Loser by Jerry Spinelli Page B

mother spots him her face goes all funny and she says, “Who are you?” But then Binns himself comes in and takes him off to his room.
    They spend some time looking at Binns’s stuff. He meets Nobody the lizard. Then Binns tells him to wait in the hallway and closes the bedroom door. When he opens it, he holds in his hand a brown pill bottle already filled with earwax. “This is the first one,” he says. “I keep it hid.”
    Zinkoff can’t believe he’s being allowed to see it. He feels truly honored.
    Riding home that day on his bicycle, Zinkoff notices the marks dotting the sidewalks. Black licorice spit marks. He smiles.
    Â 
    Zinkoff is determined to be the best best friend he can be.
    One day Barry Peterson calls Binns “Heckie.” Zinkoff knows Binns hates being called that, so he says to Peterson, “Hey, that’s not his name, it’s Hector.” Because that’s what you do, you stand up for your best friend.
    And you eat lunch with him and talk with him and share secrets and laugh a lot and go places and do stuff, and when you wake up in the morning, he’s the first person you think of.
    Zinkoff does all of this, and more. He starts eating black licorice. He pretends it’s chewing tobacco. He walks around with a chaw bulging from his cheek. He tries spitting pretend tobacco juice, but his mother puts a quick stop to that.
    Binns is probably the most interesting person Zinkoff knows, with the possible exception of the Waiting Man, and Zinkoff soon decides he needsto be interesting too. It’s around that time that he discovers in one of his pockets a clump of petrified bubblegum. It’s a gift from Claudia, the little leash-and-harness girl. It looks like a pink stone. He appoints it his lucky piece, which he will carry with him always and rub when he needs some luck. He feels more interesting already.
    About a week into the best friendship, Zinkoff asks his mother if he can invite Binns to sleep over. She says sure. Excited, Zinkoff runs to the phone and calls Binns. Binns says, “I guess.” Binns never says “yes.” He always says “I guess.”
    But the sleepover has problems. Binns turns out to be a kicker and a roller. Actually, he’s a regular bulldozer in bed. Zinkoff wakes up to find himself thumping to the floor. He climbs back into bed, and as soon as he gets to sleep it happens again. After the third time he takes the extra blanket from the closet and makes himself a bed on the floor.
    Except for his bed, after that night, he shares everything he can with his best friend: the lunch in his paper bag (he has outgrown the lunch pailtoo), the allowance in his pocket, the candy in his hand, the joke in his giggle. He shares the nine hundred block of Willow with him. He introduces him to little Claudia on the leash. They walk their bikes past the Waiting Man. The lady with the walker isn’t on the front step that day, so for days afterward Zinkoff keeps asking Binns if he wants to go back, because he wants Binns to hear her say, “Oh, mailman!” But Binns keeps saying, “I guess not.”
    There is one thing more special than any other that Zinkoff intends to share with Binns. He saves it for weeks and weeks, and when he can no longer bear to wait, he gives it to Binns. He gives it to him after school one day in a brown paper lunch bag. Binns opens the bag. In it is a little tin that says “Altoids.” Zinkoff found the tin on the street. Binns opens the Altoids tin and stares.
    â€œWhat is it?” he says.
    Zinkoff beams. “Wax.”
    Binns stares, first at the contents of the tin, then at Zinkoff. That’s all he does, stare.
    â€œIt’s mine,” says Zinkoff. “From my own ears.I’ve been saving it up. I know it’s not much, but I couldn’t wait any longer. I figured you could add it to yours and get enough for a candle faster.” He doesn’t tell