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gamely on.
    The boys had formed into two lines, taking turns shooting free throws, each smoothly retrieving his ball and passing it to the next shooter before taking his place at the back of the line again. It was an infinite loop of dribbling, shooting, and jogging. The hollow, ringing
thud
of bouncing basketballs was punctuated by Mr. Turrentine’s barked instructions that seemed to carry effortlessly over the din of directed play.
    “Both feet behind the line, Ybarra.”
    “One smooth motion, McKee.”
    “Stop gossiping like old ladies and get to the back of the line.”
    Colin stepped across the court with robotic strides, clad in stained blue polyester sweatpants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a mouthless Japanese animated cat. As he approached, he heard familiar high-pitched laughter. It sounded like Stan, and indeed Eddie, Stan, and Cooper were waiting to shoot. Colin fixed his gaze on Eddie, trying to understand what the laughter was about, only vaguely aware it was directed at him.
    Then he cast his eyes downward and focused on his breathing, trying to make each breath deep and even as he took his place with the rest of the boys.
    Colin looked up as his turn came, just in time to see Eddie hurl the ball at his midsection. He batted it away rather than catch it, then, realizing his mistake, scrambled after the ball as it skittered toward an adjacent court.
    “Fetch, Shortbus,” Stan said, and laughed even harder.
    “Shortbus” was a reference to the small yellow bus that trundled through the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley, taking handicapped and developmentally disabled children from home to school and back again. Colin had never ridden it, but Eddie gave him the nickname in sixth grade. It had stuck to Colin ever since.
    Pretending not to hear the giggles and mock cheers, Colin retrieved the ball and returned to his place in line. He dribbled it once, then tossed it overhand,sending it sailing over the backboard with at least a foot to spare. The schoolyard erupted in laughter at the spectacular miss. The noise was disagreeably loud, and now it came from all around. Mr. Turrentine whipped his head around at the sound of it and witnessed Colin lope gamely toward the baseball diamond after his lost ball.
    His mustache twitched. “All right, keep it moving, people,” he said to the three lines of basketball throwers. “Five more minutes, then laps, passing, and cool down.”
    For a moment, it was as if time had frozen. The laughter stopped, and so did the dribbling, the shooting, and the low buzz of conversation. Colin looked around at his classmates, wishing vaguely that he had his Notebook to record this unprecedented display of a teacher’s power over his students. Then the silence broke, and a cacophony of dribbling, shooting, shuffling, and trash-talking resumed with renewed vigor. Colin realized that Mr. Turrentine was coming toward him with his quick but easy gait and took a moment to examine the man’s feet—did they ever touch the floor?
    “Fischer. Over here.” Turrentine pointed to a vacant court. Colin approached it warily, cowering slightly as his teacher held a basketball in front of his face. The ball was close enough for him to observe the bumpy, fingerprint-like patterns on its surface. Colin wondered if he could calculate the total number ofbumps from a one-inch sample and interpolating based on its total surface area, and so he did.
    “Is this a live grenade, Fischer? Is it going to explode in your face?”
    “No,” replied Colin. Marie had spent several days over the summer trying to teach him to recognize a rhetorical question when asked, but he never got it right more than half the time. So he found it best to answer every question as if it had been sincerely asked. In this case, his answer seemed to meet with Mr. Turrentine’s approval.
    “You’re a genius, Fischer. It is not a live grenade. It will not explode in your face. So don’t throw it like you think it