Summary
Andrew moves away by the time Zinkoff begins third grade. That November, Zinkoff has surgery to turn the upside-down valve in his stomach right-side up. He stops throwing up but misses three weeks of school. Zinkoff tries to escape the house because he is eager to be at school. He hates having to wait. He doesn’t really sleep: he merely waits until morning. He looks out the window, bored with life, feeling the sadness and emptiness he imagines the Waiting Man on Willow Street must experience.
Zinkoff decides to make school come to him by giving himself a test. Although Zinkoff isn’t afraid of the dark like most children, he is afraid of the Furnace Monster who lives in the basement. Over several days, while his mother works her telemarketing job, Zinkoff walks down the dark basement steps toward the frightening furnace, which switches on with a whoosh and sends him running back to the light. He hopes to pass his test and reach the bottom before his convalescence period is over, but he fails to pass his test.
Mr. Yalowitz, Zinkoff’s fourth-grade teacher, commiserates with Zinkoff about having a last name at the end of the alphabet. He invites Zinkoff to sit in the front row, instead of alphabetically arranged at the back. Zinkoff is excited and rushes forward. Mr. Yalowitz is encouraging to Zinkoff, and makes him the center of attention. Other students begin to notice things they hadn’t before: they notice Zinkoff’s clumsiness, atrocious way of talking and walking, and how he volunteers for everything. They notice his low grades and bad handwriting.
On Field Day, a competitive all-school sports and activities day, Mr. Yalowitz puts Zinkoff, despite his clumsiness, in position to be tagged off as the fourth leg of the hop-on-one-foot race. Gary Hobin gives him a generous lead, but Zinkoff is too uncoordinated and so loses the race for the purple team. Hobin and the others blame Zinkoff for the loss of the medals they could have won. They file past, each calling him “Loser.” At the dinner table, Polly asks if he won. Zinkoff shouts no, clearly upset. His dad takes him for a drive in Clunker Six. He knows his father will never give up on him.
Because Satterfield Elementary only goes to fifth grade, Zinkoff enters his final year with a sense of importance reserved for the eldest kids. However, he realizes he has a new nickname: Loser. It seems to be all around him, though people rarely say it directly to his face. The narrator comments that virtually everything Zinkoff does can now be related to his performance on Field Day and summed up in the nickname.
Meanwhile Zinkoff is growing up, and growing out of old beliefs. He is allowed to go further from home. He bikes to see the Waiting Man through his window. The man’s concentration is intense. Zinkoff cannot believe the world allows such waiting and wanting to go unrewarded.
One day Mrs. Shankfelder hands out blue booklets with questions and multiple-choice bubbles to fill in. However, she says it isn’t a test. Zinkoff enjoys answering the questions until the final one, which asks him to write in the name of his best friend. He realizes he doesn’t have one. He panics and then settles on Hector Binns, who he believes also doesn’t have a best friend.
After class Zinkoff meets Hector at the bike rack, where he is cleaning out his ears with a paper clip, collecting the wax in a little brown jar. He says he is trying to collect enough to make a candle. Zinkoff reveals that he wrote Hector’s name on the questionnaire, proposing that they could become best friends. Hector stares into the distance, eating licorice. He doesn’t say yes or no.
Zinkoff visits Hector’s house and meets his pet lizard, Nobody. Zinkoff spends all his free time at school with Hector. He begins to chew licorice to be more like his new friend. One night they have a sleepover and Zinkoff presents an Altoids tin of earwax that he has been collecting to help Hector make his candle. Hector hands Zinkoff back the tin. Zinkoff realizes he wanted to make the candle from his own wax. Weeks soon pass. Zinkoff is dimly aware that he is seeing Hector less and less. Eventually he realizes the friendship is over.
Analysis
As a reprieve from judgmental teachers like Miss Meeks and Mrs. Biswell, in the fourth grade Zinkoff is delighted to meet Mr. Yalowitz, a teacher who seems to recognize immediately Zinkoff’s neurodivergence and need for special attention. Unlike the other teachers, Mr. Yalowitz matches Zinkoff’s level of enthusiasm rather than shaming him or seeing him as a troublemaker trying to challenge the teacher’s authority. In contrast to the other teachers’ judgmental nature, Mr. Yalowitz is approving of Zinkoff in all his difference.
However, Mr. Yalowitz’s approval arrives at a time when Zinkoff’s classmates begin to view Zinkoff with new discernment. Although he is just as clumsy and prone to humiliation as ever, the students, having turned ten years old, notice him in a new way, which leads to greater judgment and rejection. Zinkoff’s difference, while it is the same as it ever has been, stands out more, leaving him vulnerable to greater levels of rejection and judgment.
The theme of rejection arises most overtly during Field Day, when Zinkoff’s lack of physical coordination leads to an abysmal performance during the one-leg race. Although Mr. Yalowitz makes the team put Zinkoff, their worst member, in the most crucial position in order to challenge the students’ judgment of Zinkoff, the consequences of having let down the entire team will live with Zinkoff for the next year.
Branded a “loser” by his teammates, Zinkoff’s peculiar immunity to shame finally starts to break down. That night he goes home to dinner and erupts in anger when his sister asks if he won the race. In contrast to early scenes in which Zinkoff endured humiliation and rejection at school but came home to tell his parents only how much he loved school and his teachers, Zinkoff finally feels the burden of his difference. Having been so ruthlessly judged and rejected by so many people, Zinkoff roams his neighborhood, coming to identify with the loneliness of the Waiting Man on Willow Street.
In fifth grade, Zinkoff receives a standardized questionnaire that prompts him to realize, with anxiety, that he lacks a best friend. Until the questionnaire, it had not occurred to him that he has no intimate connection with a person his age. In a panic he writes down the name of Hector Binns, another loner. Hector, however, does not seem to mind his isolation from others. Although Zinkoff makes valiant efforts to emulate Hector’s behavior, and even collects his own earwax to contribute to Hector’s candle project, Hector gradually cuts Zinkoff off, making excuses not to see him until Zinkoff finally realizes they are no longer friends.
