Adam Levin - The Instructions

“Present,” said Mark Dingle.

Maybe they didn’t believe I could be humiliated.

“Hentsary!” said Botha.

“Present,” said Ansul Entsry.

“Failedburns,” said Botha.

“Here,” said Renee Feldbons.

Maybe they thought, moment to moment, that I would break free of Slokum in the next moment. That was definitely what I thought when it started happening, and by the time I knew otherwise, I didn’t have enough air in my lungs to call for help — but they didn’t know that. My lungs were not their lungs.

“Freudy!”

“Present,” said Jackie Friday.

My lungs were not their lungs, and my humiliation wasn’t their humiliation. It didn’t have to be, at least.

“Glanncow!”

“Here,” said Janie Glencoe.

They didn’t have to be humiliated by my defeat.

“Hyeney!”

“I’m here,” said Chunkstyle.

And they didn’t have to be ashamed for letting me be defeated.

“Kannilwath!”

“Present,” said Forrest Kenilworth.

Yet they were humiliated. And ashamed. I could see it in their faces.

“Layp!” said Botha.

Stevie Loop said, “Here.”

Their faces were blank; I saw shame in their faces, shame in their blankness. And maybe I just wanted to. Maybe I needed to — maybe I wanted, that much, to forgive them; maybe to forgive them I had to see shame that wasn’t really there — but shame’s what I saw.

“Lant!” said Botha.

They wished they’d done more for me, regretted they hadn’t.

“Right here,” said Casper Lunt.

They wanted to do more.

“Make-bee!” said Botha.

They wanted to atone.

“Make-bee!” said Botha.

They wanted to be loyal.

“Make-bee?” said Botha. “Where’s Make-bee?” said Botha.

Someone cleared his throat — Leevon Ray. “Here,” Leevon said.

“Nice to finely hear from you, Layven,” Botha said, “but don’t eff around with me. Where’s Garrion Make-bee?”

“Here!” the Side shouted.

And Leevon Ray spoke: “Word is bond, you prison-colony trick. Outback gimp-ass vegemitebrain. Coyotebugger. Stingraybait. Wallabee-eating marsupialsack. Crocodile ugly walkabout cripple. Bent Australian clawfisted lame inbred Foster’s-pounding bowie knife…”

I came down the hill, damaged and relieved and forgiving as the rest of them.

Mounted behind glass in a wallcase outside the art room was Miss Gleem’s Quarterly Student Themeshow. The theme for the quarter was “Exploring Black & White.” In the center of the display, amid would-be photoreal ink-drawings (moons, penguins, busts of tuxedoed Bruce Wayne types) and construction-paper cameos (all 19th-century-looking except Leevon’s: a spear-cleft Centurion’s helmet), hung the only unsigned piece. According to the little card Miss Gleem had pasted above the upper margin, it was made by June, and titled “Visual Thinker.”

This is exactly what it looked like:

Though the themeshow went up in mid-October, I didn’t get the whole joke til early November, when, returning to ISS after going to the bathroom, I happened to see the piece from thirty paces off.

I pointed as we approached it on our way to the Cage. The Side of Damage looked, and I told them to go closer. All of them did so — and fast — except Benji.

He’d stayed out of speaking range since I’d come down the hill. I’d been telling myself he was waiting for privacy, but now that I was alone — the others half a hallway off, either puzzled or giggling in front of June’s artwork — I saw how stupid that thought had been. If Benji’d wanted to speak to me alone, he would have scattered the lot of them and spoken. And had he done that, even if all he’d said was, “Hey” I think I would have forgiven him on the spot. I think I would have assumed I’d missed something obvious; that there’d been a solid reason for him not to help me in the field; that despite, if not because of, my efforts to forgive the others, this reason eluded me like a deer a duckhunter. Indeed, the very fact he couldn’t be forgiven on the same grounds as the rest of them — while always his friend, I’d never been his protector — might not have occurred to me at all. Had he only said “Hey.”

But he hadn’t. He didn’t. He kept on not. He wouldn’t even look at me.

What I decided was he’d write me a note.

And after we’d been in the Cage for ten minutes, I decided the note he was writing was long, more like a letter than a note, and I decided the letter would right everything between us.

The anticipation got me H with vigilance. It was the last letter in the world I’d want Botha to intercept. In the meantime, though, just about everyone except Benji was tossing me notes—“We Revenge We” “The Side of Damage is the End of Basketball” “You got snuck up on!” “Slokum dies Friday!” “I am a defiance!” “Death to the Arrangement!” “ *EMOTIONALIZE*” “Robots will melt!” “Tomorrow I’m singing at th p p rally with Boystar! Can you wait? I can’t wait! Lov, My Main Man Scott Mookus”—and because Benji was on the opposite side of the Cage, his hypothetical letter would have to pass through the hands of at least three intermediaries before it could get to me, and I didn’t know who would toss it, or which direction it would come from, and soon I did a very unstealth thing: reaching for a ricochet, I scooted my chair.

The Side of Damage believed I wanted a hyperscoot.

And so there was a hyperscoot.

Botha beat his fist on his desk and we couldn’t hear it over our noise. But the teachers, Miss Lang and Mr. Wadrow, though they covered their ears, looked on in simple amazement, even smiling a little: it was the first hyperscoot they’d witnessed, and they didn’t know to be terrorized — they thought it was just random weirdness. Clearly they hadn’t spoken to Miss Mingle or Miss Plotkin since before fourth period, and Botha must not have told them about hyperscoot, either. That surprised me for a second, but it shouldn’t have: it was, above all, his authority that hyperscoot damaged, and a trickler like him would want that information to remain hidden for as long as possible.

Though I was glad the Side of Damage was so battle-ready, the teachers needed to understand hyperscoot was a tactical weapon, and because the current hyperscoot wasn’t in response to any obvious offense the Arrangement had provided us, they couldn’t have understood, so I stopped it. I waited til all robot eyes were directed elsewhere — there was nothing to be gained by letting them know there was a leader, let alone who that leader was — and then I showed the Side of Damage my palm. They stilled their chairs.

“Tomorra you’re eating lunch in here,” Botha said.

It was a show of weakness and he knew it. We would have all stayed in the Cage for lunch on Friday anyway: I was banned from the cafeteria, and the rest of them would have wanted to eat with me. So then what was the point of his sentencing us to lunch in the Cage? This was the point: He knew we would think of the punishment as our having gotten away with something — and we did think of it that way; half the hands in the room were hiding sly smiles — and that therefore we wouldn’t respond with another hyperscoot.

And if we didn’t respond with another hyperscoot, Lang and Wadrow, who Botha was so concerned with impressing, and who had no clue that we’d want to eat lunch in the Cage, would believe that Botha’s power was intact.