Loser by Jerry Spinelli

his test.
    Perhaps if Zinkoff had not had two weeks to build up a good head of boredom, taking the test would not have occurred to him. But he is bored and it does occur to him and, for Zinkoff, that is that: If it occurs to him, he does it.
    One day while his mother is on the phone and Polly is napping, he opens the door in the kitchen and stands at the head of the cellar stairs. He turns on the light. The cellar appears dimly below him, lit only by a bare forty-watt bulb. He counts the number of steps. There are nine. Tohis eyes they look like nine hundred. Nine hundred steps into a bottomless black hole.
    Knees trembling, one sweaty hand on the railing, the other flat against the wall, he lowers himself one step. He’s breathing fast, as if he’s been running. He sits down.
    He sits for a long time. He has thought that after a while he would begin to feel better, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to lower himself one more inch. He wants only one thing in this world, to turn around, take one step back up, turn out the light, reenter the kitchen, close the door, and go curl up with Polly. He imagines himself doing exactly that…
    â€¦and lowers himself down to the next step.
    More of the cellar comes into view: the cold, gray, cracked concrete floor; the once whitewashed walls, now gray and streaked with green slime, gashed and oozing sand; the coarse, timeworn planks of his father’s workbench. The modern geometry of the oil furnace and water heater seem out of place in this crumbling pit that reminds Zinkoff of ancient ruins.
    He lowers himself another step…and thinks he glimpses the furry edge of a flank pulling itself out of sight.
    He grips the front edge of the step with both hands. He stares bug-eyed into the shadows.
    The Monster speaks.
    Zinkoff bolts. Back up the stairs and into the kitchen, into its glorious familiar light, the stitches in his stomach tingling. He knows it wasn’t really the Monster. It was really the oil furnace kicking on with a whoosh . He knows it, he knows it. Nevertheless he doesn’t go near the cellar door.
    Until the next day.
    The next day he goes down three more steps. He is truly down into the cellar now, closer to the gray stone floor than to the top of the stairs. He looks back up at the light from the kitchen. He repeats to himself: “It’s only a cellar. It’s only a cellar.” His heart is banging to get out. His stitches tingle. Beyond the hum of the furnace he can hear his mother’s voice. She is on the phone a lot these days. She has gotten a job as a telemarketer. She sells memberships to a health clubover the phone. He whispers in the direction of the furnace: “Please don’t come out.”
    There is one other sound: the tock-tock of his mother’s cooking timer. He has set it at five minutes and brought it with him. It sits on the step beside him. It sounds like the thunder of a kettle drum. He has just decided the timer is broken when it goes off with a firebell clang. He yelps. Back to the kitchen.
    On the third day he leaves the timer behind. He lowers himself step by step until his feet rest on the cold cellar floor. He starts counting, whispering the numbers. He will stay until he reaches one hundred. It is noticeably cooler down here. Above him a slurry of light barely leaks from the forty-watt bulb, mocking the sun and stars he loves. A smear of light puddles at the far corner of the furnace. At last he reaches one hundred and returns to the kitchen.
    He tries to feel good, to congratulate himself for what he has accomplished. But he cannot fool himself. He cannot forget that the test is not over.
    The next day he returns to the doctor’s officeto get his stitches out. Then comes the weekend. He resumes the test on Monday. He does the same thing he did the first day—he lowers himself down three steps—only this time there is one difference: He does not turn on the light. This time the