She has grown up on a dairy farm, but fifteen-year-old D.J. is no ordinary milkmaid. She has played pick-up games and caught balls for her college-football-hero brothers all her life, and now with an injury sidelining her father, she is doing almost all the farm work. The dairy is the family's top priority, but it is taking a toll on D.J. She has little social life, less study time (she is flunking English), and no expectations of a brighter future. She is uncomplaining and unaware of her frustrations until Brian, the talented but out-of-condition quarterback for her high school's archrival, compares her to a cow. "You do all the work . . . It's like you're a cow . . . one day . . . they're going to . . . take you away to die and you're not even going to mind." Furious with unflinching honesty, D.J. takes the point and in contentious-but increasingly respectful-dialogue, both teens embark on a journey of self discovery during which D.J. becomes Brian's football trainer and realizes that she wants to play herself. D.J.'s voice is funny, frank, and intelligent, and her story is not easily pigeonholed.
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