I

When We Were Heroes

Lights up. Crowd silent. Five points ahead. Four seconds left.

But seconds were becoming minutes for Billy. The winter air was affecting everyone in the bleachers. The orange and purple clad fans of the Angel Grove Seraph's football team were huddled up trying their best to stay warm while the battle for the playoff advancement lingered nine yards in front of the goal line. No high school game had been as intense since the start of the season. Though the crowd teetered on the edge of becoming Popsicle clusters, the players out in the field dribbled in sweat. It could have been a sauna or a tundra; climate meant absolutely nothing to Billy. Under the cold night sky and illuminated by enormous stadium lights, Billy was absolutely focused. Or so it seemed.

Billy hunched over, watching the opposing center in front of him. If one could read through his dirt and grass-stained jersey, "CRANSTON 40" would be the visible text on his back. Being his fourth and final year as one of Angel Grove Seraphs' defensive tackles, he refused to let Winston High destroy his chances at the playoffs by gaining nine yards on a fourth down in mere seconds before game's end. At age eighteen, 260 pounds, and a height that would put him eye-to-eye with Arnold Schwarzenegger, he cast fair-sized shadows over most of his classmates. He had a lot at stake on these nine yards: a nightmarish spring and summer of eating and working out, a chance of gaining credibility among the higher ups, and most of all, the enamor of a girl.

Somewhere among the freezing crowd of orange and purple masses, nestled in with her fellow members of the Angel Grove dance line was a little freshman girl who had taken an innocent attachment to Billy. He couldn't see her, but he knew she was there. He knew she would be huddled up with her sister dance line members, frosting from the weather but dedicatedly watching him. Only him. She might have been whispering Bill's name to herself over and over, like a spell of good luck.

The cold air had gradually flushed Kimberly Hart's pale cheeks into a rosy pink. The incredibly tiny brown-haired freshman was one of two skinny dance line girls sharing a giant purple blanket embroidered with orange wings and the gigantic letters "A.G.". The two of them huddled so close together under the blanket that they humorously resembled a life-sized pair of frozen, fuzzy chimichangas. Dwarfed in her school-spirited blanket-tortilla by her much taller dance mentor, Aisha, Kimberly stared through the frozen air at the lineup directly in front of her. Being on the very front row with the rest of Angel Grove's band behind her, she had the perfect view of her knight-in-grass-stained-armor, and even though the cold kept her voice quiet, she dutifully and repeatedly mouthed the name of the player sporting the 40 on his back.

With arms tightly wrapped around the small girl who the dance line had dubbed "Freshman of the Year", Aisha was focusing on jersey number 19, "TAYLOR". Standing behind the defensive line, the Angel Grove safety, Zack Taylor, studied Winston High's quarterback. Whereas Billy was big, white, and lumbering, Zack was skinny, black, and quick like a dart, and whereas Billy was secretly trying to win over a girl, Zack was desperately trying to keep his. Zack and Aisha had been steadily dating for seven months, and the sophomore wasn't going to disappoint the only girl who could keep up with him at break dancing. However, showing off to his girlfriend wasn't the only issue on Zack's mind. A fellow teammate, Eugene "Skull" Malkovitch, was warming up Angel Grove's benches and itching for Zack to make a mistake. The punk, Jewish junior had never really liked Zack ever since Zack proved to be a better safety, and the last thing that Zack needed was for Skull to find any more reasons to get his old position back.

"Down!" The center called. Zack noticed the quarterback ever so slightly glance at the right wide receiver. Target acquired. "Set!" Billy eyed his fellow defensive tackle, aptly nicknamed "The Incredible Bulk", and felt a bit more confident being reminded that a man sixty pounds larger and six inches taller than himself was going to be charging through the guards with him. "Hut!"

Instantly, the anxious calm of the stadium was obliterated by an uproar of opposing fans' voices.

The defensive and offensive lines charged, slamming together in a rumbling, echoing force of raw determination. The ball flew to Winston High's quarterback and upon receiving, he immediately surveyed for possible openings.

Within seconds, Billy had locked with an offensive guard. To his left, Bulk and his ox-like girth were giving a guard and a tight end more than enough opposition. The mass of a man bellowed like a dragon, slowly but surely giving into the pressure of the two offensive linemen's onslaught. The Winston High offensive line was smart. They knew that not a single one of their guys could hold off Bulk in a one-on-one struggle, and always having to sacrifice two men for only one of Angel Grove's had been costing them plenty throughout the earlier quarters. Still, the only alternative for them would have been to put only one guard on Bulk, which would have been a sore decision for any team who didn't want their players steamrolled.

Zack saw the right wide receiver take off and immediately go under cover of Angel Grove's cornerback. He remembered the quarterback's head twitch: the glance towards the receiver. Zack left no clue underestimated, so he joined the Angel Grove cornerback in covering the receiver.

The buzzer echoed. This was it. No more plays. Billy continued wrestling with the guard but found himself being shoved further back. His feet were slowly slipping, and out of his peripherals he saw that Bulk was taking what could have been his fiftieth fall for the night as the two Milton High players overtook the jersey-clad elephant. Billy couldn't let the quarterback make a pass. He had to get through the guard. Yes, there was always the chance of an interception, or an incomplete, or the targeted receiver simply not making it into the end zone, but Billy had a girl to impress. A girl who in only eleven weeks of school ended up thinking the world of him but who hadn't so much as hinted at romantic interest. She had to see him be the one to secure the win. He needed all of the dumb, pathetic, macho victories that under social bureaucracy would make the sweet young and innocent girl fall in love with him. He wanted her. He needed her. It wasn't sensual lust. The two of them could be celibate all the way until their tenth year of marriage for all he cared. For once, he just wanted a cute and nice girl in his life.

And then he heard it. He never knew how, but somewhere in the cacophony of noise around him he heard it.

"Come on, Billy!" Kimberly, wrapped up with Aisha, was hopping up and down with anxiety. Aisha was giving similar encouragement to Zack, albeit a bit louder and with more profanity.

If Billy was Popeye, then Kimberly was his spinach. With a furious heave, Billy lunged to his left and shoved the guard towards his right. He ended up slipping around and tripping the guard in the process. With his path open, he roared towards the quarterback. Zack had chosen correctly when chasing his wide receiver. The receiver was far too quick for Angel Grove's cornerback, who had already started to trail behind, but Zack was keeping up, stretching his legs as long as he could to keep pace with the receiver. Billy closed. The quarterback had to pass now or risk botching the play due a hormone-driven defensive lineman. So he threw.

His only chance was the wide receiver. Zack was sprinting as fast as possible, but the receiver was just inches faster. The quarterback found his target. As the ball left his hand, Billy lunged into the air, hands outstretched. Time slowed down even slower than before. What had currently been a six-second play seemed to drag on for minutes. Billy reached, fingers grasping for a small chance of swatting the ball out of the sky.

He felt it. He felt the ball. It wasn't much, but the very tips of his fingers scraped against the coarse lemon-shaped missile. Billy, airborne, crashed into the quarterback and the two of them tumbled to the wet ground. He'd done his job.

Zack was just behind the wide receiver. There was just enough room out of Zack's reach for the wide receiver to have caught the incoming pass. Unfortunately for the receiver, Billy's encounter with the ball had altered its trajectory. In other words, it was making a head on drive towards Zack. Seeing his chance, Zack opened up his arms and within a split second, claimed an interception, a touchback, and a win for Angel Grove.

"Oh my God did you see that?" Aisha jumped upward, the roaring crowd around her drowning out any chance that her words reached anyone not nearby.

"We're going to the playoffs! I can't believe it we're going to the playoffs!" Kimberly squealed with delight, the tip of her French braid bouncing sporadically against her back.

"They're already on the field." Sure enough to Aisha's words, the fans of Angel Grove were stampeding out of the bleachers in a frenzy. Left and right teenagers, parents, faculty, and everyone else who had shown up supporting the home team stormed onto the football field, joining their team in celebration.

"Can they do that?"

"Hell yes! And so can we. Come on. There's a guy I gotta throw my arms around." Aisha dropped down to the front guard rail of the bleachers, forcing her blanket-Siamese twin Kimberly to follow.

"Hold on. We're wrapped up." Kimberly fidgeted as Aisha tried to slide through the front railing onto the football field.

"Well hurry."

After scooting up next to Aisha, the duo slid out together onto the cold, wet track that encircled the grassy football field. All around them, Angel Grove fans were running out to the rhythmic beats and celebratory anthems of the marching band that the girls had just left behind. Aisha, still oddly wrapped up with Kimberly, dashed with a penguin-like movement towards the hooting and hollering football team.

"Hey, I'm little! Remember?" Kimberly bounced along behind Aisha, trying to keep up with her taller blanket-companion.

Congratulating teammates swarmed around Billy. Every second he was being shaken on the shoulder, patted on the back, man-hugged, or high-fived for knocking the ball off course. "Zack! Where you at, man?" He shouted over his everyone.

In another swarm of victorious players and cheering high schoolers, Zack was dealing with the same praise. He even still had the football. "Where's my assistant?" Zack, smiling, tried peering through the cluster of praising Angel Grovers to find the man responsible for half of the victory. "Hey! Get over here!"

After sharking his way through the crowd, Billy finally stumbled into Zack. The two of them threw their arms around each other, Billy giving Zack a huge lift off of the ground in the process. "Dude, that was the tightest shit ever!" Zack screamed.

"I thought they'd make the down but you snatched it out of the air, man!" Billy laughed. "You were like, "Nope, mine!" and we got it man, we got it! We're going to the playoffs!"

"Dude if you didn't knock the ball it'd gone straight to the receiver." Zack wriggled out of Billy's bear hug and landed back down on the grass. "Looks like if Skull wants wide receiver back he ain't getting it from me."

"I hear you on that." Billy was glad to see that a lot of the players had started to dissipate into other, smaller assemblies. "Hey, you know what this means, right?"

"What's that?"

"Victory party at Jason's."

Zack took a beat. "That's right! I totally forgot about it. Will it be at the corn field or at the bluffs?"

"He said at the field. Signs'd be up showing where to park and stuff." Billy had many fond memories from parties in Jason's parents' corn field, though he'd have had a lot more if Jason never supplied alcohol.

"Nice." Zack smiled. "Though I don't think I'll go too crazy tonight."

"Dude, it's our victory party. I know I'm going nuts. Did he tell you he was trying to get a keg?"

"A keg? That'll last Bulk for, what, ten minutes?"

Billy couldn't help chuckling. "Yeah, that's why we gotta get there early."

"Well let's not get too crazy. This is one night I definitely don't want to forget." Zack glanced around at all of the huddled up Angel Grove devotees conversing in purple and orange flocks. "Well isn't that just adorable."

Waddling towards them were none other than their personal cheerleaders. Aisha was scuttling quickly with Kimberly hopping along behind her. It was a ridiculous sight, but the smiles on their faces made them look like excited five year-olds on Christmas Eve.

"You two cold?" Zack joked.

"Shut up and hug me!" Aisha, arms nestled warmly beneath the blanket, jumped into Zack. He caught her just in time, still holding the football.

"You guys look like a pair of conjoined egg rolls." Billy hugged the other half of the blanket, laughing at the sight of Kimberly's small head poking out from the warm school-spirited blanket.

"Wear these skimpy dance uniforms and see how you like it." Kimberly stretched her arms around Billy's chest in hug. Her hands barely reached each other around on his back. "Good lord you're warm!" She tightened her grip, trying to get closer to his body heat. "Can you two get a room?"

Zack and Aisha were celebrating in a more lip-oriented fashion. Zack wrapped his arms around her waist the best he could with the blanket in the way. "You know Jason's having something at his place, right."

"Will there be a giant bonfire?"

"Always is. How 'bout we continue this when we meet up over there?" He winked at her. "Think you can be ready in an hour?"

"Well since you put it so sweetly, come get me at 10:30." She said. "I gotta have time to defrost my hair. I swear these uniforms might as well be scraps— Hey!"

An instant waft of cold suddenly caught Aisha, and she knew why. Billy was running away and laughing. In his arms was a purple and orange bundle with Kimberly's head laughing out of one end. "Later!" It shouted at her in between laughs.

"That's my blanket!" Aisha, unwrapped and sporting the skimpy, sequence-covered dance line outfit, took off after the thieves. "It's too damn cold for this crap, Kim!"

"Go get 'em." Zack called after her, laughing at the ruse. "Show them no mercy!"

"Shut up!" She yelled back over her shoulder.

Zack took a deep breath. "God I love her."

People were already starting to disperse. The game was done, meaning traffic would soon start getting congested in the parking lot. Zack stood on the field amidst everyone else, watching his girlfriend chase down the duo that had robbed her of her warmth. Seven months and they were still going steady. For a sophomore dating a girl one grade above him, Zack hadn't done too badly.

He fiddled around with the football and glanced up into the night sky just in time to see a shooting star rocket across. Never being one to pass up an opportunity, he made a wish. Keep us going. Keep it fresh, fun, and exciting. If anything, just keep us together. Zack smiled to himself at his cheesy wish, but deep down it was really the only thing he thought worth asking for. He'd had an amazing reputation with the football team, a close group of friends spanning all grades, and a girlfriend who knew all the lyrics to the Jackson 5's "I'll Be There" even when drunk and stumbling all over the place. Hopefully, she'd be just as entertaining at Jason's celebratory party this time around.

Like all shooting stars, the one he saw faded out of sight. Unlike all shooting stars, it altered course out of Earth's gravity and arched towards the moon.