Damage 
by A. M. Jenkins

Subjects: Sports, Mental Conditions
Genre: Realistic Fiction

Austin has it all.  He's the pride of the Parkersville Panthers.  He is a senior and star receiver on the football team.  But lately he's been feeling down, he can't seem to get excited about anything.  Not football, not even his new girlfriend Heather, "the most beautiful girl in town number one on every guy's top ten to do list." You've heard the proverb, "Life is like a box of chocolate, you never know what you're going to get." Well for Austin life is like football.  "It's all yours.  Your hands rise, fingers spread, ready to feel the firm scrape of the football, ready to pull it to you, ready to tuck it safely in. But the ball bumbles against your fingertips. It lurches away, and the beautiful spiraling pass ends its life in a series of ugly bounces across the field.  Then there's just a football lying untended on the grass, just that---and your empty hands." What do you do when you have it all, but you can't feel it.  Find out what Austin does, read Damage by A. M. Jenkins.

Booktalk prepared by Janice Bailey, East Central High Librarian