All because of a school paper, Lucas thought.

He looked at his grandfather, slumped now in his chair, looking older than he ever had before, like the oldest man on Earth.

“At least now it’s out in the open,” Gramps said. “And I’m not making excuses for what I did. The things that happened, I let them happen.”

“What about the money?” Lucas said.

He had meant to ask about the money before. The stories he’d printed out said Joe Samuels had been paid five thousand dollars, and that Tommy Angelo had gotten more.

“I kept it in a pocket of a jacket hanging in the closet of my dorm room,” Gramps said. “I thought that when the school year was over I could take it home and give it to my parents and tell them I’d gotten a job when I wasn’t playing basketball.”

Lucas shook his head quickly now, from side to side, feeling the anger rising up in him again.

“You should have been brave enough to tell,” Lucas said.

“You don’t think I know that?” Gramps said in a tired voice.

“I want to go home now,” Lucas said.

He stood up and bounced the ball as hard as he could, then caught it, and bounced it again, even harder than before. The sound of the ball hitting the floor was very loud.

“Are you sure you haven’t told me more lies?” Lucas said.

“Everything I’ve told you is the truth, son,” Gramps said.

“It’s like you lied to me my whole life!” Lucas said.

“Until now,” Gramps said.

“Until you got caught again,” Lucas said.

Gramps stared at him. Lucas saw the hurt in his eyes. Then his grandfather said, “The worst part of all this wasn’t that everybody ended up knowing what I’d done. The worst part was that I knew.”

He started walking toward the doors at the other end of the gym. Gramps followed him. His whole life his grandfather had tried to be like his father, too. He’d coached Lucas the way he’d coached Lucas’s own father. All he’d ever wanted was to be in a gym like this with him. All he’d wanted to do was learn basketball from him and talk basketball with him. Gramps had been the only coach he’d ever wanted. Or needed. He’d even dreamed that Gramps would somehow get to coach him at Claremont High.

Now he wasn’t sure that he even wanted him to be his coach tomorrow.

Or ever again.

TWENTY-TWO

But Gramps did coach the Wolves on Saturday.

Lucas tried to act as if things were normal between him and Gramps. But once they were back in the gym together, Lucas managed to stay away from him as much as possible. He just wanted to concentrate on basketball today.