Adam Levin - The Instructions

So we should have hyperscooted in response to the sentencing. If we had, Botha still would have known that he’d shown us weakness, but he’d also have looked weak in front of the teachers. It took me a minute to think of that, though — for those first sixty seconds after the sentencing, I was, like the others, too busy being impressed with our small victory to imagine a larger one — and after that it was too late. A delayed response would not look like a response. Just more randomness.

As the minutes after the hyperscoot quietly passed, I became less and less convinced that Benji was writing me a letter, more and more convinced that he’d been too afraid of Bam to help me, that he’d been just as afraid as the rest of them and was ashamed. That kenobi line of his about timeliness and vengeance and pride and propriety — maybe it was , after all, just impressive-sounding babbling, a clever-phrased reason to explain away the fact that after two years of arch-enmity he’d never once stepped to Slokum; to make it sound to others, maybe also to himself, like he wasn’t plain scared. If there is such a thing as a disloyal thought — and I’m not sure there is — that would be an exemplary one. But my options were narrow. Either I could (disloyally?) believe that Benji was ashamed for having been afraid to fight the one guy he swore up and down was his enemy — and in the perfect storybook situation no less, a situation in which the fight would rescue his best friend — or I could believe that Benji wasn’t loyal to me.

But why would he be disloyal? Because despite all his naysaying about the Side of Damage, he actually wanted to lead it and he thought my defeat would put him in that position? Or maybe his naysaying was understatement; maybe he hated the Side of Damage, and he thought my defeat would break it apart? Maybe he wanted the Side of Damage to break apart because he thought that would mean that we’d go back to how it used to be, just me and him and Vincie and Mookus and Leevon and Jelly and sometimes Mangey against everyone? When he seemed to come around to the idea of being friends with the Janitor and Ronrico and Eliyahu and Ben-Wa, could he have just been faking it? Was it the earlier two-hill field thing? that I hadn’t invited him to meet the scholars, who didn’t, in the end, show anyway? Was he jealous of June for being invited? All of these things, though possible, didn’t ring even slightly true, and, more to the point, they were too abstract: They didn’t supply motive enough for anyone capable of preventing it to stand by and watch his closest friend get humiliated. So either he’d been too afraid to fight Slokum or… what? Or he had quit our friendship.

And what reason could he have had for quitting our friendship? The only one I could think of didn’t seem good enough at all. Maybe finding out that you’ve been given an inferior version of Ulpan justifies smashing exit plaques and pulling alarms— I was certainly pissed enough to do something like that by the time Nakamook had exited the Nurse’s — but it doesn’t justify abandoning your best friend. Benji wasn’t an Israelite, and I would not act as if he were. To do so would be to pretend. To do so would be unfaithful of me and condescending to him. To do so would be chomsky. And Benji was the most anti-pretend person I’d ever met. He wouldn’t have wanted me to merely act like he was an Israelite; he’d have wanted me to believe he was an Israelite, or that Israelites weren’t Israelites. And I didn’t believe those things. And I couldn’t believe those things. And it is no easier to change what you believe than it is to change what you want, and my beliefs were far older than Benji’s desire — if my changing my beliefs even was Benji’s desire — so if either of us needed to bend, it was him.

And when did it ever really come up, anyway? When was the fact that he wasn’t an Israelite ever a practical consideration? Only with Ulpan . Only in that one instance. And he could so easily make of that the opposite of what he’d made of it in Nurse Clyde’s office. It was the easiest thing in the world to flip: Nakamook could just as easily decide to believe that my giving him a doctored copy of Ulpan —a copy I’d made specifically for him — signified my loyalty to him, my friendship, my trust. And it did. And, in so many words, I’d explained that. I had taught him to build a weapon intended for Israelites. I had trusted him enough to share with him the means of protection I’d given my first brothers. I had, in all but name, made of him a brother. Could the name really be that important to him?

He’d either been afraid, or he was no longer my friend. Both options were suck, but I definitely preferred the former. If he had been too afraid to fight Bam, I would have a sad and ashamed best friend who wasn’t as brave as he or I had imagined. If he had quit being my friend, though, I would have no best friend at all.

I looked over my shoulder and saw, by the way Benji was bent, that he was writing.

Good, I thought.

For a while I wrote potential responses to the forthcoming letter to see which one might be the most comforting:

I probably would have been too frozen with fear to help you, too, Benji.

Because I’ve never seen you helpless, I bet I wouldn’t think it possible that you ever could be, even if your feet were alternately kicking at and dangling in the air while some giant’s arms were wrapped crushingly around your chest right before my eyes, so don’t sweat it; I understand.

Bam’s too big for any one kid, and although the Side of Damage would have surely helped you take him down if only you’d led them in his direction, if I was you I probably wouldn’t have realized I had an army either, so stunned would I be at the sight of my best friend’s humiliation.

Botha’s voice suddenly gloated from the opposite side of the Cage. “Something to share with the cless, Miss Rotstain?” he said.

I revolved. So did everyone else.

Jelly threw a folded note into Mangey’s lap and Mangey tried to swallow the note, but Botha snapped it from between her teeth with his claw before she could get it all the way in her mouth.

“Let’s see,” Botha said to the class, once he’d wiped the note’s saliva on the wall of Mangey’s carrel and read it through to himself. He said, “Says here, in the handwriting of Mister Nackamake, ‘Bibey, will you be my bibey?’ And then, beneath it, in the handwriting of Miss Rotstain, ‘Mate with me after school boy the bus circle? Yours, Jaily.’ Seems there’s a badding rowmentz happening in this clessroom of ours. Well, whuddya think Nackamake? You gonna mate with Jaily boy the bus circle?”

“Wherever she wants,” Nakamook said to Botha. “I’m in love with her. Anyone in here have a problem with that?” he said to the Cage. He was standing. “Anyone in here wanna make a pun about it?”

“Stap two,” said Botha.

No one made a pun.

I was thinking: I get humiliated, and Nakamook courts a girl? Courts — wait — courts Jelly?

“C’mon,” Benji said to us, “pun’s right there for the taking. Right before your very ears. Jelly asks to meet me and the Monitor tells you about it in order to embarrass me, only he can’t pronounce the word ‘meet,’ so he says ‘mate,’ which is a verb as well as a noun.”

“Enough, Nackamake. You’re at stap three as of now.”

Benji said, “I asked you all a question. If someone who knows how to speak English says to you ‘Benji went to the bus circle to mate with Jelly,’ what would that person be saying? What’s ‘mate’ mean when it’s a verb?”

“You’ve got a detantion now. Anyone answers him’s gonna get a detantion, too.”