Chapters (41)
- Cover
- Dedication
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
- Also by Mike Lupica
Maybe Lucas should have started asking him questions about that long before this. Or maybe if he had, the answers would have been the same as they were now, which meant no answers at all. All Lucas knew for sure was that by the time his dad had been born, his grandfather and grandmother were living in Claremont.
“C’mon, Gramps,” Lucas said out loud. “Help a guy out here.”
He decided to open up one more box. It was the one with his dad’s Chip Hilton books in it. These were the books that had been Michael Winston’s favorites when he was Lucas’s age, and that he had loved to read as much as Lucas did now. Lucas knew this because his mom had told him, telling him all the time about how these books in particular were most meaningful to him. By now, Lucas had read most of them too. They were about a star athlete named Chip Hilton, who’d grown up in a town called Valley Falls before he and his buddies went off to college. He played football and basketball and baseball, and the books would go from sport to sport and season to season. When Lucas was little, his mom would read Chip Hilton books called Championship Ball and Hardcourt Upset and A Pass and a Prayer as his bedtime stories. Lucas loved them all.
“These are the books that made you love to read before you could read,” his mom told him one time.
He was holding Hardcourt Upset in his hands when a picture fell out of it.
There were two basketball players in it.
It was obviously an old picture, Lucas could tell that just by looking at the uniforms. He couldn’t believe how small and tight the shorts looked. One player wore number 14. One wore number 24. There were holding the same basketball between them. Both the players had their hair buzzed really, really short.
BISONS was written across the front of their jerseys.
Lucas turned over the photograph. On the back was written a date: 10/15/61. Underneath the date were two names: Joe and Tommy.
They were standing underneath a basket, but there was nothing around them that identified the gym. It could have been any gym anywhere. Lucas couldn’t even tell for sure whether they were high school players or college players.
Both of them were smiling.
But who were they?
Why had his dad kept this picture?
Joe who? Lucas thought.
Tommy who?
He’d come up here looking for answers, and now just had more questions.
FIFTEEN
He took the picture with him down to his room. While Lucas waited for his mom to get home he opened his laptop, went to Google, and typed in, “Colleges with nickname or mascot Bisons.”
A bunch of them came up.