Adam Levin - The Instructions

She said, “I’d rather tear my eyes out — why don’t you pay attention? If I broke your lobe, then you’d be dark, and it would be a tragedy. And my fault.”

I said, If you don’t love me, it’ll break my lobe.

She said, “But if I love you for a while, then break your lobe later, it’ll be even more broken.”

I said, If you break my lobe, you break my lobe. Broken is broken and I break things all the time, so I know. I’d rather have you break my lobe later, I said.

June was hugging herself.

I reached out and put the hoodie on her shoulders again.

She said, “You’ll be cold.”

I said, I don’t get cold. You want a poem I wrote you?

“You wrote me a poem?”

I set it down on the floor between us and finally she stopped looking away from me. She wasn’t looking at me, but if she looked up, she would have been. I decided to skip the coaster joke. I touched the part in her hair. It seemed the right thing to do, though I didn’t know why.

She said, “Your poem’s attached to a Coke. I don’t like Coke so much. I like coffee.”

I said, Same here, but I wasn’t sure if you liked Coke or not, so I—

Miss Gleem came into the hall. She said, “Five or six minutes, June? And you,” she said to me, “you haven’t even gone to Mr. Klapper yet, have you? And what is that? There’s no drinks allowed in detention.”

June was standing already. She said, “Tell me the Coke story tomorrow.”

Miss Gleem said, “People, please.”

I said, I’ll call you tonight and tell you.

June said, “I hate the phone.”

Miss Gleem said, “People! If you don’t move along right now, I’ll have to give you detentions.”

I said, I’ll tell you by the buses, then — rush out to the circle when deten-tion ends. It’ll only take a minute. And I still have something to show you.

I’d completely forgotten about the birthmarks.

June said, “I don’t want you showing or telling me anything else today. I need to think.”

I said, But how will I see you tomorrow?

Miss Gleem said, “Fine. You’ve got detentions.”

“That’s how,” June said. She was so tough.

I said, I want you to tell me something, then.

June said, “I’m stealing your hoodie.”

I said, It’s yours. I’m giving it to you.

She said, “Let me steal it, okay?”

I said, Give me back my hoodie.

“No,” she said, “I’m stealing your hoodie.”

I said, You’re stealing my hoodie.

“Yes I am,” June said.

Then she went in the cafeteria and I put the Coke in my bag. The Coke was poemless. The poem was gone. June stole it.

Mr. Klapper checked e-mail at a computer-carrel and touched his mustache at both ends. The mustache was white like his suit, and I thought: He is Missouri-looking. The thought surprised me because I didn’t know what I meant yet — I’d never been to Missouri.

I waited beside his chair for him to notice me. After a minute of nothing, I dropped my pass on his keyboard. His shoulders jumped like I’d startled him and he revolved. It was a fun thing to watch — him seeing me. His tri-focals were smeared heavily with finger-grease, and on top of that, I was standing in an unfocused middle-ground he’d have had quadrafocals for if they made them. His eyes wobbled in their sockets and he moved his head down-and-toward and then up-and-away from me like a strolling pigeon.

“I know,” he said, pulling on his string-tie. “I know. If Mark Twain were a pigeon and etcetera.”

I said, You’re my favorite teacher.

“But you never come to class, you little firebrand!”

I said, I’m not in your class!

“How come?”

I’m in the Cage, I said.

“Hell with the Cage!” he said. He checked his roster. “Gurion Maccabee?”

Would you like a warm Coke? I said.

“No thank you,” he said. “Burns my guts, that stuff. Check your email?”

I said, I’ll wait til I get home.

“Well,” he said, “that’s discipline! I have to check mine every hour, or I get nervous, know what I mean. Now, I want you to take a seat, but before you do that, I want you to take this asinine assignment off my hands and, once you’re sitting, I want you to fill it with assininities multitudinous.”

I said, Where should I sit?

“Wherever,” he said. “Just don’t yell or kill anyone.”

He handed me the detention assignment and I headed to a table at the back of the library to sit with Nakamook.

Nakamook said, “That Klapper? He pretended to be all fuddy-duddily angry about how noisy the lunchroom was, and then as soon as we got out of there, he told us, ‘Not to worry, students, I’m no fascist — just wanna check my e-mail.’ And then he let us check our e-mail if we wanted. I got one from my cousin Phil in New Hampshire. His dad just bought him a rifle. He’s lucky. I want a gun. Not to shoot anybody with or anything, but to clean it and know the parts of. The barrel and the trigger and the stock and the sight — that’s all I know. But there’s all these other parts, the parts that make it work. And plus you could shoot people with it.”

Where’s Eliyahu? I said.

“Probably trying to decide if someone’s a Jew.”

I said, He’s a good person.

“He’s a weird person,” Benji said. “He lives with his aunt and uncle. Why’s he live with his aunt and uncle? He mentioned something about it in a way like he wanted me to ask him, and so I didn’t ask him cause I don’t like being hinted at.”

I said, I don’t know why he lives with his aunt and uncle, but he’s friends.

Benji said, “He said you shouldn’t be in love with the girl you love — that’s not friendly.”

I said, He didn’t say that. He just said she didn’t look like an Israelite. And she doesn’t really. Not particularly.

“It’s what he meant, though,” Benji said. “It’s like a kind of racism.”

I said, I can’t marry a girl who isn’t an Israelite — Eliyahu was looking out for me.

Benji said, “Of course you can marry a girl who isn’t an Israelite.”

I said, But my sons wouldn’t be Israelites.

Benji said, “What if she converted?”

I said, Conversion’s complicated — you don’t so much convert, it’s this other thing. It’s called converting, but if you do it, it means you’ve been an Israelite all along, so it’s not really converting and—

He said, “But either way, she could do something?”

I guess so, I said.

He said, “And if she wouldn’t, then you’d—”

I said, My lobe would break.

“Your what?”

I said, It doesn’t matter. I said, She’s an Israelite.

He said, “Calm down. How hard is it to convert, anyway?”

I said, I told you it doesn’t fucken matter.

He said, “I’m just asking.”

Why? I said. I said, You wanna marry me?

All of a sudden, Benji acted real interested in the grain of the library table’s fakewood. So I wrote my detention assignment because I wasn’t going to apologize to him.

Name:Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee

Grade:5 6 7 8

Homeroom:The Cage

Date:11/14/2006

Complaint Against Student (from Complaint Against Student Sheet)

Speaking out of turn, inappropriate tones, speaking out of turn, turning in seat. The Cage. 1st Period. 11/07/06. Mr. Botha.

Step 4 Assignment: Write a letter to yourself in which you explain 1) why you are at step 4 (in after-school detention); 2) what you could do in order to avoid step 4 (receiving after-school detention) in the future; 3)what you havelearn edfrom being at step 4 (in after-school detention); 4) what you have learned from writingthis letter to yourself. Include a Title, an Introduction, a Body, and a Conclusion. This letterwill be collected at the end of after-school detention. This letter will be stored in yourpermanent file.