“When our game was over on Saturday,” Ryan said, “I went home and e-mailed Mr. Collins and asked if I could add one more thing to my paper. That’s the schoolwork I was talking about. He e-mailed me back and told me to go for it. So I wrote about what had happened in the fourth quarter against the Pelicans, and how I learned even more about friendship when I least expected it.”

“Wow,” Lucas said, because that’s all he could think of to say.

“You got me to stop acting like an idiot,” Ryan said. “It just happened in a game this time.”

“But you came up with an awesome ending,” Lucas said. “For our game and for your paper.” Ryan shrugged.

“Isn’t that what good writers are supposed to do?” he said.

Then he laughed. They both did.

THIRTY-TWO

They finished their regular season without losing a game, even if they had managed to lose their head coach along the way.

Gramps still wasn’t back, and they still hadn’t heard from him. Almost every day, Lucas asked his mom if they should be worried about him, now that he felt as if anger toward his grandfather had been replaced by concern.

His mom said no.

“He might be wounded by everything that has happened,” she said. “And he is an elderly man. But he is still the toughest old bird I’ve ever met in my life. He’ll just show up one of these days, and when he does, I believe he’ll tell us where he’s been and what he did, and why.”

It was the Monday of what Lucas and Ryan and the guys were calling Championship Week, the way ESPN did when everybody was getting ready for the NCAA Tournament. On Saturday they were playing Corey Tanner and the Jazz for the title at Claremont Middle. Lucas knew there had been some talk about moving the game to the bigger gym at Claremont High School. But when Mrs. Moretti asked Lucas and his teammates what they thought, they were unanimous in telling her that they wanted to play the game where they’d played their other home games this season.

“We earned home court,” Lucas said. “And we want to stay on our home court.”

This was before practice on Monday night. Their last practice before the Jefferson game would be on Thursday night.

On Tuesday night, just as Lucas’s mom had predicted, Gramps just showed up right before dinner.

And proceeded to tell them where he’d been, and what he’d been doing.

And why.

He was wearing his old Celtics cap, but took it off when it was time to sit down and eat turkey meatloaf. It was then that Lucas discovered that Gramps had called his mom that afternoon to tell him he was back, and hoped he could still invite himself over for dinner.