Silent Striker by Pete Kalu Read Free Book Online

sniffed him. Calmly, Marcus hauled himself up the wall. When he turned back, the dog was still sitting, whining pleadingly.
    ‘Good boy,’ Marcus said, ‘I’ll be back.’
    He jumped down into the alley, dashed back to his kitchen, raided the fridge again, ran out and climbed the wall. The dog did not bark this time. It was already sitting, its tail wagging. Marcus threw it another piece of sausage. It gobbled up the meat, turned and sat again.
    ‘Good boy,’ said Marcus.
    He threw another morsel and jumped into the yard as the dog chewed it. Marcus rescued four of the other balls, even though they were all badly mangled. He left one ball, the most chewed one, for the dog to play with.
    He went up to the dog, and felt its collar and found the silver disc that dangled there. It was engraved with one word. Nero.
    ‘Nero?’ he said.
    The dog looked up at him, still chomping on sausage.
    ‘Good boy, Nero.’
    Nero stopped chewing. His ears pricked up and his head swung round towards his house.
    Suddenly the back door opened and the owner was out in the backyard with them.
    ‘What are you doing in my yard?’ the owner shouted at Marcus. He was tall and had wild hair, scruffy trousers and what looked like newspaper stuffed into the sleeves of his woolly grey jumper.
    The dog was between them.
    ‘Sorry, I came for my ball,’ Marcus said.
    ‘That dog’ll rip you to pieces and it’ll be your own fault!’ the owner said, sawing the air with his hands as he said it.
    Nero growled. More at the owner than at Marcus though, Marcus thought.
    ‘Sorry,’ Marcus said. ‘I’ll go now.’
    He leaped onto the wall, leaped off it into the alleyway and ran back home. Later that night, his mum moaned about him eating too much, that they couldn’t afford it, and she’d have to put a lock on the fridge door if it carried on. She was on the computer as she said this, searching for websites of rival double-glazing companies. His dad grunted a hello. He had taken the photograph of Marcus’s grandfather off the wall and was staring at it. ‘He was a chief you know,’ Marcus’s dad said to him, as Marcus headed to his room.
    ‘I know, Dad,’ Marcus sighed. ‘You’ve told me enough times.’

ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES
    T here were four chairs outside the head of year’s office. One of the chairs had a dead beetle on it. Two of them were wet from a roof leak. He sat on the fourth. He had been hauled out of Monday form class by a teaching assistant and escorted here. He waited. Eventually the teaching assistant emerged from the office and waved him in, before scuttling away down the corridor.
    Marcus entered and looked around. He’d been here a few times before. The same certificates in frames on the wall behind the desk, the same bag of golf clubs in a corner, the same ‘You-Don’t-Have-To-Be-Crazy-To Work-Here-But-It-Helps’ mug on his table by the keyboard. That same ‘shame-on-you’ look on the head of year’s face.
    ‘I’ll keep this short, Marcus,’ Ozone said. ‘Actions have consequences. Walking out of Miss Podborsky’s class has to be punished.’
    Ozone’s hairspray afro shook with sternness. Yet something in his tone told Marcus that the head of year himself was not fully committed to what he was saying.
    ‘But why, Sir?’
    ‘Cause and effect. Understand?’
    ‘No, Sir.’ Marcus imagined the gold Buddha that his mum kept on her bedroom mantelpiece. ‘Calm. Be calm,’ he thought.
    ‘For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. You know that. Marcus. Year 8 Physics. So the consequences are these. I’m suspending you from the school football team.’
    ‘What?! Sir?! That’s nuts.’
    Marcus suddenly remembered Mr Davies’s heated conversation on the touchline with Ozone. So this was what it was about.
    ‘I’m not going to argue about it,’ said Ozone. ‘My decision is made.’
    ‘But that’s crazy, Sir. That’s the stupidest thing I can imagine. What has football got to do