Colin Fischer (7 page)

High school gym class seemed an altogether more threatening experience. Compared to Colin, many of the boys had sprouted into giants and seemed capable of crushing him without ever noticing he was there. For a moment, Colin hesitated. He took three deep breaths to prepare himself and continued gamely on.

The boys had formed into two lines, taking turns shooting free throws, each smoothly retrieving his ball and passing it to the next shooter before taking his place at the back of the line again. It was an infinite loop of dribbling, shooting, and jogging. The hollow, ringing
thud
of bouncing basketballs was punctuated by Mr. Turrentine’s barked instructions that seemed to carry effortlessly over the din of directed play.

“Both feet behind the line, Ybarra.”

“One smooth motion, McKee.”

“Stop gossiping like old ladies and get to the back of the line.”

Colin stepped across the court with robotic strides, clad in stained blue polyester sweatpants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a mouthless Japanese animated cat. As he approached, he heard familiar high-pitched laughter. It sounded like Stan, and indeed Eddie, Stan, and Cooper were waiting to shoot. Colin fixed his gaze on Eddie, trying to understand what the laughter was about, only vaguely aware it was directed at him.

Then he cast his eyes downward and focused on his breathing, trying to make each breath deep and even as he took his place with the rest of the boys.

Colin looked up as his turn came, just in time to see Eddie hurl the ball at his midsection. He batted it away rather than catch it, then, realizing his mistake, scrambled after the ball as it skittered toward an adjacent court.

“Fetch, Shortbus,” Stan said, and laughed even harder.

“Shortbus” was a reference to the small yellow bus that trundled through the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley, taking handicapped and developmentally disabled children from home to school and back again. Colin had never ridden it, but Eddie gave him the nickname in sixth grade. It had stuck to Colin ever since.

Pretending not to hear the giggles and mock cheers, Colin retrieved the ball and returned to his place in line. He dribbled it once, then tossed it overhand,
sending it sailing over the backboard with at least a foot to spare. The schoolyard erupted in laughter at the spectacular miss. The noise was disagreeably loud, and now it came from all around. Mr. Turrentine whipped his head around at the sound of it and witnessed Colin lope gamely toward the baseball diamond after his lost ball.

His mustache twitched. “All right, keep it moving, people,” he said to the three lines of basketball throwers. “Five more minutes, then laps, passing, and cool down.”

For a moment, it was as if time had frozen. The laughter stopped, and so did the dribbling, the shooting, and the low buzz of conversation. Colin looked around at his classmates, wishing vaguely that he had his Notebook to record this unprecedented display of a teacher’s power over his students. Then the silence broke, and a cacophony of dribbling, shooting, shuffling, and trash-talking resumed with renewed vigor. Colin realized that Mr. Turrentine was coming toward him with his quick but easy gait and took a moment to examine the man’s feet—did they ever touch the floor?

“Fischer. Over here.” Turrentine pointed to a vacant court. Colin approached it warily, cowering slightly as his teacher held a basketball in front of his face. The ball was close enough for him to observe the bumpy, fingerprint-like patterns on its surface. Colin wondered if he could calculate the total number of
bumps from a one-inch sample and interpolating based on its total surface area, and so he did.

“Is this a live grenade, Fischer? Is it going to explode in your face?”

“No,” replied Colin. Marie had spent several days over the summer trying to teach him to recognize a rhetorical question when asked, but he never got it right more than half the time. So he found it best to answer every question as if it had been sincerely asked. In this case, his answer seemed to meet with Mr. Turrentine’s approval.

“You’re a genius, Fischer. It is not a live grenade. It will not explode in your face. So don’t throw it like you think it will.”

Mr. Turrentine leaned in slightly for emphasis, looming. For the first time, Colin noticed a small constellation of raised moles on his teacher’s right cheek. He tried to imagine how the man shaved around them without cutting himself, but left the thought experiment inconclusive as Mr. Turrentine snapped his fingers to regain Colin’s full attention. “Step up to that line.”

“Sir?”

“Did I misspeak, Fischer? Did I mumble, cough, or otherwise fail to articulate the fullness of my meaning? Step up to the line.”

Colin appreciated the concreteness of the clarification. He obediently stepped up to the faded white line before him, then turned to face Mr. Turrentine.

“There is one and only one thing to understand about the game of basketball,” Turrentine said. “God is a busy man. He doesn’t have the time in His ineffable schedule to appear on my court and miracle your balls into a basket nine feet in the air.”

“Mr. Turrentine?”

“Yes, Fischer?”

“I don’t believe in God.”

Colin waited for what he believed was the inevitable response. His lack of belief in a Supreme Being was longstanding, extrapolated from his third-grade deconstructions of Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, but he often encountered hostility when it came up in conversation.

Mr. Turrentine, however, remained impressively blank-faced. “Well, that’s just fine, Fischer. Because I believe in you.” He took a step to the side, observing Colin’s stance. “Now, square your shoulders. Relax your elbows,” he said. “Let them swing.”

His words were crisp and clear. Not simply loud, but commanding. In fact, they weren’t really
loud
at all—simply loud
enough
. Colin hypothesized Mr. Turrentine never shouted, though he allowed that future encounters could prove him wrong.

Mr. Turrentine reached to touch Colin’s elbow to correct him. Instinctively, Colin drew back with a cringe.

“Please don’t do that,” Colin said in a small voice.
His teacher gave no indication of having heard him, but didn’t try to touch Colin again. Instead, he demonstrated the free throw stance himself, letting Colin observe and then try to model the posture himself.

“Like this?” asked Colin. His positioning was an exact mirror of Turrentine’s own. Eight years of occupational therapy had prepared him well to follow instructions on where and how to move.

“Just like that,” Mr. Turrentine replied. Colin detected a new tone in his voice and tried to identify it.
IMPRESSED
, Colin decided. Perhaps
AMUSED
. He couldn’t be entirely certain without a recording to review and further comparative study.

“Now, close your eyes.” Mr. Turrentine waited a moment for Colin to comply. “Now visualize the basket, and the distance between your hands and the hoop. Then visualize throwing your ball into the basket. Are you seeing it?”

Colin stood with his brows furrowed and eyes darting rapidly back and forth beneath closed lids, almost as if he were dreaming. “No, I missed that one.”

Mr. Turrentine watched Colin as he slowly dribbled the ball, his eyes closed, occasionally muttering phrases like “No” or “Not quite” and “Failure.”

Colin wrinkled his face in consternation, wishing he had his Notebook to draw the picture first. But he didn’t have his Notebook and doubted Mr. Turrentine would allow him to retrieve it. So he did the
next best thing: He imagined he had his Notebook. In his Imaginary Notebook, Colin drew a schematic of the asphalt court, overlaid with a complicated force diagram depicting every variable involved in making or missing a shot. He included every conceivable factor, from the distance between himself and the hoop, to the estimated strength of the breeze he felt on his face. Satisfied that he understood the parameters of the problem, Colin extrapolated the diagram from his imaginary Notebook to a mental image of himself and the hoop in three-dimensional space. Colin threw shot after shot in his imagination, testing his calculations, finally arriving at the precise combination of angle, velocity, and spin that sent the ball careening into the basket.

“Got it,” Colin said. His eyes snapped open.

He fired the shot without hesitation, launching the ball with both hands from directly in front of his chest. It traced a parabolic arc through the air and into the basket, making a slight whooshing sound as it passed through the net without touching the rim.

Colin blinked, not sure if he had really accomplished this or was going through another mental simulation. Other students who had been waiting for him to fail simply stood and stared.

“There, Fischer,” Mr. Turrentine said. His expression was blank. “Like that. You’re a damned basketball prodigy. Now retrieve your ball and get back in line.”

Colin turned to chase after the basketball, then stopped as a thought occurred. He looked back at his teacher. “Mr. Turrentine,” he asked, “are you God?”

“No, Fischer. I’m a gym teacher. I work for a living.”

Satisfied by this answer, Colin trotted off after the ball, which had rolled to a stop at the half-court line. Colin picked it up, felt its weight in his hand, gauged the distance to the basket, and threw a one-armed shot. This, too, sailed cleanly into the basket, which Mr. Turrentine acknowledged with a nod and provoked a round of murmuring from the other students as Colin trotted past. Once was luck, twice was skill.

“Shortbus has a mean three-pointer,” said Cooper, admiration leaking into his voice. Stan narrowed his eyes and glared as Colin took his place at the back of the line.

“Shut up,” Stan said.