Adam Levin - The Instructions

I could not stop hearing the humming of the motor in the water fountain.

Eliyahu told me, “Not vengeance. No vengeance.”

Something about how he said it made me not try to convince him, despite the singsong. It was very final how he said it. Vengeance was out of the question. But then protection was impossible.

I explained to him, Even if I wasn’t in the Cage, we’d still be in different classes — I’d only be able to protect you at lunch and in the hallway.

He said, “A little bit of protection is better than none. And so what can we do to get you out of the Cage?”

Nothing, I said. I said, As long as there’s a Cage, I’m in it.

“Maybe we’ll get rid of this Cage,” he said.

I said, Not today. I said, Do you know how to fight at all? I’ve never fought the Co-Captain, but he looks like the kind of kid who’s never gotten hit, like if you hit him just once, he’ll run away.

“I can’t,” said Eliyahu. “I think of hitting someone? I think of hurting him. I think of hurting someone? I become sad. My stomach aches. I cry a little. I just can’t do it. So how does a boy get into the Cage?”

The Cage is locked down, I said to Eliyahu. You only get to leave for Lunch and Gym, and sometimes you can’t even leave for Lunch.

“So what?” he said.

You have to sit there all day in a carrel, facing forward. The teachers don’t teach. They tutor in the center, but you can’t just approach them. You have to get called on, and most of the time they’re not looking around to see if your hand’s raised. You sit there, waiting, and you can’t talk to anyone, or even see anyone — you’re not allowed to look.

“Okay,” he said. “So it’s quiet in there. So no kids can bother me.”

That’s not exactly true, that no kids can bother you. Ways can be found.

“But you wouldn’t let any kid bother me,” he said. “You’d protect me from that.”

That’s true, I said, but the Cage is no kid. The Cage will bother you. And Botha, I said, who’s the schmuck who’s in charge — he’ll bother you, too. He’s a horrible man. Cartoon-level horrible. He’s even got a claw instead of a hand.

“I’m bothered already by the school,” he said, “and I’m certain the teachers will bother me, too. Public school teachers — they’re always bothering.”

You’re a scholar, Eliyahu. You don’t want to be there.

“And you’re not a scholar?”

I’m a scholar, I said.

“So what, then?” he said. “Why should a scholar not be in the Cage? Who says it shouldn’t be? Rabbi Akiva, maybe? Not Rabbi Akiva: He died in a cage. In a torture chamber! At the hands of Romans! How do I get in?”

It was true about Rabbi Akiva. It was also true that Eliyahu was determined to stay near me, where he would feel protected, no matter what it meant, and that if I didn’t tell him how to get in the Cage, he’d figure out a way to get in there himself. And while it’s true I didn’t want him to be in the Cage because the Cage was terrible, it’s also true I wanted him to be in the Cage because I was in the Cage, and to have another friend there, let alone another scholar, couldn’t help but to make the place more tolerable.

“Nu?” said Eliyahu.

Break things, I said.

“Break things,” he said. “And what should I break?”

I said, It’s not just what you should break, but when you should break it.

“When should I break what I should break?” he said.

After you get told to do something you don’t want to do, I told him.

“And what is this that I won’t want to do, Gurion?”

The first thing you’re told.

“And if I want to do it?”

Pretend you don’t, and then break something.

“It sounds very simple,” he said. He chewed his thumb some more.

I said, Don’t be afraid, Eliyahu. It’ll be fun if you’re not afraid.

He said, “I’m not afraid of breaking things. I just don’t like this school. I don’t like that for protection I need to be violent. Violence causes death. I do not like death. I don’t want to cause death or contribute to death. I don’t want death to be. I don’t want us to die. I do not like it, how everyone dies.”

I said, I won’t die.

“Then I will try not to fear it,” he said. “I’ll break a window.”

I said, A window would be a perfect thing to break. It’s loud and dangerous and if you broke it with your fist, they’d think you were violent, but they’d also worry that you secretly wanted to kill yourself with glass in the armveins. It would get you in the Cage for sure, for two-week observation at least. The problem is all the windows in the classrooms are highly shatter-resistant. Swung chairs can’t even break them, much less fists. It’s been tried. Believe me. Too bad, too. That really is suck. A window would’ve been—

“Science!” said Eliyahu.

Science?

“In Science, there’s usually a fire-extinguisher.”

That won’t go through those windows, either, I said. Those are some serious windows. You can barely even open them — they’re casement windows.

“No. Not to put it through the window. The fire-extinguisher, at least at my last school, was always in a box on the wall, a glass-doored—”

Perfect, I said. That’s perfect. Break the glass door.

“I will break the glass door.”

You have to be careful, though, I said, so that you don’t kill yourself by accident. You can’t put your fist through the door. And you can’t wrap your hand in anything before you do it. If you wrap your hand, they’ll think you were making a cry for help, and they’ll only give you therapy. You have to do it barehanded, so you have to aim the punch.

“How do I aim the punch?”

It’s almost the opposite of what you do when you’re hitting a baseball, I said. You don’t follow through.

“I don’t play baseball.”

Even better, I said. Baseball is suck.

“I think so, too,” he said. “So much waiting. And then for what? For two seconds of action. Stop and go. Wait, wait, wait, and then wait some—”

I told him, Let me watch you throw some punches.

He dropped his bag. He jabbed the air. Whoever taught him fighting took karate in the suburbs = he held his fists at his waist. It’s hard, from that position, to throw a fast elbow, and elbows are important: they’re harder than hands, they tend to surprise, and when one connects with a nose or an orbit, the noise backs off potential interferers. It wasn’t, however, any big deal to show him the right way to raise his arms, and other than that he wasn’t bad at all. He knew to keep his thumbs outside of his fists, he knew how to stand with his feet apart so his base was wide and he wouldn’t lose balance in the middle of the punch, and he knew to turn his fist a full 90 degrees between launch and target to draw extra power from the muscles of his back. If he could punch people the way he punched air, he’d win most fights at Aptakisic, I thought. I could take him easy and so could the Flunky; Benji and Slokum went without saying. The teachers, of course, could take Eliyahu, and probably Leevon Ray could too. Though no one had ever seen Leevon fight, everyone seemed pretty sure he could fight because he never talked, and not ever talking had to get him in fights because it had to make a lot of kids crazy — it made teachers crazy, which is why he was in the Cage, and teachers get paid to not get crazy — and we’d never seen Leevon bruised up or bleeding. Or maybe it was just because he was a black guy that everyone seemed to think he could fight. About Jenny Mangey I couldn’t be certain: she always fought guys, and guys who fought girls were weak and sick, so even though Mangey had never lost a fight, it was hard to know if she was really any good. Vincie Portite, prior to the eye-trauma, could have defeated Eliyahu no sweat, but now the two would most likely be even. There were five or ten others at Aptakisic I’d have ranked Eliyahu even against, but the more that I watched him throw punches at air, the more certain I got he couldn’t throw them at people. Eliyahu wasn’t serious about damaging things. I could see it on his face. Totally calm. Not calm with concentration like a zenned-out old sensei, but more like an uncle, drunk at a wedding, in the middle of dancing to his favorite song badly. Not even that. I didn’t think ill of him. His face was just… It was Eliyahuic. His violence was not sincere.