Adam Levin - The Instructions

I said, I’ll get expelled by the end of the week.

But the words sounded obligatory, even to me.

“I hope that’s not true,” he told me. “I believe that after the weekend, after some time to think, you’ll see this is a good decision and you’ll be a mensch about it. That said, I will not tolerate you holding yourself hostage. If you try to get back in the Cage by misbehaving, you will be expelled. I’ll explain that to your father, and he’ll be fine with it, I’m certain.”

I stared speechlessly at the wingnut on his desk. It shined bright without meaning, and my thoughts spun, tractionless. Hold myself hostage? Was that even possible?

Brodsky opened the door for me. “Ms. Watermark,” he said.

June rose from her chair. We brushed wrists as we passed, and she whispered in my ear: “The Israelites live!” Then she looked at Eliyahu and he turned up his thumbs, and only then did I realize June had spoken in Hebrew.

Smiling, Eliyahu said: “Nice girl, this redhead, who tells you you’re smart and handsome in the language of the patriarchs.” He was sitting at the desk nearest Pinge’s. While Pinge wrote my hallpass, he took off his hat and flipped it upside down. Two rolls of pennies were hidden in the sweatband. Affixed to the crown by tape was his weapon.

“He’s a pretty good buddy, this guy,” said Pinker. “He’s no shmeckel.”

I was glad. There was no way around it. There’d be no more tapelines. No more Face Forward rule. No more blindsiding wings extending from the walls of carrels. No more carrels. I could make out with June at recess. We could trade notes in classrooms where only one robot presided. Steal kisses. Make faces at each other across aisles between desks.

Wasn’t I glad? Was there no way around it? Why was I looking for some way around it?

Why should I care what Botha intended? Why should I care if he got to save face? If he behaved in a way that was to my benefit, what did it matter if it was also to his? Wasn’t that the ideal, anyway? Wasn’t it better to make allies of your enemies than it was to defeat them? Maybe allies was overstating the case, but even still: wasn’t it better to achieve a steady détente with your enemies than it was for the two of you to suffer? And maybe détente was overstating it, too, steady or no — but a ceasefire? Not so much a de-escalation of hostility, but an end to hostilities ? No more hostile acts? That was under stating it, actually, ceasefire . This was better than a ceasefire. At least a little. It was more secure. The lines we’d have to cross to bring new hostilities weren’t abstract — they were walls. The same walls inside of which we’d been trapped with one another for ten weeks. Now they’d be between us, physical blockages. I’d rarely see him, if ever. The Cage, after all, was a cage.

It is true that my exile would leave the Side of Damage leaderless, at least til someone else stepped up; and true that Botha would almost certainly regain the ground he lost on Thursday, ground now occupied by my friends. That was the suck of it, but this was the thing: what could I do about it? That was the thing. What could I do about it? Brodsky wasn’t bluffing. I would not be allowed back into the Cage. It wasn’t up to me. It was either expulsion or June, and expulsion would be good for none of us.

So why did I want to resist it, this gladness? Why, in Main Hall, was I dragging my feet as if beaten? Was I faking it? For whose benefit? For my own benefit? Was I playing a role, like Brodsky’d implied? Can you fake yourself out? I did feel fakey, but I did not believe you could fake yourself out. I’d never believed anyone could fake himself out. You could be misinformed, you could fail to see the truth, but I didn’t see how it was possible, logically, to fake yourself out, especially not while suspecting yourself of doing so…

My thoughts kept spinning, and I wasn’t solving anything, only getting H. I needed to do something, or maybe to prove something — something concrete and simple, something effective. I needed something to focus on, something to focus me; I needed to take aim at something and nail it. The clock in the gym.

I turned into B-hall, tearing down streamers, shredding pep rally posters and Boystar flyers, uncovering WE DAMAGE WEs. I hid in the central doorway and looked. Behind centercourt, fifteen chairs were shaped roughly like a half-flattened V, like the body of a crow in a stickman universe. A line of five chairs formed its east wing; its west was two such lines set parallel. In this west one sat Blonde Lonnie, smashed-nosed, plus all of the B-team minus Maholtz. Dominating the whole tableau was a scaffolding rig strung with light-cans and — panels and a pair of spotlights. The rig appeared to hold the laws of physics in contempt: Twenty feet high and thirty across, it stood on two legs of thin steel piping with speakers for ankles and telescoping feet — four for each leg — which should have locked into something heavy below them, something stable to stay them, a pillar of concrete or lead, but didn’t. They didn’t lock into anything at all.

The bleachers, extended, blocked my forward periphery. I stealthed under the eastern ones to scope more.

Maholtz and Slokum stood behind the west hoop. Eight chairs formed a row between the northern sideline and the lowest bench of the western bleachers: a special gallery in which a cheerleader now sat, stealing glances at Bam and chewing her nails. Slokum cracked his knuckles and wrote in a notebook. He looked smaller to me than the last time I saw him. His face was turned away, and maybe that’s why, but his back seemed slouchy and a lot less wide. I remembered how I’d helped him to make fun of Nakamook, and I didn’t want to think of that, and looked away.

I crossed the doorway’s-width gap between the two sets of bleachers. Ducked beneath the western set to see what lay east.

Arrows made of cardboard were taped to the floor to form a path. They led from the locker-room to centercourt. In the tipoff circle, just a couple yards north of the chair-row, two cardboard squares were taped to the floor on either side of the halfcourt line. The locker-room-side one had a star of Boystar on it. The side-exit-side one said MOKUS. I didn’t see Scott anywhere and I thought that was suck. He could memorize a song after hearing it once, and I was pretty sure that they wouldn’t have him dance, so they probably didn’t need him to rehearse, but still: if the basketballers got to skip first period, they were bancers for not letting Scott skip too. And they should have got his name right, the dentists. It was probably Boystar who gave them the spelling.

And there he was. He kept bursting from the locker-room to pose before the bleachers. Each time, he stopped at a different arrow on the path. Cameramen milled, coordinating angles. Chaz Black clapped and Boystar’s parents made suggestions about his posture. I thought about shooting him, decided against it. Decided against it because now I could do it later, better, more repeatedly. I would not be short of chances now. Kiss my girlfriend? Murmur in her ear? Even stepped regular and busted every time, I could give him six beatings before getting expelled. Every day we’d have Lunch together, Recess too.

Lunch-Recess, I thought. That was another thing. I’d no longer be in the same room as my friends for class, but there was always Lunch-Recess. Rather, there wasn’t always Lunch-Recess. Now there was Lunch-Recess; now I would have irrevocable cafeteria privilege. Now, whenever my friends in the Cage were also granted cafeteria privilege, we could eat together, speak outdoors in the schoolyard together, plot without whispering, no Botha down our necks. Maybe I could lead from exile. To do so would be hard, but to believe it was impossible was way too dramatic.