I tried to text you a bunch of times yesterday,” Ryan said as they were walking to their first class.
“I know.”
“You didn’t hit me back.”
“I didn’t hit anybody back,” Lucas said, “even though I did feel like hitting something a few times.”
“So is it true?”
“It’s true,” Lucas said.
He hadn’t taken the bus today. His mom had driven him to school, so they could talk one last time about all the questions he was going to get, the way she was sure his friends were going to react, how he should handle it.
“You can’t hide from this,” she said.
“I’m not hiding,” he said.
“And you have to remember, you didn’t do anything,” she said.
Lucas answered her by quoting Mr. Collins, who’d told him that sometimes other people’s choices affected your own, whether you liked it or not.
They had tried calling Gramps all day Sunday. They had driven over to his apartment and rung his doorbell. Nobody had answered. His car wasn’t in its usual parking space on the side of his building. Lucas’s mom told him that as soon as she dropped him at school, she was going to take another ride back over there.
“Your grandfather really did all that wack stuff?” Ryan said. “And you didn’t tell me?”
“It wasn’t my place to tell anybody,” he said. “He never told me until I found out.”
“Usually you tell me everything,” Ryan said.
Lucas managed to smile, if not for long. “No,” he said. “Most of the time you tell me everything.”
Ryan said, “My mom thinks this is going to be a big deal with the people who run town basketball.”
It was something else Lucas had discussed with his mom, what the fallout might be with the Wolves.
“She thinks they might want another coach to finish the season,” Ryan said.
“Does she want that?” Lucas said.
“She doesn’t,” Ryan said. “But she thinks they might fire him.”
From his room after they’d had an early dinner, Lucas heard his mom on the telephone in the kitchen for nearly an hour. She wasn’t a board member herself for Claremont Basketball. But she knew just about everybody who was.
When she finally was off the phone, she came up to his room.
“They were actually more reasonable than I thought they’d be, and a lot less hysterical,” she said. “They all feel as if they got blindsided by this news.”
“So what did they decide?” Lucas asked.
“They didn’t decide, as a matter of fact. Just about everybody I spoke to mentioned that it’s Christmas, and even if they do end up voting to fire Gramps, they don’t want to do it during Christmas. And they’d all like to hear from him before they make a decision.”
“Did anybody try to call him?”
“A bunch of them did. They did as well reaching him as we have,” his mom said.
“Is Gramps still in Claremont, even?” Lucas said.
“Kiddo,” she said. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
She sat next to him on his bed and put an arm around him.
“But if he is still in town,” she said, “isn’t he supposed to be at your last practice before Christmas tomorrow night?”
“He said he wanted to have one last practice before our break even though there’s no game next Saturday,” Lucas said. “That was after the Jefferson game. He said he wanted to have us be together one more time before we went on vacation.”
She kissed him and left his room, shutting his door behind her as she did.
Where was he?
What was he feeling, being in the newspaper like this all over again, like he was one more page in Lucas’s dad’s scrapbook?
Lucas was just finishing his homework when he heard the doorbell, and yelled to his mom that he’d get it. When he got downstairs and opened the door, he saw Ryan standing there.
“Sorry I didn’t call first,” Ryan said.
“No worries,” Lucas said. “I just finished my homework.”
“Wish I could say the same,” Ryan said.
“You finish your paper?”
“No,” Ryan said.
“Dude,” Lucas said. “You know it’s due the day after tomorrow, right?”
“You think I don’t know that?” Ryan said.
They headed up to Lucas’s room. As they passed his mom’s room, they heard her say, “Hey, Ryan.”
Ryan said, “Sorry about everything that’s happened with Coach, Mrs. Winston.”
“Not as sorry as we are,” Lucas’s mom said.
When they were inside Lucas’s room, it was Ryan who closed the door. And got right to it.
“You have to help me finish my paper,” he said.
“You know I can’t do that,” Lucas said.
Ryan sat at Lucas’s desk. Lucas was on the bed, cross-legged.
“If you’re really my friend, you’ll do this,” Ryan said.
“We already talked about this,” Lucas said. “You know you have to do this on your own.”
“I know what Mr. Collins said,” Ryan said. “I want to know what you say.”
“I can’t help you,” Lucas said, “not this time.”
“If you don’t,” Ryan said, “I’m going to get a bad grade. And when I do, I’m off the team. You always say you’ll do anything to help the team. Well, you can help the team now by keeping me on it.”
“If I do what you want,” Lucas said, “it won’t just be us who know. Mr. C. will know.”
“It won’t be like last time,” Ryan said. “I’ll change things, I promise. Dude, I’m, like, begging you.”
He thought Ryan might cry.
“I can’t,” Lucas said.
“You mean you won’t,” Ryan said.
“No,” he said. “I can’t. I thought I was being a good friend and a good teammate before. But all that did was get us both into trouble.”
Ryan stood up. So did Lucas. They were only a couple feet away from each other, neither willing to back up.
“Fine,” Ryan said. “Start getting used to the idea of passing somebody else the ball when we get back from break.”
“You don’t know that’s going to happen,” Lucas said.
“Yeah, I do,” Ryan said. “I might not be much of a writer. But I can still read. I read my own paper before I came over here. And it still stinks.”
“Maybe you should do a different paper,” Lucas said. “There’s still time.”
“That’s your brilliant idea?” Ryan said. “I should start all over again, with a different subject, with a little over a day to go? Yeah, that’s gonna work.”
Ryan shook his head. His face was red.
“This is your idea of being my friend?” Ryan said. “Seriously?”
And suddenly Gramps’s voice was inside Lucas’s head, telling him that character was something you showed even in an empty room. His bedroom wasn’t empty, but in this moment he understood what Gramps had meant.
“I am your friend,” Lucas said.
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Ryan said.
He turned and walked out of the room. Lucas heard Ryan saying good-bye to his mom. Then the sound of the front door closing.
Now he was alone in his bedroom. He was the one making a choice that affected somebody else. He just hoped it didn’t cost him a friend. And a teammate.
But if he’d acted differently, he would have lost a lot more.