. “Topspin!”
And now she danced a jig and crowed. “I love topspin!” She bent down and spread her arms across the table. “And I love this table.”
“Game to Abby,” said Tom, grinning.
“Look at her!” cried Bradley. “She’s a nutcase.”
“I’m a winning nutcase,” Abby said. “Change ends? Best of five?”
“You have got to be kidding,” Bradley snarled.
“In that case, Abby wins,” said Tom.
“As if I cared,” said Bradley.
“You’re not bad,” said Abby generously. “You started out quite well. But I’m used to playing Liam. Liam’s tough. You should play Liam if you want a proper match.”
Bradley stared at her; then glanced at Liam.
“Liam’s four times better than me,” said Abby. “I don’t mind. He’s three years older. I expect he’ll win the singles trophy too next year.”
Bradley said something very rude about the ping-pong trophy.
“Ooh,” said Abby, wide-eyed. “What does that mean? Can you draw me a diagram?”
“Hey, lighten up,” said Tom. “She’s only a kid.”
“She’s a freak! That’s what my sister told me, and she was right,” said Bradley furiously.
Abby opened her mouth to say that Maya would know all about freaks. Or something like that. But by the time she’d thought of the right words, she’d also realised that she was about to make exactly the sort of spiteful remark that Maya enjoyed making. And she didn’t need to. The icy wave had flowed right through her and away.
So instead she said, “Champion freak, that’s me. Yay.” And she twirled round on her toes.
“Come on, Brad! Why don’t you give Liam a game?” said Tom.
“Sure,” said Liam. “Any time.” He wasn’t looking quite so strained and anxious now.
“At (rude word) ping-ping?” Bradley said. His voice was loud. At the rude word, Abby saw the supervisor’s head jerk up. He started to stroll over to their table.
“Then at least admit he must be good at it,” said Tom.
“He’s a freak too. It’s not a real sport,” Bradley growled. “And that trophy’s just a piece of (rude word) tin.”
“Oh,” said Abby. “You’re right. I expect your sixteen football trophies are all made of solid gold. You’re a trophy trap, aren’t you? Just can’t stop winning them. I’d like to give you something to add to your collection.”
And picking up the boot-bag, she handed it to Bradley.
“What’s this?”
“A football trophy for you. Actually, a pair.”
He unzipped the bag. The plastered boots fell out onto the table, clunk clunk.
They looked even worse than when Abby had made them. They appeared to be vomiting plaster. The other boys thought they were hilarious, to the point where two of them collapsed and rolled on the floor laughing, with gasps of “Concrete boots!” “Ol’ lead boots!”
“Rofling,” said Abby with interest. She had never seen anybody do it for real.
Liam did not laugh. He looked bewildered.
Bradley did not laugh. He picked up the plastered boots and hurled them, hard, across the table.
There was a loud crack. The studs gouged a gash along the wood: the net collapsed.
“Oh!” said Abby. “My best table!” And she burst into tears.
The supervisor came running over, brisk and busy. He said a number of sharp things about the damaged table, and told Bradley he was banned from the sports hall. Bradley swore at him, and promptly got banned from the entire sports centre.
“But he’s meant to be playing football,” said Kamal.
“Not on our premises,” declared the supervisor firmly.
“I wouldn’t play on your (rude word) team if you (rude word) paid me,” shouted Bradley. Abby thought that he really needed to learn some new swear words.
Plungledogs. Cuffmangly. Woogling. Thinking up swear words helped her to stop crying. As Bradley stamped off, leaving his new trophies behind on the table, she wiped her face on her T-shirt.
“Sorry,” she said to Liam.
“What about?” He was grinning.
“About the boots. They were meant to be for you. I brought your real ones, though, as well.” She emptied her rucksack of them.
“Come on, Liam,” said Tom. “We’ll be late for the match. Great game, Abby. Brad was getting too big for his boots anyway. Especially those concrete ones!”
Laughing, the other boys ran after him out of the hall. Only Liam lingered.
“It’s usually me who shouts and throws things,” said Abby with some wonder. “It’s strange watching somebody else do it.”
“You play better when you don’t.” He handed her the ping-pong trophy. “You keep this now,” he said. “That’s fine.”
She hugged it. “It’s not cheap tin, is it, Liam? It is a proper trophy?”
“Absolutely,” he assured her. “With your name on it.” He ran off after the others.
Abby read it again to make sure. Then she threw the concrete boots into a bin, put the trophy in her rucksack, and rang Mum to tell her she was coming home now. As she crossed the football field, the match had already started.
She watched Liam for a w
hile. He possibly did have two left feet. But they were quite fast feet, and he looked happy.
“So am I,” decided Abby. On the way home past the shops, she took the trophy out of the rucksack and raised it high above her head in triumph.
She saw Maya and her gang of girls across the road. How sad to spend your Saturday mooching around the chemist’s shop, thought Abby, instead of walloping your brother’s enemies at ping-pong.
Maya and the girls all turned to look at her. They were saying things to each other that she could not hear.
Abby bounced the trophy up and down on her head. “The horse does eighty per cent of the work!” she yelled, and jumped in the air to click her heels together. A perfect Nijinsky.
She bet Maya couldn’t do Nijinskys. She bet Maya would be too stuck-up to try.
So with the trophy on her head, she did Nijinsky after Nijinsky, the dance of champions, all the way back home.
The End
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