Loser by Jerry Spinelli

doesn’t think about it. But now and then he does. He wonders what it would be like to be so stuck to another kid that you could walk into his kitchen and his mother wouldn’t even look up because she’s that used to you, and she would say, “Wash your hands and sit down, you’re late for dinner.” It seems kind of neat, thinking of it that way, and sometimes he regrets he doesn’t have a best friend. But then he usually thinks about his own mother and his father and Polly and he thinks about the nine hundred block of Willow and he figures he is doing okay.
    Until he comes to this question— Who is your best friend? —and that blank space seems to be saying to him: If you don’t have one, you’d better get one.
    He skips over the question to finish the rest of the test. He returns to it. Time is passing. Pretty soon Mrs. Shankfelder will say, “Pencils up.”
    Best friend…best friend…
    â€œOne more minute,” says Mrs. Shankfelder, who does not usually give a warning.
    He panics. He looks around the classroom, too bad if the teacher thinks he’s cheating. His eye settles on Hector Binns, way up in the firstrow. Hector’s head is down, his shoulders hunched. He’s working away on the test.
    Hector Binns has been in Zinkoff’s class since first grade, so of course Zinkoff knows who he is. Over the years they have found themselves at the same water fountain or monkey bar rung. But Hector Binns, being a B, has always sat far from Zinkoff, and Zinkoff’s information about him is spotty at best. This is the sum of what he knows: Hector Binns wears glasses, he is about Zinkoff’s height, he loves black licorice and he’s always cleaning out his ear with a paper clip. And now that he thinks of it, there’s one more thing: As far as Zinkoff knows, Hector Binns is available. He has no best friend either.
    â€œPencils up.”
    Quickly he fills in the blank, misspelling both first and last names: “Hecter Binz.”
    Â 
    He can hardly wait for recess. He finds Hector Binns by the bicycle rack, working on his ear with a paper clip.
    â€œHi, Hector,” he says. “What’s up?”
    â€œHuh?” replies Hector Binns. Zinkoff repeats,“What’s up?” but Hector doesn’t seem to hear. Maybe his hearing goes bad when the paper clip is in his ear. Otherwise, he doesn’t seem unfriendly, so Zinkoff just stands there.
    Binns goes at his ear with a gusto that Zinkoff has never noticed before. He digs and scrapes, wincing in pain or pleasure, Zinkoff can’t tell which. He pulls out the paper clip and examines it. To Zinkoff’s eye it’s clean. Binns plunges it into the other ear. Dig, scrape, wince. This time the clip comes out with a tiny waxy orangish crumb clinging to the end of it.
    Binns pulls from his pants pocket a small brown plastic bottle, the kind that pills come in. He brings the bottle to his mouth and for an instant Zinkoff thinks he’s going to eat it, but he simply pulls off the white flip-top cap with his teeth. He taps the paper clip on the rim of the bottle and in falls the waxy crumb. Zinkoff notices that the bottle is half full. Binns returns bottle and paper clip to his pocket. Only then does Binns seem to notice that he is not alone.
    The obvious question crawls to the front of Zinkoff’s tongue, but somehow he holds it back.“So,” he says, “who did you answer for best friend?”
    Binns pulls out a pack of black licorice sticks from another pocket. He rips off half a stick and begins to chew. “Nobody,” he says.
    â€œReally?” says Zinkoff. “You left it blank? Can you do that?”
    Binns shakes his head. Except for that first moment, his eyes never meet Zinkoff’s. He always seems to be looking into the Beyond. “I wrote Nobody. The word Nobody.”
    â€œOh,” says Zinkoff, nodding, thinking he understands.