Adam Levin - The Instructions

Adonai had twice shouted No! at me and I had twice ignored it.

I was dismissed.

In the outer-office, Miss Pinge wrote me a hall-pass, my favorite thing to have at school. I went straight to detention.

It was 3:48 and I was safe, a miserable sinner. Then things got ironic.

I wasn’t allowed in detention: I had entered through the southern doorway of the cafeteria, but before I’d even gotten past the first bathroom, Miss Gleem rushed over, saying, “Go to the library.”

Why? I said.

Miss Gleem pressed a finger against her glossed lips and shooed me back into Main Hall. I spotted June at the table by the stage on the eastern side. She had her back to me. My sadness over having hurt Brodsky made me slow, so instead of shouting June’s name across the room, I only thought about shouting June’s name across the room, and by the time I decided I should actually do it, Miss Gleem had gently pushed me through the doorway.

“I’m so sorry,” Miss Gleem said. She meant about the push, but Miss Gleem was always exaggerating her emotions. Even if she was sorry, there’s no way she was so sorry. The push was fine with me, anyway. Miss Gleem was a big-time toucher, but it wasn’t perved. It was affectionate. In her head, I’m sure she called the push “encouragement.” She was the art teacher. She monitored detention on Tuesdays and Wednesdays against her will. She told me that once. I liked her. She wore fake tortoiseshell combs in her fuzzy hair, like the sweeter, less pretty sister of a bony princess whose combs are made of gold. It wasn’t just me who liked her, either. She was mostly pinged-out and everyone liked her, and if I’d met Miss Gleem first I’d have probably called Miss Pinge gleemed-out.

She bent her knees and leaned toward me and I could see the tops of her tits in her shirt. Her tits were really white and pushed together. I thought about how if I put a watercolor brush on her tits sideways, then while the brush rolled forward it would trail a fleeting, tubular dent in the skin behind it. By the time the brush fell on the ground there’d be goosebumps on her tits and maybe even her throat because the rolling watercolor brush would feel like how it feels when you run a hangnail along the paler side of your arm. I don’t know why I thought of that. What her tits mostly did was make me want to press the side of my face against their top parts while I was kneeling in between her legs and she was sitting in a rocking chair. I would reach up with my hands to put them on her ears and in her hair and then go to sleep on my knees, just like that. But then I thought about how I would rather put the side of my face on June’s tits and reach up with my hands and fall asleep. But June didn’t really have tits, so then I thought it would be better to put the side of my face on June’s stomach while we were laying down in the shape of the letter T, and my arms would be long like Nakamook’s, and only one of my hands would be in her hair and the other hand would be holding her ankle, and I would fall asleep hearing the sounds inside her stomach, and the sounds would be humming sounds, and she would have one of her hands on my head, too, but none of that could happen, not any time soon, not with me in the hall and her in the cafeteria, a sound-killing wall of cinderblocks between us.

“You’re so upset,” Miss Gleem said. “Why are you so upset?”

I said to her, I have to go in. I have detention.

She said, “We have too many students in here. We tried to seat everyone, but the chatter was too much for Mr. Klapper to handle, so he took ten of you folks to the library, and I’m sorry, but that’s where you’ve gotta go now.”

Again with the sorry.

Mr. Klapper taught Social Studies. I’d heard that he was very old. He was one of the only teachers at Aptakisic who didn’t have to teach in the Cage once a week. I never met him.

I said, But I’m here already.

She said, “I’d love to have you in detention with me, Gurion, except I don’t have your assignment form — Mr. Klapper took it.”

I said, I know the assignment by heart. I said, I’ll just write it out on looseleaf.

She said, “They make a big deal out of the forms. Looseleaf won’t cut it.”

I said, Miss Gleem! I said, No one even reads those things.

She said, “Who told you that?”

I said, It’s just I know some people fill the page up with swear words and no one gets in trouble for it.

She said, “I don’t think that’s true. I’ve never seen an assignment like that. And I read them all when I’m the monitor. It’s part of the STEP System. After we read them, we pass them on to Bonnie Wilkes and Sandy Billings and they read them. Sometimes Mr. Brodsky does, too. So a lot of people read them. And I’ve always liked yours, actually — they’re so angry, but in a very literary and deep way, and though it’s clear to me that you think verbally rather than visually, that’s nothing to be ashamed of, Gurion.”

I said, I’m not ashamed.

She said, “But why should you be?”

I said, I shouldn’t.

She said, “I was just trying to compliment your writing.”

Thank you, I said.

She said, “Now go get a hall-pass from the Office before you go to the library — Mr. Klapper’s a stickler.”

I already had a hall pass. I had one from Miss Pinge, and one with a poem on it, and then a whole pad of them with no table to throw it on and make my coaster joke.

I headed slowly toward the Office, but once Gleem was back inside, I spun and ducked into the cafeteria’s northern doorway. That doorway was deep, but doorless. I leaned back against its sidewall and slid down onto the floor. I could see the back of June. She was sitting on her knees on the bench of the table, writing her detention assignment, crouched over the page with her shoulders up to her ears like she was cold.

I tried to move heat around. I thought of blankets, a pile of them. She didn’t look any less cold. I thought of the blankets catching fire, and a high-powered fan built into my chest. It didn’t work. I failed. No. I didn’t fail . I never had a chance. I didn’t fail at anything. A high-powered fan? Blankets catching fire? A high-powered fan in my chest and burning blankets? What the fuck was wrong with me? I was thinking like a whiny escapist specialkid, a nice little Jewish boy who’d tell Mr. Brodsky, “I think you’re really bullying me,” and actually mean it. Gee aw gee. Such heartbreaking heartbreak. So scared inside, so lonely and helpless, just wants to be accepted. Aw gee aw gee aw fuck you, Gurion. Kill the limp magic thinking, and act like a mensch. Figure out how you hurt him, see the sin for what it was. And repent. And atone.

I reviewed the encounter, beat by beat:

Brodsky starts flipping out, talking about math.

I don’t back down.

He tells me I won’t be able to see June until I tell him who broke the scoreboard.

I see that he doesn’t want to be flipping out.

I get an idea.

Adonai shouts No! at me about my idea.

I pretend I’m very scared by pretending to wipe pretend tears from my eyes that I’m pretending inside my pretend-game are actually an itch that I’m pretending inside my pretend-game to scratch with my wrist and then I say to Brodsky, I think you’re really bullying me.

He acts like someone died, then apologizes and lets me leave.

I thought: But his son died and that’s the worst person who can die and someone saying he thinks you’re a bully…it’s nothing compared to your son dying, especially when it’s just some boy who’s saying it, some boy who, when you look at him there, in front of you, the first thing you do is you wish it was him who’d been killed instead of Ben.