PUFFIN
Part One: Birthday Cake and a Gun
Chapter One: Shark Behavior
Chapter Two: The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Chapter Three: Deterrence
Chapter Four: The Kuleshov Effect
Chapter Five: Primate Behavior
Part Two: The Fool and The Freak
Chapter Six: Eyewitness Interviews
Chapter Seven: The Battleship Potemkin
Chapter Eight: Dupin’s Detachment
Chapter Nine: The Parking Problem
Chapter Ten: Rogue Predators
Part Three: The Olympic Trampoline Team
Chapter Eleven: Hell is other People
Chapter Twelve: Test Bites
Chapter Thirteen: What The Tortoise Said to Achilles
Chapter Fourteen: Hans Asperger
Chapter Fifteen: Two Doctors in Vienna
Epilogue: Human Behavior
ASHLEY EDWARD MILLER and ZACK STENTZ met on the Internet, a consequence of their mutual love of all things Star Trek. Together, Miller and Stentz have written and/or produced over a hundred hours of television. Most recently, they co-wrote the films X-Men: First Class and Thor. Upcoming projects include The Fall Guy and a Starship Troopers remake. Miller and Stentz both live in Los Angeles. Find out more at: facebook.com/colinfischerbook.
Victory may have a thousand fathers, but thanking everyone who made Colin Fischer possible would require bloating this little book to doorstop proportions. Nevertheless, attention must be paid. So a heartfelt thank you to …
… Our wonderful lit agent Eric Simonoff for encouraging us to finish this book, then going out and selling it.
… Our editors Ben Schrank and Gillian Levinson, who have been wonderful collaborators and infinitely patient in teaching neophyte novelists the ins and outs of the book world.
… Multi-hyphenate genius and friend Lev Grossman for his encouragement and support.
… Shawna Benson, who can probably recite this book from memory and knows every comma intimately.
… Our film and TV agents, managers, and attorneys, who have been tireless in advocating and protecting the book (and us) through this entire process. So thank you also to Paul Haas, Jeff Gorin and the whole team at WME (Kimberly, Tom, Zach, and Jordan), Allen Fischer at PYE, and Ken Richman and Gretchen Bruggeman-Rush at HJTH.
Finally, a special thank you to Susan Solomon, our Mama Bear. Without her, the sun doesn’t rise and the world doesn’t turn.
Susan, we’re sorry your favorite word isn’t in this book.
www.puffin.co.uk
Puffin is well over sixty years old. Sounds ancient, doesn’t it? But Puffin has never been so lively. We’re always on the lookout for the next big idea, which is how it began all those years ago.
Penguin Books was a big idea from the mind of a man called Allen Lane, who in 1935 invented the quality paperback and changed the world. And from great Penguins, great Puffins grew, changing the face of children’s books forever.
The first four Puffin Picture Books were hatched in 1940 and the first Puffin story book featured a man with broomstick arms called Worzel Gummidge. In 1967 Kaye Webb, Puffin Editor, started the Puffin Club, promising to ‘make children into readers’. She kept that promise and over 200,000 children became devoted Puffineers through their quarterly instalments of Puffin Post, which is now back for a new generation.
Many years from now, we hope you’ll look back and remember Puffin with a smile. No matter what your age or what you’re into, there’s a Puffin for everyone. The possibilities are endless, but one thing is for sure: whether it’s a picture book or a paperback, a sticker book or a hardback, if it’s got that little Puffin on it – it’s bound to be good.
www.puffin.co.uk
In the open ocean, fish often swim together in schools. This is typically a strategy to find food or evade predators. But in the waters off the Galápagos Islands there is a school of fish like no other in the world. …
Thousands of hammerhead sharks congregate and swim in intricate patterns, the only species of shark to exhibit schooling behavior. Scientists still don’t know why.
Have they come here to feed and take refuge in a hostile ocean? Are they selecting potential mates? Or are they engaging in mysterious social behaviors that an outside observer could never understand?
My name is Colin Fischer. I’m fourteen years old and weigh 121 lbs. Today is my first day of high school.
I have 1,365 days left until I’m finished.
Colin clutched his precious, dog-eared Notebook to his chest. The Notebook had seen better days, though it had been fastidiously cared for. Its red cover was faded, the metal spiral down its side showed the wear of a slow but inevitable unraveling, and the holes in the cardboard were worn down from constant opening and closing.
The Notebook, in Colin’s way—unspoken, but demonstrated—was loved.
He pushed his way through the sea of humanity around him, sometimes bobbing, sometimes swimming, eyes downcast to avoid the gaze and attention of any predator that might hunt the hallway. Collisions with other students occurred, though infrequently, in spite of Colin’s best efforts. “Excuse me,” he would say without looking as someone brushed his arm. “Please don’t touch me,” as elbow met elbow. “I’m sorry.”
Colin’s eyes flicked upward, having counted every step before this last one, knowing there were precisely twenty-seven between his locker and the Boys’ Room. The heavy wooden door dwarfed him, and for a moment Colin fixed on the blue triangular sign just next to it. Colin didn’t like the color blue. It made him feel cold.
Still, he pushed against the door, taking care to protect the Notebook from coming into contact with any part of it—especially the blue triangular sign.
The Boys’ Room was dimly lit and dirty. Colin carefully set his Notebook on a narrow black shelf and stood at the white porcelain sink. He noted with a wince that the sink itself was not very clean or well-cared-for, and after a moment’s hesitation turned on the faucet (one turn–beat–two turns–beat–three turns, now wash). Two drops of soap from the dispenser—blue, which Colin didn’t like, but there was nothing to be done about it.
It was only after rinsing his hands, when his bespectacled eyes met his own in the decaying mirror, that Colin realized he was not alone. Wayne Connelly stood behind him.
Wayne was a beast, Colin’s opposite in every way. He was broad, thick, giving the impression that he might have been carved out of solid rock rather than born from flesh-and-blood woman. Colin turned toward him, and Wayne smiled.
Colin scrutinized the smile. Analyzed it. What did it mean? He pictured a series of flash cards, each with a different sort of smile drawn on it, each carefully hand-labeled for proper identification:
FRIENDLY. NERVOUS. HAPPY. SURPRISED. SHY.
CRUEL.
“Hello, Wayne,” Colin said, as if he were reading from a script. “How are you today?”
Wayne’s smile widened as he grabbed Colin, quick for someone of his size. His indelicate fingers twisted the material of Colin’s striped polo shirt, then hoisted him into the air and carried him toward a bathroom stall.
“My shirt,” Colin observed. “You’ll ruin it.”
“Bill me, Fischer,” Wayne answered. He kicked the stall door closed with a loud clack that made Colin shudder. “After you say hello to the sharks.”
CRUEL, Colin decided as his head went into the toilet, thrashing but helpless. The smile was definitely CRUEL.
I want to tell you about a problem.
It is called “The Prisoner’s Dilemma,” and it’s very interesting because it is a math problem about telling the truth. The problem does not concern real prisoners, just hypothetical ones. “Hypothetical” means it is a logical construct, a scenario to help illustrate the problem space.
It goes like this: Two criminals collude on a robbery. They are arrested and taken for questioning by the authorities. The problem concerns how they answer, and the consequences of the information they choose to provide. The prisoners have two possible strategies to deal with the police: They can “cooperate” with each other, or they can “defect.” “Cooperate” means they lie, and “defect” means they tell the truth.
I think it would be simpler to say “lie” and “tell the truth,” but I did not make up the problem.
If both prisoners lie, they both get a minimal sentence. If one lies but the other tells the truth, the liar gets the maximum sentence and the honest one goes free. If both tell the truth, both receive a minimal sentence with early parole.
This means it is better to tell the truth. A lie will never pay off, and it may cost you a lot.
The Fischer house was in every way ordinary.
Nestled in the northwestern corner of the San Fernando Valley, it more or less resembled every other house nestled in the northwestern corner of the San Fernando Valley: two stories, a beige exterior, and architecture that attempted (halfheartedly) to evoke Spanish colonialism.
The backyard contained one unique feature: a trampoline, well-used, bought for Colin when it was discovered that bouncing helped him relax, focus, and think. Here, reassured by intermittent weightlessness, he was free to imagine himself unbound by earthly concerns. Up-down, up-down, up-down … usually for hours, and always alone.
Colin stood at the gate, eyes fixed on the trampoline, his hair matted and his clothes soaked. In his hand, he clutched his Notebook, which had mercifully been spared Colin’s unexpected and unwanted encounter with the toilet. For a moment, he considered losing himself to the trampoline’s elastic embrace—but then he thought better of it. His wet clothes would in turn make the trampoline wet, and that simply would not do.
Instead, Colin hurried up the walk and burst into the kitchen.
He barely registered the presence of his parents and younger brother gathered around the breakfast table, so he did not see their looks of surprise and concern, or in Danny’s case, the look of weariness, exasperation, and vague dread. Even if he had seen them, Colin would have had neither the time nor the inclination to process or understand them. Colin was on a very particular mission, on his own particular timetable.
Mrs. Fischer checked her watch: eight A.M. “That was a quick first day,” his mother observed, her irony as lost on Colin as it usually was. “Taking ‘homeroom’ kinda literally, aren’t we?”
Mr. Fischer nodded as he rose from his place at the table. He started after Colin like a border collie off to round up an errant sheep. “Whoa there, Big C.”
Colin stopped in his tracks, a learned response to his father’s kind but commanding voice. He turned toward his father, head tilted down, avoiding his gaze—not out of shame, but because Colin avoided any gaze unless absolutely necessary. It had the effect of making the boy seem perpetually sad, although he almost never was.
“Lose a fight with a fire hose?” Mr. Fischer asked, watching the water drip from Colin’s soaked polo shirt onto the tile floor.
His mother didn’t wait for the answer. She was already halfway up the stairs. Fourteen years of the unexpected had trained her to swing into action on a moment’s notice, even in the absence of complete information or explanation. “I’ll get a towel.”
Danny shook his head as he realized Colin’s predicament and what had likely brought him to it. “Holy crap,” he said. Then he saw his father’s reproachful look and turned back to his pancakes. “Yeah, yeah. ‘Eat your breakfast, Danny.’ I know.”
His mother reappeared a moment later. Colin took the towel she offered, careful not to touch her, and began to run it through his hair.
“So we’re waiting for the story,” his father said. He leaned against the kitchen wall with his arms folded, fixed on Colin with his particular, patient CONCERN, letting the suggestion hang there. You couldn’t push Colin to do or say anything, but if you made your expectations clear, he invariably gave you what he felt you needed—if not precisely what you asked for.
“I got wet,” Colin said, as if that explained everything. Which in Colin’s mind, it did. Then he turned and climbed the stairs toward his room.
“Way to crack the old whip,” Danny said, and went back to his breakfast.
The first thing a visitor to the Fischer house would notice about Colin’s bedroom was the portrait hanging over his bed. It was a framed, black-and-white photograph of Basil Rathbone in a deerstalker cap and a houndstooth cloak with a long, curved pipe perched on the edge of his bottom lip. His pose was thoughtful and distant, as though he were aware of the photographer but possessed of greater concerns. He was in this portrait not Basil Rathbone at all—he was Sherlock Holmes.1
The second thing a visitor would notice was Sherlock Holmes’s company. Photos of Star Trek’s Mr. Spock, Commander Data, even Detective Grissom from CSI all hung in places of honor on the wall. Once, Colin’s father had taken the picture of Spock to be autographed—and had to replace it after Colin declared the photo “ruined” by Leonard Nimoy’s signature. Mr. Fischer learned from this that Colin’s room was a shrine not to actors he admired, but to cool, clear-headed logic.
The third thing a visitor would notice was Colin’s floor, littered with piles. Piles of books. Piles of magazines. Piles of toys and half-disassembled household appliances. The piles were everywhere.
To the untrained eye this was just a mess, not so different from the mess any other boy could have created in any other room in any other house. But its true nature was in its details—not as it appeared, as Colin might point out, but as it was. Neatly organized, like-with-like. There was a principle behind every pile in the room, even if understood only by Colin himself. For example, a magnetron from an old microwave sat atop a book about marsupials and several back issues of The New England Journal of Medicine, an organizational feat that defied even his parents’ efforts to divine a connection.
Colin stood amid the piles in front of his desk, dripping wet, the towel draped around his shoulders. His gaze was fixed on a piece of paper filled with columns of crude, hand-drawn faces, each labeled with a word describing an emotion. The paper in turn was but one of many in a stack, a rough guide to understanding social intentions of the human animal. At the moment, Colin studied every imaginable species of the smile.
He looked up at the sound of sneakers on his hardwood floor. From the peculiar squeak and the weight of the step, he knew who had entered. “Hello, Danny,” he said. “How are you today?”
Colin was only three years old when Danny was born. Like most children, he was fascinated by the prospect of a little brother or sister. Unlike most children, he expressed this by forcing his father to read him every page of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. He asked pointed questions of his mother, her eating habits and general health. He was present for the sonogram when the new baby’s sex was determined. He was unusually involved in every aspect of the pregnancy and cried when he was informed he would not be welcome in the delivery room. Colin seldom let his baby brother out of his sight. He recorded his observations in drawings and, on the eve of Danny’s first birthday, presented a complete dossier entitled “Things We Know about Danny” to his parents. In fact, the first entry in Colin’s first Notebook was about him:
I have a brother. His name is Danny. He likes to smile. My mother says he is happy because he has a big brother who loves him.
Investigate.
Danny didn’t answer Colin’s question. He knew it was just part of Colin’s social script and made no secret of his hatred for the forced, almost robotic nature of Colin’s interactions with him. “So,” Danny began, “somebody took your head on a grand tour of the boys’ bathroom. You know, the full Tidy Bowl treatment. Am I right?”
“My behaviorist Marie says, ‘Kids are often frightened of anyone different. They make themselves feel secure by picking on kids who are.’” This was repeated word-for-word, precisely as Marie had said it to him.
“You’re not different,” Danny said with a snort. “You’re a carnival sideshow.”
From outside came the sound of a diesel engine slowing to a halt and a soft, hydraulic hiss. Mrs. Fischer’s voice rang up from down the stairs. “Danny, your bus! I am NOT driving you to school, compadre, so saddle up!”
Colin watched carefully as his eleven-year-old brother’s expression visibly changed. “Just stop, Colin,” Danny pleaded quietly. “Can’t you just stop?” With that, he pounded back downstairs. Colin impassively turned his attention back to his guide. He flipped through the pages, trying to match a drawing to Danny’s face.
Finally, he paused and placed his finger on a frown. “AFRAID.”
Colin and his father rode in silence.
Colin wore fresh jeans and a simple burgundy T-shirt. Mr. Fischer was dressed for work, a blue button-down oxford with a twenty-dollar cotton tie and a pair of khakis, all neatly pressed. A Jet Propulsion Lab security badge was clipped to his shirt pocket, identifying him as “Michael Fischer, Senior Analyst.” In the picture, he was smiling and HAPPY. Colin liked to look at the badge; his father’s smile was comforting.
At the moment, Mr. Fischer was not smiling. His lips were pursed gravely, his fingers tapping out a slightly uneven rhythm on the steering wheel. Colin looked away from him. Instead, he stared out the window, considering the cars waiting at the 118 on-ramp. They had been merging in a neat left-right-left weave, an example of spontaneous self-organization. Then a woman in an SUV with a phone to her ear broke the pattern and threw it all into self-interested chaos. Colin found it very interesting how one small violation of the social order could throw an entire system out of balance.
“So,” his father finally said, tired of the silence and convinced he couldn’t wait Colin out on this one, “are you gonna tell me what happened? Or do I have to guess?”
Silence. Then: “You have an important meeting,” Colin said. It was not an answer.
“It’s the first day of school.” His father pressed. He would not allow his son any opportunity to change the subject, as he was the master of it. “You couldn’t have even made it to homeroom. Well, unless homeroom is in the swimming pool.”
“Your shirt is pressed,” Colin observed. “You never press your shirt unless you have a meeting, and only if it’s important.”
This was true. It was also irrelevant. “I know it’s scary. It was scary for me, and I was a jock. I could take care of myself.”
“You’re drumming your fingers. That means you have to meet with someone you don’t usually have to talk to. And you have to answer their questions.”
Mr. Fischer stopped drumming and glanced at his hands. When Colin was right, he was right … which was nearly all of the time, actually. “I’m sorry you’re on your own in there now. I am. But that’s how the system works.”
Colin looked at his father finally. He understood everything. “The director,” he said. “You have a program review. Is it the budget again?”
“It’s too bad changing the subject isn’t a business. You’d make a killing.” He turned the car into the West Valley High School parking lot. “I’m not gonna make you talk to me,” he said. “I just want you to know you can.”
“I am talking to you.”
His father sighed, defeated. He held up a hand and splayed the fingers apart.
“Coming in for a landing.” This was a warning, letting Colin know he was about to be touched. Colin didn’t like to be touched by anyone, even his parents, although he was tolerant if given proper notice. On some level, he understood their need for contact. He had read about it in a book.
Colin braced himself as his father reached out and touched his shoulder. A gentle squeeze. “Have a good day at school.”
Colin nodded silently and got out of the car. Mr. Fischer watched him trudge up the walk, head down and body hunched. He felt a pang of worry, then helplessness,2 a recognition on his part that no matter what, eight hours a day for the next four years, Colin would be alone.
The hallways were packed with students, teachers, and staff, all pushing past each other in transit as the first bell rang.
Colin winced a little at the sound—too high, too shrill, and too staccato. The first time Colin heard a school bell had been three years earlier. He had shrieked with terror at the unexpected cacophony and continued to shriek until the bell finally stopped ringing. In time, and with a great deal of effort, he learned to control his response to the noise. It was now anticipated, its effects dispelled through slow, silent counting.
On the mental count of “three,” the bell stopped. Colin took a deep breath … then held it as he heard a familiar sound from around the corner, one that was almost as worrisome as the school bell: the voice of Wayne Connelly.
“Eddie’s head, meet wall.” Something heavy collided with concrete, a soft crack like the sound a melon makes when dropped on the sidewalk, only more violent. Colin crept around the corner, his curiosity getting the better of him. He flipped opened his Notebook and produced a green ballpoint pen to record what he saw:
Wayne Connelly in fight with Eddie Martin. Shoving. Eddie wears a football jersey over a white T-shirt, blue jeans with high-top shoes. Other boys in football jerseys watch fight—Stan and Cooper. Stan has prominent gap in front teeth. Cooper exhibits pronounced ectomorphism. They are both tall. (All on football team? Cooper’s frame lacks the standard muscle mass associated with the sport. Kicker? Investigate.) They do not help.
Eddie was up against the wall. He tried to shove Wayne back, but nothing happened. Then he swallowed hard, more than a little afraid. Eddie’s friends, Stan (prominent gap in front teeth) and Cooper (exhibiting pronounced ectomorphism), looked at each other, nodded, and stepped forward to help.
Wayne turned on them with a snarl. “Back off,” he growled. “I’ve got one foot for each ass.”
Colin raised an eyebrow and counted. Three boys. Two feet. Curious.
Wayne Connelly may have deficiency in math. Investigate.
Stan and Cooper didn’t seem to care if Wayne could count. They understood his meaning well enough, frozen in place as Wayne stared them down. Finally, Wayne gave Eddie another quick shove into the wall and let him go. He stormed away.
Eddie glanced around the hallway, the focus of stares from everyone in the hallway. He collected himself. “Yeah—keep walking, wimp!” he called as he stripped off a blue-and-gold Notre Dame basketball jacket and hurled it into his locker. Wayne did not look back.
A girl, Sandy Ryan, emerged from the crowd and wrapped her arms around Eddie in a hug, pushing past Stan and Cooper. Eddie’s friends made way for her. Cooper sighed with thinly veiled EXASPERATION, but Stan’s eyes drifted down the back of her body with a half smile that Colin couldn’t quite place. Eddie apparently had no such difficulty—he narrowed his eyes at Stan with a TERRITORIAL frown, an expression so primal that Colin would have understood it as a toddler even if he had no name for it.
Sandy Ryan in romantic relationship with Eddie. Likely consequence of breast development and prominence of secondary sexual characteristics. Investigate.
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 Greer: Well-read. Good at math. Very interesting.
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.