Adam Levin - The Instructions

“You might think it was because of the scoreboard getting killed,” Ronrico’d explained when we first noticed Floyd wasn’t at his post, “but don’t blame it on Ben-Wa. Floyd was roving even before that — because of how I tagged up Main Hall. It’s my fault and I’m sorry.”

“Shut up about it already,” Nakamook had said.

“Sorry, Benji.”

“Stop saying sorry. If you want to brag about tagging up Main Hall, brag about it, but don’t pretend you’re reluctantly confessing for the good of Ben-Wa.”

We’d decided to work in pairs so one guy could always be on lookout for Floyd. It would have been more economical in terms of passes and defacement-per-minute rates if we worked as a single group with one guy on lookout and five bombing, but we decided on pairs because two’s the most guys that could hope to hide safely in a doorway. I wrote out one pass for each pair and designated different times to return to the Cage since if we trickled in separate it would look less suspicious.

Tired how? I whispered across the rhombus.

“Everyone’s writing it,” Nakamook said.

I said, Some people are still writing DAMAGE WE and WE DAMAGE — I’ve seen probably ten of those.

“Yeah,” said Benji, “but those just seem like screw-ups. The one kind looks like the tagger was dyslexic, and the other like he got caught before he could finish. That’s not the point, anyway, how many people do one or the other. I don’t like writing what any one else writes. It’s team-spirity.”

I said, If the tags all say the same thing, they’ll be more powerful. They’ll look more like a message.

“What’s the message?” said Benji.

It’s what it says, I said. WE DAMAGE WE. It is that it is.

“What does that mean, though?”

I said, Every time someone reads or writes Damage now, the Arrangement gets damaged and the Side of Damage gets stronger.

“Maybe that’s what the message does,” Benji said. “Maybe. But what I’m asking you is what it means .”

It means what it does, I said. Beyond that, it doesn’t matter. At least not yet. What matters is the Side of Damage has the power to send messages — that we can send messages the Arrangement doesn’t want sent.

Benji said, “Even if that does make sense, someone’s gonna get—”

Here he comes, I said, and became the wall.

Benji did, too.

Floyd paced past the doorway.

When he was out of range, I whispered, Maybe someone’ll get caught, but that’s not so bad. If they rat — and I don’t think they will, but even if they do — we’ll continue. Everyone’ll know we’re unstoppable.

“Not if they kick us out.”

They can’t kick us all out, I said.

“Why not?” he said.

So fine, I said, so say they kick us out — maybe we’re still victorious.

“How’s that?” Benji said, then became his wall.

I became my wall, waited.

Floyd passed by again, hands crossed at the wrists at the small of his back, cheering cone bopping the backs of his thighs. I snuck to the edge of the doorway. The way I cocked my head, I could see C-Hall to 2-Hall before my line of sight got obscured. If Floyd took a right into 2-Hall, we’d wait because there wasn’t much 2-Hall to the right of C-Hall — the side entrance was just three classrooms from the junction, and it wouldn’t give us enough time to deface anything well. If he took a left, though…

I said, If we get kicked out, we’ll get sent to other schools and maybe we’ll do the same thing there with other kids. The Side of Damage could spread out from Aptakisic like—

“First of all, that’s crazy — the only reason all those kids even joined the Side of Damage is because it means that we’ll protect them. If they go to a new school, we won’t be there to do that. Secondly, what do I care anyway? They’re not my friends. Any loyalty they have to me comes out of fear. And any loyalty I have to them is only by proxy; it’s only cause I know they’re on your side.”

I said, That’s good enough, Benji.

“Loyalty without friendship creates hypocrisy.”

That’s just a whiny word, I said.

Benji said, “There’s only so much loyalty to go around, Gurion. And there’s even less friendship. If you’re loyal to someone who isn’t your friend, and they come into conflict with someone who is, then what are you supposed to do?”

I said, Be loyal to the friend.

He said, “But you still end up being disloyal to someone who you were supposed to be loyal to, and that’s hypocritical.”

I said, It’s not hypocritical — it’s just how it is. Friendship creates — Floyd’s gone, I said.

We stealthed into C-Hall. It was my turn to play lookout. Benji led me to the water fountain.

Friendship creates loyalty, I told him, but loyalty doesn’t necessarily lead to friendship. So friendship and loyalty are separate, and it’s better to have both than just one, but it’s better to have one than neither.

“Whatever,” Benji said, gesturing at the water fountain.

He’d written I EXPLODE in the basin, just above the drain.

“You got a problem with that?” he said.

I said, The marker’s gonna wash away if someone takes a drink before it sets.

“No one’s gonna take a drink,” said Benji. He pressed the button and nothing came out of the arcing hole, and I remembered: it was the water fountain Eliyahu had punched. “I was asking about what I wrote — you got a problem with it?”

I said, You’re Benji Nakamook.

“What’s that mean?” he said.

I said, You’re my best friend.

He said, “You sure about that?” = “I saw you talking to Bam by the bus circle yesterday.”

I said, Don’t get subtle on me, Nakamook. You asked me not to fight him.

“That doesn’t mean you’ve gotta be his buddy,” Benji said.

I’m not his buddy, I said.

“You looked pretty friendly.”

We’re not, I said. I said, He thinks we are, but we’re not.

“But you do like him,” said Benji. “Everyone does.”

That’s what he keeps saying, I said, but that doesn’t make it so.

“Let’s drop it. Pride and propriety.”

You’re the one who started talking about him, I said.

“I didn’t start shit. You think I should do more I EXPLODEs or what?”

I said, Write what you want. I said, It’s probably better to change it up, anyway — it’ll confuse the robots.

And when I said that I got an idea.

I said, I just got an idea.

On the wall across from the Cage, I wrote *EMOTIONALIZE*, hugely, using an entire cinderblock for each letter.

“That is just smart as hell, man,” said Benji. He liked it so much.

We admired what I did for a few seconds, then heard human noise and ducked back into a doorway. It turned out to be Ronrico and The Janitor, returning to the Cage, right at the time I’d told them to.

The Janitor rang the doorbell and Ronrico noticed the *EMOTION-ALIZE*.

“‘Boystar Emotionalize Boystar’?” said Ronrico. “He’s biting my fucken steez, Mikey.”

“Gurion’s steez,” said the Janitor.

“Whoever’s steez it is, that kid’s biting it. Hard.”

Nakamook bit into his fist and barely stifled nose-noise.

“Come lunch, I will blot that bullshit out,” Ronrico said.

“Don’t get so emotional,” said the Janitor, “because then you’re just doing what he tells you to do.”

Botha came to the gate then, but Ronrico was still staring at the wall.

“That kid can’t tell me to do anything,” Ronrico said. “I bet he didn’t write it anyway. It was probably one of those Jennys.”

“A Jinny wrote what?” said Botha.

“Leave me alone,” said Ronrico.