Chapters 13-15 Summary

By the start of Chapter 13, "Waiting," Zinkoff is in third grade and his neighbor, Andrew, has moved to a fancier neighborhood. Zinkoff has surgery to fix the upside-down valve in his stomach, which keeps him out of school for three weeks. His active nature rebels against this forced slowdown, and his mother worries that he will run outside, which would be bad for his recuperation. She puts Polly's crib across the front door as an alarm system, because one of Polly's few words is to yell, "Bye!" very loudly at anyone who leaves. Zinkoff feels like the Waiting Man. To combat the wait before he can return to school, he decides to make a school experience of his own by creating a test. In Chapter 14, "The Furnace Monster," Zinkoff confronts the only form of darkness that frightens him, which is the...