Colin Fischer by Zack Stentz, Ashley Edward Miller Page A

Mrs. Fischer paused to admire the caller ID photo—a shot of Colin emerging from the Air & Space Museum with a rare, broad smile. The image was from six years ago—half a lifetime in Colin years—but it never got old.
    “One sec,” she said, “the world is ending, and evidently my son is in the middle of it.” There was more laughter from the group. Colin was no mystery to them; he had never been in trouble, least of all the end of the world.
    Mrs. Fischer muted the conference and picked upthe phone. “I’m a little busy right now, Big C,” she said. “Can this wait?”
    “I’m sorry, Mom,” Colin said in his usual pleasant, slightly flat tone of voice. Unlike most people, he used the exact same speech patterns for telephone and face-to-face communication. “I want to let you know I need to stay after school today. I need to do some research.”
    There was silence on the phone line. For an instant, his mother thought it seemed odd that Colin would be assigned a research project so early in the school year. On the other hand, Colin was prone to research projects whether they were assigned or not.
    “Okay,” she said. “Home by six?”
    “Yes.”
    “See you then. Good luck with your research.”
    There was another, even longer silence on the line.
    “Thank you,” Colin said simply, and hung up.
    Mrs. Fischer stared at the image of her smiling, seven-year-old son, frozen in time. Then the screen went black, and the spell was broken. And she returned to work.
    Colin should have been in detention, and he knew it. This was a calculated risk, acceptable only because his window to investigate this case was already closing. Such was the nature of things. Time had a way of eroding both evidence and eyewitness memory. Colin needed both to prove Wayne Connelly was innocent.
    Carefully, he placed his cell phone in his backpackand looked down at his Notebook, oddly entranced. For the second time in less than a week, Melissa had sullied it with her feminine, cursive handwriting.
         I’m sorry, Mom. I want to let you know I need to stay after school today. I need to do some research.
         GOOD LUCK! - XO
    Melissa had been sure to emphasize he was not to speak the last part aloud, but deftly avoided his question about the meaning of “XO.” These were obviously not her initials, nor did they indicate a year in Roman numerals. 17 In the end, Colin circled the strange marking with a note that he should Investigate later.
    Colin flipped back a page to double-check the address of his destination. He’d found himself in an unfamiliar neighborhood, and he wanted to be certain he was in the right place. He’d carefully followed the directions in his phone’s map function, but Colin felt strongly that with any machine it was important not to trust, but verify.
    The street was lined with dingy, two-story stucco apartment buildings, crammed into the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley. The jagged red rock formations that separated Chatsworth from Simi Valley rose up behind blocks of concrete and steel like shark’s teeth flashing in the afternoon sun.
    Colin walked along the cracked sidewalk, following faded addresses on the curb to the number that matched what he saw on the materials in Dr. Doran’s office and copied into his Notebook. He paused to record his observations, standing vulnerable and alone before the home of Wayne Connelly.
         Wayne Connelly’s house. Single story, peeling paint. Smells of cigarette smoke and stale beer. Toys scattered in the front yard, including a one-eyed doll. A hot pink Big Wheel with white tires is parked in the driveway next to a rusting Honda. Wayne is too large for the Big Wheel. Sibling?
    Colin fixed on a spot of bare, faded wood beneath a peephole. A cheap buzzer had been there once, but it was gone now. It wasn’t clear whether the buzzer had fallen off or been ripped out; both fates seemed equally plausible. He balled his hand into a fist to knock,