Adam Levin - The Instructions

Mangey said, “Boystar is like the guy in the date-rape movie who gives girls knockout drugs without them knowing. And then he takes their clothes off when they’re asleep and he date-rapes them.”

“Infected. Can you be more specific, Mikey?”

Ronrico said, “Flinch,” to Vincie again.

Vincie started crying, but just wet eyes and his face got red. If it was four weeks before, Vincie would have laid him out, no hesitation.

I said, No one’s gonna call him ‘Flinch,’ Ronrico, no matter how many times you say it.

“Gurion,” said Jelly, “how’d you make Boystar cry-faced? You smash him or what? You smash him in the gob?”

The gob? I said. What’s a gob?

“Can you please just hand me a tissue?” said the Janitor. He started crying with his throat.

Sandy said, “Scott, how do you think Mikey feels right now?”

“I don’t know,” said Main Man, “but everything is very scary.”

I said, We’ll be fine, Scott.

“Please!” shouted the Janitor, reaching in the air for a tissue that wasn’t there.

Vincie’s hand jumped to his eye.

Jelly said, “You’ve really lost control of the room, Sandy. I mean, even more than usual.”

Mangey said, “Boystar threatened to beat me up once, Gurion. He shoved into me in the hall and I said ‘Excuse you’ and he said he’d kick my ass.”

He’s all talk, I said. I said, I slapped his neck and he hid behind his dad.

“Flinch!” Ronrico said to Vincie.

Vincie’s hand jumped to his eye.

I stood up fast and Ronrico fell out of his chair.

“Gurion!” Call-Me-Sandy said.

Vincie’s hand jumped to his eye.

I said to Call-Me-Sandy, I’m not hurting anyone.

I stood over Ronrico. I said to him, Now who’s the flinch?

Ronrico was biting his lip.

I said, You’re just like Botha, but shorter and dumber.

Call-Me-Sandy said, “Please, Gurion.”

I said, I’m not hurting anyone.

“I am not like Botha,” Ronrico said.

I said, Why are you picking on Vincie, then? I said, You’re gonna be Botha in a few years. Ronrico Botha. That’s your new name. You’re Ronrico Botha.

“I’m not like Botha,” he said.

Not exactly, I said. You’re more scared. I said, I’d have to actually hit Botha to put him down.

Call-Me-Sandy said, “Gurion, this isn’t productive. Please sit.”

I sat. What I want to know, I said to Call-Me-Sandy, is why the Janitor isn’t helping Ronrico up. Because Ronrico is the Janitor’s best friend. Ronrico got his ass kicked in the locker-room for the Janitor. I know that because I’m the one who kicked it. And it was very easy for me, but shouldn’t the Janitor help him up, Sandy? Don’t you think that’s right?

“Mikey?” Call-Me-Sandy said to the Janitor, “Can you tell Gurion why you won’t help Ronrico to stand up?”

“You strike with a fury,” Main Man said to me, “and maybe you are out of control. People are afraid of you.”

I said, Why do you say that, Scott? Are you afraid of me?

Main Man said, “A little bit.”

It made me depressed for a second. Call-Me-Sandy saw it. I saw her lean forward. She wanted to make a moment of it. She always wanted to make a moment when Scott said something to me about feelings, but I stopped her.

I said to Scott, I protect you, though. I’ll always protect you.

I said to the Janitor, Help your friend up. I’m not gonna hurt you. Just be a good guy.

The Janitor said, “What if you chop my neck? I don’t want you to chop my neck.”

I said, I wouldn’t chop your neck like that. Why would I chop your neck for helping your friend? That’s stupid.

“Do you promise?” said the Janitor.

I said, I don’t promise. You know I don’t promise. If you promise it means that every time you don’t promise it’s okay for you to be lying. I won’t chop your neck. Have faith in my word.

“I need you to promise.”

I said, I’ll chop your neck if you don’t help him up.

The Janitor pulled his sleeve down over his hand and started helping his friend up.

Ronrico said “Thigh!” to the Janitor.

Vincie’s hand went to his eye. The Janitor let go of Ronrico’s hand and dropped Ronrico so Ronrico fell on his own wrists. Vincie’s hand went to his eye again. The Janitor held one hand in the other and squeezed. Ronrico sat up and shook his hands out like they were asleep. Sandy’s hands were over her mouth. The thumbs of Main Man’s hands were in his mouth. Jelly was flicking everyone off with both hands. Mangey was scratching drylegs with hers. Leevon sat on his. I didn’t know what to do with mine, but I had to do something, so I dug the right one under the rubberband around the left one, twisted my wrists twice, and stretched them apart, far and fast, and the rubberband handcuffs snapped in the middle. It did not make a loud-enough sound.

I said to Scott: Mookus, you have released me from my bondage!

Scott took his thumbs out of his mouth. He said, “I have released you!”

“Bondage,” Call-Me-Sandy said. She was so nervous. You could tell from how she kept pushing her fingers through the buttonholes of her cardigan. I wished she wasn’t so nervous. She was actually a very kind person, Sandy. “Bondage is a curious word,” she said. And you could see from her faces that she was best friends with her sisters and had proud parents who used to buy her ice cream and stickers for her sticker-book whenever she brought home an A on a test or even a quiz, which happened a lot, because she was also very smart. Call-Me-Sandy was going to the University of Chicago for graduate school like my dad and mom had, but for social work instead of law or psychology, and you had to be smart to go there. Still, she was no good at what she did. When we got loud or wild or said unkind things, she thought it meant that she was doing something wrong and it worried her and she got scared and tried to arrange us with her calm voice that shook and it made us louder and wilder and more unkind. She said, “Does everyone in the group know what bondage means?”

Jenny Mangey stopped scratching and sat up really straight. “It’s a kind of leather,” she said.

“It’s a kind of sex ,” said Ronrico Asparagus. He got back in his chair.

“Fucking,” said Vincie.

“Same thing,” said Ronrico.

Vincie disagreed. He said, “Sex is what you do with your wife. Fucking is what you do to your mistress. You don’t make your wife wear leather, and that’s why bondage is a kind of fucking.”

“What the fuck?” said the Janitor. “I fucking want a fucking tissue.”

I said, Bondage is slavery.

“My mom doesn’t fuck,” Jenny Mangey said.

I said, And bondage is this school, but invisibly.

Jelly said, “No one said your mom fucks, Mange.”

The Janitor said, “Fuck this fucking school.”

It’s the arrangement, I said. Bondage is rules you are too scared to break.

“My mom is not a fucker,” said Jenny Mangey.

Vincie said, “No one said your mom’s a fucker.”

We were talking so fast Sandy couldn’t break in because it would be disrespectful. She would have had to break the rules to break in. She was supposed to keep us under control by showing us what control looked like and it was supposed to look like control was being able to follow the rules, but all the rules did was freeze her voice and spaz her fingers around in her buttonholes. It was proof that the arrangement was a kind of bondage.

Jenny said, “My mom wears bondage leather.”

“Then she is a fucker after all,” Vincie said.

Jenny said, “That’s what I said you said.”

“I didn’t say it til you did,” Vincie said. “You’re the one who said it, Mangey. If you’re not ready to say something, don’t say it.”