Adam Levin - The Instructions

Eliyahu got taller and taller.

“Note says you’re wanted in the owfice, Make-bee — I said sit down, Aye-lie.”

“I need to talk to you,” Eliyahu said to me. Up close I saw that his tzitzit were mud-caked, his fedora in tatters. Its felt was all matted and the crown bore a pattern of tiny dents that matched the tread on the Co-Captain’s Jordans. The hatband was gone. “Forgive me,” he whispered, “for yelling.”

“What dad I jes’ say,” said Botha.

Eliyahu shot a glance at Ben-Wa Wolf, who scooted his chair.

And half the Side of Damage began to hyperscoot.

Eliyahu urged the other half on. He raised an arm overhead and beckoned nonchalantly, almost lazily, as if this were the ten-thousandth hyperscoot he’d captained that week. A black ribbon tied around his elbow — the one that used to band his hat — flapped pennant-like.

Botha went to the nearest chair — Stevie Loop’s — and stilled it. The rest of the hyperscoot continued.

“I want you to know!” Eliyahu shouted into my ear, “that I was given an in-school suspension, but I told Brodsky nothing of your part in the fight!”

You would never do that! I shouted back.

Botha moved on to still Renne Feldbons’s chair, and Stevie Loop started scooting again. Lang and Wadrow were covering their ears. They were not amused this time.

“I am nonetheless verklempt!” Eliyahu shouted. “What I do not under-stand! Is why you protected those five boys who yelled ‘Death to the Jew’! Why you said to me ‘Don’t hurt them!’ It makes me very uncomfortable!”

The Five are Israelites! I shouted.

“Now I am especially verklempt!” shouted Eliyahu.

The teachers hated the noise so much, their eyes were closed.

I pulled Mr. Goldblum’s copy of Ulpan from my pocket and pressed it into Eliyahu’s hand.

Read it! I told him. I’ll explain more later!

He spun to face the Side of Damage and the hyperscoot stopped.

“None of you’s—” said Botha. The end-of-class tone sounded. “None of you’s going to the pap relly tomarra.”

“That’s a good one,” said Ronrico. “If by good you mean great,” said Ben-Wa Wolf, “and great means an ingenius way to punish us without all the paperwork.”

Making their way to the gate, Lang and Wadrow shook their heads at Botha = “You are a fuckup.” He let them out, keeping his eyes on the pass he was writing for me, pretending to ignore all of us. There was little else he could do. It was a passing-period and no one was hitting anyone. No one was even cursing.

“Forty’d be a lot of CASS’s to write,” said the Janitor. “A lotta testimony against us.” “A lotta hard evidence that you’ve lost control of your students and Brodsky should replace you.” “So let it be unwritten that it may remain undone.” “All that pep will be wasted on the already peppy while we sit in the Cage, lamenting our lack of pep.” “We need that pep.” “We need a rally to inspire it.”

“Make-bee,” said Botha, waving the pass at me. “Go. To. The. Owfice.”

Why? I said.

“I already told you.”

So tell me again.

“Note your frand brought,” Botha said to me, “says you’re wanted in the owfice.”

What’s a frand? I said.

Botha chewed his face.

“We don’t get to see enough serious high-fiving between basketballers, Mr. Botha.” “We don’t get to see enough Jennys stacked in pyramids.” “Or hear enough words get spelled out with clapping.” “The special way the words sometimes sound like swears but aren’t, even though they really are.” “Double-entendres.” “Homonyms.” “Spelled-out homonyms cleverly masking double-entendres.” “With clapping.”

“Make-bee!” said Botha. “Go to the owfice!”

“We don’t get to see enough Desormie in a tight suit, either.” “His love of cheerleading.” “His gameday tent of finest gabardine.” “And don’t forget about the music!” “You’re gonna make us miss the Boystar.”

The air vibrated on my right: Mookus was crying.

I flashed my palm at the Side of Damage.

Some of them didn’t see.

“We won’t get to be in his video now!” “Shucks! Aw shucks!” “And he’ll probably win a Grammy.” “Word on the street’s he’s next year’s favorite for best female vocal—”

Hey! I said.

The Cage went quiet.

To Main Man I said, You’ll be fine.

“Okay,” he said. He kept crying.

“Go to the Owfice, Make-bee.”

“You’ll be fine, Main Man,” said Vincie.

“Go to the—” said Botha, cut off by the beginning-of-class tone.

I decided to give him a chance to be decent. I got up from my carrel and went to the gate — I didn’t even do a three-count — and when I stepped into C-Hall, I said, Tell Main Man he can go to the pep rally.

I said it quiet so that no one could hear, so Botha wouldn’t lose any face for acting decent, so being decent wouldn’t feel like a defeat.

“No,” he said.

As I approached the mouth of 2-Hall, spacing out on dead-end thoughts about who’d ratted me to Brodsky, Call-Me-Sandy turned the corner into C. She had to pull her fingers from her cardigan’s buttonholes to wave hello.

“I’m sorry, Gurion,” she said.

Why? I said.

“You must have been waving at me forever.”

You waved at me first, I said.

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

Don’t be, I said.

“I’m — I guess I’m just feeling a little jumpy,” she said. “Distracted. That false alarm. Rattled my bag of caramels, right? Or so you might say… because of how you put it when last we—”

Sure, I said.

“Right,” she said. “And now I tell myself I’m going for a drink of water, but in fact the destination’s arbitrary. I’m on a disguised amble. I tell myself, ‘Sandy, you’re taking a walk to get a drink of water,’ but the truth is I’m not even thirsty. It’s just the water fountain’s the first destination that came to mind.”

Why can’t you just take a walk? I said.

“Because that would be a blatant, undisguised amble and it would defeat it’s own purpose: I’d know I was taking a walk because I was jumpy, and so I’d be thinking about my jumpiness, which would only make me jumpier.”

But you do know you’re taking a walk because you’re jumpy, I said. You just told me that.

Her fingers slid back into her buttonholes. “It’s not kind, what you’re doing. Undermining my healing strategy.”

I wasn’t trying to undermine your healing strategy, I said.

“Well, that’s what you were doing.”

There was nothing worth saying in response, so I made her high-five me, and then I made her high-five me again, and she laughed a syllable and I got away fast, thinking: Rat. Thinking: Deadkid. If Brodsky had seen me in the fight himself, I’d’ve been brought to the Office with the others.

I took a left at Main Hall, which was mostly empty — just a couple or three late kids speedwalking. Jerry in his booth to pass-flash at. WE DAMAGE WE bombs were everywhere: scraped, Darkered, pencilled, lipsticked. Too many of them to count accurately while walking at a leisurely pace, too many for the Side of Damage to have written all of them. I wasn’t sure what to think of that. At first it seemed completely good. The bombs weren’t just enacting damage — which, dayenu — they were actually inciting it.

But then I had to wonder what the taggers who weren’t on the Side of Damage believed their WE DAMAGE WEs signified. I had to wonder how many of them, if any, had even heard of the Side of Damage, and whether that mattered.