Colin Fischer by Zack Stentz, Ashley Edward Miller Read Free Book Online

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.
    4
Rain Man
was a famous film from 1988, which featured Dustin Hoffman playing an institutionalized autistic man with savant-like counting skills and a variety of bizarre tics and mannerisms. It had won several Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Colin found this puzzling because as far as he was concerned the best movie of 1988 was
Die Hard
, starring Bruce Willis. Loud, but good.

CHAPTER FIVE:
PRIMATE BEHAVIOR
         People make many assertions about the uniqueness of human behavior that turn out not to be true. My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Ferguson, once told our class that humans are the only animals to make and use tools. I tried to point out chimpanzees use narrow sticks to fish for termites, sea otters select rocks with which to open clams and abalone shells, and New Caledonian crows even bend wires into makeshift hooks. Mrs. Ferguson made me sit at the back of the room and didn’t call on me for the rest of the school year.
         What I find much more interesting than human uniqueness are the behaviors we share with our closest relatives: chimps, gorillas, and the other higher primates. For example, our response to danger. Most animals flee from the loud, thebright, and the unfamiliar; primates tend to move toward bright lights and loud noises, preferring to investigate and learn the cause of the commotion.
         Humans and other primates are also the only animals to laugh when they are tickled—though I usually scream instead.
    Colin sat alone at a table in the cafeteria, his back against the wall with a view of the windows and doors. This was what his father called “the gunfighter’s seat.” He called it this because he claimed that gunfighters in the Old West would always choose the spot in the saloon where they could best see danger coming. 5 Colin fully endorsed this as a policy but calculated the probability he might encounter an actual gunfighter anywhere to be exciting but vanishingly small.
    Although the seat had been chosen for its view, Colin kept his head down. This allowed him to tune out the cacophony of clanging tableware, shouting, and conversation that might otherwise have overwhelmed him. He focused instead on cataloging the lunch his mother had packed for him: stick pretzels speared through slices of deli ham, baby carrots,