I saw a field of grass like an island in an impossibly large ocean. Grand stands towered on either side like gigantic tombstones, barren and cold. The entirety of the universe hung above my head like an uncountable army of fireflies. The sky seemed to shrug under the weight of the stars, stuffed and swollen. I saw a meteorite streak across the sky. It was slow and silent but it tore the sagging night in half. The pregnant belly ruptured open and its full contents spilled over my entire world. The stars fell in mass, plunging into the grass all around me. Each concussion lifted clods of dirt and grass fifty feet into the air. The tombstones cracked, crumbled and toppled into the sea. A saltwater mist mixed with the freshly upended dirt. The field tilted and groaned. I leaned away from the tilt and panicked as I saw the edge of my world sinking into the deep blue. I grasped onto the blades of grass in a struggle to keep myself from the bottomless cold. We lurched further into the water as the sky continued to rain fire. A voice echoed across the chaos. It called my name.
Tre, it repeated.
The streaks of shooting stars skipped for a moment and then slid off the side, leaving yellow and orange smudges against the absolute black. It blurred into a bright white light.
I jumped up in my seat to find Freddy elbowing me. I stared right at him trying to make sense of everything. Famous Freddy Flash was my wide receiver and my best friend. We came from the same puny town in nowhere Texas where all wed do was pretend to be Montana and Rice. I remember throwing a brick at him on a curl route and catching him right in the face. Good thing those werent his permanent teeth. Still, the scar across his cheek was never going to go away. He smiled at me like he did that day in the hospital, mouth mostly full of dried blood and black stitches across half of his face.
You awake, Tre? You know we have a game in five minutes, right? he said.
I always tended to doze off when I was stressed. It was like my body dropped my blood pressure to keep my heart from exploding. As the blood rushed back to my brain I could make out the surroundings. Coach Creighton was yelling at all eighty five of us, no individual word discernable over the pure volume, his face red with exasperation. He pointed emphatically at a blackboard full of xs, os and an infinite number of lines and arrows connecting them all. He circled on particular X, threw the chalk at the ground, smashing it into a dozen pieces and then violently directed us out of the locker room, throwing a chair at the door to make sure we all headed in the same direction.
The team hustled to the hallway, bottle-necking at the double doors. I was the smallest man of the group, not able to see over the rest of the shoulder pads. Numbers 92, 96, and 99 were in front of me: Little Lee Williams, Baked Bobby Blue and Jolly James Joliet, the core of my offensive line. They made a habit to always staying in front me of no matter what I was doing. Their jerseys were as white - I stole a quick whiff - and as clean as they were going to be this night.
To my right was my rock, my go-to guy, Freddy Flash. He towered over me, leaving me behind in altitude our freshman year of high school. At six foot four, two hundred pounds, and as fast as his name teased, he was the perfect model of a wide-out. He had the softest hands Id ever seen - Id made sure of that by drilling them with thousands of footballs over the last ten years. He was bound for stardom, and he never let us forget it.
"We about to be famous, boys!" he yelled, inches from my ear.
He was right. Our small, unknown school had quietly put together its best season of football. We were undefeated and about to take on a Big Ten school for a chance at a major bowl game. Even still, we were shocked to find ourselves a Las Vegas favorite coming into this game. A win here would put us in the national picture, a chance for Freddy Flash to finally get the recognition he deserved, and maybe a chance for me to get a look from a pro team. But I dreamed. I put those thoughts away and focused on the jerseys in front of me and my best friend to my right. I wasn't going to let them down.
We slowly leaked into to the dark hallway. Our cleats rataplanned lightly on the cold concrete. It reminded me of the sound of hail against the walls of our trailer home.
We emerged from the tunnel into an alien world of bright lights, cables, cameras and screams. Freddy grinned at me like an idiot. I thought back to that first day we met; a snot nosed with a frayed shirt off in the far corner of our dirt schoolyard. He challenged me to a race with that same stupid grin. We haven't stopped competing since then; still the same two nobody kids throwing a deflated soccer ball at each other in the middle of a desert, alone. I turned to remind Freddy of that day only to not to find him. He was already sprinting to the field, his white helmet reflecting a million pinpricks of light.
The flashbulbs blended in with the bright starry sky. It seemed like the whole universe was watching us. The flashes strobed at a blinding speed as a football was blasted into the sky. The ball seemed to glow as it arced past constellations and finally fell into Freddy's arms he streaked like a comet, bounced like a dragonfly and finally crashed against the tsunami of opponents at midfield.
My name was called and I raced to midfield to meet my offense, already waiting for me in a circle. It was like those days playing duck-duck-goose; we would only ever pick each other and race around the classroom until we were forced to stop.
"Red option read, boys. Let's do this," I urged.
I tried to sound like a leader but I could hear my own voice breaking. A hand slapped me in the back. It was Freddy's.
"Let's go get paid," he said, with a wink, and then raced off to his position on the far right.
I walked up under center and then got a look at the play clock. It read two seconds. Shit. I called for the snap and turned to hand the ball. I heard the clapping of air getting crushed between the pads of titans. I reached the ball out to running back but found absolutely nothing; just a far off yellow goal post and whole lot of green. A brush against my back told me that the running back had ran to the left, off tackle. I had forgotten the play. But before I could pull the ball back and survey the field it was yanked from my hand. As a panic swelled I turned to find a white jersey with a big number one jetting away from me; Freddy Flash. I was pushed to the ground but when I had picked myself up I found us sitting at second and two yards to go. Freddy had turned that disaster into an eight yard gain.
Back in the huddle, I thanked everyone and slapped them on the helmets. My blood pressure began to sink. I felt calmer by the second. I looked up at the clock and it seemed as time had slowed to a crawl. I called a play action pass and told Flash to be ready for it. We broke and settled into formation. The flashbulbs were going nuts. As I looked over the field the flashes winked on and off slowly. The crowd had turned deathly silent - or I had gone deaf. All I could hear was my own steady breathing.
I grabbed the snap, turned, faked to the back and then looked downfield. Gotcha. The safety had joined the linebackers, abandoning the deep throw; his eyes were frantically looking for the running back. Further downfield, a tall man in a white jersey with a number one on it was putting an inside move on a smaller man in a red jersey. Freddy was going to be wide open, and with his speed I would need to put some air under the pass. I reached back and threw a bomb towards the right goal post. It left my hands as tight as any throw I'd ever made. In between the wrestling mammoths I could see Famous Freddy Flash, a lone defender stumbling in his wake, throwing his arms after number one desperately trying to prevent him from slipping away; the defender was about to fall. It was all on the throw. I could see the two objects on a collision course like a pure mathematical figure; a sine wave approaching the x-axis; music. He was going to be hit in stride.
The ball ricocheted between his two extended hands and pinwheeled harmlessly on the ground.
Freddy jogged back to the huddle shaking his head. I slapped it hard.
"Sorry, boys. Keep throwing to me, Tre," Freddy said, confident as ever.
"Extend the hands, Flash. You're better than everyone on this field. Just do the fundamentals and I'll get you ten touchdowns today," I said, with an honesty that can only be shared by family.
"Crossing rout, Flash. Make sure you get past the first down marker," I ordered.
At the line the defenders all bunched up, guessing run on third and short. I hiked the ball and went into a five step drop. Freddy ran a perfect square pattern through the defenders weak jam and streaked towards the heart of the field. I rocked on five and threw a laser at Freddy's chest. It was squeezed tightly between his hands. He turned to continue his route and was immediately laid out by a linebacker. The ball popped free and spilled on to the turf.
We jogged off the field to let the punt team take over. As I ran, shoulder to shoulder with my best friend I was beside myself. I opened up when we got to the sideline.
"Did you get past the first down marker, Flash?" I asked.
I couldn't contain my anger. I knew he ran his route short.
"He jammed me. I had to cut in short."
"Bullshit, Freddy. You got fifty pounds on that guy. He's nothing to you. You could have blasted him."
"Alright, Tre. No excuses, I'll destroy him."
"Atta boy," I said and slapped him on the ass.
I grabbed a Gatorade as the red jerseys slowly inched their way across the field against our outsized defense. I whispered to my backup to get me pictures of that last series. In a minute I had a full set of glossies in my hand. I flipped through the crossing route and saw the inescapable: Freddy made a beeline right for a linebacker. He wanted to run into a defender. Was he sabotaging our game?
No way, I thought. Not on this stage. Not with fifteen years of friendship on the line.
A field goal and a kickoff and we were on the field again. Freddy made some nice plays up the field, especially in the open on run plays, making the red jerseys look silly. He even made some amazing grabs in traffic for short gains. But on third down and on deep throws the ball would somehow find the grass. As the drops increased I went less and less to my best friend. But as I looked for viable options elsewhere on the team it all resulted in the same basic result: incompletions, punts and a couple of field goals.
I threw myself into the sideline huddles of the defense. They were playing heroically, and I knew that they were the only chance we had to win the game. The offensive line noticed my new allegiance and the increasingly Flash-less game plan and called me out. I took Little, Baked and Jolly to the side and told them that Flash was off today, that I couldn't trust him. They didn't buy that for a second and prodded me for more. At five foot nine it's not easy to ignore three giants; I told them I thought Freddy was sabotaging the game, probably for a payoff.
They were ready to tear Freddy's arms off. I had to talk them down and tried to work out a new strategy with the linemen.
After a halftime of angry, unintelligible screaming we attacked the red team with flurry of runs. We succeeded in keeping the game tight, by running off the clock and limiting the points to field goals. By the middle of the fourth quarter Freddy was onto us. But he didn't wan't to flat out admit anything so he was forced to play along and kept begging for the ball. I gave him empty promises and continued to run the ball. But a fumble gave the ball away to the red team in field goal range. With three minutes left, they ran three times and kicked a field goal to give them a six point advantage with less than two minutes left.
I didn't wan't to give Freddy a single touch in this last crucial drive. With one play he could guarantee a loss. I screamed at my line and my back, begging them to leave everything they had on the field. We needed to march eighty yards in as many seconds to have any shot at the national spotlight.
"For us seniors, this is our last shot. If we don't win this game, the NFL doesn't even know we exist. Do you want be somebody? Do you want keep playing football? Or do you want this to be the last game you ever play?"
As I let that thought sink in, I turned to Freddy. The enormity of the moment hit him as hard as any of the other guys. He looked at me with wide eyes, finally realizing the truth of what he was doing, not just to himself and to me, but the whole team. But in a second his eyes narrowed, defiant and proud.
"It's not too late, Flash. You can win this for us. Nobody else can."
"Let's go get paid."
Fuck.
A great block on the left side by a pulling Jolly gave us a huge twenty yard rush to the middle of the field. But the next few runs only brought us to a fourth an one near the thirty with only seconds left: one last play. I bit the bullet and called a play action throw.
"I will catch it, Tre. I promise you, bro."
I wanted to believe him with everything I had. But could I hang the dreams of everyone else on that hope? I was about to find out.
As I approached the line, the cameras continued to strobe from the monolithic slabs to the right and left, completely unaware of the internal strife tearing a family apart before their eyes. Above, the sky seemed closer, the stars bigger. The field had been torn to hell, huge clumps of grass upturned from the scores of skirmishes over the last two hours.
I received the snap, turned and faked. That idiot safety was lost again - twenty runs in a row might have something to do with it though - and Freddy had already torn off his defender's jam and had the inside step. I began to rear my arm back and checked it.
Before I knew what was going on I was on the run. I was passing the line of scrimmage with no one around me for miles it seemed. I looked across to my line and stared at my center, Baked. What the hell was I doing? He looked back with a similar expression, "what the hell are you doing?" he seemed to say.
I turned and faced my first obstacle: the red cornerback. After years of racing with Freddy, I had picked up a lot of his moves. A quick shoulder fake shook him to sideline. A fierce mountain of a linebacker was on an intercepting path to behead me. I faked a throw to the middle of the field and he jumped in the air to block the pass - purely out of instinct - falling behind me.
Ahead, Freddy was locked in a block with the strong safety. He saw me in the corner of his eye, turned and simply let go. The bastard!
I ran with a renewed rage and lowered a shoulder into the defender. I stepped over his falling body, stumbled and almost rolled but a lucky hand plant shot me upright.
All that was left was Flash. He seemed to grin... that stupid grin that challenged me to a race so many years ago. He sprinted for me, all two hundred pounds and four-four speed. The game, our friendship, our dreams: they were all going to die right here. Suddenly, something like an elephant ran through Freddy from the left and sent him sprawling off the field into the red jersey sideline - fitting, I thought. Little Lee Williams rolled and sprawled across the turf and yelled at me to run.
As the flashbulbs exploded across my universe I pumped my legs as fast as they could. The field began to tilt and I leaned my body towards the approaching goal line. The stars and flashes streaked across the sky. I stumbled and clawed at the grass to keep myself moving. I had to reach that line before I passed out. I reached out the football as far as possible, the crowd's screams reached a crescendo and the lights all blended together into a single canvas of white.
