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    “Asperger’s syndrome.” Mr. Turrentine pronounced the words slowly but correctly. When most people said it, it came out sounding like “Ass-burger” (an endless source of amusement to Colin’s younger brother and—until his mother put a stop to it—Danny’s preferred nickname for Colin), but Mr. Turrentine was careful to make the “s” sound more like a buzzing “z,” an artifact of the name’s Austrian origin.
    “What the hell is that?”
    “It’s a neurological condition related to autism,” Colin explained patiently. “It was discovered by Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger in Vienna in 1943, but not widely diagnosed until—”
    “Autism,” Mr. Turrentine interrupted. “You meanlike
Rain Man
? 4 You don’t look like the Rain Man to me. Are you the Rain Man, Fischer?”
    “I’m diagnosed as high functioning, but I still have poor social skills and sensory integration issues that give me serious deficits in areas of physical coordination.”
    Mr. Turrentine’s mustache twitched slightly. Did he not like what he heard, or simply not understand it? Colin opted to explain it a little further. “That’s why my parents and therapy team say I should be excused from this class.”
    Mr. Turrentine remained silent and impassive. It was as though the man had turned to stone. Finally, he spoke, his voice even and his words precise. “I can’t accept this note.”
    Shock crept into Colin’s usually even voice, causing it to go up a register. “But it clearly explains—”
    “I know what it says, Fischer,” Mr. Turrentine said. “I can read. And if I let everyone with two left feet skip out of my class, I’d be a very lonely guy. You don’t want me to be lonely, do you, Fischer?”
    “You’re lonely?”
    Mr. Turrentine’s mustache twitched again. “Iassume you thought that little note of yours would do the trick, so you didn’t bring gym clothes.”
    Colin nodded, impressed with his teacher’s powers of deduction as he turned and moved briskly toward his cramped office at the far end of the gym. “Follow me,” Mr. Turrentine said. “I’ll see what I can find for you from the lost-and-found bin.”
    Colin froze. “These clothes don’t have synthetic fibers, do they?”
    “Only the best here at the house of Turrentine.”
    Colin wanted to feel relieved, but he suspected that Mr. Turrentine was making a joke—and at his expense to boot.
    Twelve and a half minutes later , Colin marched onto the asphalt basketball courts of West Valley High, where the midday sun of the San Fernando Valley beat down on him with the relentless heat of the high desert. He had changed into his gym clothes alone in Mr. Turrentine’s office, having rummaged through the discards for anything remotely clean and mostly cotton that might fit him. To Colin’s dismay, even the best at the house of Turrentine assaulted his skin with petroleum-based fibers and his nostrils with the rancid, stale sweat of students long departed for college and the workplace.
    Regardless of his current physical discomfort, Colin had a long-standing dislike of gym class and playgrounds. Putting aside the usual dangers of overlypersonal contact, the distasteful smells, and the unsettling, almost animal sounds of human play, Colin did not consider himself particularly coordinated. He could not throw; he could not catch. His only real physical gift, the only one that brought him joy (other than bouncing on his trampoline), was running. Colin loved to run. He learned to love it the first time he closed his eyes and felt the wind on his face, his body in motion, the sweat evaporating off his skin. Running made Colin feel alone and alive.
    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