If I keep writing Heroman fics, will other people start writing more? ...Please?
I don't even know the name of the guy who broke my leg beyond repair. It was just easier to blame Will.
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Will and I were never friends. We didn't get along, but we didn't hate each other. We were friendly rivals. I like to think we pushed each other- to become better, on and off the field.
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Will never bothered Joey much before my accident. I used to think it was because Lina didn't show much interest in Joey until that year. Now I wonder. If maybe he did it to get to me. Because he missed the way our relationship (friendship?) used to be. I know I liked to tell Will off. It felt like things hadn't changed.
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I wonder why Will backed off whenever I told him to. It's not like I could hurt him- even before the accident, he could take me down easily. He was bigger, stronger, the star quarterback. I was smaller, faster (before), the (ex) running back. Maybe he was afraid to punch out the cripple. Maybe he was afraid to admit things had changed.
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I wonder who told Will I would never play football- never even walk right- again. I know it wasn't me- after the accident, I only talked to Will to tell him to leave Joey the hell alone. It was probably our coach, after I had to tell him I wasn't ever coming back to the team. I cried when I told him. He cried, too. I wonder if Will cried when he found out. (I hope not. I like to think one of us took it like a man.)
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Will never told anyone why he resigned as captain. But everyone knew. I was the last to find out about it. (No one would tell me anything when I came back to school, at first. They treated me like I was made of glass. I felt like I was.) I was the last to figure out why.
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The thing about forgiveness is that it always seems to come too late. I never truly forgave Will until that night, standing on the cliff next to Joey, telling him my story (a story he already knew, mostly, but that I suddenly had to get off my chest, like lifting the world from Atlas's shoulders) as we stared down at the coal mine that held so much of his story. But by then it was too late- too late to tell Will, "I'm sorry."
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I wonder if we could have been better friends. Funny (sad) that it took Will turning into an alien for me to realized how human he really was.
Psy Kaina used to be the most arrogant guy I knew. He's piss-poor, with a useless drunken hag for a mom, but he was the best running back our school had ever seen- and he knew it.
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Lina could do so much better than Joey. He's not only poor, he's pathetic and weak and whiny and the most air headed pansy I've ever seen. (I sometimes find myself thinking Psy could do better than him, too.)
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There's nothing quite like the relationship of a team. No matter how much you hate each other off the field, when the game starts you have no choice but to tolerate- to respect- to trust- your team mates. (Maybe Psy trusted me too much when he leapt to catch that crappy pass I threw him.)
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I've never heard a sound more sickening than the crunch of Psy's leg being crushed.
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"His injury is permanent," Coach told us. "He's not coming back."
The team's looks were veiled, careful (I didn't have to be Skrugg to pound fear into people) but I knew they blamed me. I resigned as captain the next day.
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The worst part is that Psy's accident didn't just rob him of his ability to walk- it robbed him of his arrogance. (He didn't seem like the same Psy anymore.) I could still get a rise out of him by pounding on Joey, though. Which I didn't mind doing at all.
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His crutches made me feel sick the first time I saw them. Crutches are for the elderly, the weak, the Joey Joneses of the world. Not for the football stars, not for the heroes.
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I was going to ask Psy to come with me to the Skrugg base. But as soon as I came up to them and shoved Joey around a bit- Joey with his new crazy robot, Joey with his new hero complexe- Psy snapped at me, told me to leave his friend alone. And I knew he'd never come with me. (One less person infected by the Skrugg- I was only thankful later.)
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My claws tore through Psy's ridiculous guitar, and he stumbled back, fell, couldn't even stand on his own. Joey had to swoop in to save him. (It was sickening.)
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I sacrificed myself to save the pathetic kid with the just-as-pathetic robot. Because I couldn't keep living like this. Because maybe Joey wasn't as bad as I made him out to be (maybe). Because Psy would miss Joey more than he'd miss me. (Because he'd already lost enough because of me.)