Lucas tried to explain it all to Maria when it was just the two of them at lunch the next day.
When he finished she said, “You should just drop this now.”
“I would have by now,” Lucas said, “if that picture hadn’t dropped out of the book.”
“But it wouldn’t have if you hadn’t gone up into the attic snooping around,” she said.
“I wouldn’t call it snooping,” Lucas said.
He saw she was smiling at him. Sometimes when she did that he had to find an excuse to turn away, as if he’d spotted somebody else on the other side of the cafeteria, afraid he might be blushing.
“What would you call it, then?”
“Trying to solve a mystery,” he said.
“Maybe it’s not that great a mystery,” Maria said. “Maybe it’s just a story your Gramps doesn’t want to tell. You know what I really think you should do?”
“Tell me.”
“Tell him you love him next time you see him,” she said.
“That’s it?” Lucas said.
She smiled again. “My mom says you can never do that enough with the people you love,” she said. “And don’t you always do what he wants you to do in basketball?”
“Yeah.”
“Do that now,” she said.
Maria already knew Lucas had picked Mr. Collins to write about now that he wasn’t writing about Gramps. Maria had picked her grandmother, because she wanted to write about how inspiring her life had been, starting her own dressmaking business as a young woman. And, she told Lucas, it was more than that. Her grandmother had been born in China. Maria wanted to focus on why her life was such a good example of how immigrants could come to America and lead great American lives. And she told Lucas that there were things that her grandmother had seen growing up that she didn’t like talking about.
“I’m so glad Mr. Collins asked us to do something like this,” Maria said.
“Well, I’m not!” Ryan said.
He’d been sitting at another table with some of the other Wolves’ players. Now he plopped himself down in the chair next to Maria’s.
“Sorry to interrupt,” Ryan said.
Maria smiled again. “That’s so unlike you.”
“I need more help with my paper,” he said.
“Do you mean you want Lucas to help?” Maria said. “Or both of us?”
“You want to help me too!” he said. “Awesome!”
“Sounds like more of a Lucas thing to me,” Maria said.
“Thanks a bunch,” Lucas said to her.
“Oh,” Maria said, “you don’t have to thank me.”
“What’s the problem now?” Lucas said.
“Other than I can’t write?” Ryan said.
“I thought we had you off to a good start,” Lucas said.
“But every time I try to write on my own, I get stopped,” Ryan said.
He turned to Maria and started to tell her how he couldn’t get less than a B on his paper or he wouldn’t be able to finish the basketball season.
“I know,” she said.
“You do?” Ryan said
“I think my distant relatives back in China know,” Maria said.
Lucas couldn’t stop himself from laughing.
“Funny?” Ryan said. “You think this is funny?” He groaned as he put his forehead down on the table.
Maria leaned down close to him and said, “Didn’t Mr. Collins tell us that a lot of great writers suffered?”
“I’m not looking for great here,” Ryan said. “I’m just looking for doesn’t stink.”
The bell rang then, ending lunch, and sending them off to their one o’clock class. Lucas told Ryan they could work at his house after they got off the bus, and that he promised to get him unstuck. He was actually looking forward to it, thinking it would take his mind off Gramps. And he was happy to help his friend get through this paper, get a good grade, get on with the basketball season.
He wished he was as confident that things would work out with his grandfather.
More than ever, Lucas wished he could write a happy ending to that story.
He and Ryan worked until it was time for Ryan to leave for dinner. They were up in Lucas’s room while his mom was down in the kitchen grading papers of her own. Ryan asked Lucas if his mom might mind terribly just shooting him an A on his paper. Lucas told him he was pretty sure it didn’t work that way.
But the work they did was similar to what they’d done the first time they’d worked together. Today Ryan talked about the difference between an individual sport and a team sport, and what it was like being on the court alone. As he did, Lucas took notes. Then he wrote out a few paragraphs as a way of helping Ryan organize his thoughts.
“Now just go home and put this into your own words,” Lucas said.
“But they already are my words,” Ryan said. “We’ve gone over that already.”
Lucas said, “But Mr. Collins talks all the time about how we have to find our own voice. I know you just said this stuff. But when you write it yourself, put it in your voice. Seriously, dude? We’re almost there. It’s like your shot when we’re playing ball. You just have to trust it.”
When Ryan was gone, Lucas thought about calling Gramps. But he didn’t. Gramps would talk when he was ready. And when he was ready, maybe he’d explain everything so that Lucas could understand. Maybe it wasn’t as much of a mystery as Lucas thought. Maybe everything would make perfect sense, like when you got to the end of a book. Lucas told himself he had to be patient, even though patience wasn’t exactly one of his strong suits.
There was no practice tonight. Dinner probably wouldn’t be for another hour or so. He tried to read, but he just couldn’t focus. So he put down his book, did the little homework he had to do.
Then he quietly made his way back up to the attic. He wasn’t going up there to snoop. He was just curious. He just wanted to know for himself. Even if he found something else, he might show it to his mom, and talk about it with her. But it would just be the two of them. He didn’t want to upset Gramps. He didn’t want to make him talk about things that he didn’t want to talk about. He didn’t want this mystery, if it really was one, to come between them.
He just wanted to know.
Lucas knew Maria had been right at lunch, and that he should drop this now.
But this time when he went up there, he found the letter.