Adam Levin - The Instructions

His leg was cocked for a second face-shot when I got there and threw him aside. Eliyahu dragged GlassMan away by the ankles.

Mr. Goldblum said to me: “But you said!”

About then is when Brodsky began to catch on. At the edge of the crowd, with most of the teachers, he was too far away to see more than blurred movement, but the movement blurred fast, fast meant violent, and Shlomo kept screaming. The principal yelled, “Break it up!” through his soundgun, and the sitters in the field all leapt to their feet. The standers were already thickening around us.

Mr. Goldblum attempted to make his way past me, faking to the left, slipping to the right. I side-stepped to block him, left-right-left, til he caught me off-footed with a sideways shoulder-thrust. I landed on my ass and he helped me back up, saying, “Sorry, I’m sorry. Sorry, sorry.”

We were standing nose-to-nose, Mr. Goldblum and I, and I thought: We’re nose-to-nose, Mr. Goldblum and I, and I’d think we’d be nose-to-clavicle, us, or at least nose-to-thrapple.

Was I also cartoon-looking? I touched my nose.

I noticed his copy of Ulpan on the ground. I knelt to pick it up, still a little bit stunned, and he shot right past me, returned to the fight. I jammed the paper in my pocket, tried to follow him in, but before I’d even landed a second footfall, I got yanked back, then up in the air. Two arms wrapped tight around the crooks of my own, and my elbows pressed into my gut so hard some lunch got displaced and I puked in my mouth.

I spit it out.

I thought: Desormie.

I kicked my legs around, trying to get free. The stun was entirely gone now.

I saw Eliyahu wrap The Levinson’s torso and wrestle him off of Shlomo Cohen’s wrists.

The Levinson’s face was soaked with tears and he was screaming at Shlomo: “Where’s your friends now? It’s my friends who saved you! My friends! Mine! You—” Then he was knocked away by the Chewer, and Eliyahu got arm-barred by Maholtz.

Eliyahu’s fedora fell in the grass.

Finally my heel made contact with something soft on my holder and my holder said, “Fuck,” but he didn’t drop me. He swung around, and I could no longer see Eliyahu and the Five, and then I made contact again with my heel, and my holder swung us back to the first position. If I was him and he was Gurion, I would have leaned forward and fell on Gurion, stuck my knee in one of Gurion’s kidneys and sideways-chopped on Gurion’s neck, but he was not me and I was not him. He just kept holding me in the air while I kicked, and walking us backward, away from the fight, further into the crowd, and laughing, he was laughing, a peculiar laughter. It was forced, but not loud enough for anyone to hear — not anyone but me. He was laughing for my benefit.

I heard Brodsky screaming for Jerry and Floyd. He was still far away, trapped back by the crowd.

My holder kept swinging me left and right. Kids opened a path so they wouldn’t get kicked.

Boystar, now travelling beside us, was thrilled. He got in my face and talked news like it was his: “Maccabee’s a dead man! Maccabee’s dying!”

I wanted to say something back but I was gasping. Every time I exhaled, the pressure on my center got tighter. My holder adjusted his grip a little, and for a few seconds, I could see over everyone’s heads. I saw Co-Captain Baxter. He crushed the crown of the fallen fedora, then stepped to the Maholtz-grappled Eliyahu and took his yarmulke. He threw it behind him, frisbee-style, into the crowd. Maholtz reached his leg around the front of Eliyahu, released the arm-bar, and shoved forward so Eliyahu tripped. He fell bad. He caught his own knee in his beauty, and his wind got blasted. I needed to get loose to help him and I couldn’t. Co-Captain Baxter flipped him over and pinned him, slapped him, twetched in his eye. Everything in sight spun for a second.

I put all my strength in my shoulders to spread them, inhaled as hard as I could. This got a little air inside my cramped lungs, but blinking sparks were already falling, scraping their way down my visual field.

All the Five were cleared away by teachers except for Shpritzy, who was nearly horizontal, stretched in mid-air, his arms locked tight around Shlomo’s head, Desormie pulling him west by the ankles while the Chewer pulled Shlomo east by the waist. Floyd dropped his cheering cone and Main Man grabbed it. He shouted through the bell: “Nakamook? Nakamook? Where is Benji Nakamook? Is Benji Nakamook in the two-hill field?”

I wanted to know where Nakamook was, too. And Vincie. Leevon. Where was the Side of Damage? If the cheering cone was a soundgun, then Main Man could — but no. There was no need for a soundgun. There was the Side of Damage! All of them but Benji — no! There was Benji. They were standing right there. Not helping me.

Watching.

“Nakamook!” shouted Mookus. “If you are Benji Nakamook please report to the center of the penultimate crowd scene! Please step back to allow Benji Nakamook access—”

Shpritzy and Shlomo had suddenly separated. Floyd’s elbow struck Main Man. The cheering cone dropped. All the Side of Damage glanced between me and Benji.

Again my holder re-adjusted his grip, turning us a little. I caught sight of some Shovers shoving each other, yanking scarves off each other, lofting scarves in the air, then my eye-level sunk to the crowd’s neck-and-back-plane. Any breath I had left in my body was stale. I heard ticking in my ears, and the sparks ceased to blink, and they grew tails like comets and were falling so quickly I was seeing bright lines, phosphorescent white.

And I wanted to know how Desormie could possibly hold onto Shpritzy way over there while he crushed all the air from me right over here.

The white lines thickened.

Desormie couldn’t be in two places at once.

I tried some more kicking. My legs were floppy. My holder said, quietly, “Don’t make me hurt you.” The calm of his voice was unmistakable.

I thought: But he’s only just another boy, though. I’m being defeated by another boy.

“I’m saying calm down, kid,” Slokum said.

I turned my head as hard as I could and used my last halfbreath to twetch in his face, but it only drooled out of me.

Kids were staring.

“Okay now,” said Bam, and he set me down. “You’re okay now. Good guy. Okay.”

I sucked air, gulped air, wiped my face on my hood. Slokum was leaving.

Wait! I shouted.

He stopped. He waited.

I caught my breath and jumped straight at him. He turned away, and I bounced off his arm. “Smacked-up Maccabee,” Boystar said. He thought it was hilarious. “I’m gonna write a song.”

“Just disappear now,” Slokum said to one of us. “Don’t make it all knotty. Don’t complicate things.”

When I got back on my feet, he was gone, in the crowd. The crowd had gone calm, lining up to be counted.

I walked around the hillside and sat in the valley, cold and faceless in a puddle of snat.

I lay back on the stiff grass and stared at the yud-shaped clouds. They drifted together into pairs while I daydreamed an audience that filled the risers in the gym. I paced inside the tip-off circle, denouncing Slokum’s tactics through a megaphone. I explained how I’d have wrecked him if he’d faced me honorably: if he’d attacked head-on instead of creeping up from behind. And if I’d have wrecked Bam Slokum, I explained, he’d be the one in front of an imaginary audience, protesting the unfair tactics of Gurion ben-Judah, explaining how he’d have wrecked Gurion if Gurion had faced him honorably and how in that case it would be Gurion in front of an imaginary meow meow, explaining meow meow meow meow meow meow meow.