Loser

  Zinkoff sits with the orchestra during Graduation. The orchestra has two numbers to play, plus “Pomp and Circumstance” as the graduates march in. From his perch on the stage, Zinkoff can see everything, but he cannot locate his parents and sister in the crowd.

  The principal says things to get the program started. Then the superintendent of schools speaks. Then comes the orchestra’s first number, “Palaggio’s Waltz.” Twice during the number Zinkoff’s flute yips like a pinched sister. The music teacher winces, but Zinkoff never notices.

  Then Katie Snelsen receives a book for having the best grades. She stands at the podium and gives a speech. Everyone smiles and pays attention to her. Only the orchestra can see that she is grinding the toe of one shoe into the stage floor.

  Next come the awards and special recognitions. There are winners galore—for the best this, the best that, the most this, the most that, second-best, third-best. There are medals and citations and checks and handshakes and gift certificates and trophies and, for Bruce DiMino (Principal’s Award), a glass apple.

  It is during the giving of the awards that Zinkoff spots Mr. Yalowitz standing in the back. Mr. Yalowitz does not need to be there. He teaches fourth grade, and what does he care about graduating fifth-graders? But there he is, Zinkoff’s favorite teacher of all time (along with Miss Meeks) and his end-of-the-alphabet neighbor. And suddenly it hits Zinkoff: He’s graduating! No more grade school. No more walking, being first there in the morning; next year he’ll ride the bus to middle school. No more staying in the same cozy classroom all day, all year.

  For the second time that spring Zinkoff feels the tears coming. Graduation isn’t even over yet, and already he misses John W. Satterfield Elementary. He even misses the boondocks and Field Day and Mrs. Biswell. He looks around. He loves everything and everybody. He wants to hug the walls. The last award is given, and it’s time for the orchestra to play “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” It’s just about the hardest thing he’s ever done: play the flute and cry at the same time. The music teacher, he notices, seems to be crying too.

  He wonders how many of the original two thousand one hundred and sixty days are left. He has never forgotten the number.

  Now the principal walks slowly to the podium. He thanks the “talented musicians” for the “wonderful music.” He smiles down at the graduates in the front rows. He says, “And now the moment we’ve all been waiting for.”

  The graduates stand and head for the stage as the principal calls out the names. The superintendent of schools hands each graduate a rolled-up piece of paper with a blue ribbon around it. The diploma. Most of the graduates grab for the diploma, but the superintendent holds it back and makes them shake his hand before forking it over.

  The calling of each name triggers a reaction in the audience. People run crouching down the aisles to snap pictures. Family, relatives, friends cheer the graduate. Some cheers are modest: a little handclapping, a “Yea, Sarah!”, a “Go get ’em, Nicky!”

  Other families are more boisterous: leaping from their seats, arms waving, two-fingered whistles, moose calls, stomping the floor. It’s hard not to make comparisons, hard not to notice who gets the loudest cheer, the longest, the most outrageous, the most camera flashes. It’s like a last minute, before-you-get-outta-here, final test.

  Zinkoff tries not to look at it that way. He knows that some families are simply not as loud as others and that it doesn’t mean they love their graduate any less. So it will be with his own family: His father is not a whistler nor his mother a stomper. Still, he can’t help thinking it must be nice to have somebody go bonkers over you. That is, assuming you have somebody there to begin with, which he isn’t assuming anymore because he still hasn’t located his parents out there—maybe Clunker Seven broke down—and it’s getting to the point where he’ll be thankful for just a peep.

  Because he’s thinking these things and searching the field of faces, he fails to hear his own name called:

  “And last but not least, Donald Zinkoff.”

  The principal waits. The superintendent waits. The principal looks around, as if Zinkoff might be up in the air somewhere. He says it again, this time with a question mark:

  “Donald Zinkoff?”

  Zinkoff snaps to. He jumps up, lurches for the principal, catches his foot in the chair of the clarinetist beside him and goes sprawling to the floor. The flute goes clattering. The audience explodes with laughter. He doesn’t blame them. What a goofus! He joins in the laughter. He scrambles after the flute. He picks himself up, takes a bow and resumes his journey to the principal, only to be reminded that it’s the superintendent he needs to see.

  By now it is quiet again, and again he is hoping, wondering…

  The tabletop that had held the stack of diplomas is bare. The last one is in the superintendent’s hand. Boondocks forever.

  Zinkoff reaches for it but receives instead the superintendent’s huge, warm paw. He shakes it. He stands at attention. He declares, “Zinkoff reporting, sir.” The superintendent gives him a grin, a brief half salute and, at last, the diploma.

  In the audience someone shrieks: “Go Donald!” The voice is familiar. He looks. It’s Polly. They’ve been there the whole time, right in the middle. His parents are clapping with their hands above their heads, but Polly’s the one. She’s sitting on his father’s shoulders and she’s flailing her arms and pumping her fists and yelling her face off—“Go Donald! Go Donald!”—and she’s doing it, she’s going absolutely bonkers, she’s giving him the wildest cheer of all. And in the very back of the auditorium, standing against the wall, Mr. Yalowitz smiles and sends him two thumbs-up.

  23. Vanished

  Graduation Day is just that: one day.

  Then comes the next day.

  And the next.

  Zinkoff puts away his flute, puts away his backpack, puts away his memories of Graduation Day and gets on with the rest of his life.

  To Zinkoff and to all the kids in this brick-and-hoagie town, summer is like a great warm shallow lake. Some frolic and splash. Some strike out for the distant shore, too far away to see. Some just stand there, digging their toes into the sandy bottom. It is warm and sunny and lazy and you can leave your feet if you want to, because in the warm waters of summer, everybody floats.

  Zinkoff rides his Clinker One with a new kid from up the block. They cruise the park. They race down Halftank Hill. On his bicycle he is graceful.

  For most of July he goes Monopoly crazy. He carries the game with him everywhere, always keeping his favorite piece, the top hat, in his pocket. He gets up games with his parents and with Uncle Stanley and the neighbors and the Oh Mailman Lady. When he can’t find anyone else, he resorts to Polly, who begs him endlessly to play. It’s never long before his properties cover the board and his stack of money practically scrapes the ceiling. But it’s no fun, she’s so easy to beat. He tries to make it fun by trouncing her so badly that she’ll get mad and stomp off, maybe throw a tantrum, which is always entertaining. But she doesn’t. She doesn’t seem to care, or even notice, that she’s losing. She just loves to roll the dice and loves wherever she lands. He’s the one who winds up mad.

  Then they go away for summer vacation: three days at the beach. They stroll the boardwalk. He shakes hands with Mr. Peanut and eats an ice-cream and waffle sandwich and a chocolate-covered frozen banana. While Polly digs holes in the sand, he hunkers in the surf and dares the ocean waves to knock him over.

  Back home, he pesters his parents to join the swim club, but they say it’s too expensive. So he does what a kid has to do: He smells the cedar chest in his parents’ bedroom, he decapitates dandelions, seesaws at the park, licks the mixing bowl, rides his bike, counts railroad cars, holds his breath, clucks his tongue, tastes tofu, touches moss, daydreams, looks back, looks ahead, wishes, wonders…and before he knows it, miraculously, the summer is over.

  Monroe Middle School is scary, it’s so big. Four elementary schools feed into it. There are no swings in t
he playground. There’s no playground. No recess. All day long he bounces from room to room, teacher to teacher. Every forty-five minutes it’s back into the hallways, the cattle drive. Moooo! Eighth-graders tower over him, knock him off balance barging through. When he sees a familiar Satterfield face he beams and waves.

  One day the face he sees stops him cold. He calls out, “Andrew!” It’s his neighbor from the old days.

  Andrew looks but keeps walking. He does not seem to recognize Zinkoff. “It’s me. Zinkoff. Donald.”

  Andrew nods. “Oh yeah. Hi.”

  Zinkoff runs to catch up. Andrew has really grown since he saw him last. He’s five inches taller than Zinkoff. If Zinkoff didn’t know better, he’d think he was an eighth-grader. It’s not only his height, but the way he carries himself. Unlike most of the other slinky, slumpy sixth-graders, Andrew gives the impression that he belongs here, that he doesn’t have to apologize for having been born.

  Zinkoff feels a little funny having to look up. “Andrew, you got tall!”

  Andrew looks over his head, looks down at him. “Yeah. And it’s Drew.”

  Zinkoff is confused. “Huh?”

  “My name’s Drew now.”

  “Oh? You changed it?”

  “Yeah.”

  Zinkoff has never seen Andrew’s—Drew’s—new home out in Heatherwood, but he can picture it with its driveway and tree out front, and Zinkoff nods, for it somehow seems to add up: new house, new name. “Cool,” he says. They’re walking side by side now. “Your father still a banker?”

  Drew looks down at him. Only his eyes come down, not his face. “Your father still a mailman?”

  Zinkoff is about to answer when a bell rings. It’s not the one for the next class, it’s coming from Drew’s backpack. Drew takes out his cell phone and answers it. He’s talking away on the phone as he veers off and into his next class.

  Zinkoff sits in class—anywhere he wants! He sits front row smack in the middle. He rushes ahead to classes so he can get to the seat first. Every time he sits in the first row, he thinks of Mr. Yalowitz. He misses him.

  He joins the band. Meets flutists from the other grade schools. They compare flutes.

  He signs up for Camera Club. And Video Club. And Model Car Club. And Library Helpers. But has to drop all except Library Helpers because they interfere with band practice.

  He misses a stairway step one day and tumbles heels to ceiling down to the landing. He’s on his hands and knees for minutes picking up pencils, erasers, books, ruler, triangle, multi-template, his lucky pink bubblegum stone, cookie pieces, Monopoly top hat and other spillage from his backpack and pockets. Most students rushing to class zigzag through the disaster. Two eighth-graders, laughing, not noticing, walk straight through, crunching cookies underfoot.

  Arithmetic, which had become math, now becomes geometry. Squares and rectangles, okay. But then hexagons, pentagons, octagons, gobbledeegookgons. He can’t get it. He’s bad at shapes. He’s transferred back to math.

  Band is not just band anymore. It’s marching band. At first Zinkoff thinks, Great! He pictures himself in a fancy uniform, golden braid, doodads, a plumed hat high as the old giraffe. But there are no uniforms. You get them in high school. Middle school is for learning the basics.

  They practice on the parking lot, learning to play and march at the same time. For the first few days they do a simple straight-ahead march. Walking and playing. No sweat, thinks Zinkoff.

  Then they start on turns. First, a ninety-degree turn. Left, then right. Then forty-five-degree turns. Then about-face turns. Zinkoff cannot seem to get the hang of it. He’s okay with either one: He can march without playing, or play without marching. But when he tries to put them together he marches into parked cars, the bike rack, his fellow marchers. It’s like bumper cars at the fair. On his worst day he runs into the tuba and bloodies his nose and is told to go home.

  But he doesn’t give up, and nobody tells him not to come back.

  There are two outdoor baskets behind the school. When there’s time the kids play pickup games. One of the baskets still has a net hanging from it. The eighth-graders get that one. The other goes to the sixth-and seventh-graders.

  Zinkoff hangs around, hoping to get picked. The pickers are always two big-shot athletes. No one elects them. They don’t earn it by making foul shots or anything. They simply appoint themselves and no one argues. Gary Hobin is often a picker. So is Drew Orwell.

  The pickers stand at the foul line and look over the troops. They take turns picking. You know how good a player a kid is by how early he is picked. When ten players are picked, the unpicked retreat to the sidelines and wait for the game to end—ten baskets—so they can get another chance.

  Zinkoff loves basketball now. He keeps waiting game after game. The pickers keep picking, usually the same players. Standing there during picking time, Zinkoff tries to look good. He puts on his game face, he scowls. Anybody can see this kid can score. Once, Drew Orwell looks right at him and he’s sure this is it, he can already hear his name, it’s forming on Drew’s lips—“Zinkoff!”—but the name that comes out is…

  “Nedney.”

  And so September becomes October, and October becomes November and December and the grass turns to hairbrushes and the bus riders fog the windows with their breath. The band comes inside and the pickup players come in and the football teams. Halloween. Thanksgiving. Basketball. Tests. Assignments. Projects. Report cards. Cheers. Groans. Waiting for snow.

  The school in winter.

  And Zinkoff vanishes.

  Not to himself, of course. To himself he is very much there, every minute: laughing, burping, biting his pencil eraser. Like everyone else, he is the star of his own life. He is seen and heard almost every day by the other band members and by his sixth-grade friends.

  But to the great dragonfly’s eye of Monroe Middle School, he is unseen. Even the thing that got him noticed at Satterfield—the losing—is gone. All of that is forgotten, left behind like candy wrappers. The clocks here tell nothing but time. Zinkoff is not a loser here. He is less than that. He is nobody. Long before the first snowfall, he sinks into nobodyness.

  24. Snow

  The flake rides in on the fringe of a northwest wind: sails high over Heatherwood before swinging toward the tarpaper roofs of the town, flies over Halftank Hill and Eva’s Hoagie Hut and the post office, makes a beeline down Willow Street and on to the grass and asphalt sprawl of Monroe Middle School, dances for a moment outside a second-story window, leaps the spouting and, as if finally tired of it all, falls upon the roof.

  In the classroom below, an eighth-grader looks up from the paper where he doodles. He sniffs. He cocks his head. He looks out the window, squints, half rises from his seat. His eyes widen, he throws up his arms:

  “SNOW!”

  Within seconds the whole school knows.

  “It’s only flurries.”

  “That’s just the start.”

  “Could be a blizzard.”

  “Snow day tomorrow!”

  “Pray!”

  By lunchtime it’s still flurries. The students crowd at the windows of the cafeteria, chanting, “Snow! Snow! Snow!”

  “It’s only flurries.”

  “That’s all it’s gonna do.”

  “It’s tricking us.”

  “It’s not sticking. Look. The ground’s dry.”

  By seventh period a new wind from the south blows the flurries away. The sky is white and still.

  “Rats!”

  By school day’s end wet fat flakes splat on the students’ upturned faces as they leap out of school.

  “Snow day!”

  “Snow day!”

  “Snow day!”

  Zinkoff loves school, but he loves snow days too, and tomorrow looks sure to be one. As he steps from the bus near his home, he sees that the snow is sticking. The sidewalk is already white. He projects how deep the snow will be on Halftank Hill by tomorrow morning and he shouts, “Yahoo!” forge
tting he doesn’t say that anymore.

  Since it is wet, the snow packs readily into balls, and snowball fights break out up and down the street and all over town. Front steps and car hoods are scraped clean as fast as the flakes can fall.

  Three-minute dinners are the rule. Take off your gloves, gobble something down, ignore your mother’s grumbling, on with the gloves, back outside, discover: The snow’s up an inch!

  It’s dark by now, and there’s something about snow falling under streetlights that makes a kid stop and look. But not for long. Snowballs fly out of the darkness, through the flake-falling tents of light, back into darkness.

  The first snowplows come rumbling through. Except it’s not a snowplow, it’s a tank, and that’s a bazooka in your hand. Bam!

  Zinkoff is winding up for a tank attack when he first notices the light going by a block away. Then another, flashing red, white and blue. Kids are turning, throwing arms slack. Someone is running.

  He joins others heading for the lights. What could it be? Fire? Murder? Snow fights continue, but they’re rolling skirmishes now, snow scooped on the run. Over one block, down two, over one.

  It’s Willow Street. The nine hundred block. It’s lit up like a carnival.

  Police cars, emergency vehicles: a parade of them up the street, the snowy humps of parked cars pulsing in the swirling lights, people shouting, running, watching from the steps. Hiss of radio voices. The snow is trampled on the sidewalks, rutted in the street.

  Zinkoff ricochets like a pinball off milling bodies. Through the glittering snowfall he spots the Waiting Man glowing in his window. He looks like George Washington. He hears fragments:

  “…lost…”

  “…little girl…”

  “…mother…”

  “…freeze…”

  “…frantic…”

  “…leash…”

  It’s Claudia, the little girl on the leash.

  She’s lost.

  For some reason he’s not surprised. He imagines her sneaking off when her mother’s back is turned. He imagines her squirming out of the harness, flinging away the leash, throwing her arms in the air with a great “Yahoo!” and bolting into the snow and down the street, free at last, much as he did when he was first allowed outside alone.