He sighed and closed his laptop. His mom happened to be walking past his doorway when he did. Lucas heard her laugh.

“I thought a gust of wind must have just blown into your room,” she said. “But then I realized that sound had come out of my son.”

He told her what he’d been doing.

“Slow going?” she said.

“The slowest,” he said. “I can’t find anything that tells me that Gramps ever even played college ball.”

“I know this is going to shock you,” she said, “but Google doesn’t know everything about everybody.”

“You probably found that on Google,” Lucas said, grinning at her.

“In the world of new information,” she said, “a lot of stuff can still slip through the cracks.”

“I don’t want new information,” he said. “Just looking for old news here.”

She came in and rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

“Eventually you might have to do it the old-fashioned way,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Go to the source.”

“Gramps,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“But what if he hasn’t changed his mind?” Lucas said.

“Then,” his mom said, “as important as doing this paper on him is to you, what he wants will be more important.”

TEN

They lucked into some free gym time after school the next afternoon, so Lucas and some of the other guys from the Wolves got to play some three-on-three. Even when the game ended, Lucas stayed on and worked on his game alone, because there was still forty-five minutes before his mom was going to pick him up. Mr. Collins had supervised the three-on-three game, sitting in the bleachers as he graded papers. Before he went back to his classroom, he gave Lucas the key to the equipment closet, telling him to put the ball back when he was through, lock the closet, and drop off the key with him.

“I promised your mother I wouldn’t let you just wander around the school by yourself,” Mr. Collins said.

“When I’ve got the gym all to myself?” Lucas said. “Yeah, like that’s going to happen.”

Today Lucas went to all the spots on the court where Gramps’s offense was likely to take him, and shot the ball from there. He worked on his left-handed dribble, going end to end using his left hand exclusively, finishing each trip up the court with a left-handed drive to the basket. He shot free throws until he could make ten in a row. If he missed, even on the last one, he’d start all over again. Even after having played a hard three-on-three game, he didn’t feel tired. He was exactly where he wanted to be.