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
“It never would have occurred to your dad not to forgive him,” she said.
“You don’t know that.”
“But I knew him,” she said. “And he knew better than anybody not to waste energy or a day of his life on things that he couldn’t change, on anything that didn’t matter. It was all there in the letter.”
He thought she might cry. She did sometimes when she was talking about his dad. Instead she broke into an even bigger smile than before.
“Now get outside and shoot some hoops in the driveway,” she said.
It was exactly what Lucas did. He knew this wasn’t the season he’d expected. It wasn’t the season he wanted it to be, for him or for Gramps. There were things he couldn’t change.
But the season still mattered.
A lot.
And it really was the only one he had.
TWENTY-FOUR
Practice before next Saturday’s game against the Oakdale Owls was different for Lucas. Not bad. Not even weird. Just different.
Gramps was acting as if things were back to normal with Lucas after what had happened in the last game. He wasn’t treating Lucas any differently than the rest of the Wolves. He had put in a new zone press for the Oakdale Owls. He drew up some plays that took Ryan away from his usual forward position and put him in the backcourt with Lucas, saying he thought that move might create real matchup problems for the other team.
“Christmas is right around the corner,” Gramps said. “Maybe in the right moment, we’ll treat a big guard like Ryan as a brand-new toy.”
“Like I’m a video game, Mr. Winston?” Ryan said.
“Yeah,” Richard said. “Ryan 2K.”
If you didn’t know that Gramps and Lucas were related, you wouldn’t have been able to tell by the way they acted around each other on the court. Lucas was still playing ball with his buddies, and for his grandfather. He still loved being out there, loved the process of practice, of learning things on offense and defense. He loved the process of getting better. But he knew things weren’t the way they’d always been, could see that they weren’t, even if his teammates couldn’t. Gramps would still pull him aside and tell him there might have been a better way to run a play. He’d still give Lucas a shout-out when he made a particularly good move.
It was just different, no getting around it. Gramps was still right there, limping out to the middle of the court when he wanted to make a point, still teaching. But it was as if there was distance between them.