Adam Levin - The Instructions

“Exactly,” said Benji. “That’s all I’m trying to say.”

Leevon seemed to “Bet what would didn’t!” at me.

I tried to break my fingers with diametrically oppositional force and they wouldn’t break.

“So what about any updates on Ronny D and the chief, there?” said Floyd. “You got a potentially predictional ballpark figure regarding the time for their pow-wow’s overage, maybe?”

“No I don’t, Floyd,” Miss Pinge said.

“You keep saying Ronny D. Is Ronny D Desormie ?” Nakamook said to Floyd.

“You bet,” Floyd said. He was so excited, he forgot to use the cheering cone, and Nakamook had to duck the spray off the “bet.”

“The two of you go back, don’t you?” said Nakamook. “That’s why you’ve got such a great nickname for him, huh?”

“Came up with it myself,” Floyd said.

“Maybe you should be a writer, Floyd, because that’s really something,” Nakamook said. “Don’t you think that’s something, Virginia Pinge?”

Miss Pinge blushed and looked away. She always blushed when Nakamook called her by her full name. He told me the first time he ever did it was the day he came back from juvie. He said he did it to be disrespectful, but that when she blushed he liked it, and after that he was never disrespectful to her again, even though he teased her the exact same way someone else would’ve if they were being disrespectful.

“I guess she really does think it’s something,” said Floyd, confused by the blushing, taking a couple steps toward Miss Pinge’s desk. “And if Miss Pinge thinks something’s something, well…a little something-something we might have indeed.”

The spray of the P left purple dots of spit on Pinge’s beige blotter, and her mouth went pinched and I wondered if she was wondering what I was wondering: whether or not it would be better for her to tell Floyd to call her by her first name. If Floyd started calling her Ginnie or Virginia instead of Miss Pinge, he’d have fewer opportunities to pronounce labial plosives, which meant less projectile saliva, but then also Ginnie and Virginia were more familiar than Miss Pinge, and it would probably encourage Floyd to further pursue the investigation of his something-something hypothesis.

I was weighing the pros and cons when Vincie finally flipped me the note. It landed in my lap and I made a very unstealth startled movement that caused Miss Pinge to look at me, so I left the note be and waited.

Nakamook picked up the slack. He said, “I think that nickname is a work of genius, Floyd. I commend you. If I had a thousand years, I don’t think I could have ever come up with a pervier name than Ron Desormie. And if you’d have asked me to? I’d have told you no one could do it.”

“Benji—” Miss Pinge said.

I grabbed the note, held it on the desk in my fist while Nakamook continued:

“You, Floyd — you did it. You out did it, Floyd. Ron nee Dee ,” said Nakamook. “If I had a sister?” said Nakamook. “If I had a sister, and she was talking to some guy in our backyard? And if my sister, she said to me, ‘Benji, this is Ron Desormie’? I would kick him in the lower back, and when he fell, I’d drop a knee on his face and drag him out into the street unconscious so a car would run him over, and then he’d be dead and that would be that, but if I had a sister and I came into our backyard, and my sister said, ‘Benji, this is Ronny D ’? I would slap him on the neck and slap him across the chops and slap him on the neck again, then across the chops again, and I think it would be the end of me, Floyd. I think that I would die. I’d be like those lab rats from the filmstrip where they hook them to cocaine drips and the rats can step on the lever so the cocaine spikes into them and they always kill themselves fast because they can’t stop stepping on the lever. If I were a rat in a lab, the slapping of Ronnie D would be my cocaine, Floyd. I mean, I could really slap the Jesus outta some Ronny D. Even dead — I’d just keep slapping him; even after he was dead, Floyd. I’d slap him to death, and then a few days later, in the middle of slapping his corpse, it would be me who was dead. I’d lose all interest in hydration and nutrients and I’d just die slapping him. You really nailed it, Floyd. You call it like it is. You tell the truth. His parents might have named him Ron Desormie, but you came to know him, and you saw that he was really Ronny D . I mean, you’re a robot just like Botha, Floyd, you’re a real machine, a total gizmo, but at the same time, you’re also the opposite of Botha, because you tell the truth. You should be a writer. Good job.”

“Good job, Floyd,” Vincie said.

Leevon shot Floyd with his pointer.

Floyd said, “Thanks to all you guys, but especially you, Benji. Sometimes I really don’t know what you’re talking about because you get all abstract like that movie The Matrix Trilogy and I think maybe you’re being condescending to me like how a wiseass does. Same time, though, The Matrix Trilogy does have some pretty great moments in there where they’re doing swords and kung fu and like that. And I like that. I like to think of those parts as ‘the other side’ of The Matrix Trilogy. And I can see that there’s something like that in you. Like the other side of Benji. The other side of Benji N , if you get my drift.”

Nakamook said, “Will you start calling me Benji N, Virginia Pinge?”

I was hoping Miss Pinge would face Benji so I could unfold and read the note in my fist, but “Whatever you say, Benji,” she said, looking at me.

“Benji N ,” Vincie said to Miss Pinge. “ Ben ji Ennnn .”

“Don’t talk to Miss Pinge that way, Vincie,” said Benji.

“Sorry,” said Vincie.

“Okay, boys,” Miss Pinge said.

“Okay, Miss Pinge,” said Vincie.

Benji punched Vincie’s arm.

“Benji!” Miss Pinge said.

“Sorry,” said Benji.

“I was just saying okay ,” said Vincie.

“You weren’t being nice to her,” Nakamook said. Then he said to Miss Pinge, “I’ve got these lighters. These jetflame ones. I know a girl who knows a guy who has a cousin who works at a BP station where they sell ’em, except for the ones that go missing, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Miss Pinge said.

“Well but who do you know? That’s what I mean. Who do you know, Virginia Pinge? You know me, don’t you, Ginnie-Gin Pinge?”

“Nice one!” said Floyd. “Especially for a beginner.”

“You know me is what I’m getting at,” Nakamook said, “and I happen to have some jetflame lighters that went missing, like ten of them, and I’m trying to tell you that the fire comes out of the firehole like fire from a blowtorch, or the butt of a fighter-jet. On ignition there’s a hissing noise that ramps up the excitement. I want you to have one. I want to give you one. You’ll find new joy when you light your cigarettes.”

That got her to finally look at Benji. I unfolded the note.

“I’m not a smoker,” Miss Pinge said. “And what’s more, I sincerely hope you’re not telling me you have these lighters here at school.”

“G-Gin-P’s right,” said Floyd, “because lighters belonging to students are grounds for actionable disciplination when we’re talking about having them on school grounds, be they inside lockers, desks, or even pockets, which are searchable with due cause of suspection.”

“Would I bring lighters on school grounds?” Benji said to Miss Pinge. “Do you think I’d do that, Floyd?”

“That totally depends on you and only you,” said Floyd.