That night, as the noise online grew louder, I walked back to the empty school field.
The rain had stopped; the pitch was slick under the moonlight. I stood in the center circle, breathing the cold air, listening to the hum of the city beyond the fence.
Every great moment starts like this quiet before the noise.
Reid would come hard. He'd plan traps, tweak shape, maybe even mirror our diamond. But I wasn't the same coach he'd faced before.
We weren't the same team.
I knelt down, ran my hand over the wet grass, and whispered to the ground,
"Let's finish what we started."
Behind me, the city lights flickered like camera flashes.
The Bridge Derby was back.
And this time, it wasn't about luck, or revenge, or pride.
It was about legacy.
Hours turned into days, and the days bled into each other.
Between the semifinal and the final, the whole city seemed to hold its breath.
East-Bridge and West-Bridge two schools separated by a few miles and a long history were about to face each other again. Only this time, it wasn't just a match. It was the match.
The posters went up first.
Every wall, every shop, every café window had the same words printed in bold:
THE BRIDGE DERBY – THE FINAL.
Two colors painted the town red for East-Bridge, blue for West-Bridge.
In schools, in parks, on the streets, everyone had an opinion.
Old men argued tactics over newspapers. Kids wore homemade shirts with their favorite players' names scrawled in marker. Teachers, office clerks, even bus drivers picked sides.
It was more than football now. It was pride.
---
In East-Bridge's corner of the city, training had turned from drills into ritual.
Every evening, Malik led the boys out onto the damp grass.
Rain or no rain, floodlights or darkness, it didn't matter.
They moved with purpose.
The touch was sharper, the passes tighter, the communication wordless now just glances and instinct.
He'd stopped introducing new tactics. No new tricks. No surprises.
They didn't need reinvention anymore.
They needed trust.
Mike and Jerome's partnership had evolved from rivalry to rhythm. They didn't even speak much during sessions now they just understood. One dropped deep, the other ran behind.
Noah, quiet as always, had become their invisible heartbeat. Every attack started from his movement, every tempo shift followed his lead.
And at the back, Darnell's voice cut through the evening air calm, commanding, unshakable.
Malik didn't shout instructions anymore. He just watched.
His players no longer looked like boys learning a game.
They looked like a team that had survived something together and come out sharper for it.
---
Across the river, under the same grey sky, West-Bridge trained too but not with quiet confidence. With fury.
Coach Darren Reid's voice echoed across the pitch like thunder.
"Again!" he barked. "Faster this time! You think Malik Amari's slowing down? He's not!"
The players moved like machines intense, mechanical, driven by one goal: redemption.
Every missed tackle earned a glare. Every misplaced pass, a lecture.
Darren was a man possessed, his mind running through East-Bridge's patterns over and over.
He'd mirrored their diamond. Adjusted his lines. Introduced man-marking traps.
He'd built a plan not to play beautiful football, but to break Malik's rhythm.
To make him doubt himself.
And every night, before leaving the pitch, he repeated the same line to his players:
"They embarrassed us once. They won't again."
---
As the final approached, the noise built into a storm.
News vans parked outside both schools. Reporters fought for interviews.
Social media lit up predictions, analyses, heated comment sections.
#BridgeFinal trended citywide.
On Thursday, both teams were featured on the evening broadcast.
The anchor's voice was smooth, dramatic, as clips played on screen East-Bridge's 3–0 against Northchester, West-Bridge's 2–0 against Fairview.
> "It's the rematch everyone's been waiting for," the anchor said.
"The underdog story against the empire rebuilt. Malik Amari versus Darren Reid. Two minds. Two styles. One crown."
The camera cut to a shot of Malik from the sidelines, rain pouring, notebook in hand. Then to Darren, jaw clenched, veins visible in his temple.
> "Will lightning strike twice?"
The segment ended with the date flashing across the screen.
SATURDAY, 4 P.M. – THE FINAL SHOWDOWN.
---
Friday night.
The eve of the match.
The city's noise faded into the quiet hum of streetlights and television static.
At East-Bridge, the locker room was empty. The kits hung in place clean, pressed, glowing faintly under the yellow bulbs.
Red. White. Hope.
Malik stood alone on the field. The lights buzzed overhead, faint drizzle misting down.
He didn't bring his notebook tonight. Just himself.
The grass was slick under his sneakers, the goalposts tall and still. He could hear the faint roar of traffic from across the bridge where West-Bridge's stadium lights shone through the fog.
He smiled faintly. "You're watching too, huh, Coach Reid?"
Maybe they both were. Two minds pacing under different skies, waiting for dawn.
---
And then, finally, it came.
Saturday.