Further research revealed something unexpected: In most cases, great white sharks bite humans with only a tiny fraction of their usual two-thousand-pounds-per-foot of jaw strength. The truth is that most victims of great whites aren’t being attacked at all. They’re being subjected to “test bites.” These light, probing bites are how a great white shark investigates strange or unfamiliar objects in its domain. An ungainly, bipedal land mammal attempting to swim in the ocean would indeed be strange and unfamiliar. Of course, a not insignificant number of those investigations do end in death from blood loss or decapitation, but this is to be expected.
When the investigator is a two-and-a-half-ton shark, even a gentle attempt at exploration can be fatal.
It was exactly noon when Colin again encountered Eddie and his friends.
Colin marched up the hall quickly and purposefully, Notebook clutched to his chest, glasses set squarely on the bridge of his nose. He knew that he had precisely two minutes and twenty-seven seconds before the second bell would ring and a bored teacher would shoo him into the cafeteria. The cafeteria was far too public a venue for what Colin now contemplated. In the wake of his encounter with La Familia, Colin had an entirely different set of questions for Eddie and his friends than what he had in mind just a day ago. They were questions he suspected Eddie might not like. Colin wanted to catch Eddie where he was weak and couldn’t turn their conversation into a sideshow.
Colin heard Eddie before he saw him around the corner. He was with his friends, voice loud and boisterous, singsong in a way Colin associated with bragging—the kind that was generally a lie or at best an exaggeration.
“…so anyway I’m like, ‘What are you talking about? Your mom isn’t even here,’” Eddie said to his friends, telling them a story. “So she did.”
Eddie mimed zipping his pants down, grinning. His friends laughed. Colin had no idea what this meant and suspected some of Eddie’s friends might not either. He edged closer, confident that he hadn’t been seen.
“Whoa,” Stan said. His voice had a slight nasal quality now, as the sound struggled to clear the swelling in his sinuses, indicated by the bandages over his nose.
“It was like I was the ice cream man or something,” Eddie continued. SMUG.
“Or the ice cream.” Stan grinned, showing the gap in his front teeth. Then he winced, presumably from pain induced by the sudden, broad movement in his facial muscles. Their friends laughed again.
“Hello, Eddie. How are you today?” Colin said. “I know the gun was yours.”
The laughter stopped. Colin noted the sudden loss of color in Eddie’s face, the way Stan looked the other direction, eyelids fluttering. These were clear signs of GUILT. The others just looked at each other and Colin with confused expressions—except for Cooper. He gave Colin his full attention, INTERESTED in hearing what Colin had to say.
Colin waited a moment for Eddie to reply, having been told again and again his own adherence to script sometimes prevented others from participating in conversation with him. Marie had explained how an uninterrupted barrage of information could make it so someone else “couldn’t get a word in edgewise.” His father referred to this as Colin “sucking up all the oxygen in the room.” They both meant the same thing.
Even with this carefully measured conversational pause, Eddie issued no answer or denial. Colin processed the silence (factoring in the background cacophony of the hallway), assuring himself he’d given Eddie sufficient edge and oxygen. “There is one thing I don’t understand,” Colin pushed on. “Why did you take the gun to the cafeteria?”
In preparing for this moment, Colin had anticipated many possible reactions, including violence (frightening—in which case Colin had been prepared to run) or an escape attempt (exciting—in which case Colin knew Eddie would eventually have to return home). The one reaction he didn’t anticipate was the one his question elicited.
Eddie laughed.29
Colin had no idea what to make of this. The laughter was a mystery, especially since Eddie’s facial expression no longer indicated NERVOUSNESS, but DELIGHT. Colin scribbled in his Notebook:
Eddie laughs inappropriately when confronted. Question incorrectly phrased as a joke, or specific reference to gun carries some heretofore unknown sexual connotation? Investigate.
“Because I didn’t, Brainiac,” Eddie spat as Colin wrote. “I couldn’t. I was in the weight room with the coach and half the football team. Getting burly.”
Stan and his other friends nodded in agreement. After a moment, Cooper did too.
“You had to be in the cafeteria,” Colin said. “That’s where they found the gun. I saw it myself. There was birthday cake on the pistol grip.” These were indisputable facts.
Stan’s lips curled up in a smile that was in no way FRIENDLY. He stepped into Colin’s space—a common power move designed to make a smaller boy shrink back or perhaps withdraw altogether. Colin, however, was too preoccupied with making sense of discontinuities between the facts to notice. Cooper smiled too. AMUSED.
“Trying to get your ass whooped again, Stan?” Cooper asked.
“Suck it,” Stan hissed, focusing his attention on Colin but absently touching his broken nose, remembering what happened the last time he’d gotten this close. Without meaning to, he stopped in his tracks. “Look, Shortbus—”
“Don’t call me that,” Colin insisted. “I don’t take the bus.”
“—do yourself a favor and shut up while you’re ahead. Or the janitor will find you hanging on a coat hook by your Fruit of the Looms.” Stan let the threat hang in the air, looming over Colin, his teeth bared like a dog. Or perhaps a chimpanzee.30
Colin considered Stan, fixated on his front teeth, then flipped back a few pages in his Notebook. He looked between Stan’s angry visage and whatever he had written there. “No,” he announced finally. “Aside from the person who bought the gun, El Cocodrilo referenced a ‘gap-toothed freak.’ I’m 99 percent certain he meant you.”
Cooper and the others snickered at Stan’s expense, a turn Colin recognized as dangerous. Whatever unconscious respect Stan might have had for Colin’s unpredictable but demonstrably dangerous right hook evaporated in the face of humiliation at the hands of his peers. He took another step forward, balling his fists, leaning in for the fight.
A delicate female hand suddenly grabbed Colin by the shoulder and yanked him backward. Colin yelped with surprise. He suppressed his instinctive urge to fight or flee as he processed the familiar and welcome scent of strawberry shampoo.
“Colin,” Melissa said with a sigh. She pulled him behind her, subtly interposing herself between Colin and imminent danger. “Stop.”
Stan jabbed a ragged, nail-bitten finger at Melissa. “Outta the way,” he growled. “Just because you’re hot now doesn’t mean you’re in charge.”
Melissa and Colin both puzzled over this one. Colin knew that while high-value female members of social species often wielded some respect and authority, it was most often because she was associated with a higher-ranking male or performed the duties of protecting and instructing younger pack members. Melissa clearly didn’t meet the latter condition, other than the occasional babysitting job.
“I know Colin talks a lot,” Melissa admitted. “He says things he probably shouldn’t say. But he can’t help it. He…he has a condition.”
Eddie shook his head as Stan looked to him for advice and possibly instruction. “Whatever,” he finally proclaimed. “Just make sure Rain Man here controls his mouth.”
“Rain Man was autistic.” Colin frowned. “I’m—”
“Coming to the cafeteria with me,” Melissa said. She herded Colin away from the scene as the bell started to ring. For the first time in his life, Colin did not respond to the sound in any way. In fact, he did not notice it at all.
“But—” Colin tried to protest, looking back at Eddie. Feeling FRUSTRATED.
“I want some ice cream.”
Behind them, Eddie and his friends just lau
ghed. Colin still didn’t know why.
Ever since he could remember, Colin had been making weekly visits to the Griffith Park Observatory with his parents. As scientists and engineers in the space program, the Fischers felt a special connection to the place. Colin’s mother once told him that these visits reminded her why her job was worth it, even on the days when she wished everyone she worked with would drop dead.
This meant nothing to Colin. He simply enjoyed the view and the breeze that seemed to blow constantly. And having no fear of heights, he loved to run to the rails and peer over the side at the city below. Often, Mrs. Fischer would lift him up to the pay binoculars so he could enjoy a better look. “Take it all in, Big C,” she would say to him. “There’s life on this planet we call Earth.”
One particular afternoon when Colin was three, he stood near the observatory with a bottle of soap in his hand, blowing bubbles high into the air. Colin liked to watch the bubbles rise on the wind, refracting the setting sunlight into dozens of tiny rainbow spheres. Each seemed a world unto itself—perhaps a universe—until they dissipated. He wondered who lived there and if they were sad when their bubble popped.
It was as he had paused to blow a fresh bouquet of rainbows into the sky that Colin felt tiny arms reach around his waist. Surprised, he turned and saw a little girl smiling at him. He took note of her bright blue eyes, perfect round teeth, and the smell of strawberries in her hair. He was so struck by her, he dropped his soap bubble bottle. As the clear liquid spilled onto the concrete, the little girl did something that Colin—who could conceive of whole civilizations encompassed by soap bubbles—could not properly imagine…. She kissed him. Then she ran away.
Colin screamed then like a wounded animal, unsettled by the unwelcome touch and most especially the uninvited kiss. When his mother arrived, breathless and panicked at her son’s cry of distress, she saw the soap spill and the half-empty bottle rolling toward the curb. She did not see the little girl dashing for her mother or the look the girl cast back at her son. “It’s okay,” Mrs. Fischer reassured him. “We’ll buy you more bubbles.”
Colin never forgot those eyes or the smell of her hair.
Then, as now, Colin couldn’t take his eyes off of Melissa. She picked at her Salisbury steak, occasionally lifting the barest forkful to her lips. He watched her chew, lost in thought as he worked through the meaning of his confrontation with Eddie. She caught his eye, then looked away. Inexplicably, she appeared EMBARRASSED.
“Sorry about what I said to Eddie and those guys about you,” Melissa offered between bird-like bites. “I just—I wanted them to leave you alone.”
“You’re barely touching your food.”
“You’re mad at me. I can tell.”
Colin wrinkled his nose, wondering how Melissa could tell he was MAD when he was in fact not MAD at all. Nor was Colin aware of anything he should be MAD about. “I wouldn’t be mad at you for not eating your lunch,” he replied.
“Not my lunch,” Melissa explained. “What I said.”
“Oh.” Colin nodded as though this made perfect sense. “What did you say?”
“I said I was sorry.”
“Oh.” He carefully separated his carrots from his celery. “For what?”
Melissa smiled. It was that same mysterious smile from so long ago. The same smile she had occasionally offered since she had kissed him that day at the observatory. He could not name it. The smile eluded him.
“You’re smiling,” Colin observed. “That means you feel better, and maybe now you can eat your Salisbury steak.” He popped a carrot in his mouth as he spoke.
“Colin,” Melissa said with a frown, pointing to her lips. Was she inviting him to kiss her? This seemed unlikely and unsanitary. It could only mean he was chewing with his mouth open, as usual, and Melissa was helpfully pointing this out. People did not enjoy watching others chew their food. It was a habit that Colin had to be conscious of while eating, but this was difficult when his mind was on other, More Important Things.
“Thank you,” he said after swallowing and before taking another bite.
Melissa shrugged. “Anyway, it’s not that. I just don’t like to have a lot at once. I like to eat a little at a time.”
Colin nodded—this was wise. He knew several small meals a day were actually better for you. They gave the body a constant influx of calories and kept the metabolism stable. He would have said all of this, but his mouth was full of carrots again. “That’s how a shark eats,” he said as he considered a celery stick. “Don’t let the movies fool you; a harbor seal is not a very big meal.”
“Yeah. I try to stay away from harbor seal sandwiches, myself.”
“No, really,” Colin insisted. “A shark will store food in his stomach for months, perfectly preserved. That’s why when you see one that’s been killed on the news, they talk about things they find inside. Entire limbs, sometimes even pieces of a head shredded by the shark’s teeth and crushed by its esophagus. The shark is just saving it for later.” He bit the celery with a crunch and tore away a chunk. It amused him to imagine he was a shark, and the celery was his prey.
Suddenly, Melissa found the Salisbury steak even less appetizing than she had just moments before. She set down her fork and pushed her tray away from her.
Colin chewed, forgetting once again to keep his mouth closed. “That doesn’t even count the random things a shark will swallow and keep down there. They found an entire outboard motor in one great white. It just spilled out when they split open his stomach, and the funny thing is it still worked.” He tore off another bite of his celery, jaws working as fast as his mind now. “In another one, they found a…”
Colin stopped speaking. Colin stopped chewing. It was all very un-Colin-like.
Melissa rose, concerned, her horror at his lunchtime dissertation forgotten as she leaned across the lunch table. “Colin? Colin,” she said, scooting closer and weighing the risks of touching him, “are you okay?”
“Birthday cake,” Colin said. “And a gun.”
29 Laughter is not a phenomenon limited to humans. Gorillas, chimpanzees, and other primates have been observed laughing for social purposes, as well as in response to tickling. Dogs and even rats also exhibit the behavior, although a rat laugh is so high-pitched that a human can’t hear the sound. Colin found this very interesting, but he couldn’t fathom what a rat or a dog might find funny. Most of the time, he had difficulty understanding jokes himself.
30 In spite of their depiction as gentle companions to human beings in film and television, chimpanzees are widely considered among the most vicious and dangerous of primates. People who have adopted them routinely report chimpanzee attacks on other household pets or even members of the family. Invariably, these animals are consigned to zoos or put down. Even so, Colin secretly hoped a chimpanzee would appear at the window and give him the finger every time a truck passed the Fischers on the freeway.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:
WHAT THE TORTOISE SAID TO ACHILLES
“The Tortoise and the Hare” is among the most well-known of Aesop’s fables. It goes like this: One day, a tortoise challenged a hare to a race. The hare, knowing he was much faster than the slow, lumbering tortoise, readily agreed. When the race began, the hare sprinted to an early and apparently insurmountable lead. He became so confident in victory he decided to rest. But the hare fell fast asleep, and the tortoise overtook him.
When the hare awoke, he realized the tortoise had almost reached the finish line. The hare dashed ahead, faster than he had ever run, scarcely able to believe his friend the tortoise could possibly defeat him. But the hare had woken up too late. He could not run fast enough. The tortoise had won. The moral of the story is generally interpreted as “slow and steady wins the race.”
Author Lewis Carroll turned this moral on its ear. In an 1885 dialogue, the tortoise explains to Achilles that no matter how fast Achilles runs, he can never defeat the tortoise in a race. Through a series of logical propositions, h
e proves to Achilles that once a lead is taken, it cannot be overcome. In short, if Achilles can only close half the lead between the tortoise and himself at a time, he is doomed to remain behind.
Carroll was not attempting to reach a moral conclusion but illustrate a paradox: Sometimes, logical deductions do not match real world experience. Sometimes, even the most logical person presented with the most objective evidence must put mathematics aside and embrace what he observes to be true. This is called an “inference,” and it is the only way to resolve Carroll’s paradox. An inference exists beyond logic and reason.
Inferences make me uncomfortable because I like certainty. The risk of faulty logic is the emergence of a paradox that might someday be resolved through better logic; the risk of making a faulty inference is that you’re simply wrong. However, an inference can be useful. Of all the most basic questions posed to any investigator, inference can answer the most difficult. Not who, what, when, where, or how…but why.
“Why” can be the most important question of all because human behavior isn’t always logical. Human behavior is not a mystery that can be solved or fully understood in mathematical terms. It just has to be experienced.
Dr. Doran walked briskly up the front hallway toward the main office, heels clicking against the tile, her eyes narrowed and jaw set. She was marching into a battle she did not choose, but intended to win. And God help anyone who kept her from it.
Wayne Connelly’s voice echoed out into the hallway. “I told you,” he was saying to the secretary, “I’m here to see Dr. Doran.”
Dr. Doran moved in behind him with her arms crossed, a formidable presence. Wayne knew from the look on the secretary’s face and the prickling of the hair on the back of his neck that he should turn around.31 The boy who imagined himself afraid of nothing was, in his heart, as afraid as he had ever been.
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