Their next practice was on Tuesday night. On Monday, Mr. Collins told Lucas and Ryan he wanted to see them after class. He wasn’t smiling, or acting like friendly Mr. C., when he said it.

“That doesn’t sound good,” Ryan said to Lucas when English class ended.

It wasn’t.

They had passed in their papers the previous Friday along with everybody else in the class. Lucas had asked Ryan if he wanted him to look over Ryan’s paper one more time. Ryan said, no, it was as good as it was going to get.

His mom had once told him something an old writer had said, about how she hated to write but loved having written. But it didn’t work that way with Lucas. It would have been like saying that he loved winning a game but not having had to actually play it.

Writing wasn’t always easy. It was hard some nights, especially when he was still working on his basketball journal, and had to be honest about everything that had happened since the start of the Wolves’ season. Mr. C. was right, though. The more you worked at it, the better you got.

Now Lucas and Ryan sat in the front of Mr. C.’s classroom. He was at his desk. In front of him were two printouts, side by side. He still wasn’t smiling, or acting friendly. Clearly there was something bothering him.

He tapped one printout, then the other, then looked up at Lucas and Ryan.

“I’ve got both your papers here,” Mr. Collins said. “Yours, Lucas. And yours, Ryan.”

He paused, but they both could see that he wasn’t finished. And seemed even less happy than when they’d arrived.

“There’s a problem, I’m sorry to say,” he said. “A big problem.”

He blew out some air, sounding tired.

“The writing in them is too much alike,” he said. “As if they were both written by the same person.”

Now he looked directly at Lucas.

“As a matter of fact, they both read as if they were written by you, Lucas.”

Lucas cleared his throat, which suddenly felt as dry as the papers on the desk. But before he could speak, Mr. Collins did.

“Every writer has their own voice,” he said. “You’ve both heard me say that plenty of times in class. A writer’s voice, even now, can be as distinctive as your handwriting. Or even the way you shoot a basketball. But it’s their own. And needs to be their own.”

Lucas looked over at Ryan, whose eyes were pleading with him, though he wasn’t quite sure pleading for what. Maybe not to make things worse.