Adam Levin - The Instructions

These days he’s not so fond of school. That is true. But it’s on you to fix that, Leonard. It’s your turn. I would remind you, sympathetically, that your very own sons came to Solomon Schechter because you felt — and correctly so — that the mental health people at their public school had wrongly damned them to what you yourself called “the ever-growing ghettos of special education.” I would remind you that your son, Ben, may he rest in peace, was a school-friend of Gurion’s, despite the gap in their ages, and that Gurion attended his shiva, and that Gurion wept at his burial. Please forgive my tone if it is too strong. I only hope, in reminding you of these things, that you will reconsider your stance, and see your way to not placing Gurion in your CAGE program; that you will do everything in your power to be good to him, to understand that he is coming to you damaged but that the damage is not irreparable, that our prophets are always treated like criminals, and that if you treat Gurion like a mensch, he will act like one. And if it is, for some reason, impossible for you to keep my student out of your cage, maybe there’s a compromise — maybe a trial period, a couple of weeks to observe him. But I must say that I have a bad feeling about even that. For a ten-year-old, especially one who is so readily fascinated with the world as Gurion, a day is as rich and significant as a history of everything. A day can change everything.

A blessing on you and your family.

Your Friend,

Avel

P.S. Gurion’s new legal residence — on Lincoln Road between Holmes Parkway and Skinner Drive — is a motel (The Boarder, I think it’s called, or maybe The Border) with a rather large driveway. Gurion has been instructed to wait on the corner of Lincoln and Holmes for the bus, but his mother would prefer the bus to pick him up in this large driveway, which one can see from inside the motel office, where it is warm and dry, and where, for that very reason, the motel owner has given Gurion advance permission to wait. I told her I was certain you could speak to the driver or dispatcher and get them to accommodate her preference. If I was being presumptuous, please let me know, and please accept my apology in advance. If I was not being presumptuous, I thank you in advance, and if I was maybe being a little presumptuous, but you’ll nonetheless accommodate Mrs. Maccabee’s request, I thank you in advance, apologize in advance, and then thank you again for working with me here, despite my presumptuousness. In advance.

Nakamook shoved through half the exit bottleneck to bookrocket Ronrico. I caught up as he lowered his fist.

I said, Benji.

Nakamook launched it.

The books popped from Ronrico’s grip and scattered.

“Jesus!” Ronrico said.

“Just shut the fuck up,” said Nakamook.

Botha, at the door, twenty kids plus two teachers — deep, shouted out “Hey!” except he didn’t know to who. He couldn’t see.

Ronrico was trying to back away from Benji, but Botha got the door open and the crowd was pushing forward, up to the gate, so Ronrico bounced off us. He said to Nakamook, “We’re all on the side—”

Nakamook plugged his hand in, beneath Ronrico’s chin, and lifted. He lifted swiftly til his mantis-arm was straight, and then, in smaller increments, at less rapid intervals, he lifted higher and higher from the shoulder. This action was called the Impossible because no one else at school could perform it. Also that’s how it looked: impossible. Nakamook often performed the action on people who, unlike Ronrico, were taller than him, and to keep his balance he had to stand bowlegged, which, to the eyes of observers, always made him look shorter. I’d never been Impossibled before, but I didn’t think it would be that hard to disengage. You’d just have to kick him a good one in the torso, or dig your thumbs deep into the soft part of his wrist til the tendons gave. It must have been that the suddenness of the action erased your sense of options though: no one had ever gotten out of a Nakamookian Impossible before Nakamook had let him, and many even seemed to cooperate with the action, bending their knees in midair the way a baby does when you lift it by the armpits.

The Janitor stepped out of the bottleneck as soon as Ronrico’s feet left the ground. Benji hammered down on his skull with his free hand and the Janitor said, “Ow. Ow. Ow.” He half-sat against the crowd, rubbing a sleeved forearm briskly through his hair, his dazed face slack.

Thirteen inches above Benji’s head, the bugged-out eyeballs of Asparagus revolved at me. He wrinkled between his pulsing temples = “Why?”

Nakamook didn’t miss it. “Don’t act ignorant,” he said to Ronrico, shaking him a little.

I set my hand on Benji’s elbow and waited for him to feel it. When he felt it, he one-shoulder-shrugged at me = “Fine.” To Ronrico, he said, “Do not try to be us,” then lowered him slow and let go of his throat.

Ronrico crouched down to gather his books. The Janitor helped him. Botha unlocked the gate. The crush of the bottleneck got heavy, then ended.

I picked a rocketed book up and gave it to Ronrico. I said, This won’t happen again.

Ronrico looked at his feet.

“The fuck!?” Nakamook said to the air next to my face. Then the Flunky walked past us. “Foog,” Benji told him.

The Flunky stalled for a second, walked on.

Benji followed him past Botha, into C-Hall. I followed Benji. C-Hall, lockerless, was always empty after school except for Cage students, who always got out of class last because of the gate.

I told Benji to hold on.

He slowed his pace. “You’re friends with the Flunky now, too?” he said.

He’s not my enemy.

Nakamook stopped walking. He said, “None of these guys are your friends. They’re just scared of you.”

So what? I said.

“Whenever I’m scared? I wait for a chance to damage who’s scaring me, and then I do that. Isn’t that what you do?”

I don’t get scared of people.

Nakamook said, “Well that’s what everyone else does.”

I said to him, Even if you’re right, I still don’t lose anything, having them on my side.

He said, “Listen. When someone’s scared of me, I know they’ll try to damage me the second they have the chance, and that makes me scared of them. And so I think: I better damage them first, while I have the chance — You should be scared of these people because they fear you, Gurion. You should damage them first. You should damage them again and again. You should damage them until they stop being scared of you. Until your dangerousness is undeniable and you’re like highway traffic or the edge of a cliff — something they wouldn’t even consider crossing. Then you make friends. It’s the only way.”

I said, You and I never damaged each other.

He said, “We weren’t ever scared of each other, but look, forget it — my mood just switched. So did yours.”

I touched my face. My face was smiling. We stood at the C-Hall/Main Hall junction. People shouting and shoving and flirting with each other. At the other end, the front doors opened and shut and the hallway had wind. I could look in any direction I wanted.

Benji said, “I feel like a millionaire on the back of an armored jet-ski my samurai girlfriend who loves me is charging at a cartel speedboat to win a game of chicken. Isn’t this the day’s best part? You don’t even have to remember to enjoy it. It enjoys you into itself.”

I could not imagine June as a samurai on a jet-ski, but a ninja — she could be a ninja, hang-gliding. And she could be my wife.