Adam Levin - The Instructions

Owing to Recommendation 1, Gurion should be re-promoted to Grade 7, the work of which is better suited to his intellectual abilities than that of Grade 5. Whether or not Gurion’s disruptive and violent behaviors have historically resulted from the social awkwardness of being surrounded by students two-to-three years his senior is irrelevant as long as Gurion is in the Cage program, where 5th-, 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-graders are mixed together willy-nilly, anyway.

In addition to twice-weekly Group Therapy, Gurion should attend once-weekly individual Therapy with me, Sandra Billings, Student Social Work Intern. His treatment plan should focus primarily on anger-management and the prevention of the onset of Antisocial Personality Disorder via psychodynamic methods we’ve been studying in your (Professor Lakey’s!) class.

Like so many other students in the Cage, Gurion should henceforth be disciplined according to what is unofficially termed the “modified” STEP System. If this exception is not made and Gurion continues to behave as he has over the course of the probational/observational period, he will be expelled from Aptakisic within two days. If he is expelled, we cannot help him.

Regarding the attached detention assignments (about which, in obedience to this essay’s page limit, hardly anything has been said): Gurion should be permitted to continue using them as he has in the attached examples — as an aid to fantasy and a tool for venting.

Detention ended at 4:35, but the buses wouldn’t leave until 4:50, in case band and the teams got out of practice late. Usually we’d wait on the curb of the bus circle playing slapslap even if the buses were there already, which they were that day, but it started raining right after we came outside, and all my friends raced. I didn’t like to get rained on either, especially not without a hood in November, but I’d known some girls who didn’t mind getting rained on, and even liked it, and I always enjoyed how those girls would stroll in the rain like it was the cleanest, nicest blessing, and how they’d sometimes stop and face the sky, winking. I had never seen June in the rain, but I thought she would be that kind of girl, and that kind of girl made fun of you when you ran from the rain, so I walked slow to Bus 3, and even paused a couple times to look at the clouds. I didn’t know if June was watching me, just that revolving my head to check would be a mistake if she was, but Vincie, who was sitting on the blocky stairway in the bus and breathing heavy from how he’d sprinted to get there, was staring straight at my face and saying, “You sexy nature boy! You’re such a dreamy—” when cherry dum-dum juice got swallowed down his wrong passage and he choked a little and raised his hands and coughed. Marnie the heavy bus-driver slapped his back. Her cheeks and neck-meat shook and flapped and I looked away.

The value of the wheel-well seats on the bus was different from school to school. At Schechter and Northside Hebrew Day, getting a wheel-well seat was prized, but at Martin Luther King Middle no one cared, and at Aptakisic it was as generally dreaded as sitting bitch in a compact between a pair of bickering people who spit. The argument against the wheel-well seat was that the hump prevented you from stretching your legs, but — maybe because I went to Schechter first — the hump, to me, meant less a lack of leg-room than a bonus of floor, so I always preferred a wheel-well seat. It is true that you had to sit with your knees at the height of your neck, but at the same time, if you leaned back, you could push your knees against the seat in front of you while resting your feet atop the hump’s peak, which gave you a warm, protected feeling that you could not get in a regular schoolbus seat, unless maybe you were very tall. To have just been rained on at the end of a schoolday pleasantly boosted this fortified feeling, and that afternoon, I got sleepy fast.

Vincie sat across the aisle from me, spreading a hole in his seatback’s vinyl with his thumbs. He pulled a piece of foam out. He said, “You ever set this stuff on fire? It smells.”

I said, When you were coughing just now—

“Stop being so fucken quiet. I can’t hear you.”

I said, When Marnie was slapping you, your hand didn’t jump to your eye.

He said, “So what?”

I said, Don’t act sensitive — can you fight Thai-style?

He said, “Nakamook showed me a little.”

I said, Get in the stance.

Vincie shoved the foam back in the hole, then stood bent in the aisle and held his fists fingers-forward at forehead-level.

I slapped my thigh loudly. Then I slapped the seat loudly. Then I yelled Flinch! at him.

He said, “That’s not cool, Gurion.”

I said, When it’s above your eye, your hand doesn’t jump to your eye.

He said, “Really?”

I said, Flinch!

It didn’t jump.

Vincie said, “I’m cured!”

I said, Wait. I said, Stand American-style.

He dropped his fists to chin-level.

I waited a couple seconds, then I said, Flinch!

His right fist opened, revolved, and covered his eye.

“Fuck!” Vincie shouted, and his hand repeated itself.

“Vincie!” said Marnie.

“Marnie!” said Vincie.

“Okay!” Marnie said.

“Okay, Marnie!” said Vincie.

The hand had repeated itself four more times. Then the sky got white outside the window and thunder struck and the hand repeated itself.

I said, You’re not cured, but you can fight Thai-style no problem.

Vincie slumped when he sat. He said, “I’m suck at Thai-style. Benji throws his elbow at my chin and lands it every time. I can’t see to side-step. Also when he does the knee-to-kidney thing, too — and it hurts.”

I said, But that’s Benji, so it doesn’t matter.

Some bandkids got on the bus and I waved hello to them. They sat down fast, clanking instrument cases.

“Why do you wave to them?” said Vincie. “They never wave back. They’re scared of you.”

I said, But they shouldn’t be scared of me, and I’ve always waved to them, since before I knew they were scared of me. If I stop waving to them now, they’ll get even more scared of me because they’ll wonder, “Why doesn’t Gurion wave anymore?”

Vincie said, “Maybe I should wave to them, then.”

I said, But they’re scared of you, too, and you never wave to them. I said, If you wave to them now, it’ll be like if I stopped waving to them.

He said, “That’s what I’m saying. You stop waving and I’ll start — it’ll be funny.”

We aren’t Shovers, I said.

“You don’t have to be a Shover to enjoy a scared bandkid.” He held his hands above his head and told me, “Watch this.” Then he yelled to the bandkids, “Hello! Hello!”

They ducked their heads.

“Sorry!” said one of them.

“We’re sorry!” said another one.

Vincie said to me, “I think that’s pretty funny.”

It was pretty funny, but laughing felt cruel. We weren’t Shovers.

We aren’t Shovers, I said to Vincie.

Don’t worry about Vincie! I said to the bandkids. He isn’t a Shover! Neither am I!

“We’re really really sorry!” they said, all of them still ducking.

“Really!” they said.

“Sorry!” they said.

And I stopped feeling cruel because why did they keep apologizing? Maybe they did something to me that I didn’t know about and they were scared that I found out about it, but probably they did nothing to me and so their apology was a kind of lie. And I’d told them not to worry — but it was like they couldn’t hear the words I said, just my voice that scared them.