Adam Levin - The Instructions

I sat down on the bench on the other side of the table from her. I sat forward like I would eat, instead of like a cowboy. It was hard to figure out where to put my hands and my arms; if I should put them in my lap or on the table. If I put them in my lap, they would be under the table, and if they were under the table, it would take a lot of movement to touch her hair, and also it would look pervy in the meantime. If I kept them on the table, though, then they would be between us, doing the movements my hands do when I talk, which is distracting to some people because I point a lot with my pointer finger and sometimes raise the thumb to make a harmless gun-of-flesh that I jab in the air or swing around in a fast way with snaps from the wrist when I am saying something important. I didn’t want to scare her with wild hand movements and I didn’t want to look pervy, so I balanced it out by keeping my right arm on the table and my left arm in my lap. But maybe I looked perved out and scary at the same time.

“A penumbra is a part of a shadow?” June said to me.

The lighter part, I said. On the border.

“It’s a pretty word.”

I took the half-pad of hall-passes from my pocket and set it on the table. I said, I got you these yesterday, so you can go anywhere.

June said, “I’m worried about you.”

I said, I won’t get in trouble. I’m stealth.

She said, “I know you’re stealth. I’m not worried about you getting in trouble.”

I told her, I missed you.

“And maybe you’re crazy.”

I said, I like your coat because it shows off how many different reds you are.

Her face blushed and she turned away from me, pulled her hair into a ponytail. When she turned back, she was wearing two hoods.

I said, The color of your blushing is exactly the same as the color of the freckles on your face. I was thinking that the freckles were red until I saw you in your coat. Now I know the color of your freckles and your blushing is actually a very light pink color. What’s amazing is when you blush your freckles disappear. I’ve never seen that happen before. It’s beautiful.

“No one else thinks it’s beautiful,” she said.

I told her, Everyone thinks it’s beautiful. Everyone thinks you’re beautiful.

She said, “No one ever tells me.”

No one? I said. Really?

“No one I trust,” she said.

I said, I’m telling you. I said, I think that what happened is that when you were a baby, when you knew some words but you couldn’t talk yet, you were just as gorgeous then, and everyone who saw you would say how gorgeous you were and you knew what it meant, but you couldn’t say anything because you didn’t know how to speak, and so you blushed because you knew how to do that, and you knew it meant thank you, even though you’ve forgotten now. And so one day—

June said, “Gurion,” = “Stop/Go on,” and then she smiled like she was getting tickled and she liked getting tickled but she didn’t want to like getting tickled.

I said, One day your mom took you out somewhere, like to the beach, to Oak Street Beach, and you were on a striped blanket the size of a bath-towel and it was such a hot day that half of Chicago was there and so people kept walking by you non-stop, thousands of them, and they all saw you and said how gorgeous you were and you kept blushing to say thank you, and that is how you got your freckles, because you blushed so much that the freckles got left behind permanently, like the wrinkles my father has at the sides of his eyes from squinting while he reads. It looks like he is always reading and it looks like you are always saying thank you.

“Shh.”

I said, The reason people don’t tell you how gorgeous you are without cease is that they think you can read their minds because of the way your freckles make you look like you’re always saying thank you, which is lucky for you, since I’d imagine that conversation would get old fast.

I took a breath.

“So you don’t think I can read your mind?” June said.

I said, No one can read my mind, June. Not even God. Maybe you can read my face, though, like Him. But even if I knew you could read my face, I would still tell you you’re gorgeous. Because you make me into a kind of sissy is why I tell it to you. Because I am scared not to tell you because I am scared that if I don’t tell you, it will cripple me from the inside not to tell you and I’ll become a tyrant because I am in love with you.

She said, “Stop.”

I said, And plus your hair is no less than seventeen separate shades of red.

She said, “Stop it, Gurion.” Then she took the barrel of the gun of my hand and closed it and then she closed the thumb so I had a fist and she pushed the fist down onto the table between us and turned it over so the fingernails-side was up. She undid the fingers and pressed both of her hands on top of my open one.

It was quiet and it would have been the perfect time to start trying to kiss her by touching her hair with my hand that was under the table, but I was way too nervous to reach it up. We stared at each other very hard in the eyes, but not like a staring contest, and mine got heavy in the sockets and then numb and then I was about to start crying, but June started crying first, so I didn’t. But it was not like a crying contest.

I said, Why are you crying?

She said, “I am sad and worried.”

I said, Why are you sad and worried?

She said, “Because what if you die?”

What was wrong with everybody?

I told her, I won’t.

And then it made me sad and worried because what if she died? People died all the time, and what if June died? What would happen then? I was sitting there, across from her, and it was so much better than before when I wasn’t, when I was only thinking of her. And before, at least, I knew I’d soon sit across from her. If I couldn’t even walk around knowing that, though… If I knew that I could never see her again, I would have to go crazy. Time would pass and June would become like Hashem’s revelation at Sinai, like manna, like the parting of the sea, and I’d have to suspect that maybe there never really was a June I knew, let alone a June I loved, that she was only a person I once longed to believe and failed to fully believe had ever existed. I’d tell myself lies and believe my own lies, or else I’d have to go an even worse kind of crazy.

“I was sketching,” she said. She let go of my hand and took a sketchbook out of her lap. Then she stopped sitting cowboy-style so she could face me with her whole body. I looked at the picture in the sketchbook. It was a picture of a boy in the center of a large room kneeling on the chest of another boy in a way that made it look like he was trying to pull the second boy’s face off, but neither boy had a face.

I said, The boys have no faces.

She said, “It’s a sketch. I don’t know who they are yet.”

June wasn’t crying anymore and she touched her face with her arm to get the tears off. The tears got trapped in the overcoat fibers. They didn’t smear. They shivered like raindrops on a windshield on a highway when she set her arm down on the table. She said to me, “So do you like the drawing?”

I said, I don’t know.

June said, “Good.”

I said, Good?

“If you don’t know,” she said, “it is bad to pretend like you do.”

I didn’t say anything

She said, “Everyone is a liar.”

I didn’t say anything.

She said, “You are a liar.”

I didn’t say anything.

She said, “I’m a liar, too, but it doesn’t matter if we’re liars, as long as we lie about the same things.” She said, “What do you have to show me?”

I couldn’t remember which wrist had the י on it, so I pushed both her sleeves back and turned her hands over so the soft sides of her wrists were facing the ceiling. They both had a י.