Maniac looks haggard, dirty, underfed, and just generally pitiable when Grayson finds him.
This happens at the beginning of Chapter 22. Here's how the narrator describes Maniac right as Grayson discovers him:
The kid looked terrible. His clothes were scraps, rags. Wherever his body showed through, it was bony and dirty and scratched.
Maniac has been sleeping in the buffalo pen at the zoo, having run away from Amanda's house after some of her neighbors made it clear that a white kid like him was unwelcome in the East End. When Grayson finds Maniac, the boy has been away from the comforts of the Beale home for quite a while, without meals, without a clean place to rest at night. So it's no wonder that he's ragged and scrawny when the kind old Grayson realizes that there's a kid in the buffalo pen.
Normally a resourceful kid who's great at taking care of himself, Maniac reveals a deeper problem by letting himself become such a mess: he's in despair after being practically run out of the East End neighborhood that he'd loved so much. He's also deeply displeased with himself for allowing Amanda's encyclopedia to be destroyed.
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