T.J. and the Hat-trick by Theo Walcott

C HAPTER 1
    ‘WHAT DO YOU think?’ asked Tulsi. ‘Shall we ask him to play?’
    ‘He’ll get those shiny shoes dirty,’ said Jamie.
    For a moment they both looked at the new boy, TJ, who was standing nervously on the edge of the playground. Suddenly Tulsi grinned. ‘Hey, you!’ she yelled. ‘D’you want a game?’
    Before he could reply, she put the ball down and hit a beautiful, curving pass towards him. It curled behind the kids from Class 2 and thudded into TJ’s chest.
    ‘What the . . .?’ TJ looked down at the muddy mark on his clean white shirt, and then he laughed. He bent down and picked up the ball. ‘Here,’ he said, walking towards them. ‘That was amazing! Can you do it again?’
    ‘Don’t encourage her,’ said Jamie. ‘She already thinks she’s a superstar.’
    ‘I don’t
think
,’ Tulsi said. ‘I
know
. I play for a proper team,’ she told TJ. ‘Canby Road Girls. We won the league last season and I scored eleven goals. I’m Tulsi and this is Jamie.’

    Jamie was a giant, with spiky, hedgehog hair and the widest smile TJ had ever seen. Another boy ran past and knocked the ball out of Tulsi’s hands onto the ground. He dribbled away, weaving in and out of the little kids. ‘That’s Rafi,’ Tulsi laughed. ‘It’s his ball. He doesn’t like standing still.’
    ‘Do you like football?’ Jamie asked TJ.
    ‘Well, yeah. But at my last school we just played rounders.’
    ‘That’s crazy,’ said Tulsi. ‘What kind of rubbish school wouldn’t let you play footie?’
    ‘It wasn’t a rubbish school,’ TJ said hotly, but Jamie interrupted.
    ‘Don’t listen to her,’ he said. ‘We can’t play football here either, only on the playground or in the park. And we don’t even play rounders. All the teachers hate PE.’
    ‘And Mr Burrows dug up the playing field last year,’ Tulsi said gloomily. ‘He said it was going to be a wildlife reserve but then he got ill and no one looked after it. The pond leaked and the trees all died.’ She pointed at a patch of brown grass with a big hole in the middle of it.
    ‘You must have somewhere to do games and stuff,’ said TJ.
    ‘We were going to use the park. It’s only down the road. It was all arranged and then something happened and we couldn’t. I don’t know why.’
    ‘Come on,’ said Jamie when the bell went. ‘I bet you’re in our class. It’s through here.’
    ‘I’m not sure,’ TJ said. ‘I came with my mum and dad yesterday and Mr Burrows said I was in Mr Wood’s class.’
    ‘That’s the one,’ Jamie told him. ‘Mr Wood is new too.
We
haven’t met him yet either.’
    ‘We’re always having new teachers,’ Rafi said, as he dribbled his ball along the crowded corridor, bouncing it off the walls. ‘None of them can stand it for long.’
    ‘He’ll take one look and then go home again,’ Tulsi said. She pushed the classroom door open. Everyone was yelling. Two boys were throwing a bag backwards and forwards and another boy was buzzing around them like a small, angry bee, trying to grab it back.
    ‘Hey, Danny!’ yelled Jamie, striding forward and catching the bag. ‘Leave Rob alone.’
    Danny made another grab for the bag, and he and Jamie fell to the floor in a heap, knocking over a couple of chairs. TJ stepped backwards just as Rafi was trying to balance his football on his nose and the ball went bouncing off across the classroom. Suddenly everything went quiet. TJ looked round and saw a tall man in a suit standing in the middle of the classroom. He looked down at the bouncing ball.
    ‘I suppose this is how you got rid of all those teachers last year,’ the man said finally. ‘Well, you won’t get rid of me so easily. Who does this ball belong to?’
    ‘Me,’ said Rafi. ‘I’m Rafi.’
    ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Rafi. I’m Mr Wood, and your ball control is terrible. I’ll look after this until it improves, I think.’
    Mr Wood put his foot on the ball, and then suddenly it was in his