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

for Colin to decide what this meant. He pursed his own lips back at her, hoping this would invite a clue.
    “Maybe next time I’ll get you some peanut brittle.” She smiled. FRIENDLY .
    Colin perked up. “I like peanut brittle.”
    “Thought so,” Melissa chirped, then turned to rejoin the impromptu party. As Colin tracked the graceful movement of her hips, he realized he rather enjoyed watching Melissa walk away. An unfamiliar, though not altogether unpleasant, flush of warmth bloomed through the skin of his cheeks.
    To Colin’s surprise, Melissa made a sudden detour toward a table occupied by Josh and Sundeep—two academically inclined boys toward whom she had been friendly in middle school. The boys were obviously of lower social status than the students at the table with the cake, yet Melissa took time to speak to them. “That is very interesting,” Colin said to no one in particular, and opened his Notebook to record the moment.
    The complexities of social groupings at West Valley High School were even more daunting than they had been at middle school, and Colin pondered strategies for untangling them. Perhaps, he thought, he could print out photos of the students from the school website and social networking sites, then pin them upon the cork board in his bedroom in a sort of social map—much like the ones the FBI used to understand the inner workings of drug syndicates and Mafia families. It would be very useful because over time he could add to the map and make changes as appropriate.
    Colin began to sketch a very rough version of what such a social map might look like based on the people he saw in the cafeteria. He arranged the groups horizontally, with the vertical axis representing the person or group’s relative position in the school’s pecking order. The higher on the chart, the more popular that person was. Colin smiled at his solution. He prided himself on making charts that were intuitive and easy to read.
    Colin started toward the bottom left of the page, writing Josh and Sundeep’s names under the heading “ Nerds .”
    In the “ Jocks ” column near the top of the page, Colin immediately wrote Stan and Eddie’s names. He hesitated before adding Cooper, though, recalling that the tall, olive-skinned boy had a surprising talent for math. In fourth grade, Colin and Cooper shared a classroom, and Cooper consistently came in third or second in the room’s weekly “math minute” contest. Colin, who won every week, had once attempted to compliment Cooper for his math skills, but the other boy had muttered, “Go away, spaz,” and stopped speaking to Colin for the rest of the school year.
    Emma the ace water polo player also went into the “ Jocks ” column. Beside it, Colin created a “ Queen Bees ” category to capture girls who seemed to have no talent or interests beyond the maintenance of their own popularity—a heading he took from the title of a bestselling book on the social anthropology of American high school girls. Abby went into that category. So did Sandy, with Colin drawing a line between her and Eddie to denote their intimate relationship (making a note to use color-coded yarn when constructing the board at home ).
    Melissa, Colin realized, would be a problem assigning to one group. As a cross-country runner and exceptionally intelligent student whose company was now seemingly in high demand, she had a foot in several different camps. Colin opted to table the Melissa question and moved on to Rudy Moore, whom he placed by himself at the top of the page.
    Despite his presence in all the honors classes, Rudy was the only boy Colin knew who suffered none of the social demerits that accompanied extreme intelligence. Rudy had been popular for as long as Colin had known him. Colin wondered idly if there were some connection between Rudy’s popularity and his penchant for cruelty. The ability to inspire fear was common among alpha members of any social species. Yet Melissa, too,