Adam Levin - The Instructions

Miss Pinge said, “Look around. Do you see any room in here for three more desks?”

“But yesterday Mr. Brodsky said—”

“I miscalculated,” said Brodsky, emerging from his office. “They’ll serve ISS on Monday, though.”

“So they get to go to the pep rally.” “I smell a rat.” “The rat smells like Desormie.” “A testimonious sack is what it smells like.”

“You’ll go to the pep rally, too,” Brodsky said. Then he left to go to the bathroom.

“What about the Orthodox kid?” “Where’s he at?” “There’s still an empty desk.” “It’s saved for that Elijah, right?”

Hey, I said.

“What?” “What’s wrong?” “What’d we do?”

I said, When Eliyahu comes in here, you make him your best buddy.

“You can’t just make someone a best buddy like that, Gurion.” “It takes time.” “There’s a whole set of things that goes into it.” “We’ve never even seen a movie with him on Sunday.” “Let alone on seven consecutive Sundays.” “And batting gloves?” “Forget it — we’ve never even watched a game on TV with him.” “He might be a Sox fan.” “Best buddies, at this juncture, even if we wanted to… it’s impossible.” “We can do friend, maybe even pal.”

Pal shmal, I said.

“Good pal.”

Sounds pally to me, I said to June.

“It does,” June said.

“Now she’s weighing in?” “Fine.” “She says good pal sounds pally, maybe it’s pally.” “Straight-up buddy’s the final offer.” “Can we really do that, Mr. Goldblum?” “Franklin Gurstein. Three weeks ago. Precedent’s been set.” “That’s different.” “How’s it different?” “Franklin Gurstein told us what frottage was, and the Brumpy.” “And the Dirty Sanchez and the Angry Dragon.” “He told us all about the Ray Charleston Chew.” “Point taken. But maybe this Eliyahu can tell us what something dirty is?”

He can teach you words for penis in Yiddish, I said.

“We know all those words.” “Shvontz.” “Putz.” “Schmuck.” “Shlong.” “Pizzle.”

There’s more.

“How many?”

At least ten more.

“If he can teach us ten more, we’ll call him Buddy.”

Five more and good buddy, I said.

“Good buddy’s too much.” “Just a half-step below best.” “Straight-up buddy, Gurion.” “And only if he asks.” “And he has to teach us seven words for penis in Yiddish.”

“That’s enough with the penis,” said Miss Pinge.

“Miss Pinge said penis.”

Miss Pinge bit a smile back.

Pretty good buddy, seven words for penis, and he doesn’t have to ask, I said.

“There’s no such thing as pretty good buddy.” “Who ever heard of pretty good buddy?” “Pretty good buddy’s a unicorn.” “A winged unicorn.” “A horned Pegasus from Atlantis with rainbows in its eyes.” “Work with us here.”

Pretty good buddy, three words for penis, and he doesn’t have to ask.

“That’s not how you do it!” “We go lower and you go higher.” “We meet somewhere in the middle.”

Pretty good buddy, one word for penis, and he doesn’t have to ask. Anything less I walk away unhappy.

“Do you see what he’s doing?” “Look at what he’s doing!” “It’s an affront to the process.” “He’s undermining the process.” “It’s now or never.” “Gurstein’s gonna call it a ripoff.” “Everyone’s gonna call it a ripoff!” “Pretty good buddy!” “Is it even real?” “It’s definitely not real, but can we make it real, if we really try? That, best buddies, is the question.” “Let’s say we could, let’s say we can make pretty good buddy work. If Gurstein hears of it—” “Why would Gurstein hear of it?” “If Gurstein hears of it, we’ll make him a pretty good buddy, too.” “We’ll have to.” “No way around it.” “Can we do that?” “If we can make pretty good buddy real, how hard could it be to make of Gurstein a pretty good buddy?” “It’s settled then.” “It’s settled then?”

It’s settled then, I said.

Brodsky returned. “Who wants to go first?” he said.

June poked my knee.

Next to Brodsky’s phone was a box of donut-holes shaped like a house. He pushed it my way and opened the roof. He wasn’t just offering me donut-holes, though.

I’m not talking about my father, I told him.

He showed me his palms, chuckled hurt hurt hurt . Then he tapped on the box and said, “Please. I’ll be diabetic by noon.”

All the chocolates were gone. I wrapped three cinnamons in a napkin, and Brodsky handed me a spreadsheet. Thursday’s detention roster jammed in a grid. Since June and I had gotten collared together, I already knew we were in the Office for ditching detention, but what surprised me was that next to Eliyahu’s last name (Weitzman, it turned out — a small surprise in itself, to learn he was a Yeckie), instead of a blank space or check-mark, were the letters EXC. A couple slots above Eliyahu’s name was June’s, and next to hers another EXC. I scanned the whole STATUS column and failed to find a blankspot, let alone an INEXC or ABS.

“EXC means excused,” said Brodsky. “You won’t receive an ISS for ditching detention.”

I snapped a curled, stray thread off the cuff of my hoodiesleeve.

“Neither will June. No one will.”

This nub of elastic poked out from the cuff where the thread had been. I pinched it between my nails and pulled, but the nub just got longer, which I should have expected. How many out-sticking elastic nubs had I made elastic string of, pulling them?

“Do you know there were nearly eighty students on yesterday’s detention roster?” said Brodsky. “Forty were from the Cage, but the average number of students in Thursday detention is sixteen, so even without the students from the Cage, who account for an average of thirty-nine percent of detentions on any given day, roughly seven percent of the school was in detention. Unheard of. And nine students skipped, also unheard of. Now: all of you will serve a detention to make up for the skipped one. None of you, however, will be disciplined for having skipped , nor for any other offense for which you haven’t yet been stepped this week.”

The move my dad had showed me was you grasp the fabric on either side of the nub and massage it; it took a few seconds sometimes to get the action right, but the nub never failed to suck back inside the garment. I rarely thought to massage til after I’d pulled the nub, though. I usually made string of the nub, and you couldn’t massage string away. You could wind string around your swear-tip and yank suddenly, but half the time that made more string. The only guaranteed method was sawing side-to-side at the base with your teeth. This got spit on your garment, but was always effective, so that’s what I did. I brought my wrist to my mouth and started to chew.

Brodsky hadn’t stopped talking. “…Then yesterday you told me the students in the Cage act like they’re in a cage because they are in the Cage. Now, as I’m sure you’re well aware, that’s not a new idea. However, it’s not an entirely insupportable one either. In fact, were you to allow it to soften a little — were you to qualify it… were you to say, instead of the students, some students, or even ‘ Many students in the Cage act like they’re in a cage because they are in the Cage,’ then you’d find yourself saying something I might entirely agree with. Whether or not I’d agree it was problematic, however — that’s a different story.”

The trouble was lining your teeth up right.