Nathaniel Cruz, St.Andrew’s star midfielder shook his head in indignation at the words being yelled by his coach. On that day, he felt even more annoyed than usual by the coach’s endless shouting and running back and forth during the game. Although he was only eighteen, he had a strong idea of how he would do the job of managing the team much more efficiently. He was also quite determined about his own future career as a footballer, for which St. Andrew’s Secondary School, a place well known for its advanced sports education, was giving him a great push. It had launched about a dozen great athletes on the bumpy, but shiny, road of their professional careers. Its junior football team was a legend of its own due to its successes at the annual national championships organised by the English Schools’ Football Association. And this year, Nate and the team once again stood a good chance to make it all the way to the final.
They regarded their opposing team, Downhill High, as quite an unpleasant rival, and their ’duels’ often ended in a tie. This was thanks to the tactics applied with conviction by Downhill’s coach. He preferred a passive, defensive style to attacking football. This tactic almost drove Mr Lewis, the coach of St. Andrew’s, crazy. Even at this moment, he was running up and down the edge of the pitch, occasionally crossing the side line, while shouting instructions to his players. The linesman kept sending threatening glances towards him, signalling that if he continued to violate the touchline, he would be sent to the seating area as punishment.
St. Andrew’s attacked into the sun, so visibility wasn’t the best for them. This, and the one-one scoreline of the match annoyed Nathaniel all the more, and his general mood had of late been a bit edgy, anyway. He wiped his sweaty forehead into the sleeve of his royal blue jersey, and murmured something between his teeth, then turned to face the ball again.
Despite it being a weekday afternoon, there was quite a crowd of about two hundred people seated in the school’s grandstand, watching the game. Right now, the opposing team’s central defender, a short guy with unusually broad shoulders for his height, brutally pushed one of the St. Andrew’s strikers to the side – the one who was on his way to cross the 16 yard line with the ball at his foot. The referee’s hand immediately went up in the air, giving a free kick against Downhill High. Everyone turned expectantly towards Nathaniel, and he couldn’t help but pull a smile. True, this was his speciality: free kicks from the edge of the penalty area. He could take them with his eyes closed, blind even. He had practiced them so many times at training. Now, as always, he carefully positioned the ball. He took exactly three steps back, then sized up the four corners of the goal, starting from the bottom right to the top right, and so on. Despite the fact that the sun was in his eyes, enhancing the challenge, he was strangely confident that he wouldn’t miss. He licked the edge of his mouth, narrowed his eyes, and ran for it. He could sense, even see that he had got the ball at the best place, sending it flying towards the left corner of the goal with a vehement spin, making an arc. For a second, he waited motionlessly to see the outcome, but then something covered up the sunlight which had shone into his eyes. He tilted his head to the left, but couldn’t see what had created the sudden darkness. There came a huge blow to his face, which caused him to collapse to the ground, unconscious.
#
Nate had quite a bit of experience in football, despite his young age. Ever since he could remember, he had been running crazily on a pitch, chasing a ball. His exceptional talent soon caught the attention of the young boy’s coaches, too. As his mother recalled – and since she loved to tell his stories, everybody knew them by heart – it was even thanks to football that he was able to quit wearing nappies. He must have been about three when he was already passionately playing in the garden, but his parents just couldn’t convince him to get out of the habit. After a while they gave up trying, and waited for the thing to just happen in its own time. Led by a random idea, his mother once remarked in his presence that she didn’t know any football players who wore nappies. The little boy became serious and stared at her pensively for a while. Right there and then, in the middle of the kitchen, he carefully pulled down his pants, undid his slightly wet nappy, and dropped it on the floor. Seeing his mother’s puzzled expression, he said with the strong conviction of a three-year-old that if that was the situation, he didn’t need one anymore, either. Evelyn Cruz firmly stated that from that afternoon onwards she had never had to put a nappy on her son. As time passed, Nathaniel had become a devoted football fan, who was able to recite the rules of the game from a young age. From memory, he was able to recall players from the English Premier League, and was equally familiar with players from the German Bundesliga, and Portuguese and Brazilian leagues. There were no such questions related to football that the little boy couldn’t answer, and about which he didn’t have an opinion of his own. Wherever the family lived, it was a priority for him to join the junior team at the local football club. And they had lived in various places. His present bad mood was also caused by his father’s announcement a few days back about a new commission, which of course, meant that he and his mother would have to move house again. Nate had been completely upset by the news, and had a nasty fight with his father.
The tension between Nate and his father was often palpable. José Manuel Cruz was a child of simple Brazilian immigrants. It was due to his own strength and diligence that he was able to work his way up to the English consulate from his family of dockyard workers. It was in the army that he found his real calling, and later on, as a professional soldier, he managed to work his way higher and higher up the hierarchical system. The peak of his career was his nomination as a military attaché. He spoke English and Portuguese at native speaker level, and, of course, his Spanish was also fine. What was more, if needed, he was able to jovially converse with the Italian ambassador as well. Keeping up with his career moves, his family had also had to repeatedly change their dwelling place. Little Nathaniel wasn’t bothered by this, after all, he could play football in any school, and they were always able to find a football club for him. Since the possibility of a professional career had, however, begun to take shape before his eyes, he was more and more reluctant to accept the fact that they would have to move again. And the latest announcement had completely upset him. He felt like St. Andrew’s could have been an ideal spring board for him to make it into the U18 football team. Numerous scouts, who had been travelling up and down the country, had shown interest in Nathaniel, and he knew that the timing of this upcoming relocation would, rather unfortunately, undermine his opportunities.
Nathaniel and José Cruz weren’t particularly close, as the volatile, stormy-natured man was away a lot. Although Nathaniel had inherited much of his mother’s pleasant character, fierce arguments often broke out between father and son.
On the other hand, Nate’s relationship with his mother was perfectly harmonic and trustful. It was Evelyn who from time to time had tried to silence the stormy fights between the two, and help them reconcile. Evelyn was a real beauty, radiating warmth all around her. Unlike most English girls, she had black hair and brown eyes. Her skin, though, was absolutely pale, with a tendency for freckles. With the dimples on her face and her long, silky eyelashes she was still an attractive woman, even at her present age, and not just when she was young, when boys were queuing up for her mercies. In those rare moments when Manuel was in a good mood and had some time, he recalled how many fans he had had to knock out of the ring before he won over Evelyn’s heart and hand. At times like this, they both laughed, and she left it at that. She didn’t mention that the challenge hadn’t been so big after all, because from the moment Manuel began to court her, there was no other man for her, and for a long time, even in the first years of their marriage, she was almost blindly in love with him. When they spoke like this, it was obvious that she still loved her husband despite all his faults, and that he, in his own way, also loved his wife. Evelyn almost never complained – at least, not when Nate was around – about the fact that her husband had so little time for her. When they were on a mission in Spain, she often had to make an appearance at her husband’s side at various official events, where she was able to reveal her brilliant, dynamic personality to the public. However, since they had come back to England, it seemed to Nate that she had been spending too much time on her own. As a lector and literary translator she mostly worked from home, and it may have been due to this lifestyle that up until then she had been Nathaniel’s closest confidant. He felt very devoted to her, and loved the aura of positive energy and safety that surrounded her. He was convinced that Manuel Cruz did not treat her in a worthy manner, since he neglected her so much. Although he had no proof, he suspected that his father hadn’t been loyal to his mother. As a teenager, he felt deeply hurt by this. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t make a move, why she didn’t do anything in defence. But he didn’t have the courage to mention the issue, and since his mother also kept quiet about this, they never discussed it. This was perhaps the only thing that they didn’t talk about, as their relationship was otherwise open and honest.
Evelyn had spent part of her childhood in the Republic of South Africa, and another part in Madagascar, where her parents, employees of the Wycliffe Global Alliance, had translated the Bible for many years into languages that up to then had no script of their own. She always said that her childhood had been spent in an idyllic, almost fairy-tale-like environment, and the fact that she had been able to meet people of so many types and tempers, coming from so many cultural backgrounds, had helped her to handle her husband’s volatile mood swings. Nathaniel still felt that his father should love his mother in a worthier manner, that he should be more thankful for having such a wonderful and attractive woman as a wife.
On the outside, Nate was a perfect combination of his parents. Recently, he had let his dark brown, curly hair grow long. With his distinctive eyebrows, light golden brown, smiling eyes and mocca skin he was very popular among the girls, but up until now, his passion and interests were solely restricted to football. His face was both vivacious and serene at the same time, cheerful and yet secretive. His facial expressions spoke of quick mood swings, which made it close to impossible for his peers to tell what was on his mind. He was tall, and thanks to his regular, strict workout, sporty and muscular. He was aiming for a professional career in football, and was doing all he could to make his dreams come true. This was why it had annoyed him so much that his father obviously wasn’t taking his ambitions about football very seriously. Manuel was about to snatch him out of St. Andrew’s in the middle of the term, thus making it impossible for him to successfully participate in the rest of the national football championship as a member of the junior team. Nate was furious at his father for putting his own interests first, so obviously ignoring those of his son’s.
At the same time, on the other pitch, the girls’ team had been working out, with very little enthusiasm. Their lack of dedication was accredited to the fact that the young ladies’ attention was drawn to the ongoing match on the adjacent pitch. The sight of the handsome footballers caught their eye even more than the game itself. The snappy Alexis Woodville, who had joined the girls’ team during the term, thought she would find new friends much more easily if she started playing football. Not that it was a problem for her to make friends. Even before that, she had been seen as a leading figure in her school. She voiced her opinion confidently and loudly in front of both children and adults. Her teammates soon learned to appreciate her speed on the pitch, even though there was a lot of room for improvement regarding her ball control. She herself didn’t take it too tragically. Alex didn’t usually panic about anything. She primarily saw football as an opportunity to do regular sports. She was quick on the pitch, and couldn’t care less about ball control.
Like the other girls, Alexis kept glancing over to the other pitch, where the boys were sweating it out for victory, while Coach Lewis was shouting his lungs out. Andrea, a tall blonde, was throwing the ball to her with great power, and she had to kick it in the air. Then she was to pass the ball on to her teammates situated to her left. She put all her might into the kick, but the sun was mercilessly shining into her eyes. The ball ricocheted off the tip of her shoe and flew unstoppably in the opposite direction. Exactly where Nathaniel Cruz held his eyebrows in a frown, fixing his gaze on the outcome of the free kick he had just completed. The distracted football hit Nate’s face full on. Alexis screamed out in fright, as she saw the handsome, brown-haired boy collapse. For a few seconds she stopped breathing. She covered her mouth, and stared at the lifeless body, paralysed. For a moment, there was indeed a shock of silence on the pitch. The referee was the first to make a move towards the body lying on the ground, then his teammates joined in running to him. Since almost everybody had been following the flight of the ball towards the goal, there were very few who had witnessed what had caused the collapse of the midfielder. By the time Mr Lewis got there and knelt down beside Nathaniel, the boy’s face was almost completely covered in blood. Lewis kept calling to him, and with his nervously trembling hands, patted Nate’s cheek. Seeing this, the referee told him off with annoyance, and ordered for the school doctor to be called. Nathaniel was still not moving. The crowd of shocked faces multiplied around the body lying on the ground. Alexis had been standing in one place for a while, paralysed with shock. Holding her breath, she waited for the boy to get up. But nothing happened. Andrea ran to her, putting a hand on her shoulder in sympathy.
“I hope you know who it is that you have finished off with just one kick!”
Alexis slowly turned to face her, and shook her head very slowly, with an embarrassed facial expression very unlike her. Andrea sighed deeply, and it was indeed hard to tell whether this sigh had been caused by regret or envy. Directing her gaze onto the boy sprawled out on the grass, she softly said,
“Darling, your victim is none other than Nathaniel Cruz. The very guy.”
Alexis stared at her uncomprehendingly, causing Andrea to frown and say with audible resentment in her voice, “Nate Cruz is the cutest guy at St. Andrew’s, and not least, the new starlet of school football. The most talented player, who probably has an international career ahead of him. Or at least had, until two minutes ago,” she added, with open irony.
Alexis’ face went as white as a sheet.
“Nevertheless…”
It looked like she wanted to continue Nathaniel’s characterisation, but her speech was cut short, as Alexis suddenly ran away from her, as fast as lightening. When she saw that after so much time the boy was still lying on the ground, and that Mr Murphy, the school doctor, was running to the pitch in a hurry, she was pierced by the ice cold recognition that something serious may have happened. Now she wanted to see with her own eyes what she had caused, and rushed like crazy towards the small crowd. In the meantime, the referee had told most of the boys to back away so as to let the injured player breathe freely. With determination, Alexis broke through the group surrounding Nate, and as soon as she caught sight of his face covered in blood, she collapsed desperately onto the ground beside the motionless body, openly shaking. The referee and Mr Lewis, who were also kneeling there, looked at her and immediately wanted to send her away.
“No,” Alexis replied in full confidence. “I must see how he is. It was me… It was all my fault.”
At that very moment, the school doctor arrived. Kneeling next to Nate’s head, he signalled for everyone to step back, and held his ear against Nate’s chest, carefully listening to his breathing. He had dropped his black medical bag onto the grass beside him. Never diverting his eyes from the injured, he pointed to his bag, and began to speak with cool confidence.
“Give me the stethoscope!”
The people looked at each other in confusion, and Alexis also glanced up at them. She was closest to the boy lying on the ground, kneeling only an arm’s length from the doctor. Once again, she looked around in embarrassment, and her gaze settled on the medical bag. The previous order was heard again: “The stethoscope and a sterile white bandage from the bag.”
The girl wasn’t sure whom the order was for, but since she was closest and the others weren’t making a move, she undid the buckle of the bag with shaky hands, and lifted the stethoscope out of it. The doctor kept his eyes fixed on Nate, and without turning towards the girl, he held out his right hand for the device. In the meantime, he cautiously lifted the boy’s eyelids with his left hand, and leaned over him observingly. Placing the stethoscope to his ears, he listened carefully for a while.
“How did it happen?” he asked.
With a dying voice, Alexis informed him that the ball had hit him right in the face, and then he had simply collapsed. The doctor nodded, and very softly reached under Nathaniel’s neck with both hands, beginning to feel around the back of his skull.
“Now the sterile white bandage!” came the restrained order again, and Alexis no longer wondered whom the doctor was talking to. She simply put her hand into the bag and took out the little package. She tore it open, pulled the bandage out and placed it into the doctor’s hand. With slow and careful motions, the doctor began to wipe Nathaniel’s face, trying to locate the source of the bleeding.
“I don’t see any serious injuries on his face. By all means, the ball hit his nose in a rather unfortunate way, and that’s how it’s bleeding so strongly. It must have come unexpectedly,” the doctor assumed. “I guess, he wasn’t prepared for it, so he wasn’t even trying to protect his face with his hands.”
You can take my word for it – Alexis thought bitterly, and felt the lump growing in her throat.
As the doctor was cleaning the boy’s face from the blood, more and more of it had become visible, although it still looked quite messy. His dark hair had become moist and sticky with the mud of the pitch, and his locks were mixed with blades of grass, which had stuck to his forehead. Blood was still leaking from his nose, and there was even a little cut on the nice line of his mouth, also bleeding. The doctor told Alexis to take a few more sterile bandage pieces and hold them against the boy’s nose while he searched his bag for the cotton wool required for the tamponade. Alexis nodded, and pulled a bit closer to the boy’s head from the other side. With shaking hands, she began to clean the wound that she had caused. Not that the sight of blood scared her. Not in the least! After all, she wanted to be a doctor herself; the only thing she couldn’t decide was which direction to take within the field of medicine. The question was for the time open in front of her, and she thought she had enough time to make up her mind. This situation, however, was different. Her intensified nervousness and the shaking of her hands were a result of guilt. After all, even without intending to, she had been the cause of the calamity. Thoughts were flashing in her mind wildly as she cleaned the face with a tremor: What if it was something serious? What if there was a permanent injury? How would she live with the knowledge that she had broken this young man’s promising career at its very beginning? Oh no! – she screamed inside. Wake up! Please, please, wake up!
Her lips trembled every now and then while she muttered a silent prayer. Then, she could hardly help shouting out hysterically when the boy’s eyelashes quivered, and his eyes slowly opened. She pulled her hands back with a fright and, holding her breath, waited to see what was going to happen. The doctor also leaned close and examined the pupils. Nathaniel was slowly coming round, and at first, he blinked vacantly. Life was returning to him second by second. Alexis felt like screaming again, now with relief. With infinite concern, she gazed fixedly at the boy, who slowly lifted his gaze upon her.
The doctor called his name.
“Nathaniel! Nathaniel, can you hear me?”
He tried to look in the direction the voice had just come from, then once again, closed his eyes. Alexis was come over by a wave of alarm, and almost unwillingly, she also began to talk to the boy, who was as yet unknown to her. Her voice was permeated with fear, but at the same time, it carried something like a stubborn command.
“Nathaniel, open your eyes. Please, come round! You must come back!”
His eyelashes lifted again. His gaze hesitantly found a spot to focus on. It seemed like he had found it on the girl’s worried face. He struggled for his vision to clear up again, and as the seconds passed, his face grew more and more puzzled and surprised. Finally, to the relief of all, his voice returned, although in a whisper.
“What happened?”
“At last, son!” the doctor sighed. “For a while you were away, but it will be okay now. Tell me, can you remember what happened?”
All this time, Nathaniel had not diverted his eyes from the girl kneeling right next to him, leaning over him. A few messy bunches of her long auburn hair hid her concerned face. Her large green eyes studied the boy, while she bit her lip in apprehension. Her beautifully lined face was flushed, and she was gasping. Nathaniel’s facial features slowly rearranged themselves into an honest expression of admiration, and even the hint of a pale smile appeared on his bleeding lips.
The doctor made another attempt.
“Can you remember what happened?”
The answer came slowly and broken.
“We were playing…”
He was probably trying to say the name of his opponents, which couldn’t come to his mind. The doctor must have been of the same opinion because he went on asking him.
“Can you tell me your name?”
The boy kept staring at Alexis with an enchanted face, and gave a quiet but confident answer,
“Nathaniel Cruz.”
It sounded like some kind of an introduction from his part, even if the situation was rather strange. Hearing it, Alexis smiled softly, and closing her eyes, heaved a deep sigh of relief. Even the doctor’s lips formed a little smile as he reassuringly turned to the crowd around them, “He will be fine.”
“Thank God!” cried out Mr Lewis in a burst of relief.
Leaning close to Nate, the doctor continued, “To be on the safe side, you shouldn’t move about too much. You have probably suffered a mild concussion. The ball hit you pretty badly.”
At the word ‘ball’, Alexis’ face suddenly turned red. She caught her eyes from Nathaniel’s gaze, which was still fixed on her, and hung her head in shame. The strong sunlight struck her from behind, casting a shiny outline around her crown of hair, its reddish tint all the more intense.
“Wow…” broke the undefinable sigh from the boy’s mouth.
Alexis sensed that her face was aflame in embarrassment, and she understood less and less why the boy was staring at her so stubbornly. She wasn’t sure whether it was clear to Nathaniel that she had caused the accident and that she was the one to thank for his concussion. She knew that the two of them hadn’t met yet, because the boy’s face, still dirty with blood, and yet so likeable and handsome, wasn’t in the least familiar to her. True, the school was really large, and she had only been attended there for two weeks; other than her own classmates and the members of the female football team, she knew almost nobody else. While she was pondering this, the doctor ordered a stretcher to be fetched for Nathaniel. He wanted by all means to prevent the boy from moving about too much until it was known exactly whether he had suffered a serious injury or not.
“I don’t know you,” Nate spoke in a somewhat stronger voice, making Alexis look up in wonder. “I haven’t seen you before. I’d definitely remember you. Concussion or not.”
She cleared her throat and replied with an uncertainty that was so unlike her, “I’m new here. I’ve only been studying at St. Andrew’s for two weeks.”
At this moment, the other players arrived with the stretcher and put it on the ground. Alexis moved back to give room. Following the doctor’s orders, they surrounded the boy to lift him onto the stretcher. Nate sat up slowly and was about to protest, saying he was okay and didn’t need to be carried, but he had to realise he was wrong. He began to feel dizzy as he attempted to straighten up, and had a head rush. The doctor commanded him strongly to lie down at once. Nate obeyed, and allowed his mates to lift him up carefully. All the time, he was looking for Alexis, who, in the buzz that had suddenly been generated, had got further and further away from him. As much as he could, he kept turning his head to find the girl, who now emerged from the crowd again, behind the nervously gesticulating Mr Lewis. The procession had already started moving with him towards the dressing rooms, while he continued to look out for her.
“Don’t move about so much, young man, or you might fall off the stretcher, dammit!” came Mr Murphy’s angry outburst.
As their eyes eventually met in the hustle, the boy silently mouthed the question, “What’s your name?”
Alexis caught it. Quietly, as if murmuring to herself, she responded while the boy disappeared into the distance, “Alexis Woodville.”
He most probably didn’t catch her response, as he shook his head slowly, with a frown. Then, as the doctor pressed him back onto the stretcher, they lost eye contact in the big tumult.
#
At this point, Alexis seriously wondered why the hell she hadn’t listened to her father, who had initially wanted to talk her out of football. James Woodville was a devoted fan of cricket and polo, and had found it hard to handle when his elder daughter announced that she was going to start playing in the school’s football team. Just like her, James Woodville also watched the big matches played by the best in the football league. He only laughed when his daughters considered him an old-fashioned macho, but he just couldn’t take female football seriously.
The Woodville family was quite well-off. They thanked their fortune to the stock market success of the elder James Woodville in the 70s, and it seemed like his son, James Woodville Junior – Alexis’ father – had inherited his father’s refined instincts to guide him in the fiercely changing world of shares and currency rates. Accordingly, the family had a rather posh villa for a home in a very elegant South-Western suburb of London, at the top of Richmond Hill, with a breathtaking view over Richmond Park. In the basement of the spacious six-bedroom house, there was even a swimming pool and a sauna. Behind the property, there was a considerably large garden, a favourite location of hide-and-seek and other activities for the girls, Alexis and Veronic. After growing out of such games, they still loved to spend their time in this tiny, idyllic private oasis, situated in the middle of a metropolis.
Alexis still stood on the pitch, with her feet rooted to the ground, still staring dumbfounded into the crowd, when the school building had long since swallowed the stretcher and the boy lying on it. “Nathaniel Cruz,” she repeated the name dreamily, uttering it for the very first time. At this point, she couldn’t surmise how crucial this name would become on the rest of her life.
The referee literally chased her off the pitch as the game had to continue, even in the absence of the wunderkind. Alex walked back to the other pitch exhaustedly, where the girls were discussing the most recent events instead of working out. She didn’t know exactly why, but a change had taken place in her, causing her to want to withdraw from the rest of the group. She said she wasn’t feeling too well, and taking the long route around the school building, she settled on a slow pace back towards the dressing rooms. The coach of the girls’ team looked at her with some sympathy. Not a word of resentment left her mouth about Alex’s interrupting the training. She knew the girl must have felt miserable after what had just happened. For the short two weeks she had known Alex, she had never seen the otherwise so lively and boisterous girl so much under the weather.
The truth was, Alex too had hardly recognized herself until now. Among her classmates at school, she had always been the ringleader. An energetic, dominant personality either loved or downright hated by her peers, but never leaving anybody in the cold. In grade eight she had determinedly cut her hair short like a boy’s, and was constantly in trouble, so much so that she had to visit the headmaster’s office almost every week. She was often caught getting up to mischief, driving her teachers crazy with her stormy behaviour.
Back home, however, within the walls of the Richmond Hill house, everything was different. Whenever she got home, by the time she entered the last door on the first floor, she was a different person. The cause of her big transformation was the precious tenant of the room. Veronic, Alex’s sister, was four years her junior. She was a kind, smiley, loveable teenage girl, a tad more serious than average, but not morose at all. She didn’t look too different from her peers until she stood up from her chair. Since birth, she had suff