“Suddenly I have the first knee problems of my life: they turn to rubber.”

“Any chance that you're pregnant?' the technician says as he pulls the X-ray lamp over my swollen knee.'No,' Henry and Dad say at the same time.”

“Keep telling yourself that. Thanks for scaring them off. Turn around so I can get dressed." "No." "No?" "No." He stares straight into my eyes. "I didn't scare them off for you. I did it for me. I'm coming in with you.”

“At least I’ve got football .It’s been my life since I was seven, but sometimes Henry says I need to spend less time focusing and start “living life like I’m going to hell tomorrow.”But I feel like a normal teenager. Wel , as normal as I can be. I mean, obviously I think Justin Timberlake is a mega-hunk, but I’m also over six feet tal and can launch a footbal fifty yards.Other ways I’m not normal?A girl who hangs with an entire football team must hook up all the time, right?Nope.I’ve never had a boyfriend. Hell , I’ve never even kissed a guy. The closest I’ve ever come to a kiss happened just this past summer, but it was a joke. At a party, one of those cheerleaders suggested we all play a game of seven minutes in heaven, you know, the game where you go into a closet and kiss? Somehow Henry and I got sent into the closet together, and of course we didn’t kiss, but we ended up in a mad thumb-wrestling match. Which turned into a shoving match. Which turned into everyone thinking we’d hooked up in the closet. Yeah, right. He’s like my brother.”

“Henry keeps dealing. When all the cards have been separated, I pick up my stack and shuffle my cards again. Then I look up into Henry's eyes, and he's staring back at me, at my tears, and I see all these tiny wrinkles around his eyes-sadness wrinkles. He frowns, biting his lip.”

“For what it's worth," Dad says, running his fingers over the picture, "I've never seen anyone run faster than Henry after you hurt your knee last week.”

“Henry looks from my face back to the field, and his eyes pop open wide. I turn to see why he's gaping: JJ and Carter are messing around, tryingto shove a scrawny wide receiver into Jerry Rice's stroller."JJ!" Henry yells, "You can't fit a freshman in that stroller.”