The Instructions by Adam Levin
“Fair enough, but it’s beside the point. Let’s forget the phrase ‘act like one is in a cage.’ Let’s focus instead on ‘endangering others.’ Can we do that?”
I chinned the air at my shoes = It’s your office.
“Thank you. Now. Were you to qualify your statement—were you, as I suggested earlier, to say, ‘Some students in the Cage endanger others, at least in part, because they are in the Cage,’ I could not dismiss that, not responsibly. Were you to say ‘some’ instead of ‘all,’ and add the ‘at least in part’—after all, everyone in the Cage was originally put in the Cage for having, in some way, endangered others while outside the Cage—it would be my responsibility to ask, ‘How many?’ And yesterday, on my drive home, I imagined a dialogue with you in which you did say ‘some,’ and added the ‘in part.’ You said ‘some,’ and ‘in part,’ and I asked you ‘How many?’ And you said, ‘Five or six.’ You said, ‘Five or six students endanger others, at least in part, because they—the five or six—are in the Cage.’ And I said, ‘That’s eight to ten percent of the Cage who endanger others, at least in part, because they are in the Cage; that’s one percent or less of Aptakisic. That is not troubling. That is something to celebrate. That is a system that works for ninety-nine percent of the student population.’ You see, it’s about math, Gurion, it always is. Yet I thought maybe I wasn’t being fair. Maybe, in our imaginary conversation, I had formed your argument of straw. So I rewound. I rewound the conversation so that when I asked how many, you doubled the number. And still your argument was weak. So I rewound again and had you triple the number. Yet again, your argument was weak. I had you increase the number by increments of eight, then ten. I had you increase it until you were back to ‘All the students in the Cage endanger others, at least in part, because they are in the Cage’; until you were up to forty students. Forty students is roughly seven-point-five percent of the school, I reasoned, which would mean the system worked for over ninety percent of the school. And though a ninety-two-point-five percent success rate is not as admirable as a ninety-nine percent success rate, it is nothing to scoff at. But this is where the revelation happened.
“You, the imaginary you, said two very intelligent things to me in succession. First you said, ‘Mr. Brodsky, you are rationalizing the abandonment of seven-point-five percent of your students.’ And I saw that you were right. And it stung me, Gurion, it did—even in fantasy the idea stung. I am an idealist, a do-gooder, I have always been. I am not ashamed of it. I am, in fact, proud of it. Do-gooders who disregard practicality, however, are a dime a dozen. It seemed impossible to reconcile the sting with the ninety-two-point-five percent success rate. So I wasn’t perfect, I thought, but no one was, I thought, and it’s nothing short of hubris to strive for perfection as if it were attainable. It is hubristic to fail to leave well enough alone. Who is to say that if I changed the system, I would make it better? Who is to say I wouldn’t make it worse? Could it be anything other than selfish, I wondered, to take such a risk? But then you said, ‘Last month, only five or six of the students in the Cage endangered the school, at least in part, because they were in the Cage. This month it’s forty. The danger has spread and the danger will continue to spread.’ And that, Gurion: That was a strong argument for change, an argument based in math, however imaginary. And this is what I decided, in my car, with an imaginary you as my audience: I decided that the danger needed to stop spreading, and I saw that it was not the Cage itself that caused most students in the Cage to endanger our school, but those original five or six—that original one percent. That one percent truly wishes harm on the school. ‘Damage’ as the graffiti would have it. The Cage doesn’t fail them so much as they fail the Cage. The rest of you—and I am counting you among the rest (though exceptional among the rest, which I’ll get to momentarily)—the rest lack true malice. You all have good intentions, you want to be good, but the one percent has filthied up your environment, has not only made school feel unsafe, but has made it dangerous, and you can’t help but respond with dangerous behavior, for dangerous behavior begats more of the same. It does so by means of undermining trust in authority. You look around at all the dangerous behavior… You look around and feel unsafe, and you think, ‘The school is failing to protect me. I must protect myself. I must blend in with my dangerous surroundings.’ And when you get in trouble for it, for blending in, when you get in trouble for engaging in what seem to you to be acts of self-protection, you think, ‘Not only is the school failing to protect me, but it is attacking me. It is as hostile toward me as those who initially made me feel unsafe.’
“And this is the kind of thinking I want to put a stop to. I must put a stop to it before the damage becomes permanent. So I’ve decided that, along with a few other measures, a goodwill gesture on my part is in order. A gesture to show all of you that the school is on your side, is here to protect you. That we are not here to punish you for acting in ways that you feel you must act in order to remain safe. Thus: amnesty. Amnesty to show all of you that I know—that Aptakisic knows—that you are in a compromised position, that you are not acting out of malice, but rather attempting, however misguidedly, to survive. A goodwill gesture to show you that we understand you: that is the beginning. That will grant us all a fresh start. And I believe this schoolwide rash of misbehavior, the fistfights and detention-skipping as well as the graffiti, and this nonsense with the scarves—because they have not for the most part been committed by the malicious few, but the endangered many… I believe this misbehavior will cease. By the end of next week, the graffiti will have been cleaned up, and by the end of the month we’ll have security cameras installed throughout school. Those few malicious students who are causing all these problems will be neutralized, if not expelled. The good ones will feel safe again.”
Here, Brodsky popped a toasted-coconut donut hole. He chewed it vividly behind an all-lips smile, nodding his head with each clench of his jaw, his chomping and swallowing way louder than necessary. I knew it wasn’t possible to like donut-holes that much, but what I wasn’t sure of was whether he was he trying, with his dumbshow, to infect me with enthusiasm, or if he meant to cue approval from me that he believed already imminent. Either way, he was taking too much for granted.
I said, Why’d you just tell me all that stuff?
He showed me his pointer and his Adam’s apple bobbed. He sucked a flake of stuck coconut off the front of his teeth. “I thought you’d be happy to hear it,” he said.
Why would I be happy to hear it? I said.
His big pink head deluminesced a little, but except for that loss of candle-power, the question didn’t seem to deflate him like I wanted it to. “To begin with, as I began before, you played a big role in my decision-making process, and credit is due to you. If I failed to express that—”
I didn’t ask you for amnesty, I said. I said, I definitely didn’t ask you for cameras.
“Not by name,” said Brodsky, “but in spirit, I think. I’m not certain, here, why you want to deny that. I heard how you helped out in the Cage yesterday, and your actions speak volumes.”
What exactly do you think my actions say?
“They tell me you want us to be on good terms, that you want—as we discussed at our meeting yesterday—you want to help me. That you want to make Aptakisic safer.”
I think my actions might’ve bumbled their lines a little, I said. What I did yesterday was demonstrate that I could help you—that if you get rid of the Cage, I will help you.
“Did you not believe me when I said I wasn’t bargaining, Gurion?”
He seemed more entertained by this than he should have.
That was before you knew I could do what you pretended to believe I could do, I said.
“No, Gurion. I pretended nothing yesterday. I reached out to you, and I did so in good faith. I was honest with you.”
Reach out by getting rid of the Cage.
“It can’t happen.”
Fire Botha, I said.
Tch, I said.
“After school, yesterday, after I’d discussed with him what you and I had talked about regarding Scott Mookus, he described what you’d done in the Cage. He said he’d never before seen the students behave so well.”
He acted more like he’d never seen them behave so badly, I said.
“He said that, too. He even admitted some culpability for the chair-scooting, but claimed that you, Gurion, and I am quoting directly, ‘have shown him the error of his ways.’ I was, I think, even more surprised than you look right now. Mr. Voltz and Mrs. Sepper were also impressed. But where they left off, Mr. Botha did not. He suggested that you might be ready to move on. He thinks you no longer require what the Cage has to offer.”
I nearly jumped from my chest, but I swallowed me down. My voice stayed level.
He just wants to be done with me, I said. I said, He’s trying to railroad me.
“Railroading usually leads toward locked rooms, Gurion.”
Are you in on it? I said.
“What a way to speak. Back up a second. I understand you believe yourself and Mr. Botha exist in some irrevocable state of enmity, but I’m certain you’ve got it wrong. After we discussed Scott Mookus, and after Mr. Botha finished praising your behavior, he, without prompting, explained that he understood the reasons behind this scooting thing you were all doing.”
You guys understand a whole lot, I said. There’s so much understanding going on—
“He said that yesterday morning, during announcements, Scott had told everyone that he would be singing with Boystar, and Mr. Botha had not believed it—he thought Scott was confused. And he had assumed that the rest of you had thought so too. But. He said that now he realized that all along, the lot of you had known that Scott would sing, and that that was why you had reacted with the scooting behavior when he took away your pep rally privileges. And then, Gurion, then Mr. Botha told me that he thought hearing Scott sing at the pep rally could only be good for the morale of the rest of the Cage students, and so he would allow all of you to go to the pep rally. And I did not prompt him to say any of these things. He said it all out of the goodness of his heart. What do you think now?”
I think he warped everything that happened yesterday, I said, including the basic sequence of events. I think he just wants me out of the Cage. I said, He’s trying to wash his hands of me.
“And I’m sure you’re incorrect, but let’s say you’re right. That you’re right about his motives. What if I remove you from the Cage, anyway?”
Now you’re threatening me? I said. I said, I thought you were reaching out.
“And I thought I’d just offered you a bargain. What quarrel could you possible have?”
It’s no bargain to keep me from my friends, I said.
“Maybe it is,” he said. “From some of them. Maybe some of your friends hinder your education, put you at risk. Your father seems to think so—that’s what he told me over the phone the other day. I think separation from them will be good for you. You’ll make new friends.”
I can make new friends whenever I want, I said.
“Be sensible,” he said. “Who’re those pastries in the napkin for?”
They’re donut holes, I said.
“They’re for your girlfriend. She’s very talented, by the way, June Watermark, a very intelligent girl. And more to the point: she’s not in the Cage. She’s in all of the gifted classes we offer for seventh-graders, classes you would certainly be placed in, were you not in the Cage.”
I said, You can’t use June against me.
“Against you, Gurion? If anything, I’d think she’d play carrot to the Cage’s stick.”
Don’t give away your carrots, I thought.
I said, Stop trying to arrange me.
“I’m offering you an incentive to be good,” he said. “Yes,” he said, slapping the desk, “I wasn’t certain before, but talking through this with you—now I see I was right. You need an incentive, not a deterrent. Deterrents backfire with you. They make you resent us. This is the right incentive. It’s all over your face. You should see yourself. I’ll file the papers this afternoon. You’ll be out of the Cage on Monday. You won’t be going back in, either. And we’ll put you on the regular STEP system. We will no longer damn you with our low expectations.”
I said, I’ll get expelled by the end of the week.
But the words sounded obligatory, even to me.
“I hope that’s not true,” he told me. “I believe that after the weekend, after some time to think, you’ll see this is a good decision and you’ll be a mensch about it. That said, I will not tolerate you holding yourself hostage. If you try to get back in the Cage by misbehaving, you will be expelled. I’ll explain that to your father, and he’ll be fine with it, I’m certain.”
I stared speechlessly at the wingnut on his desk. It shined bright without meaning, and my thoughts spun, tractionless. Hold myself hostage? Was that even possible?
Brodsky opened the door for me. “Ms. Watermark,” he said.
June rose from her chair. We brushed wrists as we passed, and she whispered in my ear: “The Israelites live!” Then she looked at Eliyahu and he turned up his thumbs, and only then did I realize June had spoken in Hebrew.
Smiling, Eliyahu said: “Nice girl, this redhead, who tells you you’re smart and handsome in the language of the patriarchs.” He was sitting at the desk nearest Pinge’s. While Pinge wrote my hallpass, he took off his hat and flipped it upside down. Two rolls of pennies were hidden in the sweatband. Affixed to the crown by tape was his weapon.
“He’s a pretty good buddy, this guy,” said Pinker. “He’s no shmeckel.”
I was glad. There was no way around it. There’d be no more tapelines. No more Face Forward rule. No more blindsiding wings extending from the walls of carrels. No more carrels. I could make out with June at recess. We could trade notes in classrooms where only one robot presided. Steal kisses. Make faces at each other across aisles between desks.
Wasn’t I glad? Was there no way around it? Why was I looking for some way around it?
Why should I care what Botha intended? Why should I care if he got to save face? If he behaved in a way that was to my benefit, what did it matter if it was also to his? Wasn’t that the ideal, anyway? Wasn’t it better to make allies of your enemies than it was to defeat them? Maybe allies was overstating the case, but even still: wasn’t it better to achieve a steady détente with your enemies than it was for the two of you to suffer? And maybe détente was overstating it, too, steady or no—but a ceasefire? Not so much a de-escalation of hostility, but an end to hostilities? No more hostile acts? That was understating it, actually, ceasefire. This was better than a ceasefire. At least a little. It was more secure. The lines we’d have to cross to bring new hostilities weren’t abstract—they were walls. The same walls inside of which we’d been trapped with one another for ten weeks. Now they’d be between us, physical blockages. I’d rarely see him, if ever. The Cage, after all, was a cage.
It is true that my exile would leave the Side of Damage leaderless, at least til someone else stepped up; and true that Botha would almost certainly regain the ground he lost on Thursday, ground now occupied by my friends. That was the suck of it, but this was the thing: what could I do about it? That was the thing. What could I do about it? Brodsky wasn’t bluffing. I would not be allowed back into the Cage. It wasn’t up to me. It was either expulsion or June, and expulsion would be good for none of us.
So why did I want to resist it, this gladness? Why, in Main Hall, was I dragging my feet as if beaten? Was I faking it? For whose benefit? For my own benefit? Was I playing a role, like Brodsky’d implied? Can you fake yourself out? I did feel fakey, but I did not believe you could fake yourself out. I’d never believed anyone could fake himself out. You could be misinformed, you could fail to see the truth, but I didn’t see how it was possible,
My thoughts kept spinning, and I wasn’t solving anything, only getting H. I needed to do something, or maybe to prove something—something concrete and simple, something effective. I needed something to focus on, something to focus me; I needed to take aim at something and nail it. The clock in the gym.
I turned into B-hall, tearing down streamers, shredding pep rally posters and Boystar flyers, uncovering WE DAMAGE WEs. I hid in the central doorway and looked. Behind centercourt, fifteen chairs were shaped roughly like a half-flattened V, like the body of a crow in a stickman universe. A line of five chairs formed its east wing; its west was two such lines set parallel. In this west one sat Blonde Lonnie, smashed-nosed, plus all of the B-team minus Maholtz. Dominating the whole tableau was a scaffolding rig strung with light-cans and -panels and a pair of spotlights. The rig appeared to hold the laws of physics in contempt: Twenty feet high and thirty across, it stood on two legs of thin steel piping with speakers for ankles and telescoping feet—four for each leg—which should have locked into something heavy below them, something stable to stay them, a pillar of concrete or lead, but didn’t. They didn’t lock into anything at all.
The bleachers, extended, blocked my forward periphery. I stealthed under the eastern ones to scope more.
Maholtz and Slokum stood behind the west hoop. Eight chairs formed a row between the northern sideline and the lowest bench of the western bleachers: a special gallery in which a cheerleader now sat, stealing glances at Bam and chewing her nails. Slokum cracked his knuckles and wrote in a notebook. He looked smaller to me than the last time I saw him. His face was turned away, and maybe that’s why, but his back seemed slouchy and a lot less wide. I remembered how I’d helped him to make fun of Nakamook, and I didn’t want to think of that, and looked away.
I crossed the doorway’s-width gap between the two sets of bleachers. Ducked beneath the western set to see what lay east.