WHO I AM: DeShawn. 17. Senior. Outside Atlanta. Up until July 17 I was a quarterback, and that's all I ever said when people asked. Then at a summer 7-on-7 I planted to throw, a linebacker fell into my leg, and I heard a pop like a knuckle. Torn ACL. The doctor said you wait for the swelling to go down and the knee to bend again before surgery, so we waited, and they fixed it August 10. They say six months minimum before I play anything. Senior season is three months. You do the math. I did it about a hundred times.

So this is my journal. I'm writing it because Mr. H., my English teacher, says writers write every day, and because I'm up at night anyway.

ENTRIES: 9/26 · 9/24 · 9/20 · 9/16 · 9/10 · 9/1 · 8/27 · 8/11

Church with Grandmama. During prayer requests she stood up and said "My grandson's knee," loud, like the Lord might be hard of hearing, and about forty church mothers turned around and looked at my knee. After service three of them touched it. I'm not complaining. It's feeling better, so who knows.

This afternoon I sat down with the application for State. The regular one. The one everybody fills out, the one with a line for your social security number and a box for "intended major." Last spring I figured I'd never see that form. I figured a coach would hand me a different kind of paper. Now I got a B average, which Mama reminds me every day means the HOPE scholarship pays tuition if I keep it, and I got an essay to write.

The prompt is basically "tell us who you are." I wrote "I am a quarterback" and then I sat there a long time and erased it. Then I wrote "I am a guy who reads the defense before the snap." Then I wrote about Friday, about standing on the sideline with a notebook. I think it might be the truth. I don't know yet. Mr. H. says the first draft is just you telling yourself the story. Okay then.

Knee: 118 degrees of bend, Miss Renee (my PT) says. Listening to: Lauryn Hill, "Everything Is Everything," on repeat.

My first article came out today. Page 6 of the school paper, under the ads for the car wash and the band fundraiser, but there it is. My name in print, not in the lineup, on top of a story. Mama bought... well, it's free, but she took six. She's taking them to work.

Then the game. Same spot on the sideline, down by the 40, but tonight I had a notebook and a pen and I wasn't just a hurt guy in a jacket, I was working. I wrote down every play. Tay, the junior who's starting in my spot, went 11 for 17, two touchdowns, and one of them was the play-action rollout I ran all last year. He looked right at me after, pointed, like "that's yours." I pointed back. Then I went and stood by the cooler for a minute where nobody could see me.

I'm proud of him for real. I'm also jealous enough to spit. Mr. H. says a good reporter says what he saw, so there it is. Both.

We won. Big moon over the visitors' stands, almost full. I wrote that down too. Probably can't use it.

Six weeks. Off the crutches for good. Walking in the brace with the hinge unlocked, which feels like being let out of jail, except jail is my own leg.

PT is three times a week, Monday Wednesday Friday after school. Mama works till 5:30 so my girl Keisha drives me in her Civic. She plays the radio loud and I don't argue because she has a license and a car and right now that makes her the most important person in my life after Mama and Grandmama. (Don't tell Grandmama she's ranked.)

Today Miss Renee had me on the stationary bike and I went all the way around. Full circle. First time since July. I know how that sounds. A grown man, or a mostly grown man, getting excited because a bike pedal went around. But two weeks ago I couldn't make it past the top without it feeling like the knee was going to fold. Today I rode for ten minutes and Miss Renee said "Look at you" and I had to look at the wall for a second.

Then step-ups, and ice. Always ice.

House is full. Aunt Dee and my three little cousins came up from the Georgia coast Tuesday night when they told everybody down there to get out ahead of the hurricane. Took them forever on I-16. The storm went on past Georgia and hit Carolina instead, and I'm glad, and I'm also sleeping on the floor next to a six-year-old who kicks.

Grandmama has cooked every hour since they got here. Greens, chicken, a pound cake, a sweet potato pie "for later." There is no later. There are three little boys.

I turned in my first article today. Mr. H. gave it back yesterday with so much red ink it looked like it got in a fight. "Who, what, when, where. THEN why. Cut the adjectives. The score goes up top, not in paragraph five." I rewrote it at the kitchen table with my cousin Marcus, age 8, reading over my shoulder and asking what "red zone" meant. Explaining it to an 8-year-old made it better. Don't tell Mr. H.

Mr. H. caught me after English. He teaches English and runs the school paper and he's been at every home game for like twenty years, always in the same spot up top with a thermos. He said, "You know you watch a game better than anybody in those stands? I watched you last Friday. You were calling their coverages before the snap. Out loud. To nobody."

I said I didn't know I was doing it out loud.

He said the paper needs a sports editor because the one they had graduated, and he'd rather have somebody who knows the difference between Cover 2 and a zone blitz than somebody who just likes the cheerleaders. He said: think about it.

I said no. I said I'm not quitting the team to go write about the team. He said nobody said quit. He said you're on that sideline anyway. Might as well bring a pen.

I thought about it through the whole game tonight. We lost by a field goal. I could tell you exactly why. Maybe that's the answer.

Told Mr. H. yes in a note under his door. Coward way. Still a yes.

I have a shoebox under my bed with every letter a college ever sent me. Junior year it filled up. Camp invites, questionnaires, "we've been following your progress," the ones with the coach's signature printed on and the ones where he really signed it.

The mail stopped. It didn't stop all at once. It got thin, then it got to one or two a week, then today there was one, and it said "Best wishes for a full and speedy recovery," and nothing else. Nice paper. I put it in the box. Then I put the box in the closet.

One coach did call. Mama talked to him on the kitchen phone for twenty minutes and she came out and said he said to keep my grades up and do my rehab and "we'll see." Everybody says we'll see. I know what it means.

Too tired for more.

First game. I've been on that field every Friday night since I was a freshman carrying water bottles. Tonight I was back on it with crutches, jeans and my jersey over a T-shirt, standing behind the bench by the Gatorade.

Here's what nobody tells you. Everything still smells the same. Cut grass and the concession stand and that lime they paint the lines with. The band still plays the same fight song. The lights still come on and make everything look like TV. Your body still knows it's Friday. It still gets that feeling in your stomach at kickoff, like it's getting ready. And then you just stand there.

Guys kept coming by and slapping me on the shoulder. Coach put his hand on my head during the pregame prayer. Nobody really knows what to say to you. I didn't know what to say to them either. "Good luck" sounds dumb when it's your spot.

Tay started. He's a junior, first varsity start, and he threw an interception on his first series and came off the field looking for me. Not Coach. Me. So I told him what I saw: the safety was cheating over, look him off first. Second half he did. We won.

Came home and Grandmama had left a plate in the oven with foil on it and a note that said "Proud of you anyway." Anyway.

Surgery was yesterday. Home now. Leg in a big brace, ice machine wrapped around the knee, and this thing called a CPM machine that slowly bends my leg up and down all day by itself like a robot doing my rehab for me. I watch it go. It's weird. It's like it's somebody else's leg.

Mama took off two days, which she never does. Grandmama moved into the living room with me and her Bible and the TV remote. She put Jeremiah 29:11 on the refrigerator. "For I know the plans I have for you." I said Grandmama, did He mention the plans to the linebacker? She said don't be smart. She was smiling though.

The pain pills make me slow so this is short. Dr. S. said the surgery went good. Said a lot of guys come back from this. Said "come back" is a long word. I don't know what he meant by that. I think I'm going to find out.