The suburban loser takes an extended lunch break from the jewelry store at the mall and drives all the way to the westside so he can visit the bookbinder he found in the yellow pages, the whole way listening to the thrashing plastic garbage bag taped over the passenger side window from the week before when someone broke in and stole his stereo while he was drinking at Paychex. The bookbinder has a small building nestled between a liquor store and a tabernacle church with a wide, empty parking lot littered by weeds and potholes. Inside, framed posters hang on the wood paneled walls advertising industry products like different sorts of glues. Yellow stains spread out on the popcorn ceiling, and the Tigers game plays on the radio. An old man comes from somewhere in the back and clears off the receipts and binders on the counter so the suburban loser can set his book down, a Great Classics Illustrated edition of Call of the Wild by Jack London, a gift Grandpa Sullivan had given him right around the time he married the suburban loser's grandma. It was the first book the suburban loser read for fun. He'd read his favorite sections over and over again while he ran his fingers across the illustrations of snowshoes, igloos, and sealskin coats. The parts he liked most were about what the dogs did to survive in the Alaskan tundra, like stealing food and being crafty. It all came in handy, once, too, when the suburban loser's mom caught him stealing quarters from the collection plate during Christmas time at church and sent him to bed without dinner. The suburban loser crawled out his bedroom window and ran to his Grandpa Sullivan's house. It was only a few blocks away but it felt like crossing the ocean in the harsh conditions of a Michigan winter. All the lights were off at Grandpa Sullivan's and no one answered the door, but rather than return home, the suburban loser dug himself a burrow in the snowbanks along the driveway and crawled inside, just like the dogs did in Call of the Wild when they curled up into balls to keep themselves warm. The suburban loser sat this way, thinking about the tuna melt with potato chips on the side Grandpa Sullivan would make him until the headlights of his Cadillac swung around a few hours later illuminating the suburban loser's face, red and frozen with snot and tears. Unfortunately, the bookbinder says, it is impossible to repair the book. The Great Classics Illustrated are so cheaply made that he'd shatter the spine if he made any adjustments and the paper is so acidic and brittle that even the weakest glues would eat right through it. He lifts the flaps of paper on the cover as he talks, peeling back the husky’s face to show mildewed cardboard underneath. The good news, he continues, is that they printed so many of these, it would be cheap and easy to find a copy in just about any used bookstore. Back inside the car, the suburban loser uses a marker he borrowed from the bookbinder to write on the inside cover, right underneath his Grandpa Sullivan's inscription. To my eldest son, he writes, may reading be the first of your many adventures. He'd give the book to his son on his fifth birthday, he decides, still not knowing what they'd name the baby when it was born.