Adam Levin - The Instructions

Get rid of the Cage, I said. I said, If you get rid of the Cage, a lot less kids will act like they spend their days in a cage.

“That’s Jerusalem you’re asking for. The district requires we have a lockdown program.”

So have a lockdown program, but don’t put anyone in it, I said.

“That wouldn’t fly.”

Fire Botha, I said. I said, Hire a monitor who isn’t a schmuck.

“Mr. Botha can be a hard man to deal with, I know, but we’ve had worse in the past. I’ll tell you the truth: his job’s not a terribly desirable one. Those who want it… It takes a certain kind of personality.”

I said, So you won’t do anything. I said, You want me to act different, but you won’t do anything different.

“I am reaching out to you, Gurion. I’m not bargaining.”

I said, Botha banned us from the pep rally, the whole Side — the whole Cage.

Brodsky said, “Why?”

It wasn’t to make the school safer for the benefit of better education, I said.

“I can’t undermine his authority, Gurion. If he’s suspended your pep rally privileges… that’s within his power.”

What about Scott Mookus?

“What about him?”

I said, He’s supposed to sing with Boystar at the pep rally.

“And he will.”

Won’t that undermine Botha’s authority?

“Mr. Botha said Scott Mookus couldn’t go to the pep rally?” said Brodsky.

Everyone, I said.

He spun the wingnut a couple times. He wanted to let Main Man sing, but something was making him hesitate, and I realized it was exactly what he’d claimed. He really didn’t want to undermine Botha’s authority. He believed in Botha’s authority. Believed it was good that Botha had authority. As wrong and arranged as he was, Brodsky was trying to be ethical. The choice to override Botha and let Main Man sing was actually the easier choice, here; Brodsky was Botha’s boss and Botha was as much Brodsky’s sycophant as any of the other robots. Whatever Brodsky would do, Botha would not complain. The Boystar people, though — the parents and the Chaz and the shotframer; all of them but for Boystar himself… If Mookus wasn’t allowed to be in the video after all the preparations those sleazebombs had made, after all the money they’d already invested (“the best acoustics man in the business,” etc.), they would complain. Loudly. Yet Brodsky was willing to suffer them, if that was the ethical choice…

Not that it impressed me so very much. It is not impressive when people try to do what they believe is right. It is only right. Yet I was a little surprised.

Still, what Brodsky suspected was right wasn’t right. Main Man did not deserve the brunt of Botha’s collective punishment. He didn’t deserve anyone’s punishment. Anyone who punished him deserved punishment. The severest.

One time I asked my father what he looked for in potential jurors during the selection process. He told me, “Ethics,” a much simpler answer than I had expected. I’d thought that he would’ve laid out a matrix: X-type juror for Y-type client in Z-type dispute, B-type juror for C-type client in D-type dispute. And so on. But he said, “Ethics,” and for a second I thought he was making a reference to that movie Miller’s Crossing that he loves, and I chuckled, and he told me, “Ethical people — even those whose systems of ethics may appear hideous — can, by their very nature, be reasoned with. And I, boychical, am a very, very reasonable man.” And then he chuckled. I still don’t know what that chuckle was about. Maybe he’d just caught himself being cocky, or maybe he hadn’t meant what he’d said at all and thought it was funny that I seemed to believe him. Maybe he really did want me to believe the world was a place where there were enough ethical men to fill juryboxes, but knew I doubted it. It was a back-of-the-throat, possibly arch, likely uncomfortable, nearly atypical Father-type chuckle, but whatever it indicated, the idea that ethical people were inherently reasonable seemed like it made sense.

And so to Brodsky I said, I bet Maholtz and the Co-Captain and Shlomo get to go to the pep rally, even though they’ve got ISS.

“Everyone in ISS tomorrow will go to the pep rally,” said Brodsky, “but that decision belongs to me, not Mr. Botha — I’m the one who gave them their ISS’s.”

He was certainly using reason.

Fair enough, I said, but where are Maholtz and the Co-Captain gonna sit? Are they gonna sit with Eliyahu and the other five?

“I hadn’t thought about it. I suppose, though, that they’ll sit with their teammates.”

They’ll get special treatment, I said.

“Well—”

Not because they deserve it, though, I said, but because the school deserves it, right? The school deserves to have a look at every one of their basketballers at the pep rally. The school deserves to have a proper pep rally. Especially after all the panic from that false alarm. The school needs to heal.

“Something like that,” he said, leaning over his desk a little = “Go on.”

I said, Even though the special treatment might be unfair to the others in ISS, it would be unfair to everyone else at Aptakisic if that special treatment weren’t granted. So it’s unfair to the few vs. unfair to the many . You do the math and the choice becomes obvious.

And this time he said it: “Go on,” he said.

The plan is for Scott to sing with Boystar, I said. I said, This morning, that Tanya Volleyball person announced there’d be a special guest. Most people don’t know it’s gonna be Scott. They’re expecting someone famous. Instead they’re gonna get a retarded kid. You knew all of that, and you planned it that way; to keep the special guest a secret. You must have figured it was good for the school. Maybe it’s a little manipulative — get their hopes up, sink them suddenly, and then they’re thrilled beyond they’re wildest imaginings because it turns out the elfy-looking boy is a great singer… And after about six notes, they’re gonna decide to be nice to this boy, and respect him for having talent, and maybe think twice about being cruel to other retarded people, of which the world has a great many. Yet none of that happens if, to be fair to Botha, you don’t let Scott sing. So it’s unfair to Botha vs. unfair to the whole world.

Brodsky spun the wingnut.

“I’ll let him sing. We’ll have to work out another punishment for him, though.”

I said, That’s very reasonable of you, Mr. Brodsky.

“I’m glad you think so. You see how far you get with me when you talk like a mensch? Now consider what I’ve asked of you, okay?”

I let the mensch thing slide.

I said, I’ll consider it.

“And that’s reasonable of you ,” he said.

Reasonable of you, John. Reasonable of you, Dick. No two Israelites had ever pattered so goyischely.

By the time Miss Pinge started writing my pass, I’d finished considering. And this is what I decided: Brodsky had only been flattering me. If he really believed I had as much sway as he said — and I did, regardless of what he thought — he would have been willing to bargain.

Call-Me-Sandy hadn’t returned to the C-Hall water fountain.

“I never left,” she cried.

She cried like a television beauty. Her breathing wasn’t sniffly, just deep and sudden, and she didn’t make any choked sounds. Her bright blue eyes were much brighter wet, and when she wiped at them with the hand that wasn’t on the button, her sleeve, rather than sopping up the tears, spread them all over her face.