Todd Lewis was swetting. His eye-black was running down his face in streaks, as if the heat from the glaring stadium lights was reaching al l the way down to the field on which he stood. It was eerily silent in his head, though he knew the stadimu had a capacity of eighty thousand and it was crammed full of spectators. This was the moment he had been waiting for all of his life. Todd Lewis, he of the only two-time Heisman wins since fellow Ohio State University alum Archie Griffin. Todd Lewis, nintegral part of OSU's last national championship ring. Todd Lewis, number one overall pick in the NFL Draft. The awards were many, rookie rushing yards, touchdowns by a running back. He had almost single-handedly turned the flaccid Cleveland offense into one of the most prolific ever. And now here was his chance to add to his extensive collection of accolages and trophies with the best of them all - a Super Bowl ring.

Fourth down and five. A field goal wouldn't cut it. The vaunted Chicago defense was hungry, holding his Browns' offense in check. What would Cleveland do? Would they trust i ntheir NFL MVP quarterback's arm and let him unload one of his famous cannon tosses for the endzone?

Of course not. They would give it to their all-world tailback, knowing that when the going got tough, Todd got going. The snap, the handoff, he had the ball, he cut around the first defender, he juked out the next, he had the five yards! But he was still going, gracefully outrunning the Bears, to the thirty, the twenty, the ten, TOUCHDOWN!!

Todd raised his hands in the air, gasping for breath. The silence went away and the roar of the crowd was deafening - a crowd eighty thousand storng and they were all screaming his name.

Then the sprinklers came on, dousing Todd and his fantasy. The brilliant lights faded to dull, yellow and the grass under his feet was just grass, not turf. He flopped to the grass where he had stood, letting the cold water splatter over him. Reality again. He was no longer Todd Lewis, the star, but Todd Lewis, the boy.

"Goddammit, Todd, when are you ever going to do anything right? Can't you just try to keep from tripping over your own fucking feet?"

"Higher!" she shrieked, giggling and swinging her legs to pump her swing up, up, up.

Celeste was flying. The moment of near weightlessness right at the top of her swing... She could feel the sky hold her still, as if there were no such thing as gravity. Flying. Then the crash back to Earth, the slow climb backwards, and the steady journey back up again, all for that one moment. That one moment that she could soar.

All kids had their dreams. Little Celeste, at seven, still had hers of becoming a dancing astronaut that married a prince to save the world. As she let herself swing, back and forth, back and forth, it was clear to no one how close she could get to reaching all her lofty goals. But piece by piece, from the ballet slippers on her feet to her gravity defying swinging, she was closer than they would ever know.

Really, all she needed was a prince, and, y'know. Maybe a Honda Prius, so she could help save the world.

Summertime meant no school, so instead of class, Celeste spent her days at dance camp. Her nights, however, she spent with her uncle, here in the park. But he hadn't come yet. Instead, her nanny helped push her on the swing.

From her perch, Celeste watched a boy run across the grass of the park with curiosity. She hadn't seen him here before, and even though her uncle insisted that she couldn't know everyone in the park, fact was that she was pretty darn close. And this kid... He was new. And he ran with his eyes closed. In the sprinklers.

Five minutes after Todd collapsed on the field, Celeste stood over him, her face in a small pout as her dress slowly became soaked by the water. "Who are you?" she said, in a tone more demanding than asking. "And what are you doing in the sprinklers?"

Todd was exhausted. It might have been the offseason, but he was still keeping up his running. However, since they had closed the track at school because of vandalism (hellooo, thank-you-very-freaking-much) he'd had to find other places to do his running. He did his weights at home with his garage sale barbells. But that was the way you tgot into the HoF, right? Right. You worked your damn ass off. Like he was ever going to get into the Hall of Fame.

Being hot and sweaty, he didn't mind the sprinklers so much. They click-click-clicked as they doused him and slowly his breathing started to even out. He could almost fall asleep...

"Who are you? And what are you doing in the sprinklers?"

Todd cracked one hazel eye and studied the little blond girl. And scowled. At thirteen, Todd considered himself much too old and sophisticated to be messing around with six year-olds. "None of your busy-ness," he answered none too politely, wiping water off his face and freshly buzzed hair. He sat up, feeling water soak through his frayed jeans and battered running shoes.

He scowled again, a look that managed to be both funny and annoyed on his sharp-featured face. "And I wasn't doing anything in the sprinklers. They came on when I was here. There's a diff'rence."

Celeste made a face in mimicry of his: a slightly haughty, slightly annoyed scowl. She had asked him a question. Who was he to brush her off like a mere child?

Along with lofty dreams, goals, and ambitions, Celeste has a lofty view of herself. She crinkled her nose at the boy before her. Seven years old, and while she swears she will marry a Prince, boys are still icky. They have cooties and they're dumb.

And this one was no exception.

"Who are you!" she demanded, sounding none too polite herself. "And why are you still in the sprinklers." She crossed her arms tightly across her chest and was moments from stomping her feet. Ah, yes, she is no mere child.

But I will give her one thing: she's still standing there, even though her skirts are slowly getting more and more waterlogged. Like her mother and countless other women in her life, she loves her clothes. But, unlike them, apparently not more than she love knowing things.

Man, what was it about little kids? Todd wondered that as the little kid in question crossed her arms and glared at him, all but stomping one slippered foot on the muddy earth to complete the picture of... little kid-ness. "I'm in the sprinklers 'cause I wanna be in the sprinkelers!" the boy snapped back, then thought about how stuoid that sounded. "And that's 'cause it's hot. So I'm cooling off."

But even as he said so, he pushed himself up from the ground, slightly embarrassed about his soaked clothes, even though there wasn't anybody... important around to care. He brushed grass and dirt from the butt of his jeans. "Go home and play with your Barbies, kid," Todd told Celeste in a tone meant to convey how much older and more superior and... manlier he was than her.

That last one was sort of a given, but still.

Sounds like there isn't just one little kid in the sprinklers tonight.

If Celeste could fold her arms across her chest any tighter, she would, with the ultimate look of disdain that she could muster across her face. He still hadn;t answered her question, and that was annoying. Annoying in a 'give me, give me!' kind of way, and a way she'd usually win by out-whining the opponents.

"No," she declared, with closed eyes, and a large pout. "I am staying here to wait for my uncle." And, as if remembering that this kid in the sprinklers was not nearly as important as getting picked up by Colton, her eyes flung open and her hands returned back down to her sides as she spun around to stare off at the swings she had just left. Her nanny was beckoning her out of the sprinklers.

Oh, yes, there were sprinklers. And a boy who didn't have a name.

With a slight yelp-screech-cry combination, Celeste jumped and ran away from the wetness. Once safely back on the path, she looked down at her dress, tights, and shoes. She was pretty well soaked, with little blades of freshly-cut grass clinging to her shoes and ankles. One stalking was starting to discolour because of the mud that had creeped its way into her sandal. With a new-found upset feeling, Celeste balled her hands into fists and turned back to Todd.

"WHO ARE YOU!" she screamed back at him, tears threatening. Because, whoever he was, he caused her to get all muddy and she didn't like that.

He could have laughed. As a boy, a teenager, and a... teenage boy, Todd could easily have laughed at the way the little girl shriekd and ran away from teh water - after having spent enough time in it to get soaked and slightly, uhm, grassy. Like, on her shoes. And yet he didn't laugh... well, he snickered once, but only once. Maybe twive.

Okay, face it, he was a teenage boy, she was a little girl, and she'd been bugging him about the sprinklers and him getting wet. And it was funny. Oooh, no, she got her little dress wet!

But he did at least feel a little bad about it, like he was mean. Until she yelled out him.

"Holy freaking cow, girl!" Todd exclaimed, surprised by the ferocity contained in a dinky six year-old. Like a... a... weasel or wolverine (grr, wolverines!) or something small and attack-y. "It's Todd, alright? Why are you so, like, obseesed anyway?"

Little girls were weird. He'd never been weird at that age. Thus proving, of course, the superiority of boys to girls.

The laughing was just a further blow to her crushed pride, and Celeste started to water up. Stupid boy. She wasn't going to cry in front of him. Not one tear. With a stubborn fist, she wiped her eyes before the tears could escape them, and that would be all.

Okay, well maybe just that little bit, but no more.

"Well, mister Todd, you're a bully and I don't like you." Her voice barely wavered. She was a feisty one; her mother would have been proud to see her now. She would have stormed off, but she couldn't. He had called her 'obsessed'. She didn't know what that was, and her curiosity was getting the better of her.

After a moment of standing there, all brimstone and spitfire, she visibly softened. "Wait... What's an obsessed?"

Once she knew, then she'd leave.

Holy rusted metal, was she crying? Todd had a typical and very boyish reaction to the tears that poped up in her bluey-grayish eyes. Panic. He might have been mildly unkind, but he wasn't the sort who enjoyed making other people cry. In his opinion, she should have had thicker skin. The fact that she was a good deal younger than him was not considered.

"I'm not a bully," he objected, his coffee colored brows drawing together so that they made practically a flat line over his hazel eyes. Bullies tripped you in the hallway and laughed when you fell over and tore the knees of your brand-new Levi's. Todd didn't trip people. "I'm a... And I don't care if you don't like me!" the boy retorted haughtily, or at least as haughtily as someone in wet pants could get.

Nearly ready to saunter off in a way that would show her and everybody else that he was way too mature to be hanging around some little girl, Todd was kept from doing so when she spoke again. His brows drew toegther once more. "Obsessed is... like... being buggy about something." He explained unhealpfully.