Adam Levin - The Instructions

“Your knuckles are cut.” “It doesn’t even hurt.” “The Janitor’s toe’s broke.” “Gangrene set in yet?” “Do not play with us!” “No one fucken plays with us!” “Look at that latch. That’s blood on that latch.” “I didn’t even notice the blood til you said.” “Do not look at us.” “…not fucken look at us!” “Bleeding’s weird.” “I bet I could take him.” “No one here can take him. He’s from Chicago.” “He’s only, like, ten, though — I’m twelve.” “So’s Asparagus.” “Do not think of us. Do not talk of us. Do not try to be us.” “…much less try fucken being us.” “A sock full of flashlight batteries you’re saying.” “I haven’t bled in a really long time.” “Duracell mace.” “Except for hangnails.” “Blew out the ligaments with a special chi-punch.” “Then the bodyslam.” “Bam Slokum could take him.” “Totally beside the point.” “Full-nelson to suplex, closed with a sleeper-hold.” “Blonde Lonnie could take him.” “Blonde Lonnie could n’t take him — he’s standing right there.” “Do it, Blonde Lonnie.” “Blonde Lonnie fakes deafness!” “An axe-kick to the shoulder to top off the evening.”

No one was speaking to any one person. All of them were speaking to every single person. Everyone was going on record. I’d performed specific actions on Ronrico and the Janitor, but the hows and the whos didn’t matter to the rest of them. What mattered was something had messed up the arrangement. They wanted a part of that, so they tried to explain it, but didn’t know how, so they made things up, working together, though none of them knew it, like bouncing molecules forming gases.

“Bleeding doesn’t hurt.” “If your face was bleeding, trust me it would hurt.” “And the Flunky’s not stepping up either, is he? And he’s the Janitor’s very own brother!” “A spring-loaded sap like Maholtz has.” “HCl in a two-dollar squirtgun.” “I’ve cut my lip — didn’t ever hurt.” “Boystar, too.” “Boystar! Tch.” “Co-Captain Baxter, then.” “I’ve never seen him fight.” “I’m saying your nose, getting punched in your nose.” “A punch in the nose would hurt cause the bone. It’s snapping the nosebone’s the pain, not the bleeding.” “Boystar and the Flunky and the Co-Captain together, then. Plus Bam Slokum. And Blonde Lonnie.” “There isn’t any nosebone.” “Five guys is cheap. Especially with Slokum.” “Tell it to my nosebone. He’s standing right here.” “A pointed fucking instrument.” “Slokum’s beside the point.” “Nose is all cartilage.” “Slokum’s the whole point. Slokum’s indestructible.” “What the fuck’s cartilage?” “He’s fucking immortal.” “He fucking jammed a screwdriver in dude’s fuck ing earhole!”

Desormie yelled, “Quiet down!” at the ceiling.

Vincie Portite yelled, “Quiet down!” at Desormie.

Desormie yelled, “Quiet!” into the floor. To me, he said: “You’ve got trouble coming.”

I should have said, Bring it. Instead I said, I know.

Someone said, “A dead kid.” Nakamook shouted, “Ve vill crush you like zeh grape!” “Ve vucken vill crush!” Vincie Portite flaved.

Asparagus coughed, then started breathing normal. Desormie said “Good” and sat the Janitor next to him. “The office’ll send for you later,” he told them. “For now you go back to the Cage.”

“Let’s go let’s move,” he said to me.

After counting to seven, I hoisted my bag.

On the way to the door, I looked over my shoulder and saw the Janitor eyeing the gooze that was still on his foot, eyeing a t-shirt laying on the bench, about to decide to wipe one with the other. The t-shirt belonged to Leevon Ray. Leevon was the only black kid at school, unless you count halfie Lost Tribesmen — I don’t — and he refused to speak, which is why he was Cage, but we’d sometimes trade snacks and play slapslap at lunch, so I knew we were friends, and to spread word through kids was no form of ratting, but it took me a second of sorting that out before I cued Leevon to safeguard his shirt. It took me a second because of the fight. My chemicals, after fights, often fired weird; during a fight, they were always reliable, tunneling my thinking so I could be simple, but after a fight the opposite happened and sometimes the tunnel would loop til it knotted and wouldn’t untangle until I noticed.

Your shirt, I told Leevon.

The Janitor flinched.

I entered B-Hall behind Desormie. Up at the B-Hall/2-Hall junction, a red-lettered banner that hung from the ceiling read

JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

APTAKISIC ^ FOREVER

They had to jam in the “Junior High School” because of genocide and irony. Most of Aptakisic’s people were gone. Aptakisic was a chief. His tribe was called the Potawatami, but the Aptakisic basketball team was called the Indians. I got called a Jew, but Jews were no longer; we were already Israelites.

I took a running start and jumped to tear the banner down. I missed the lower edge by three or four feet.

“Don’t test me, Maccabee,” Desormie said.

You, kinesiologist, will soon be delivered.

He said, “What did you say to me?”

I said, Into my hand, Gym teacher.

Admissions Record: Gurion Maccabee

DOB: 6/16/96

The Solomon Schecter School of Chicago

Admitted Aug 20, 2001 Kindergarten

Released May 3, 2006 Grade 4

Brief Description of Release:

Expulsion. Physically assaulted Headmaster.

Northside Hebrew Day School

Admitted May 8, 2006 Grade 4

Released June 5, 2006 Grade 6

Brief Description of Release:

Double Promotion followed by Expulsion.

Supplied weapons to students/weapons possession/incitement to use weapons.

Martin Luther King Middle School

Admitted Aug 21, 2006 Grade 7

Released Aug 24, 2006 Grade 7

Brief Description of Release:

Expulsion from Evanston Public School System.

Assaulted student w/ brick.

Aptakisic Junior High School

Admitted Sept 5, 2006 Grade 5 (CAGE Program)

Brief Description of Admission

Demoted to age-appropriate grade-level. Placed probationally (three weeks) in CAGE Program for observation.

Update (September 26, 2006)

Re-promoted to Grade 7.

Observed to be appropriate for CAGE Program—

placed indefinitely in CAGE Program.

The air in Main Hall was blinky that morning. Dust touched light and the particles twitched. Desormie, ahead of me, hummed out a melody with lipfart percussion and aggressively dance-walked and thought it was strutting. I was thinking how dust was mostly made of people, and that a pile of dust from a one-man home should be as easy to mojo as fingernail clippings, which was probably why Hoodoos were vigilant sweepers (self-protection), when a swollen-lipped Ashley, trailed by Bam Slokum, came out of the lunchroom, and Desormie stopped humming.

“Bammo!” he said.

I pulled on my hoodstrings.

“Hey Coach D,” Bam Slokum said. Superhero-shaped and over six feet tall, Bam was Aptakisic Indians Basketball’s goldenboy. I’d never even exchanged as much as a nod with him. He and Benji Nakamook were longtime arch-enemies.

Desormie said, “You got a hall-pass there, Bammenstein?”

Bam made the noise “Tch” = “I know you don’t care if I’ve got a hall-pass,” and laced his fingers in front of his chest, then pushed out his hands to pop all his knuckles. A thousand dark veins and knotty tendons raised the taut skin on his forearms.