Golden Boy

1.0; Declan Woods: football extraordinaire

"Where'd the hotdog guy go?"

Brynklie looked at her with slight disgust as Taylor leaned forward in her seat, trying to spot the hotdog seller among the throng of people sat atop bleaches. "You need to chill it with the hotdogs. You've had three," Taylor could hardly hear her over the screaming.

"I will have had three," Taylor corrected, pulling back just in time to avoid getting hit in the face by the boy in front's oversize, foam pointy-hand, "Once I have another one. And then I'll probably have one more after that, making it an even four," On her other side, Bostyn, the second of the triplets, nodded in agreement with her sister, though there was some humour in her voice. "If you keep going like this, you won't be able to fit into your dress for Friday."

Taylor groaned, spotting the blowup hotdog costume on the other side of the field, where he was serving a group of scandalously dressed middle schoolers. She couldn't understand their choice in clothes for the life of her; she was shivering in her skinny jeans and cashmere pullover, so they must have been freezing their nonexistent-asses off. She'd have to wait until the guy came back round the bleachers for another hotdog. Ignoring Bostyn's comment, she pulled her legs up to her chest and tried to get as comfortable as possible on the bleachers; the peeling paint scratched skin of her legs through her pants, and Taylor shivered in the cooling air, regretting her passing up her mother's offer of another coat. Winter was going to be a polar opposite of the summer they'd just experienced, the cloudy and empty-mindedness of which was just beginning to fade. Hopefully the days would stay warm for a little longer; though Taylor didn't like to reduce herself to such shallow things, she wanted a few more weeks to show off the glowing tan she'd gotten when visiting relatives in the Caribbean, especially since it made her look so good compared to some of the other girls who'd gotten their (incredibly orange) summer skin from the overpriced tanning salon a suburb over.

Bostyn and Brynklie made eye contact over her, and she could feel the judgment in their look; while she knew it wasn't possible for people born in multiple births to communicate telepathically (or anyone), it sometimes felt like it was around the triplets.

"God, this is boring," Taylor told them after a minute of picking. While she took great interest in things that she found fascinating and never bored of them, football was not one of those things, and watching a varsity game was not a way she wanted to spend her Thursday evening. It had been months since final game of the previous season, and shed forgotten how much she hated the over-glorified game of electric piggy-in-the-middle. "They all look like dogs, racing after the ball," When neither Brynklie or Bostyn replied, Taylor zeroed in one of the guys from the home team, Pincey High, which wore a strikingly ugly orange and red uniform (which actually made their team's uniform appear to be slightly nice, which meant it exceeded all qualifications of ugliness). The guy was running with the ball, leaning forward, almost parallel to the ground with only momentum keeping him up. "That one looks like a greyhound,"

Bostyn's eyes narrowed as she looked at him, "He looks like a noodle-" she decided, just as he was crash-tackled to the ground by a guy from their team with a horrifyingly loud thud. "-looked like a noodle."

Noodle-greyhound guy flopped over on the ground, managing to pull himself to sitting. Even with the distance, Taylor could see the blood gushing from his nose onto the fake grass of the field. One of the refs blew his whistle, stalking onto the field to escort the guy off. "They're all gonna end up with either considerable brain damage or life-long bodily harm-"

"Would it kill you to just watch the game without commentary, Tay?" Brynklie asked her. "There's only a few minutes left, just stare at Declan's biceps or something,"

"One: I couldn't spot Declan on this field if I tried. Two: you couldn't see his biceps through the jersey and padding anyway, and three: I think I'm hilarious and will commentate all the hell I want."

"You're unbelievable," Brynks sighed, watching as Taylor bent down and took a sip of the creaming soda she'd bought from the hotdog guy - who was still nowhere nearby. "Seriously,"

Taylor raised an eyebrow, offering her can to Brynks. "Unbelievably fabulous."

This time, Brynklie laughed, and took the can. "This isn't laced with anything, is it?" Looking at Taylor's solemn expression and took a chug. "I had to ask," she shrugged, passing it straight across to Bostyn, who Taylor poked as a reminder to leave some of the soda.

Noodle guy had been taken off the field now, and was standing next to a a burly, bald guy Taylor assumed to be his coach with a tissue held to his nose. The coach looked downright terrifying: a total meathead in a matching pants and jacket tracksuit set. Play had resumed, and the coach's brow stuck out even more as some of the people in the crowd began to countdown the final minute of play.

The scoreboard stated that the teams were tied on forty-three each, and Taylor watched as their own coach, a far less terrifying man, pounded one of the guy's on their benches back, and pushed him out onto the field. It had to be Declan Woods, the team using him as a last play defence like they had the previous to come out on top while still letting the older, less talented guys play enough to feel appreciated.

"Fifty-one, fifty, forty-nine," the crowd chanted over Taylor's head, a person in the row behind her almost kicking her in excitement to watch Declan play. "Forty-eight, forty-seven..."

Pincey's team had the ball, darting down the field ready to score a goal. At the last second, Declan darted in between two of the players, leaping up to an inhuman height to intercept the ball. The players stood stock-still as he hit the ground running with it glued under his elbow, even his own team unmoving. The counting had silenced, only picking up as Declan smashed into the goal zone, ball hitting the ground as a hushed "One," echoed around the stadium.

There was a moment of silence, and then Brynklie and Bostyn were jumping up, etching yanking Taylor by a shoulder, screaming their lungs out. The rest of the Richmond supporters did the same, the school chant spreading through the air, an equally as abused chant of "Declan! Declan!" joining it.