The Instructions (155 page)

Tighten his bindings and stand him up.

They tightened the bindings at his wrists and his ankles. The phone buzzed again.

TALK. END.

Boystar was vertical.

Again the phone buzzed.

This time I answered.

You can see us, I said, and you want us to stop. You’re calling to warn us to stop, I said. So what? I said. I’m warning
you
to stop.

I ended the call, took two steps forward, and the soldiers followed. With my right arm, I reached around Boystar’s right shoulder. I seized him by the throat and pulled him against me, dug the thumb of my left hand deep in his armpit. His knees went weak, and he began to get lower. I clawed his throat hard and he rose.

You stay on your feet, I said. We’re taking this slow. You walk when I push you, stop when I don’t. Do anything other than what I want, and I’ll tear your windpipe clear off its moorings. Even if they save you, you’ll never sing again.

“I’ll do what you say,” he said, vocal cords grinding.

Now, I told the soldiers.

They opened the doors.

1473

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SCHOLARS SCHOLARS SCHOLARS

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD SCHOLARS SCHOLARS SCHOLARS TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

SCHOLARS SCHOLARS SCHOLARS

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

SCHOLARS SCHOLARS SCHOLARS

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

SCHOLARS SCHOLARS

EMMANUEL

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

COPS/NEWSCREWS

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD TWO-HILL FIELD

RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD

RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD RAND ROAD

B

C O R D O N

US

LE

CI

PARKING

RCLE BUS CIRCLE BUS CIRC

BARRICADE BARRICADE BARRICADE BARRICADE

LOT

WALKWAYWALKWAY

WALKWAYWALKWAY

C O R D O N

PARKING LOT

WALLWALLWALL

WALLWALLWALL

WALL WALL WALL

WALL WALL WALL WALL WALL WALL

*

CLASSROOM

SOLDIERS SOLDIERS

SOLDIERS SOLDIERS

יי

LIBRARY

SOLDIERS SOLDIERS

SOLDIERS SOLDIERS

יי

MAIN HALL MAIN HALL MAIN HALL

MAIN HALL MAIN HALL MAIN HALL MAIN HALL

FRONT ENTRANCE

GUARDS

MAIN HALL MAIN HALL MAIN HALL MAIN HALL MAIN HALL

MAIN HALL MAIN HALL MAIN HALL

B

B

HALL

HALL

LOW HILL

VALLEY

A-HALL
N S
C-HALL

W

2-HALL SIDE ENTRANCE

GYM

1474

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THE INSTRUCTIONS

Outside was near freezing, but the wind blew warmer. The sky hung low and greenish. Ten scholars stood the hillcrest, Emmanuel foremost, the others out of sight in the valley behind them, four cops and five news crews on the slope before them. Midway between the front entrance and the scholars, the hundred-cop barricade, facing the field, stretched north-to-south in two even rows. To the barricade’s south was the parking lot cordon; thirty cops strong, ten to a side, bracketing off two-hundred-some people—evacuated students and staff and faculty, Aptakisic parents and Stevenson truants, a few jobless locals and newspaper jour-nalists. West of the cordon, where the lot got wider, cruisers and firetrucks, strobing blue and red, were jammed fender to fender with hospital-, news-, and armored police-vans.

The hailstones we stepped on squeaked as they crunched.

The rock salt skittered and pecked at our ankles, caught in our treads, jumped into our shoes. We’d traveled a yard when the scholars started shouting, and the cops of the barricade’s west row revolved, nightsticks drawn, faces obscured—the spinners on the cruisers glaring their visors. Boystar’s face was dripping on my knuckles. A helicopter, white, hovered high above the high hill, its flank stenciled black with a stylized eye; it wasn’t police but the CBS News. A magnifed voice that might have been Persphere’s crackled from a speaker on one of the cruisers, giving orders in a code that didn’t sound real: “BLUE ALPHA BLUNTBACK DOMINO CANOPY.” A mom behind the cordon wailed, “Please don’t shoot!” Other parents in the park-1475

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ing lot took up the cry. No one seemed sure who was being addressed.

We stopped moving forward three yards out the door. All the scholars in the field were shouting my name. Emmanuel revolved and quieted them.

Resting her elbow on the edge of my shoulder, chest pressed to my back, her breath on my ear, June held the soundgun in front of my head.

Trigger, I said.

She triggered the soundgun.

GOOD YONTIF, I said. PUT YOUR WEAPONS AWAY.

“Good yontif!” yelled the scholars, and they pocketed their weapons. Rather, those on the crest did; those in the valley weren’t able to hear me. Emmanuel turned and relayed my instruction.

“Good yontif!” the scholars in the valley all shouted.

I NEED YOU TO HELP ME PERFORM A GREAT

MITZVAH. I NEED YOU TO HELP ME PROTECT US, I said.

“We will!” said the scholars atop the hill.

Emmanuel turned, relayed what I’d said.

“We’ll help!” shouted those in the valley.

KEEP YOUR HANDS IN PLAIN VIEW AND COME

DOWN THE HILL. STOP WHEN EMMANUEL GETS TO

THE ROAD.

Emmanuel turned, performed one last relay. The cops on the hillside unholstered their clubs. In columns, the scholars descended the slope, their hands at their sides, palms bare as newborns. The 1476

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hillside cops backpedaled, kept shouting, “Halt!” til one of them stumbled, another one caught him, and all four fled west to the road’s farther shoulder. The newsmen tread slower, continuing to report, aiming mikes at Emmanuel, getting no comment.

“TEACUP NINER WINE NIGHTINGALE CRAYON,”

came the voice through the speaker that was mounted on the cruiser. The code incited nothing from the cops of the barricade; nothing, at least, that was visible.

As the news crews backed up into Rand’s middle lanes, the cops from the hillside—now on the shoulder farther from Emmanuel—

ordered them south to the cordon. The news crews faked deafness, or were slow to react, or weren’t slow to react and didn’t fake deafness, but were slow
enough
to react, or deaf-seeming enough, for the cops on the shoulder to vacate the path between the scholars and the barricade to enforce their orders without looking as if they were running away, or so they must have thought, for that’s what they did. They escorted the news crews over to the cordon, and once that was finished, they didn’t return.

“FIVE-TEN FORTY-NINE BALSAM CLANDESTINE.”

The barricade held. It didn’t even twitch.

Emmanuel arrived at the side of the road. The scholars stretched back past the high hill’s west foot. The columns were three rows deep up the incline.

PERSPHERE, I said, OR WHOEVER’S IN CHARGE:

THIS IS NO KIND OF SHOWDOWN. ELOHEINU IS WITH

US. YOU’VE GOT THIRTY SECONDS OF VOLITION

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REMAINING. PART THE BARRICADE AND NO ONE

GETS HURT.

“COLD RUN REDNINE GANGSTAND GANGSTAND.”

SCHOLARS, I said, THE ROMANS CAN SEE YOU. IT

ISN’T ENOUGH. PRAY THE SH’MA AT THE TOPS OF

YOUR LUNGS.

Mournful-sounding Hebrew arose from the field. A second white helicopter chopped overhead; this one’s flank bore the NBC

peacock.

Five seconds passed and the barricade held.

“Please don’t shoot!” scores of parents were chanting. To whom didn’t matter. Kids’ lives were at stake if anyone fired. The cops wouldn’t fire in this current arrangement; if they were willing to fire, they’d have shot me already, or tried to negotiate and then tried to shoot me. They weren’t even trying to negotiate, though; we’d been out there two minutes and they’d only made code-noise and postured with clubs. They hadn’t even told us to drop our weapons. They thought they could freeze us out til we surrendered.

“They’re fronting,” said Vincie behind me, just to my left, gripping the Janitor’s hair and sweater. “Half those fuckers don’t even have masks. They’re fucken fronting.” Vincie was right. Or somewhat right. All the gear in the department—department
s
by that point; the cruisers that were blocking off Rand Road’s traffic were Glenfield- and Bolling- and Lake County-marked—

all the gear they could get must have been on display, but they couldn’t use gas when so many lacked masks, and on one hand 1478

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this meant that a part of their costumes was there just to scare us; on the other hand, though, they all had batons and tazers and mace. They all wore helmets. They were all behind shields. They weren’t
just
fronting.

“Please! Don’t! Shoot! Please! Don’t! Shoot!”

The cops held their ground. The scholars finished praying.

“Hurt him,” Vincie said, the him being Boystar.

“Please no!” said Boystar.

I knuckled his armpit. He stopped making noise.

“What’re you waiting for? Show them already.”

“He’s a shield,” June said. “He isn’t a sword.”

That explained it in a poem as elegant as any.

The couplet that followed was even more deft.

Vincie: “What’s our sword, then?”

June: “We don’t
have
one.”

Trigger, I said.

June triggered the soundgun.

SCHOLARS, I said, I’M ABOUT TO ASK YOU TO PUT

YOUR LIVES AT RISK. IF YOU WON’T, THEN GO: HEAD

BACK UP THE HIGH HILL AND OVER THE CREST. NO

ONE WILL SAY YOU WERE COWARDS. THEY WILL SAY

THAT YOU KNEW YOUR OWN LIMITATIONS. I WILL

SAY THE SAME, AND OTHERS WILL LISTEN. WE WILL

MEET YOU SHORTLY, AND WE WILL EMBRACE YOU. GO

NOW IF YOU’LL GO, THOUGH—GOING LATER WILL

HURT US, ALL OF OUR BROTHERS.

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I waited out a three-count. No scholar moved.

The barricade’s west row revolved to face east.

THESE COPS, I said, WEAR VESTS AND HELMETS.

NOTHING YOU COULD LOAD IN YOUR PENNYGUNS

COULD DAMAGE THEM. THESE COPS ARE MEN AND

WE ARE BOYS. THEIR BODIES ARE STRONGER—

THERE’S NO WAY AROUND THAT. THEY HAVE TAZERS

AND PISTOLS, CLUBS AND MACE. SOME HAVE SHIELDS,

WHICH, LIKE THEIR HELMETS, EVEN BULLETS CAN’T

GET THROUGH.

“VAGABOND HELIUM EIGHTBALL TRANSUM.”

WHAT WE HAVE IS NUMBERS, AND OUR NUMBERS

ARE GREATER. YET OUR NUMBERS, THOUGH GREATER,

AREN’T GREATER ENOUGH. AND WE HAVE ELOHEINU,

ELOHEINU IS WITH US—ELOHEINU ON HIS OWN,

THOUGH, IS NEVER ENOUGH. TOGETHER THEY’RE

HELPFUL, ELOHEINU AND OUR NUMBERS, BUT EVEN

TOGETHER THEY AREN’T ENOUGH. WE NEED BETTER

TECH. WE NEED BETTER TECH!

“We need better tech!”

WE NEED BETTER TECH!

“We need better tech!”

WE NEED BETTER TECH AND WE NEED BETTER

TECH. WITH ELOHEINU AND OUR NUMBERS, WE CAN

GET BETTER TECH. SO YOU AND ELOHEINU WILL

GET US BETTER TECH. ON MY GO, YOU WILL FOLLOW

1480

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EMMANUEL LIEBMAN. YOU WILL WALK TOWARD THE

BARRICADE BEHIND EMMANUEL. IF THE COPS DON’T

PART, HE’LL LEAD YOU TO ONE OF THEM. EVERY LAST

ONE OF YOU, CONVERGE ON THAT ONE. KNOCK HIM

OFF HIS FEET. STRIP HIM OF HIS PISTOL. PULL OFF HIS

HELMET AND BLOW OUT HIS BRAINS. THEN CHOOSE

ANOTHER ONE AND DO THE SAME. CONTINUE—

“DROP YOUR WEAPONS.”

Behind the cordon, a commotion had erupted. People running south, running over each other, getting as far away as they could. Something behind me had started changing, too. Heat on my ear, on the back of my neck.

CONTINUE UNTIL THE BARRICADE PARTS.

Heat from the school on the back of my neck; it came and went. The doors of the entrance had opened and closed. I thought it was Benji. I didn’t turn to see. I couldn’t take my eyes off the scholars til I finished, and I wasn’t yet finished—I hadn’t even blessed them. A group behind the cordon refused to flee south; teenagers mostly, ten or twenty. The cops were pushing, the teens going limp; lead-bodied resistance, they’d have to be dragged.

“FREE YOUR HOSTAGES.”

LET NOTHING STOP YOU.

I thought he’d forgiven me and come outside; I thought he’d come out to stand behind me, to stand before everyone standing behind me, to be the first person I’d see when I turned: Benji 1481

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Nakamook, still my friend. I don’t know why I thought that, not exactly. I know I was happy, and I remember I was thinking that; thinking I was happy. Thinking: You’re happy, Nakamook’s your friend. And it didn’t cross my mind that that’s what I was thinking
because
I was happy; that because when you’re happy, what you hope for seems likely, sometimes so likely it even seems real.

It didn’t cross my mind because I wasn’t
that
happy. At least I didn’t think I was. Nor do I now. “DROP YOUR WEAPONS.

FREE YOUR HOSTAGES.” You’re happy, you’re happy, you’re happy, I thought. It stood out right then, that moment of happiness, not for being the happiest of my life, not by a longshot; in the last four days I’d had happier moments, like when June raised her fists when I first said I loved her or Momo said “neepo”