Colin Fischer (4 page)

Sandy was blonde with skinny legs like a chicken—a physical attribute Colin had associated with her since preschool—but she was agreeably attractive in her freshman cheerleader uniform. “Eddie,” she said in a low voice that seemed to have some visible effect on Eddie’s breathing, making it slower and more regular. “It’s not worth it. Wayne Connelly is a loser.”

Colin poised his pen over his Notebook to record the moment, wondering idly if this made Eddie a “winner” by implication and if so what Eddie had won. Colin was so focused on his task, he was completely unprepared when Stan charged over to body-slam him into a locker. Colin was keenly and suddenly aware of his teeth clacking together, the constriction of his frame, and the slight give of the metal door as his body crashed into it. More than anything, and most distressingly, he could smell Stan’s sweaty clothes—stale, at least a few days removed from an encounter with a washing machine.

As he collided with the locker, Colin’s precious Notebook and green ballpoint pen tumbled from his fingers. His glasses were knocked from their perch and hung perilously from one ear and the tip of his smallish nose.

“If you’re so worried about your little boyfriend, maybe you should go after him,” Stan hissed through that gap in his front teeth. “Freak.”

Colin adjusted his glasses. He felt a fire in his belly. In his chest. In his throat. He tensed his body, fighting back the blaze. If it continued to burn, Colin knew he would not be able to control it. It would get out. As Colin drew in a deep, cooling breath—

“Hey, Stan,” a girl’s voice said. It was gentle and clear. Pleasant. Colin liked the sound of this voice. It soothed him. The voice belonged to Melissa Greer.

In Colin’s mind, Melissa was a skinny girl with a tangled mop of mousy hair, her face dotted with angry spots of acne, her smile caged by mirthless metal braces. Colin had noted over the years how other children would shun her, targeting her with their collective cruelty. During recess or after lunch, Colin would find Melissa alone in a corner of the playground, her face red and her eyes wet. He would not speak to her. He did not ask her why she looked
SAD
. He would simply sit on the ground next to her, knees huddled into his chest, and think of how cool the grass felt beneath him.

Of Melissa, Colin had once written in his Notebook:

Melissa had changed over the summer. Colin noted her braces were gone. Her acne had disappeared. Her hair seemed tame. There were other changes Colin found very interesting. Stan, Cooper, and Eddie stared at her, noting many of the same things. None of them were quite sure what to make of this transformation.

“Holy crap.” Stan blinked. He looked her up and down.

Melissa was not looking for anyone’s approval, and she was long past crying on the playground. She nodded toward Colin, then fearlessly stepped into Stan’s personal space with a smile—a rare event, and worth noting. Colin absently wished for his cheat sheet or a camera because this particular species of smile defied quick categorization.

“Go sublimate your homoerotic fantasies somewhere else,” she said.

Stan looked at her blankly. “My—my what?”

Colin straightened his glasses. “She means you’re confused about your sexual identity,” he offered helpfully, “and you beat people up because you’re secretly gay.”

Stan scowled at Colin. Before he could say anything, Eddie gripped his shoulder. He seemed tired,
as if the fight had aged him. “Stan,” he said, “weight room in five.”

Stan nodded slowly and backed off a little. He leered at Melissa. “You got hot. Call me.” With that, Eddie, Stan, and Cooper disappeared down the hall with Sandy in tow.

“I missed you this summer,” Melissa said as Colin leaned over to collect his Notebook and his pen. He dusted it off carefully, then pulled a worn cheat sheet from a pocket. The ink had faded to a spotty dark gray, the paper thinning at the creases from being folded, unfolded, and folded up again over seven years of almost constant use. Colin paged through it, looking back and forth between the pictograms and Melissa, comparing them. Finally, he found a match. In Colin’s mind, he wrote the word
PLEASED
out over her head. “I can’t believe you’re in the halls without your shadow.”

“Marie would just be a distraction here,” Colin said. “I don’t need a shadow.”

A “shadow” was a person whose job was to follow Colin around and help him deal with the unexpected, the dangerous, or the potentially upsetting. Colin’s shadow had been a woman named Marie. Colin liked her very much, although she often had to scold him for staring at her chest. Now that he was in high school, Marie had moved on.

Melissa nodded, agreeing but uncertain if Colin was correct.

“Your breasts got bigger,” Colin announced. Melissa’s cheeks ran red, and she laughed a little coughing laugh. She was used to Colin, but never quite prepared for him. Colin looked back at his cheat sheet. “
Embarrassed
,” he observed aloud, erasing
PLEASED
and writing
EMBARRASSED
over her head. “Don’t be. Breast development is a perfectly normal reaction to elevated hormone levels during puberty. Interestingly, it doesn’t proceed at a uniform rate….”

“Colin.”

“It can be accelerated by a number of environmental factors, so it’s not just genetics. For example, if your mother—”

“Colin,” Melissa interrupted. “Please. Stop speaking.”

Colin did. He waited patiently, remembering, as Marie had often advised, that sometimes people wanted to engage him in a discussion and had interesting observations and interjections to make.

“I…I know all that stuff,” she said.

“Oh.”

“So,” Melissa said.
So
was a filler word, the kind people inserted into a paused conversation while they played for time to think of something more relevant or germane to the situation at hand. Colin rarely used filler words.

“Yes,” Colin replied.

Melissa grabbed the Notebook from Colin’s hand.
She whipped out a pen and started writing on the first blank page she found. Colin watched in horror but did not move to prevent this.

“If you need anything—anything—just call my cell,” she explained. “Okay?”

She handed the Notebook back to Colin. He stared in disbelief at the ten-digit number Melissa had scrawled inside of it. “You wrote in my Notebook,” Colin said.

Melissa smiled. The bell rang again. Colin counted to three. “See you,” Melissa said. She scurried off to class as the halls emptied out, leaving Colin alone and holding his Notebook open to the page with Melissa’s phone number. Fixed on it.

Colin sighed. “She ruined it.”