Adam Levin - The Instructions

Big Ending shoved a teacher and the teacher said, “Careful.” They shoved him again, and he told them, “Watch out.” Beauregard Pate warned the teacher, “You should fear us,” and the teacher turned away, as if he hadn’t heard. Big Ending rammed the teacher into another. Both teachers fell on three bandkids and Mussel. All six involved hit the floor in a heap, the clattering instruments bruising their softparts. Next to the heap stood the atheist seventh-grade Shover, Trent Vander. Vander extended his pointer and laughed, and Seamus Fitzsimmons, who played the bassoon, who the Shovers, since the fifth, had called “Faggot Shitzlemons,” stood where he’d sat on the bottom bleacher: above moaning friends atop their bent horns, over bandleader Mussel who’d always brought donuts, before the pointing Shover paralytic with mirth. Seamus held his woodwind by the boot-joint and swung it. When he pulled it back to swing again, its reed was chunked with earlobe. Vander blacked out and dropped on the heap. Thirty-odd bandkids understood they held weapons.

The mother hauled back to swing once more, got stopped from above by a nib through the jaw muscle. Instant bloodstar under the hairline. Holding her cheek, she began to sit down, and the stand, as she collapsed, dropped from her grasp, and its base struck the foot of the principal edgewise, right above the tongue of his shoe. He buckled, went fetal, and let out a choked sound. Snapped was the tendon connecting his bigtoe. My girlfriend the deadeye showed me a powerfist. I showed her the palm on the arm that wasn’t fizzing = Stay high, I love you, keep sniping, protect us. Berman crawled over to see the mother’s face.

The untapped rage of the bullied musician, mounting for years, suddenly loosed.

Seamus Fitzsimmons led his band upward, stalking for Shovers in the western bleachers, but anyone who stood in their way got clouted, and anyone clouted who dropped got stomped, and anyone stomped who kept laying there… stomped.

Mangey caught an elbow from a runner in the forehead. Ronrico dragged the runner to the floor by the shirt. A Shover bolted over to help them kick the runner. They pinned him to the wall between the doors of the locker-rooms, the lightswitches mounted there got flipped to ON, and the whole gym was lit by the overhead fixtures. Ronrico cracked the Shover on the eye while Mangey held him. “Do not try to be us.” “Do not try to be us.” “Do not try to be us do not try to be us.”

When the lights came up, Seamus and a flautist, atop the western bleachers, along their eastern edge, held a broken Blake Acer by all four limbs, and Acer shrieked, “Please!” and he was louder than anyone. Nearly all of the spectating everykid no-ones ******revolved to locate the source of the shriek, yet few of their eyes ever got to Acer; the trail of the stomped left behind by the bandkids captured their attention first. That trail was becoming wider and wider, and except for the wealth of bare necks among the stomped (or, inversely, the scarcity of scarved ones), there was nothing more conspicuous than the spatters of blood that beaded the brass and stained the white bibbers: nothing more striking than who was stomping except for who it was that was getting stomped. The implications for the everykid no-ones were huge. Under whose gaze hadn’t the bandkids suffered the undeserved enmity of Shovers? No one’s. Yet who’d ever protected a bandkid from a Shover? Who’d ever defended a bandkid but a bandkid? Who’d ever done other than laugh when one fell, let alone offered a hand to help him up? No one and no one and no one and no one. The everykid no-ones fled the bleachers in droves.

In the meantime, Bam had discovered his advantage. He turned his chair over, legs forward, said, “Guys!” and when the rest of the Indians turned their chairs over, he led them forth crouching in lock-step, a phalanx, and at last Benji Nakamook did what needed doing. The platoon close behind him, their fists at the ready, he pocketed his weapon and charged northeast. Seeing their approach, Bam halted his march and stood higher to strike, to cut Benji down. At three steps distance, Benji sprung. He went horizontal, body turning mid-air, and clipped three Indians at once at the neck. Lonnie and Maholtz, who’d been flanking Bam, hit the floor loud, chairs flying, skidding. Bam dropped his chair and caught Benji on impact. They went down together, a T-shape, Bam-first. Nakamook barrelled through the gap Benji’d opened. Eliyahu came sprinting off the wall to help. Main Man remained in the southwest corner. “Never give the power to the baldhead,” he sang. Slokum, half-stunned, still their T’s crossbar, groaned beneath Benji, who blindly reached down the length of his torso, feeling around until he found nose, and swatted with the heel of his palm, saying, “Hi!” He swatted twice more—“Hi! Hello!”—and then planted the hand that had done the swatting on the mess of Bam’s face, now slick with blood, and started to push, attempting to rise, but Bam turned his head, and Benji’s hand slipped, and Salvador Curtis, in the midst of a fists-forward superman dive — the gym teacher’s gabardined bulge the bullseye — clipped Benji’s temple with the toes of both shoes, and Benji’s weight shifted to Slokum’s advantage. Bam got an arm free, got leverage, turned sideways, cracked Benji deep in the ribs with an elbow. Benji curled up. Bam flipped himself prostrate, then bucked to all fours. Benji, thrown, hit the floor coughing, and Brooklyn, who was grappling with Co-Captain Baxter, using the kid’s own tie to strangle him, took a step back to anchor the choke, landing a heel on Benji’s kidney. Benji thrashed and cursed and coughed more. Brooklyn flailed and lost his purchase, used both hands to break his fall. Baxter wheezed and clutched his throat. On Slokum someone dropped a chair. It wasn’t the first chair to be mismanaged, nor should that fact come as any surprise. Most people can’t make a good fist when the time comes (their snat floods too early, boils them rubbery), let alone apply any kind of strong grip — their barrels wobble, their cudgels slip — and the Aptakisic Indians, in this, were unexceptional. Not even one had swung his chair more than once, let alone aimed for anyone’s head. The chairs they didn’t drop were pried from their hands or shoved in their guts, the dropped ones pitched from the fray by Jerry Throop while Leevon and Dingle mashed faces with their foreheads, and Jelly bit a B-teamer in the middle of the forehead, and Fulton checked Maholtz, who’d just gotten up, then kneedropped Lonnie, who hadn’t gotten up, and Desormie, in child-pose, struggled to recover from Curtis’s sackblast, and Curtis came around and kicked him in the crack, and Shlomo Cohen hobbled toward the pushbar door, and Eliyahu, crawling toward Co-Captain Baxter, tripped Gary Frungeon by yanking his ankle, and Frungeon, falling, brought Curtis with him, and Benji and Slokum kept trying to rise.

You’ll be okay, I said. I’m not here to hurt you. None of us are, just—

Brodsky dry-heaved.

That’s nerves, I said. You aren’t really sick. You’re nothing like dying. You’re doing that to yourself. Now I’m just gonna empty your pockets, I said, and I’m gonna be gentle, I know you’re in pain, I can see that your foot hurts, but I can also see that your foot will be fine — there isn’t any blood there, no bones poking through, you don’t have to keep contorting, there’s nothing to see —but these guys who are standing behind me, watching, they’re wound really tight, and they’ve all got weapons, so please don’t make any sudden movements. Please just don’t even move at all. If you can just breathe deep and stop with the contortions, you won’t get hurt more. You have my word. This isn’t about you. This is just how it is. Okay? Okay. I’m reaching in the pocket of your jacket now. You don’t have to say bubkes. I’ll find what I need.