The Instructions by Adam Levin
At the junction with Main Hall, I stopped to close my eyes and breathe out the dizzy. When I opened them again, I saw Josh Berman’s sidekick—the kid from the Office, what was his name? Goldman, Cory Goldman—getting monkey-in-the-middled by a pair of icthiied Shovers. Bare-necked between them, turning 180s in rapid succession, Cory Goldman shouted, “Give it! Hey hey! Give it back!” as they arced his balled scarf back and forth above his head. I considered stepping in—I really didn’t like him, but yes, he was an Israelite, but—but before I could decide one way or the other, Berman himself emerged from somewhere behind me and barreled at the Shover who had Cory’s scarf. That Shover saw him coming, and before he got floored, tossed the scarf to the other one, who caught it and ran in the direction of B-Hall, Cory on his tail now, and Berman on Cory’s. Shovers they ran past joined in the chase—some of them Israelites, others of them not—and they grabbed at each other, attempting to capture each other’s scarves, and the Shover Berman’d floored got back on his feet, revolved to face B-Hall, as if to join the chase himself, but encountered a bandkid and stripped him of his flute. He twetched on the flute, told the bandkid, “Get gummed,” then touched the flute’s goozed part to the bandkid’s cheek, and the bandkid cried.
That was when someone yanked my hood and I spun. I grabbed his face by the chin. It was Isadore Momo.
“Aye-yay ah-yah!” he shouted. “I am Momo I am Momo!”
I said, Sorry, Momo, you surprised me.
Beside Momo, an even squattier kid, a kid so chubby his forehead had dimples, seemed to be floating above his own shoes.
“He is my friend Beauregard Pate,” Momo explained. “Beauregard Pate is a man of ideas, and when I tell to him the story of our Gym class and the nipple, he is wanting for to tell you something. Tell to Gurion what you tell to me, Beauregard.”
“You are nice!” shouted Beauregard Pate, nearly breathless. “That is first of all!” The Shover who’d performed the goozeflute on the bandkid popped out of the C-Hall crowd-stream then to accidentally-on-purpose elbow Beauregard sideways. I ankleswept him hard, he hit the floor one-kneed, crawled a couple yards fast, then got up and ran. Beauregard seemed to have noticed none of it. “You were nice to Isadore!” Beauregard continued. “And you have all my best wishes! So secondly, I would like to say, God bless you, Gurion Maccabee! All my best wishes are with you!”
Momo slapped Beauregard on the shoulder and Beauregard high-fived him. They tilted their heads in opposite directions and made meaningful-looking eye-contact, as if cuing one another to patter for the benefit of their Broadway audience, like, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Isadore?” “I’m thinking we should turn up the music, Beauregard.” “You mean turn up the music and do a little dancing, Isadore?” “I mean turn up the music and do a lot of dancing, Beauregard!”
The sight of the joy of the chubby always puzzled me. When the chubby had joy, I knew in my heart they were forgetting their chubbiness, but to my eyes it always looked like a celebration of their chubbiness, and I’d feel like an invader and have to go away.
I tried to go away, but Beauregard said, “Wait! I didn’t say what I wanted to say! Please wait?”
I waited. Where was June? The crowd kept pushing by. Beauregard swallowed hard. He said, “We want to ask you if you like gangs commited to social reform. We want to start a gang called Big Ending to end our oppression. We believe that girls would like us more and teachers would stop making faces.”
Why do you believe that? I said.
“Because we believe that girls do not find oppression to be a sexy phenomenon, and we also believe that teachers don’t know they’re making faces when they’re making faces, but that the faces they make encourage our oppressors to oppress us, and therefore we must raise teacher awareness. Will you be the leader of Big Ending?”
I said, Some girls think oppressors are sexy, and some other girls think the oppressed are sexy. I’d never say you shouldn’t start a gang, but you can find a nice girl without starting a gang. And teachers know exactly what they’re doing when they’re making faces at you. Because they’re tall and you’re nice, you think they’re all like your mom who loves you and tries to understand, and some of them are like your mom that way, but most of them aren’t. Most of them think of you the way everyone else thinks of you, because the way everyone else thinks of you is always the easiest way to think of you, so if you want them to stop making faces, you have to stop being oppressed. If you stop being oppressed, then everyone else will think of you different, and so will the teachers who make faces. And they’ll stop making faces.
“So it’s our fault?” said Beauregard. “It’s our fault the teachers make faces?”
No, I said. It’s your enemies’ fault. Stop beating yourself up. It’s your fault that you beat yourself up instead of treating the teachers who make faces like enemies, when that’s what they are. Those teachers are your enemies.
“Will you to lead the Big Ending then?” said Isadore. “If we say the teachers are the enemies?”
I said, No way. I said, Not if you guys are in it.
“But you were so nice to Isadore, Gurion. I thought you were on our side,” Beauregard said.
I am on your side, I said. I said, That’s why I’d never lead Big Ending. The two of you were born to lead it—I’d only get in the way.
They blushed, the red climbing their faces like a juice-spill up mop-strands, and again I tried to go, and again Beauregard said, “Wait!”
And Isadore said, “Will you join us in the Big Ending?”
No, I said. I said, Sometimes I lead things, but I never join them. You have my blessing, though, and if you want Big Ending can be a special arm of the Side of Damage.
“What’s that?”
The thing I lead, I said.
“What is it, though?”
An army.
“What can Big Ending to do for your army?”
I don’t know yet, I said.
“We will do what you want us to do when the time comes.”
To my right, a single cracking sound rose above the crowd-noise in Main Hall. As the three of us revolved, there was another. Maholtz was demonstrating the power of his sap to some seventh-grade girls. He was striking the cinderblock corner of the northern entrance to the cafeteria. “Look out, Jenndy. Stand bank,” he said. “Bank. Come on. Bank. Angshley,” he said, “get Jenndy outta the way, put her over by Jenndy, there. Good,” he said, “now I’m gonnda show you.” Another crack. “Seend?” he said. Another crack. “Seend that?” he said. “It’s just paint,” said an Ashley. “No, it’s wallnd. Don’t you dount me, now.” Crack. “Seend?” said Maholtz. “That’s wallnd. Try and tell me thant’s not wallnd.” “It’s paint.” “I think it’s wall, Ashley.” “It’s not wall, Jenny. If it was wall, it would be a different color than the paint.” “Okay okay,” said Maholtz, “here.” Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. “And?” he said. “Fine,” said the Ashley, “that’s wall. But before it was paint.” “I can bring down wallngs, girlies, is the poind. You want Maholntz to bring downd the wallnds for you? Maholntz is bringing downd the wallnds for you.”
“I am dreaming very badly of a time to see the Bryguy Maholtz writhing with frantic in the throes of pain and anguish,” said Momo.
“Making that dream come true,” said Beauregard Pate, “will be one of Big Ending’s primary objectives.”
I like that, I said.
And again they blushed.
Four sleepy-looking fifth-graders were sitting in the corner of Nurse Clyde’s office, leaning on each other and whispering. I’d never seen them before. They were short, narrow guys and they all had cartoonface: eyes and lips as large as men’s, jaws and noses and chins that were boy-size. You’d expect them to turn blue when cold, green when sick. If you frightened them and their teeth chattered, it would not be surprising. Or if puffs of steam whistled from their earholes when you slapped them.
And I did want to slap them a little, mostly for that r
When I came through the door, they stopped talking but pretended not to see me.
Hello, I said.
They huddled closer and whispered quieter. Then one of them asked, “Who are you? Are you Ben-Wa Wolf? Are you from the Cage?”
I couldn’t tell which one said it. It could have been any of them.
I said, “Where’s Nurse Clyde?”
Two of them said, “With Shpritzy,” a third one pointed at the Quiet Room door, and the fourth said, “Nurse Clyde said anyone who comes in should knock.” Their voices were identical. The office smelled like mouthwash.
I didn’t know who Shpritzy was, but the four guys, on closer inspection, seemed to be more sad than sleepy, so instead of knocking on the Quiet Room door, I sat down next to them, but with a chair between us, and instead of asking who Shpritzy was, I made a joke.
What’s shpritzy? I said.
“‘What’s Shpritzy’!” one of them said. “This boy just said, ‘What’s Shpritzy’!”
Two of the other ones slapped their knees. One of them clapped his hands together.
“Shpritzy’s not a what! He’s our best buddy,” one of them said. “He’s the best guy in the world besides these other guys here, who are also the best,” said another one of them. Then they all gave each other affirmative nods.
That was not a good enough reason to slap them.
I said, Is Shpritzy sick?
“He’s in pain.” “He got choked.” “And he got headlocked.” “He got thrown on the floor a lot.”
What about you guys? I said.
“We got full-nelsoned.” “And tackled.” “And held by the waist.” “Some of us were half-nelsoned for a little while.” “Some of us got our shoulders banged against the sinks during the half-nelsons.” “And some of us got knocked on the wall between the urinals while attempting to lunge at Shpritzy’s attacker.”
It’s good you tried to protect your friend, I said.
“We’re losers.” “We’re not losers, but we don’t know how to fight so we suck.” “We don’t suck, but we suck at fighting, so we’re sissies.” “We’re not sissies, but we’re small guys right now, and when we try to act brave we get held back and Shpritzy gets hurt.” “Ah, Shpritzy!” “Shpritzy’s such a good guy.” “We’re all good guys.” “We are. There’s nothing wrong with us.” “It’s the messed-up people who always want to fight that make us feel like there’s something wrong with us when really we’re fine and it’s these violent people that aren’t fine.” “Even they’re fine. It’s just that they don’t have great buddies like we do. Because they’re messed up.” “And their parents are alcoholics and divorced and very abusive. They’re messed up because they got messed up.” “It’s true. Those other guys are really okay, except that they think violence is okay, which isn’t okay because violence is wrong. But they only think it’s okay and not wrong because they got messed up.”
I said, You’re wrong. I said, Are you messed up?
“No way.” “We’re good.” “We’re nice to people.” “We don’t do violence.”
I said, But violence did you. I said, Violence did you just now, so you should be messed up.
“We’re different.” “It doesn’t work like that.” “We got messed up, but we’re not all messed up by it.” “Not like those other guys.”
How come, though? I said.
“I see what you mean. Do you guys see what this boy means?” “I think I do see what he means. He means that we just got messed up, but still we’re not all messed up.” “I think what he means is the guys who messed us up didn’t mess us up just because they were messed up by someone else, but because of some other reason.” “I think what he’s saying is that even though the people who mess up other people were probably messed up by different other people, it doesn’t mean they have to mess up the first other people since look at how we just got messed up but we’re not messing anyone else up.” “We’re just sitting here being sad about Shpritzy.” “So if we can get messed up and not be all messed up, then why can’t those other guys who messed us up not be all messed up?” “He means it’s their fault that they messed us up.” “He means we shouldn’t be so easy on them.” “We should mess them up ourselves.” “They messed up Shpritzy.” “We should mess them up back, but we can’t.” “But that’s why we were looking for Gurion Maccabee to begin with.” “No, we were looking for Gurion Maccabee to begin with because we wanted protection from getting messed up, not so he would mess up the guys who messed us up.” “We said to each other that it was protection we wanted, but we wanted him to mess up those other guys a little bit.” “We only wanted him to mess them up a little bit?” “No. We wanted, a little bit, for Gurion to mess them up a lot.” “But we called it protection.” “Right. We called it protection, when really it was mess-up.” “Are you Ronrico Asparagus?”
You’re looking for Asparagus, too? I said.
“Well we know he’s in the Cage.” “And so he knows Gurion.” “Are you from the Cage?” “Do you know Gurion?”
I said, Sure, but what makes you think he’ll mess these guys up for you?
“Gurion is the Lion Hammer!” “He brings justice.” “And he likes to mess people up.” “And we’re Jews.” “Our God is Adonai.” “Our homeland is Israel.” “Saturday’s our day off.” “We’re men at thirteen.” “And Gurion protects the Jews from the Canaanites and the Romans.” “And from the Jews who act against the Jews.” “And the righteous from the tyrants.” “And the kind from the wrongus.” “Except he doesn’t say ‘Jews.’” “He talks about Israelites cause of Hitler.” “Cause Hitler killed Jews.” “And Nebuchadnezzar did too.” “And Abdul Nasser.” “And Yasser Arafat.” “Haman.” “Saddam Hussein.” “Ismail Haniyeh.” “Stalin the Russian, in Russia and Poland.” “And lots of peasants everywhere.” “The Israelites became Jews and people kept killing them.” “Like in Night.” “And The Painted Bird.” “And the Olympics.” “And Tel Aviv and Gilo.” “There’s this Jewish school called Solomon Schecter and Gurion went there til he got kicked out because the principal thought he was the messiah. Then he went to Hebrew Day and got kicked out of there for teaching the Jews they were Israelites. Nathan Feingold told us.” “What he didn’t tell us, though, was that Gurion goes here.” “We only found that out yesterday!” “We think we found it out yesterday, at least.” “Well, we sort of found it out a couple months ago.” “If we found it out yesterday, then we’d already found it out a couple months ago when we heard this rhyme that you probably heard that goes, ‘Next stop Frontier motel, the place where Gurion’s fat black dad who fell dwells.’” “It was this kid Brad Snad who was singing the rhyme.” “And Gurion’s a really uncommon name.” “So we told Nathan Feingold about it.” “That a boy named Gurion went to our school.” “And we told him the rhyme.” “And Nathan Feingold, he told us, ‘Gurion’s dad’s not the black one. It’s his mom who’s black. And no way Gurion lives at a motel.’” “And that seemed very true.” “Because this Gurion’s dad is a famous lawyer.” “What lawyer lives in a motel?” “Except then about a week later, there was Brad Snad again, talking about Gurion.” “He told us about this kid Kyle McElroy getting stomped by Gurion for messing with some retarded kid called Lucas.” “But this time, when Snad told us about Gurion, he also said Gurion’s last name.” “Or at least he tried to.” “We thought he tried to.” “What Snad said was, ‘That Gurion MacIntyre is something.’” “And that made us think about how once he called Jerry Seinfeld Gary Steinfield.” “Snad did.” “This Snad is a kid who says lie-berry for library.” “And William Jeffenface Clim-ton and Gustav Clint.”
I said, Nathan Fein—
But they had only stopped to take a breath.
“And so we thought that, in the language of Snad, MacIntyre had to be Maccabee.” “And Maccabee is almost as uncommon of a name as Gurion.” “And so the combination of the two already uncommon names Gurion and Maccabee…” “Because that was the Schechter Gurion’s last name, Macca-bee.” “Gurion Maccabee was his name.” “So we told Nathan Feingold.” “And Nathan told us to give it up.” “He said, ‘Give it up. Gurion Maccabee does not go to your school. He is either in prison or dead, or working for the Mossad who are disinforming people that he’s in prison or dead so he can go deep cover.’” “And that sounded a little crazy.” “About the Mossad doing that.” “And Nathan is our friend, so we believed that he believed it, but that didn’t mean that we had to believe it.” “So we asked around.” “We asked other Israelites at school.” “We know almost all of them.” “And they all know about Gurion.” “The Gurion who Nathan told us about, that is.” “We asked around to see if any of them had ever seen a boy named Gurion at Aptakisic.” “And some of them had, and the ones who hadn’t—some of those ones had done the same thing as us.” “They’d asked around.” “And we found out a bunch of stuff from asking around.” “And what we found out made it seem like Nathan might be right, after all.” “Because first of all, we found out that Gurion was in the Cage.” “And the Gurion we were looking for was a scholar and why would Mr. Brodsky put a scholar in the Cage?” “The Cage is for retarded people who don’t act right and future killers and con-men.” “No offense, if you’re from the Cage.” “But that’s who it’s for.” “Not scholars.” “And then, from those Aptakisic Israelites who had seen Gurion on the bus or in the halls, we found out that he hung out with Benji Nakamook and Vincie Portite and did not look half-black.” “And the Gurion we were looking for was supposed to be half-black, and Nakamook and Portite are not the kinds of guys Gurion would hang out with.” “Those are mean, scary guys who are not scholars, but please don’t tell them we told you that if you know them.” “The meanest and the scariest.” “They’re not even friends with Bam Slokum is how mean and scary.” “And then plus, the main point is there’s all these Israelites at Aptakisic.” “There’s, like, forty or fifty.” “And that’s just the guys.” “And we know all of them, or almost all of them, and none of them had ever even spoken to this Aptakisic Gurion.” “And so we figured that even if Brodsky or whoever would put our Gurion in the Cage, and even if, for some reason, our Gurion would be friends with guys like Nakamook and Portite, there’s no way Gurion would go to school with all of us Israelites and not, like, lead us.” “Let alone not even talk to any of us.” “And much less allow kids to sing that rhyme about him living at a motel that they’re always singing. I’m sure you’ve heard it.” “And plus it would be too lucky.” “For us to go to school with Gurion.” “That was really the main thing.” “We’re good guys, all of us, but we’re not that lucky of guys when it comes to certain things like being strong.” “And basketball.” “And girls.” “We’re only lucky because of how we’ve got such great best buddies.” “That’s pretty much the only way.” “And cause our parents aren’t alcoholic abuser people.” “That too.” “But the kind of lucky we’d be if we went to school with Gurion is the exact opposite kind of lucky of the lucky we usually are.” “We’ve never been lucky that way.” “So we decided Nathan Feingold must’ve been right after all.” “But then yesterday afternoon, we get this email from who else but Nathan Feingold himself.” “And Nathan Feingold tells us that on Tuesday night, some kid saw Gurion on a train and Gurion talked to the kid and even did something with the kid’s hat, so he wasn’t dead or in prison after all.” “And if he was in the Mossad, he wasn’t deep cover.” “And Nathan told us that if we heard anything more about this Aptakisic Gurion, we should alert him at once.” “And now, after what just happened to Shpritzy, the timing seems fateful.” “Especially because it was on our way to the computer room that we all stopped to pee.” “We were with Shpritzy, at his locker, right?” “Good old Shpritzy.” “This was just right before lunch started.” “This was barely half an hour ago.” “We were with Shpritzy at his locker and Brad Snad came over to us and told us that this Aptakisic Gurion just saved that chubnik Isadore Momo from that yutzy Blonde Lonnie who’s always saying how he’s funny.” “But he isn’t funny.” “He isn’t funny at all.” “And he’s got three testicles, but no one ever said so, until Isadore Momo did, which got Lonnie pissed.” “Lonnie was gonna tear Momo to pieces, but Gurion was there and he cooled Lonnie’s jets with a punch to the chest.” “And, clutching his nipples, Lonnie fell in the pool!” “But he didn’t drown, but he almost did, except Desormie gave him the kiss of life, which saved him.” “But only barely.” “And so as soon as Snad finished telling us all of that, we decided to go to the computer room in the library.” “To email Nathan, who goes to Hebrew Day.” “We didn’t know for sure, but we thought they probably let you check your email at Lunch at Hebrew Day.” “And we didn’t know when Lunch was over there, but we thought it might be the same time as here, so we wanted to get that team-email out to Nathan Feingold as soon as possible.” “Post-haste.” “But we all stopped to pee on the way to the computer room so we wouldn’t be distracted by the need to pee if we ended up needing to pee.” “And that’s when that jerk attacked Shpritzy.” “While we peed!” “He said Shpritzy bumped into him, but it wasn’t true so Shpritzy wouldn’t apologize.” “And then the jerk attacked.” “And then we attacked.” “And then we got messed up.” “And the jerk told us, ‘Make sure to say hi to Josh Berman for me. Make sure he knows I think his scarf’s real sharp.’ And his jerks friends laughed.” “And I was all, like, ‘What’s Berman’s scarf have to do with us? That’s Shover stuff and it’s not like we’re Shovers. And we’re friends with Berman, yeah, but it’s not like we’re buddies.’” “I was all like that, too.” “We were all all like that.” “But it wasn’t like we said it.” “We couldn’t have said it.” “It was too hard to talk.” “I was choking on spit.” “I was holding my guts.” “I was holding my shoulder.” “I was choking on something.” “And now we’re here.” “And Shpritzy’s a mess.” “And the email to Nathan has been back-burnered.” “Why do you keep leaning forward with your fists balled up?” “Why does he look so tense?”