Adam Levin - The Instructions

“So excited about it.”

“I mean, really… This is… Really!”

Boystar’s hand was deep in his bag, rummaging loudly. The bag was a black leather messenger bag. His shoes and belt had high-shine buckles that matched its clasp. He always wore outfits. He rarely fought anyone. Vincie Portite said it was because of his face; if something happened to his face he’d have a hard time being famous. Soon he pulled something from the bag and flashed it. It looked like a stack of baseball cards. Baseball was slow and baseball was suck. I wasn’t excited. Neither was June. Boystar came over.

“So,” Brodsky was saying, “I’m glad the trip to California yielded your son an enviable pop album. We’re thrilled to have him back at school, and, of course, we’re looking forward to this Friday’s performance.” The principal wasn’t a stupid man. He knew they’d stick around til he said what they wouldn’t.

“He and we look forward to it, too,” the mother of Boystar said through a shiver.

Her son, before us now, palming the stack, told me some things that were meant for June’s ears. He said, “Whuddup, skid? I guess it’s like this: I’m doing a cut at the pep rally Friday. Second period, they get their first periods. That’s what they’re saying. That’s what I hear. That’s what I’m saying. Want a new sticker? Have a new sticker. Promote the new unit.”

He gave me a sticker. The stack wasn’t cards. It was stickers of him. On a background of glitter, the photographed Boystar was crouching intensely behind starry footlights. In his right hand he held a mike over his heart, and his left hand was clawed and raised in the air = “Wait, please wait, just give me a second,” and his shades were low on the bridge of his nose, and his mouth half-open to tell you a secret to make you both cry. A banner at the bottom, bombstyle fonted, read: EMOTIONALIZE. The Star’s Reborn. New Album in stores this Christmas .

June angled to see and her shoulder touched mine. I almost thanked Boystar.

June said, “Accessorize?”

Boystar had a silver Star-of-Boystar (*) earring that went with his buckles and bag-clasp. When he turned to June, the earring caught light from an overhead bulb and twinkled.

“Emotionalize,” he said, and twinkled. “Ee mo shun alize.”

Like June wasn’t kidding. Like she needed to be corrected. He needed to be corrected.

You’re on a sticker, I said. There’s a sticker of you. You look really sensitive.

“I know,” Boystar said. He said, “Girls like it when you look like a pussy, right June? And they’re the ones that buy units, the girls. And girls like stickers. These stickers move units.” He held a sticker out to June and said, “See? She wants my unit. She wants to give me money for it.”

June said, “Nope.”

“Only,” said Boystar, “cause you’re a dumb slut and while you’re asleep your father touches you.” The way he said it was really flat. Like the underdog new-kid psycho in a movie who the bad guy would shortly learn not to mess with.

I thumb-stabbed the hand that was holding the stack and slapped him on the neck. I didn’t hit him hard. It was just a slap. It was just to shock him, to show him how stealth I am and how slow he is and how sudden he would end if he monkeyed with June again. Still, he became pinkish and started breathing fast to keep from crying. Whenever people did that after I’d hit them, it made me feel sad for them, as if I should help them, and then angry because I didn’t want to feel sad for them since I had just hit them. I looked away.

No one but me and June and Boystar saw the stabbing or the slap, but the father saw the stickers fall and he saw the pinkishness of the face of Boystar. He stepped between us. If I was Boystar’s dad? I would have known what the pinkishness meant and I would have been pissed at Gurion. I would have taken Gurion by the shirt or the front of the hair and said, “Do not make my son feel scared.” It would have been a kind of justice. But the father just stood there and said to Boystar, “Come on.” He said, “Don’t drop the promotional stickers on the filthy floor. That will ruin them. Pick them up.”

Boystar got on his knees.

June whispered, “Pick them up.”

Boystar’s mom huffed air through her nose; she wasn’t embarrassed, she refused to be embarrassed, let them be embarrassed, she wasn’t embarrassed. Brodsky bid them each good luck. Boystar picked up the stickers on his knees. Brodsky picked up the CASS from the desk of Pinge and held it close to his eyes, then at arm’s distance, then in between the two points, like he needed to focus. He didn’t need to focus. His eyes were fine. He was trying to look official. “Fighting again?” he said to me.

I nodded my head = Ask a real question.

“Let’s go,” he said.

“June’s first,” Miss Pinge said.

I wasn’t getting up, but Brodsky told me, “Sit down.” Then he said to June, “Come on.”

June didn’t move for an entire three-count, and when she stood, she leaned over like she would deliver a headbutt to the side of my eye, and I would have let her, but instead she kissed me very fast, just below my ear, where I wanted sideburns to be. It felt wet but was not wet and my jaw hummed and then my head got warm on the inside.

I didn’t know my eyes were closed until I opened them and saw she was walking away from me, walking slowly, grinding stickers under her Chucks.

I had to do something, so I stood up and I shouted, I am in love with you!

Everyone looked at me, except for June, who stopped in Brodsky’s doorway and raised fists of victory before she went inside. Even if the victory fists were sarcastic, it was the prettiest thing she could have done, and I knew it was true what I shouted.

I would no longer dream of Natalie Portman at night, and I’d quit writing broken-hearted poems for Esther Salt. I would only dream of June and all my poems would be for her. I felt like unwound rubberbands, like how I imagined Main Man felt when he’d do his dance, but I couldn’t sing, plus I wasn’t good at poetry — I didn’t read enough of it to be any good; I didn’t really like it — and even if I wrote a good love poem by accident, the best a good love poem could be was nice, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to be nice to June, just that… What? Who wouldn’t be nice to her? That was what. I wanted to do something someone else wouldn’t, preferably something that someone else couldn’t. No one thing seemed good enough, though.

And then I remembered the clock in the gym. How everyone said that it couldn’t be smashed.

The window onto Main Hall in the wall behind the waiting chairs had wire outlines of diamonds inside it that suggested it was made of soundproof glass, but it turned out the glass was just sound-resistant. Half a minute after his parents took off, Boystar, from the hall-side, started knocking on the window, and I could definitely hear it. He, however, wasn’t sure if I could — I was sitting in the middle chair, my back to the window — and his knocks grew more and more frantic by the second. He wanted me to turn to see him mouth a threat like “You’re dead” or “I’ll get you” or “I’ll get my friends to get you,” and when attempts to face-save were that conspicuous, it was usually because the person trying to save face was losing even more face by trying — I could think of exceptions (Tyson’s assault on Holyfield’s ear, Simeon and Levi’s massacre of Shechemites), but Boystar’s window-knocking wasn’t an exception — so there wasn’t any way I was turning around.