With the whole changing room’s puzzled looks fixed on him, Dean’s expression stayed level.
“I really am touching structured football training for the first time today.”
Dean’s words set the room buzzing all over again.
“God!
Dean, you’ve got to have something special going on!”
“Whoa, first time I’ve ever seen anything like this.”
A lot of them started putting it together—getting recruited by Heighway himself, as an exception to the usual rules, straight into the U16 squad, even with zero background, meant this was no ordinary kid.
“All right, whatever came before, you’re one of us now that you’re at Kirkby.”
“Welcome to the U16s, Dean.”
Seeing the mood shift, Conor struck while the iron was hot, going around introducing Dean to his teammates one by one, helping him settle into the group quickly.
“This is John Flanagan…”
“This one’s Adam Pepper…”
“…and this is Martin Hanson, our keeper…”
Each teammate named gave a wave and a friendly greeting as Conor pointed them out.
Though a few just gave a flat, silent nod, not quite as warm.
Once the introductions were done, Conor led Dean to one side of the changing room, found him a free locker, and helped him get his things settled.
Dean arranged his training bag and boots neatly inside.
He happened to glance across at a teammate diagonally opposite him.
Conor had introduced him earlier—James Griffiths.
Right now, he was bent over, slowly working at unwrapping a bandage from around his ankle, teeth gritted as he peeled it back.
Once the bandage came off, the ankle underneath was swollen thick, a wide spread of dark purple-blue was bruising budding beneath the skin.
This was the first time Dean had come face-to-face, up close, with the kind of injury football could leave behind.
The sight hit him hard.
He froze for a moment, taken aback.
Griffiths felt the stare and looked up, his eyes were anything but friendly.
“What are you looking at?
Don’t get curious.
You’ll end up like this too, eventually.”
Dean looked away.
He didn’t say anything more.
Years of getting knocked around at school, of being isolated for so long, of having to fight to hold his own—all of it had long since taught him how group dynamics actually worked.
An academy might look, on the surface, like a team fighting shoulder to shoulder, teammates living side by side day and night, but underneath, it was competition, everywhere, all the time.
A team only had eleven starting places, and every position on the pitch had a fixed number of slots—if someone else had locked down a spot, there simply wasn’t one left for you. This chapter was copied from novelping.com without permission.
That competition never got put out in the open.
Dean had never once felt any real need to force his way into a group, and he wasn’t about to go out of his way to win anyone’s favour either.
He’d long since settled on his own way of dealing with people: like a mirror.
Treat him well, and he’d treat you just as sincerely in return.
Come at him with hostility, and he’d meet that too, all the way, for as long as it took.
This small changing-room moment was already forgotten, tossed behind him without a second thought.
Soon, Conor finished packing up his own things and came back over, clapping Dean on the shoulder.
“Don’t just stand there.
Go grab a shower—you’ve got afternoon lessons after this.”
Dean nodded and headed for the showers with his clothes.
Steam filled the air.
The showers were full of teammates chatting away, the conversation was almost entirely unrelated to football—just the ordinary, scattered noise of teenage life.
Someone was going over weekend plans.
Someone else was grumbling irritably about relationship trouble, muttering that his girlfriend was about to break up with him.
And someone else, with a distinct note of bragging in his voice, was talking about having just taken some girl’s virginity.
“That’s only my fourth, though.
Can’t compete with Ryan—he’s lost count of his own number at this point.”
The boastful voice set off a round of laughter.
Dean stood under the hot water, closed his eyes, and let it wash over him.
Quietly, he went back over the morning.
From the moment he’d arrived at Kirkby, in the space of half a single day, his whole life had changed shape completely.
After showering, the two of them headed to the canteen together.
On the table was the academy’s dedicated healthy training meal—not exactly delicious, plain and a bit bland, but far healthier than the fish and chips you could find on any street corner in Liverpool.
In the afternoon, lessons arrived, right on schedule.
Dean, as always, sat in the far corner of the classroom, listening in silence, while plenty of the others clearly weren’t listening at all though the teacher didn’t bother pushing the point.
Once the afternoon’s lessons wrapped up for good, Kirkby’s squads moved into free time.
Boys from every age group either paired off, joking around and chatting, or packed away their gear to turn in early—the whole place was buzzing with energy.
Dean, on his own, didn’t bother trying to force his way into the noise.
He simply found himself an empty patch of ground and repeated, over and over, the basic movements of keepie-uppies, soft touches, controlling the ball off the top of his foot.
These were all things Heighway had told him would sharpen his feel for the ball.
Liverpool’s sky stayed permanently grey.
Overcast clouds hung over Kirkby year-round, the wind was sweeping across the pitches, day after day.
It was as if time itself passed through here without leaving any mark at all.
Dean buried himself in the dull, repetitive training, barely registering the days turning over.
The one thing he could feel clearly, unmistakably, was his own football ability climbing, day by day.
Rapid progress, day after day.
It often left Dean unable to tell whether his adaptability, so far beyond anyone normal, or his outrageous gift for learning, actually came from some hidden natural athletic talent of his own or from those three mysterious beads.
But he could feel the change happening, clearly, for real.
In just a matter of days, the ball had grown obedient under his feet.
Touch, control, passing, dribbling—all of it were flowing smoothly now, more and more natural with every session.
Time slipped quietly forward.
Two weeks passed in what felt like no time at all.
Every Monday morning, Dean set off for Kirkby right on time, for a closed week of training, then wrapped up all of the base’s scheduling by Friday afternoon and headed home, with a brief stretch of free time over the weekend.
That weekend, when the two brothers met up, Ethan couldn’t stop asking about everything at Kirkby.
He was endlessly curious about all of it.
Ethan knew his own professional career had ended before it had even started, but he could find real satisfaction watching it play out through Dean instead.
The two brothers went to visit Grandma Mason at the hospital as well.
The old woman lay just as quietly as ever on the bed, with not the slightest sign of waking.
The doctors’ assessment hadn’t changed at all: given her advanced age, there was a strong likelihood she’d never wake up.
Faced with this hopeless waiting, Dean kept his own feelings locked away.
Instead, he spent his energy reassuring Ethan, telling him everything would be all right.
During this stretch of time,
Dalglish had come by Kirkby several times as well.
He was, after all, Dean’s legal guardian.
Every time this Liverpool legend saw him, he’d smile and give a thumbs up, telling Dean that Heighway couldn’t stop singing his praises whenever they spoke.
As September rolled into its final third, Kirkby’s academy wages went out right on schedule.
When Dean received his own hundred and ten pounds, it was the first time he’d truly, physically held the tangible return football could bring.
This was what all his relentless training, all the desperate effort to seize this chance, had earned him.
And it was on this same payday that Heighway pulled him aside privately and formally laid out what came next.
“Get ready, son.
Starting next week, you’re officially moving into the U16 squad, training with the team in full, every session.
You’ll be taking part in internal match play too, and I’ll be settling your position on the pitch.
Your professional journey starts for real now.”