Adam Levin - The Instructions

When he was finished giving his speech, Desormie chinned the air at Miss Pinge = “My interrogation method, though unconventional — some might even call it ‘controversial’—is pretty impressive, if I don’t chin so myself.”

Miss Pinge looked at her lap.

You’re tall, I said to Desormie. How tall are you?

“Tall enough,” Desormie said. “Don’t try to change the subject with non-sectarians.”

But how tall are you exactly? I said.

“Quid pro quo,” Desormie said. “Quid. Pro. Quo… Means you answer my question, and only then I answer yours.”

You didn’t ask a question, I said.

“You know what I mean by a question, Maccabee.”

A question? I said.

“Stop playing the fool.”

Maybe I’m playing the foog, I said.

“What the heck is a foog?” he said.

I said, Quid pro quo, Clarice.

“You said I’m a Cla rice ?” he shouted.

“Stop shouting,” Miss Pinge said.

“Yes, Ron,” said Mr. Brodsky from his doorway. “Please stop shouting.”

“The scoreboard is destroyed!” he shouted.

Brodsky said, “I’ve already discussed the matter with Gurion, and further-more, the scoreboard is not destroyed. Two letters are missing from the—”

“I’m trying to tell you it’s destroyed, Mr. Brodsky. It’s no two letters. The whole reason I came in here is to deliver the information that at nine this morning it was two letters, which is the last I checked was nine this morning — the last I checked until ten minutes ago, that is — and some time between nine this morning and ten minutes ago, while I was at the pool or in my office, him or his so-called ‘friends-of-him’ went into the gym and threw so many rocks at the scoreboard that almost all the letters are broken and almost all the bulbs, and those bulbs that are left won’t even light up anymore because those thrown rocks those kids threw blew the fuses or something. Scoreboard. Is. Destroyed!”

I wondered about the clock — if Nakamook or Vincie or whoever hit the scoreboard also got the clock. I was so excited I even started asking before I caught myself. I said, What about the—

“What about the what ?” Desormie said.

I recovered, saying, Does smoke purl from the sockets when you give the thing juice?

“Look at him smiling about it!” Desormie said. Forgetting again to use my swear-finger, I touched my mouth-corners with my thumb and pointer, and this triggered Desormie to touch his own mouth-corners, which smeared the paste onto his cheek a little.

“Let’s talk about this in my office,” Brodsky said to him.

“Good,” said Desormie. “Let’s go,” he said to me.

I have to use the bathroom, I said.

I really did have to.

“Go ahead, Ginnie,” said Brodsky, “give him the pass.”

“But we have to discuss the—” Desormie protested.

“Gurion was with his mother this morning, and he’s been in the Office since noon,” said Brodsky.

“That wasn’t the case yesterday,” Desormie said. “It wasn’t the case when the E and the V got busted out. He’s unaccounted for for yesterday.”

“You think that he damaged the scoreboard yesterday, but someone else did it today?” Brodsky said. He said it like it was the dumbest thing anyone could possibly suggest.

And I thought: Why not think that?

And then I thought: Brodsky wants for you to be innocent. He wants to keep you from being bullied.

I thought: Count your blessings, you’re off the hook.

“But why not think that?” Desormie said. “They’re all copycats. And/or they’re organized.”

Brodsky set his hand on the back of Desormie’s elbow and pushed on it, just barely. He pushed Desormie’s elbow gently in the direction of his office, and took a step toward the Office, and said, “Who’s they?”

And Desormie, who only a split second earlier was dying to break my nose and yell about me, followed Brodsky’s cue — took a step in the direction of Brodsky’s office without hesitation — and when he said, “I don’t know who they are, but I know there’s a group of them, Mr. Brodsky,” his voice was all but entirely drained of anger.

Miss Pinge handed me the bathroom pass, and I didn’t have to piss as bad.

I wanted to do something nice for Brodsky.

I said, “Gym teacher.”

And Desormie revolved. He said, “My name is Mr. Desormie to you.”

And I said, You are suggestible, Mr. Desormie.

And Desormie said, “What the heck are you talking about?”

And I dragged the back of my hand back and forth across my mouth twice.

And Desormie dragged the back of his hand back and forth across his mouth twice. And Brodsky coughed fakely to mask his laughter. And there was no more paste in the mouth-corners of Desormie. And Brodsky would not have to stare at paste while they talked in his office. That was nice of me.

I went to the gym.

The clock was intact. Floyd the Chewer knelt beneath it, examining the shards of plastic letters and scoreboard bulbs the gym floor was strewn with. Hector the Janitor, on standby beside him, gripped a pushbroom with one hand and a dustpan with the other. I watched them from the doorway. The Chewer held a shard up to the light, made a face like he was deciding something important, then dropped the shard and buzzed a go-ahead through his cheering cone. Seizing his pushbroom just above the brush and using only the bristles along the edge of its short side to avoid accidental contact with shards Floyd hadn’t yet approved for disposal, Hector crouched to sweep the rejected one into his dustpan, then stepped back into position. Floyd picked up another shard and the whole thing began again: examine, reject, command, sweep. After the fourth or fifth cycle, I remembered I had to piss.

And then I remembered I had the bathroom pass.

I headed for the locker-room.

“Evidence?” the Chewer was complaining to Hector. “More like garbage for the garbage dump. Sweep! — Oh well, oh hey, just look at who it is.” Who it was was me. “Halt it,” Floyd said. So I halted at center-court, my heels on the gnarled and overwrought nose of the floor’s red, murder-eyed Chief Aptakisic. Floyd came out of his crouch and approached, stumbling on his way on a pile of rocks that was stacked at the top of the key — the rocks scattered — and, once he’d recovered his footing, said to Hector, “Re-organize the admissable evidence and secure it somewheres safe, preferently outside the scene here so no one has to break his neck on the way to apprehend suspects is a lesson we’d do better to learn fast rather than later, Hec.”

Hector hopped to action without a word. He was as quiet as Leevon. I’d never heard him speak, but usually he smiled. And he always walked on his toes. He wasn’t smiling when he pushed the rock-pile to the corner with the pushbroom, but he did walk on his toes, and I looked away feeling like a shmuck for noticing because “Does Floyd the Chewer really believe the Deerbrook Park Police Force, who probably doesn’t even have a crimelab, will run fingerprints on all of those rocks?” is what Hector must have been wondering. It is what anyone but Floyd — who not only seemed to believe the scoreboard’s damager might have touched the shards as well as the rocks, but that he could see, with his naked eye, whether the damager had done so — would have been wondering, but no one so much as Hector, who, if he didn’t wonder about the fingerprints, would have surely had to wonder why he was taking orders from a man like Floyd.

“They always return to the scene of the crime, Hec,” Floyd said. “You hear what I just said, Gurion?”