Adam Levin - The Instructions

Then I thought: Oh no, because—

I thought: Another way to say that Brodsky wished the boy in front of him had been killed instead of his son was: Brodsky wished the boy in front of him were his son.

And I had been the boy in front of him.

And he would not have treated his son the way he’d been treating me. Ben, though a hacker of email accounts, was no stonewaller of principals. He did not drive his father crazy.

I’d pretended, to a good father, that I, the person he wished was his kind, dead son, was as afraid of him as his kind, dead son would have been if that son had just seen his father act the way Brodsky had acted.

And Brodsky became ashamed, and there was nothing pretend about it.

And now I wasn’t even looking at June’s face from across a table, but at her back through a doorway = I had shamed Brodsky needlessly.

I did math:

Of the forty-one students in detention, eleven of them, not including me, were there as a result of my influence, whether direct or indirect. And then eleven students, including me, were not allowed in the cafeteria. Why two elevens? Why not eleven of forty-one and then eight or nine of forty-one? I was the last one to arrive, so if Hashem merely wanted to keep me from June, it wouldn’t even matter if it had been one of forty-one and Klapper had left the cafeteria with no kids and one blank detention form — I’d have still been the one of the forty-one, the one who’d have gotten sent to the library to fill that one assignment out: I’d have still been barred from the cafeteria, still would have been sitting in that doorway, Juneless, punished, and that would have been suitably ironic and terrible. Being barred from the cafeteria would have caused me to suffer, regardless of how many others were barred.

But it was not one of forty-one, or eight or nine. It was eleven influenced and so eleven removed, and you only find Justice that symmetrical in scripture, and only when there is a message attached.

The elevens were a message.

And because Hashem knew I didn’t need reminders that He ran things, Him saying to me, “I run things,” could not have been the message. The message of the elevens was that He didn’t just want me to suffer, and He didn’t just want me to know that I had made Him make me suffer: Hashem wanted me to suffer from the knowledge that when I had made Him make me suffer — that when I had disobeyed his No! and made Brodsky suffer — I had made Him suffer, too, Hashem. I had made Hashem suffer.

So I dropped my head between my knees and suffered all of it.

Soon, setbuilders sent sawings and bangs through the fake-velvet stage-curtain, which hung slanted in the middle where whoever shut it caught the tassels at the bottom in a footlight, and I lifted my head. Every few seconds, a few hammers struck their targets at the same time and the noise boomed. When that happened, June’s back tensed and she’d cringe her neck.

After the fifth or sixth boom, she revolved her head, annoyed, and I saw her face. I didn’t think she saw me. I would not have let her see me right then — a sufferer, a sinner, unable to warm her — and I thought the combination of doorway-shadow and jamb blotted me out of her line of sight, but a couple booms later, she revolved a second time and was smiling. I didn’t smile back. I couldn’t. I was trying to suffer and she was such a good smiler and it stunned me.

Then she was raising her hand. Miss Gleem walked over.

June said to her, quietly, “I need to get out of here for a minute.”

Miss Gleem said, “What do you mean, Juney?”

June said, “It’s important.”

Miss Gleem whispered a question to her.

June made a single laughing noise: Tss . She said, “It’s not that.”

“Well…” Miss Gleem said. You could tell she wanted to let June leave.

June said, “It’s fine, Miss Gleem, I promise — and did I tell you about the idea I had for the sculpture competition?”

Miss Gleem lit up. “I thought you wouldn’t enter.”

June said, “I wasn’t going to, but then yesterday, I found this website with paintings by Jean Dubuffet, and also some Alberto Giacometti sculptures, and I had this idea about shadows and a flattened animal made of clay, glazed ultra-brightly — not like a cartoon roadkill or anything, but a very shiny and complicated mammal that won’t look right in two dimensions. Like say it’s a rhinocerous, but smashed down flat like a stingray, so how could she walk? is what you’ll ask yourself. How can the many chambers of her stomach perform the exertions required to digest exotic grasses? is the feeling I hope to evoke. And then an outline. A thick black one bordering the entire rhinoceros on both sides. Do you see what I mean about the outline? Because an outline is what you do before you learn shadows, right? And I’ll set the sculpture on its side, thin-way-down, on a set of casters, the super-cheap kind that won’t go in carpet, and then, attached to the back part of the back caster wheel will be a rigid length of wire that’ll be bent so that I can hang a sun-colored styrofoam lightbulb from the end of it, like the midmorning sun, and bracketed to the front part of the front caster wheel will be a large pane of smoked plexiglass that’ll lay flat, in what do you call it? perpendicular respect to the rhinoncerous plane — I have to learn to cut and stain plexiglass, first — but this plexiglass will be cut into the shape of what the shadow of the three-dimensional version of the rhino would be at midmorning, which will basically be the same shape as the 2-D rhino, but foreshortened to account for the rhino’s position relative to the lightbulb, which, like I said, will be at the angle of the midmorning sun, in summer I’m thinking, on the summer solstice, in Illinois. Don’t you think that would be a funny sculpture, though? A 2-D rhino with a fixed shadow in a 3-D world? Or is it pretentious? I think it’s funny, but my mom said it was pretentious, but I think that maybe when I told her about it, I did a bad job explaining.”

June looked at me when she said “Jean Dubuffet” and again when she said “rhinocerous” and “midmorning-height,” but didn’t make a face or anything. It was stealth.

“It does sound funny,” Miss Gleem said, “and also completely wonderful!” She said, “I take it you liked the Dubuffets?”

“I loved them,” June said.

Miss Gleem said, “There was an exhibit in Amsterdam a few summers back — I went right when I finished grad school, and they were so amazing.” She fiddled with her combs, remembering. “Did you have any favorites?”

June said, “Of course, and I’d tell you, but I don’t like titles, so I never checked them.”

Miss Gleem said, “That’s because you think visually, June, and you should be proud of it. Can you describe the paintings you liked? How about the cow ones?”

While June described cows by Jean Dubuffet, the Janitor farted twice with his armpit. I couldn’t see, but I knew it was him.

Miss Gleem turned from June and said, “Mikey Bregman! We know it’s you.”

“Sorry, Miss Gleem,” said the Janitor.

“Sorry, Miss Gleem,” said Vincie Portite, in a sissy voice. I couldn’t see him either, the liar — Vincie was the one who told me no one read the detention assignments.

Miss Gleem said, “Vincie.”

Vincie said, “Miss Gleem.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay then,” said Vincie.

Miss Gleem clicked her tongue and turned back to June.

June said, “I’ve really gotta get out of here for a minute, Miss Gleem.”

Miss Gleem said, “Only a minute.”

“Maybe five or six,” June said.