Adam Levin - The Instructions

He shrugged his shoulders = “Jaking? What do you mean, jaking?”

And he really wasn’t.

I said, It would be different if you’d said you were changing the understanding, but you didn’t.

“Told your friend Scat,” he said.

You told Main Man? I said.

I was beginning to understand.

“Told him you’d all see him sing, long’s you stayed quoyt. Thought he’d want to tale you himself.”

Well he didn’t, I said. I said, He didn’t tell us.

“I don’t belave that for a sackond, Make-bee. Scat was so excited. His smile — bright as the vary sun that warms our planet. He was looking forward to it so vary much, to all his frands seeing him do what he loves to do. He wanted that more than even you, I’d bat. Yeah. I just don’t belave you — course he told you! It meant everything to him.”

You fuck, Vincie said.

“Stap four for Vancent Pawtight,” said Botha.

The beginning-of-class tone sounded.

“Everyone sit down now,” said Botha.

Brodsky’s gonna fire you for this, I said. I said, We will rat you out and you’ll get fired. Think about that.

Botha said, “Don’t be rideckulous, Make-bee. Mister Brodsky knows I got your bast interests in mind. ’Specially yours. After all, you’re the one showed me the error of my ways. Now all you: sit down,” he said. And he extended his arm and panned it, as if to show us where our seats were. “Sit down and help your frand Make-bee cellbrate his very last day in the Cage.”

No one moved.

Unlock that fucking door, I said.

“Sit down,” said Botha.

We’re going to the gym.

Botha started giggling. “Jest sit,” he said.

I said, Where are we going?

“We’re going to the gym,” said the Side of Damage — they’d encircled us by then.

We’re going to the gym to see Main Man sing, I said to the Monitor. Give us your keys.

Attached to him, at his beltline, by a single, flimsy loop of fabric, the chunky keyring swayed and gleamed. We were moving forward, toward each other. We’d been moving forward, toward each other. I think I started it, but I can’t say for sure — it might have been Botha. Once the movement began, though, it felt as much like I was letting my legs carry me as it felt like I was making them carry me. How it felt was right . At the same time, the circle the Side had formed was growing tighter, and this banced my perspective. I wasn’t rushing at Botha, but the gap between us kept closing more rapidly than I was expecting, each step we took appearing to achieve a much greater distance than the previous one.

Whether I acted too early or from too far away — that there even could be a difference only ever occured to me in the stealthest slo-mo moments — when I lunged for the keys I miscalculated. My fingers tapped metal, but I didn’t get a grip, and Botha had time and space to pivot.

In the middle of the pivot, he hooked my hood, maybe inadvertantly, maybe only half so. The hood was a good one, stitched tight to the collar. My spine jerked straight, then my body jerked backwards.

The back of my head struck the keyring, hard.

My ass hit the floor, I popped up, angled sharp, and I palm-struck the Monitor’s nearer kidney.

It would not be correct to say — as I fear well-intending scholars may wish to — that this marked a point of no return for me, let alone for the Side of Damage. Apart from death and the moment of Elohim’s pronouncement that man be made in His image, I suspect there has never been any such thing for human beings as a point of no return. But even if I’m wrong about that, I was born an Israelite, I became a Torah scholar, I armed my brothers, I was put in a cage, I fell in love with June, the Side of Damage arose, I fell out with my teachers, was humbled by Slokum, my father was trampled, mothers slapped me, an innocent was poisoned, and the Arrangement double-dealt me. There is no good reason why my delivery of an excellent bodyblow to the Cage monitor should be ajudged the start of the Gurionic War. I will not deny that planting that shot in Botha’s kidney severely narrowed whatever set of Aptakistico-scholastic options I might have wanted to explore if I were someone other than myself, nor will I deny it roughly coincided with my knowing the Gurionic War had started, but that, scholars, is not the same as calling the moment a point of no return. Narrowed options are options nonetheless, even when your chemicals are parching your mouth and swelling your muscles. I had always been at war, whether I’d known it or not.

As for the Side of Damage, why I’d just hit Botha didn’t matter a billionth as much as that I’d hit Botha, and whatever it meant or didn’t, they knew I was their leader.

I wouldn’t guess my reasons for hitting him were any more important to the Monitor himself. Holding his kidney, he made an Australian noise and twisted. He shouted about expellable offenses—“axpailable erfences”—and pulled much harder on my hood than the first time. I lost my balance and jerked back into him.

He got me around the chest and arms. Lifted. The feeling, by then, was not unfamiliar.

I started to kick and he swung me left. I kept on kicking and he swung me right.

The circle of soldiers receded toward the carrels. I might have thought: Not again — but I didn’t. What I thought was: Hurry up! And I continued to kick, and the Monitor to swing me, harder at each pass, backer and forther, the claw’s round side gouging deep in my ribs. The faster he swung me, the more my ear fluids swirled. The room lost depth fast and my kicks were barely glancing him. No one said anything. Motion looked blurred, the Cage flat and queasy.

At some point after the seventh swing — after the seventh, I was too dizzy to count — I landed a lucky heel in Botha’s knee’s sweetspot and, as he dipped to regain balance, a small, smudgy Benji moved in the periphery, did something fuzzy with a chair.

I bonked Botha’s cheek with the back of my head, and when I bonked it a second time, we three-sixtied clockwise. I saw Vincie and Ben-Wa flip chairs at the teacher cluster, and Benji, now medium-sized, held his by one leg. He approached us like a liontamer, oriented sideways, left shoulder-first, but the chair was where the whip should have been, its seatback dragging the floor behind him.

“Let him go,” Ben-Wa said.

“Let him go,” said the Side of Damage.

Leevon flipped a chair near the doorway.

Another bonk from my head got Botha on the chin. It stung my scalp, and Botha stumbled us forward.

Benji got in our way.

Botha hoisted me shieldlike.

Benji stepped left fast, then I heard a thick thump with low, boinging echoes as the chair connected with the Monitor’s shoulder.

Botha, shrieking like a car accident, dropped me. I landed all-fours.

The Flunky pulled me up onto my feet, and I leaned against him while the dizziness passed. “You’re okay,” said the Flunky, “deep breaths, deep breaths.”

Monitor Botha was heading for the door now, clutching his shoulder. The shoulder looked low.

Benji, following, crushed the hand that clutched it. Botha’s knee met the ground, but he stood back up. Stood there, gasping and surrounded. The gasping had rust in it. His pipes were wrecked. Little cuts in his throat that had trailed that first shriek’s soundwaves bled.

“Axpail—” he hissed.

Ben-Wa and Vincie took turns attacking. A chair to the back put Botha on his knees. A chair to the chest kept him off his hands. They swung once more each before Nakamook finally chopped him down: an air-abraiding swing (“ Fffffffih! ” the air screamed) to the broken shoulder. Botha fell on the other one.