Zero (Hector Zeroni)

Zero (Hector Zeroni)
Vital statistics
Title	Hector Zeroni (Zero)
Actor	Khleo Thomas
Family	Madame Zeroni - (great-great-great grandmother) Unnamed Mother - (Mother)
Gender	Male
Race	Egyptian-American?
Status	Alive
Location	With his Mother
Gallery	Hector Zeroni (Zero) Gallery

Hector Zeroni is a camper at Camp Green Lake. There he got the nickname Zero (Due to the fact that he was assumed unintelligent, and may have been related to his last name.) He is the deuteragonist of Holes.

Family

Hector's great-great-great-grandmother, Madame Zeroni was an Egyptian. She placed a curse on Stanley Yelnats' family, because his so-called no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather, Elya Yelnats did not complete his end of a bargain he made with her.

In summary, the bargain was that Madame Zeroni would give Elya a pig, so he could take it up a mountain and let it drink from the stream. Later, his pig became heavier as a result of drinking the water.

Elya would carry Madame Zeroni] up the mountain, as he had to do with the pig and let Madame Zeroni drink from the stream on top of it. If he did not complete this, he and his descendants would be cursed.

Hector is described to have to grow up in many different places, and too never have had a real home. His mother, Mrs Zeroni, accidentally left him at Laney Park, and he waited for weeks for her to come back. Mrs Zeroni was looking for Hector, but Hector did not know this. In fact, Hector did not know if she was alive or not. At the end of the book, Hector has reunited with his mother again, and she is seen singing the second verse to 'If Only'.

Before Camp Green Lake

Before he was at Camp Green Lake, Hector was a homeless boy. He constantly had to steal in order to provide for himself. At that age, he didn't even understand stealing was wrong, but he only took what he needed. At a young age, his mother usually left him at Laney Park, as she couldn't take him with her everywhere. Sadly, one day, she left him there but never came back (A theory is that she was arrested for stealing, sentenced by a kangaroo court like the one that incarcerated Stanley Yelnats IV). So Hector lived on his own his whole life, never attending school and therefore never learning how to read. He stole a pair of Clyde Livingston's shoes from a homeless shelter's auction, unaware of whose shoes they were and what they were for (they were for auction). He threw the shoes over the overpass and they landed on Stanley Yelnats IV who was subsequently arrested. Hector was arrested the next day for stealing a pair of shoes from a Payless

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Hector Zeroni at Camp Green Lake

At Camp Green Lake

When Hector arrived at Camp Green Lake, he was placed in D-Tent and received the nickname Zero because of his (assumed) lack of intelligence. When Stanley Yelnats IV (Caveman) arrived at the camp, the two did not initially talk to each other at all. Then one day, Hector asked Stanley to teach him how to read when he saw Stanley reading a letter from his mother. At first, Stanley declined, but he later accepted after Hector dug Stanley's hole for him while Stanley was being taken to The Warden (Louise Walker) for "stealing". Mr. Sir (Marion Sevillo)'s sack of sunflower seeds, and he hardly talked with each other. Mr. Pendanski (Mom), his counselor, constantly mocked Hector's inability to read. One day after a fight between Stanley and Zigzag (Ricky), Zero started choking Zigzag in which Armpit (Theodore Johnson) pulled Hector off of Zigzag which ended with Mr. Pendanski shooting his gun into the air to get the boys off of each other, Mr. Pendanski asked Hector what D-I-G spelled. Hector responded by hitting Mr. Pendanski upside the head with his shovel and yelling "DIG!" Hector subsequently ran away from Camp Green Lake. After running away, Hector stumbled upon an old boat that had been turned upside down. Inside the boat, he found jars of spiced peaches which he called Sploosh, due to their syrupy, fermented consistency. This turned out to be Sam's boat. The peaches belonged to Kissin' Kate Barlow (Katherine Barlow) and they were remarkably preserved, though too much caused him to get sick. When Stanley found Hector, Hector was sleeping in the shade of the overturned boat. The two of them then climbed to the top of "God's Thumb." On the way up the mountain, Hector's hands were injured when he lowered his shovel to stop Stanley from falling. However, Hector held onto the spade of the shovel which resulted in his hands being sliced open. Hector then passed out just before the two of them reached the top of the mountain, due to the fermented, 100+-year-old spiced peaches 'wrecking him from the inside'. To keep Hector focused, Stanley continuously gave Hector words to spell.

The two after Stanley learns Zero's real name

As Stanley carried his weakened best friend up the mountain, he unknowingly was fulfilling his great-great grandfather Elya Yelnats's promise to Madame Zeroni.

When they finally got to the top of the mountain, the base of the `thumb', Stanley found a small stream and huge patch of enormous onions: Sam's onion field. Not only was there shade and water, but food, too! Delicious, humongous onions - Sam had made various products out of onion, because he thought onions were the cure for everything... including stomach aches. The many onions that Stanley and Zero ate erased the malady that the `Sploosh' had caused. And, apparently, they cause excessive bouts of farting, too.

And what cinched it all for them was that Stanley, lying in the stream, started singing the family mantra "If only if only, the woodpecker sighs...", finally fulfilling the entire promise, and ending the curse.

When the two of them went back to Camp Green Lake to dig up what the Warden had been looking for, they found it the hole where Stanley dug up Kissin' Kate's lipstick tube, marked by the head-shaped white boulder.

When they pulled out the chest, it was covered in yellow-spotted lizards. The Warden, Mr. Sir, and Mr. Pendanski found them moments later trapped in the hole. While trapped there, Hector noticed Stanley's name on the chest and asked Stanley if his first name was his last name backwards. Stanley's attorney arrived at Camp Green Lake with the Attorney General of Texas. When they arrived, they saw the boys trapped in the hole. The two boys eventually got out of the hole and when the Warden tried to take the chest from Hector, claiming it as her property, Hector yelled that the chest was Stanley's and that Stanley's name was on it, when he really had wrote his name on it, everybody was surprised that Zero could read. Hector and Stanley were then released from Camp Green Lake when the Attorney General found out that Mr. Pendanski had destroyed Hector's file so that no one would know that Zero was ever there.

After Camp Green Lake

After being released from Camp Green Lake, Hector went to stay with Stanley. While at Stanley's house, they decided half of the items in that chest go to Hector. Hector then used this money to hire a team of Private Investigators to find his mother, then they found Hector's mom and he went home safely. He got to meet his hero Clyde Livingston and told him that he stole the shoes and Stanley didn't.