Adam Levin - The Instructions

“How about you, young lady? Got a pass?”

“Ashley’s all distraught,” Slokum said to Desormie. “I was helping her out. Process of helping her, we misplaced her pass.”

“Oh,” Desormie said. “Distraught?”

“I’m feeling much better now,” the Ashley told him.

Slokum chinned the air in the direction of A-Hall. The Ashley squeezed his biceps and strode off toward A-Hall.

“Well al right ,” said Desormie. “Al right then,” he said. “We gearing up for a righteous premiere?”

The opening game of the basketball season was scheduled for 5 p.m. on Friday.

“Sure, Coach D,” Bam Slokum said.

“Main Hall Shovers get their new scarves today, boy. Just had Blake Acer in Gym — kid’s amped . Comes up to me, tells me, ‘Listen, Mr. D, our new scarves are gonna be so darn flossy, I’m scared once I see ’em, I’ll just go blind.’ Says, ‘Bam’s gonna crush and the Shovers’ll be there. Watch it, Twin Groves. Just watch out!’”

“Yeah,” said Bam. “The air’s crackling with pep.”

“Crackling with pep!” Desormie said. “But like what the heck’s ‘flossy’ though? The heck does that mean, right? Heck did it come from? What happened to killer ? Heck, what happened to awesome ? When did the Main Hall Shovers turn to funnytalk? Maybe it’s just Acer. Presidents talk weird. Good kid, though, that Acer. Don’t get me wrong. Good kids the lot of them. A tribute to all of us. A boon for the team. All those Shovers. Other teams get pepsquads — pepsquads! What? Wussy little pepsquads waving little flags, fancy-dancing on their twinkle-toes, and, I don’t know, lisping. That, Sir Bam, is what other teams get. The Indians, though? We got Shovers. We got us Shovers, and they don’t wave flags. We got us Shovers and our Shovers wear scarves. Our Shovers wear scarves and they trounce any pepsquad. Right? Am I right? They trounce on the twinkletoed all the dang livelong. So what if their hand-eye’s crappier than ours? So what if sometimes you want to give ’em a wedgie til the tears and the boogers go pouring down their chins? They’re carrying your books. They’re filling the bleachers. They’re loving the Indians. Good kids all of them. A tribute and a boon. It’s how you play the game. All good kids. When they almost fell apart, they could’ve fell apart, except they didn’t fall apart because instead they came together. Overcame differences. All the stronger for it. Intestinal fortitude. Trial by fire. Awesome scarves. No limp flags. Trouncing the lispers. Pep that crackles. How you play the game. Just why the funnytalk from Acer’s what I’m saying.”

“Yeah,” Bam said. “Shovers,” he said.

Desormie made the noise “Tch” ≠ anything meaningful. Bam made the noise “Tch” back at him, and then he chinned the air at me and winked his left eye = “We just made accidental eye-contact and I am only doing what is done when that happens, but still I want you to know that we are in this together.” Except for the hallway, there was nothing that Bam and I were in together. Still, I chinned back at him. His chinning made me feel brotherly. Up close to Slokum for the first time ever, acknowledged, I saw there was something I liked about him, which bothered me a lot, and not just because my best friend despised him. There were certain very few guys like Bam who something about them made me not want to harm them when I should have, or should’ve at least been planning how to. I thought it was probably the faces they made. Whatever it was, though, I knew those had to be the kinds of guys who Adonai used to make kings of, when He still made kings. David ben-Jesse was one of those guys, and Solomon, too; but then so was Saul, and even Jeroboam. Hashem had to make kings because the Israelites wouldn’t be led by the judges, even though the judges were tougher than the kings and knew the law better. It was actually because the judges were tougher and knew the law better that they couldn’t lead the Israelites. That spooked me out. I didn’t think it should be that way. It wasn’t up to me, though.

Neither was starting a fight with Slokum. I’d given my word to Benji that I wouldn’t, as long as Slokum didn’t provoke me. And Slokum, there in Main Hall, wasn’t provoking me. Not even a little. I thought that maybe he didn’t know who I was — most Aptakisic students outside the Cage didn’t — and I wanted to tell him, “I’m Gurion Maccabee, best friend of your number-one enemy, Nakamook,” but before I’d said anything, he was walking away, and before he’d walked away, he’d chinned air at me a second time, and I’d chinned back, without even thinking, and felt just as brotherly and bothered as the first time.

“Baaaam Slokum,” Desormie said as Slokum turned the corner.

I made the noise Tch = I am not your audience.

Desormie made the noise back = “You’re lucky you’re not my son.”

I said, Hnh = That happens to be true, but not because you say so.

As soon as we started walking again, My Main Man Scott Mookus fell out of the Office. Aptakisic hallways always seemed picaresque.

Main Man stumbled toward us, saying, “Hello Gurion! And hello Mr. Desormie! What a shiny whistle you’re wearing around your well-muscled neck. I would like to talk about it with you some time. How negligible of me not to have said so, but it is such beautiful weather that we are having today, don’t you suppose? I would even go so far as to say that the snow is reminiscent of my youth in the heart of the country. Oh isn’t the sky a stage, in a sense, and the snow a sort of spotlight? It is! And what of this rumor being bandied about town surrounding the subject of your tent-pitching acumen? It’s truly fantastic! In all sincerity, I do wish you well. And Gurion! My captain! Captain, my captain, my great brother Gurion, the tomorrow after tomorrow’s tomorrow you will lead us into battle to separate the head from the body of the heathen droves. What does that feel like? I say the silent fall of this snow won’t do, that we pray for a hailstorm to dramatize the atmosphere, the thunder and pattering our background music…”

Desormie had kept us walking while Mookus stayed in the spot where we’d passed him, speaking louder and faster about weather and End Days. It was the disease. Main Man had Williams Cocktail Party Syndrome. His face looked elfy and his grammar, sometimes, sounded seriously official, but he couldn’t understand himself because he was retarded. For the most part he talked because talking was social, a friendly noise, and he was nice. Almost everything he said, whatever the content = “Talk to me and I’ll talk to you,” and that used to get me sad, but then I figured that almost anything he heard must have also = “Talk to me and I’ll talk to you,” and I wasn’t sad, but I was a little spooked. For a day, I was actually really spooked, and I started to wonder if I was retarded, my parents and friends all secret condescenders for my self-esteem. I even asked my mom. “Retarded?” she said. “You are the smartest and the handsomest.” Exactly what I’d say to my retarded son if I wanted to hide the truth. Are you telling me the truth? I’d said to my mom, and my mom said “Yes,” and I believed her, or at least I believed she didn’t think I was retarded, and that was enough to unspook me.

Down the hall, I yelled: Mookus, you are my main man!

“Indeed I am, Gurion! I am indeed!” My Main Man Scott Mookus yelled up the hall back at me.

I wanted to know what else Scott was saying, but I couldn’t hear him at all anymore. I could hear my jingling pocket and the ticking of the ball in Desormie’s whistle when it swung against his pecs, the clap and squeak of our shoes on the floor, and the buzzing of the panels of light in the ceiling. Everything I could hear was not supposed to get heard. I’d been told by Call-Me-Sandy that this had to do with earlids. Earlids were figurative. They had no flesh. They closed to block out the ambient sounds. People whose A’s were D’d didn’t have earlids, unless they took Ritalin or Adderal or another form of speed for SpEds that stunts growth. I took no spedspeed, but still wasn’t tall. Nakamook took it, but only sometimes. The ones he didn’t want he’d stockpile and sell for a buck a pill to a group of sophomores with hair in their eyes who’d drive to the beach from Stevenson High School to meet him each Friday after detention.