The Instructions (31 page)

Scott said, “Ha! Haha!”

281

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

Leevon was sitting on the other side of me. I’d forgotten he was there until he poked my elbow. Then he did the same action as Nakamook did, and he did it even better so that the water on his eyes dripped down his cheeks and his cheeks looked loose.

Then Main Man did the action.

Then Jelly did it.

Then I tried to do it but I couldn’t.

Nakamook stopped after a minute, and when he stopped, breath came out of his mouth in one heavy push. He said, “It’s called ‘I’m Ticking.’”

I said, Why?

He said, “Because when you do it, you can hear that ticking inside your head. I think it’s from drops of brain-blood that whack themselves against the backs of the eardrums. Didn’t you hear the blood ticking?”

I said, Don’t be a wang to me because I can’t do it—you know I didn’t hear any ticking of blood.

He said, “I wasn’t being a wang, you spastic wang. I didn’t know because I couldn’t see. When you do the ‘I’m Ticking’

action, it’s hard to see. There’s a bright flying saucer shape that blots out the middle of anything you look at.”

I said, Tell me how you did it.

Nakamook said, “I can’t explain it. I just did it.”

I said, Tell me how you discovered it.

He said, “I was in my room and I was bored and I wanted to break something, but there was nothing good to break except 282

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

the window and I didn’t want to break the window, so I beat on the heavy-bag, but it wasn’t good enough, I didn’t want to hear thuds, let alone gaspy thuds, I wanted a breaking sound, a snapping kind of crunching sound, a shattering window sound, the one sound I couldn’t hear without doing something I didn’t want to do, and that’s when I decided to invent a new action, and I performed my first I’m Ticking.”

I said, Come on! How did you do it? I said to Jelly, How do you do it?

She said, “I just did it.”

Then Leevon did it again.

Main Man said, “Leevon is I’m Ticking-ing and he doesn’t talk. Jelly can I’m Ticking and she is a biter. Benji I’m Tickings and he is maybe psychopathic. Even I can I’m Ticking and I am diseased in a very rare fashion. What’s wrong with you?”

I don’t know, I said.

Mookus said, “Watch me like a vulture watches a fat mammal that is limping across the floor of a rocky canyon with its tongue out even though I’m your friend who you would never eat.”

Main Man performed the action again and I watched him closely. After a few seconds, I got scared for him because of his heart.

I said, Stop Scott.

He stopped. He was breathing very heavy. This was called hyper-ventilating. It was also called catching your breath. It did not look like Main Man was catching his breath, though. It looked 283

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

like Main Man’s breath was catching him. It looked like Main Man was getting breathed.

I told Benji, You shouldn’t have shown that to Main Man.

Scott said to me, “Please don’t worry.”

I said to him, Don’t I’m Ticking again.

Nakamook said, “Main Man’s fine. You’re just pissed you couldn’t do the action, you baby.”

It is true I was pissed, but I wasn’t
just
pissed. I was desperately trying to not think about kissing.

Main Man said, “Ha ha.”

I told him, Yeahyeah.

The end-of-lunch tone got born and died.

“Go to your carrels,” Botha said. He was standing by the doorway, clipboard in claw.

‪

‫

‬

‪

‫

‬

‬

As I was getting up from the teacher cluster, Ronrico Asparagus and Jenny Mangey entered the Cage and rushed me so fast I flinched. “We have questions,” said Mangey.

The two of them came across the room with me and when I turned my head to look at Benji, he made a crumpled face =

“Why is Asparagus walking beside you as though he were other than a longtime foe of ours?”

At my carrel, I sat, and Mangey handed me a piece of paper that looked like

284

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

WE DAMAGE

DAMAGE WE

WE DAMAGE WE

“Which one is right?” Mangey said.

I stared at the words, trying to understand.

Mangey leaned in close. She was bright pink along the hairline from scratching. Ronrico leaned in close, too, not smelling like pee. If his pee was as pungent as it was said to be, then he did not get any on his pants, which was a blessing. I had never peed beside him, so I didn’t know the true strength of his pee’s smell. The “Ronrico Asparagus has pee so pungent” saying was invented before I got to Aptakisic. Most people said Nakamook invented it, but Nakamook said it was the Janitor. I thought it was Nakamook. It was just the kind of pithy saying Benji would’ve invented, and he was the kind of person who would have given credit to someone else for it, if giving credit to someone else would have made it funnier, which it definitely would have since the Janitor was Ronrico’s closest friend, and his being the inventor would not only be very kaufman—the only thing more kaufman than to sniff a friend’s pee was to sniff a friend’s pee and then speak of what you’d sniffed—but would augment the saying with a sub-plot of betrayal.

“Which one?” Mangey said to me.

285

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

Ronrico said, “It’s one of the first two. I know it.”

Mangey whispered, “Ronrico was bombing the lunch tables and the bleachers with the first two, and he thought he was so smart, but I told him he was not so smart and that he should write WE on
both
sides of DAMAGE.”

Ronrico said, “You didn’t say which side of damage we were on, Gurion, but you did say we were on
the
side of it; not the side
szzz
of it. You said
the
side.”

Oh! At the end of Group you mean, I said.

“Yeah,” Mangey said. “What do you
think
we mean? Jeez.”

The Janitor came over, and he leaned in. That was three people leaning close to me. I thought: Now it is a huddle. I thought: Don’t touch my head.

Ronrico said, “Back off a little, Mikey.”

The Janitor said, “I have a question about the side of damage, though. I’m not sure exactly what it means.”

Ronrico said, “None of us are, but if you don’t stop breathing on me, I’ll touch you on the skin.”

The Janitor leaned closer to Mangey.

“I’ll lick you on the cheek,” Mangey said.

The Janitor stepped back and Vincie Portite came into the huddle. He said to me, “What the fuck is going on here? Why are these people standing here at your carrel? Are we friends with these people now? I thought we weren’t friends with these people, except for Mangey who we were kind of friends with. Now we’re all fucken friends?”

286

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“Why don’t you just go ahead and stare at June Watermark, Vincie, you stalker,” said Mangey.

Wait, I said. Wait. June’s the girl you have a crush on?

“Nope,” said Vincie.

Why’d Mangey say that then? Why’d you say that, Mangey?

“He stares at her at Lunch!”

“I don’t,” Vincie said. “I stare at someone else. She sits near June a lot.”

I’m in love with June, Vincie.

“Really? Does she love you back? I hope so, man. I’m not even in love, I don’t think, just in very deep like, and it’s really fucken lonely not to be very deeply liked back. I can’t imagine how—”

Not to be very deeply liked back by who? I said.

“I’m not saying,” said Vincie. “I don’t want to fucken say. But you know I’d tell you if it was June because you just said you loved her. That would be a big fucken problem if she was my crush—so I’d tell you.”

Mangey said, “But—.”

“Mangey’s a fucken troublemaker. Listen to me. I told you I’ve liked this girl since kindergarten, right?”

A million times, I said.

“And June didn’t go to school with me in kindergarten. Did she, Mangey? You went to school with me in kindergarten, so you would know—was June in fucken kindergarten with us?”

“No,” Mangey said. “It’s true. She wasn’t.”

287

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“See?” said Vincie. “All is well, except for how the girl I like deeply does not like me deeply back.”

I banged fists with Vincie, all kinds of relieved.

Sorry, I said.

“No problem, man. But what I was saying is,” he said, chinning air at Ronrico and the Janitor, who were making kiss-faces at him, “are we friends with these two knuckleheads now, or what?”

We’re all on the side of damage, I said.

“So we’re all friends or what though?” Vincie said.

“I told you we were friends now,” Ronrico said to Vincie. He said to me, “Vincie tried to say at recess that you didn’t mean we were friends and I told him he was wrong, just like how I told Mangey she was wrong about the bombs on the tables and the bleachers.”

“I said to Ronrico that he was a fuckface,” said Mangey, “because when you said we were on the side of damage, you didn’t mean that we were
to
the side of damage: you meant that damage is on one side, which is the side we are
for
, and then something else is on the other side, which is the side we’re
against
.”

“And then,” said Ronrico, “I told her that it was not me who was the fuckface since it was her mom who was the fuckface, because of how we already decided in Group that it was her mom who was the one who fucks like a fucker and that Gurion would not have said

‘We are all on the side of damage’ and left it that way if there was this whole other something else that we are against like Mangey is saying—I told Mangey it was maybe her that was the fuckface 288

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

because of genetics and that you would have told us what the something else was, and I told her that it is true that I don’t know if we are on the right or the left side of damage, but I do know that it is one or the other. And that’s why I switched off the sides with the bombs. I did thirteen, starting with the WE on the left. So now there are seven WE DAMAGEs and six DAMAGE WEs.”

“Who’s right?” Mangey said.

Botha said, “In your seats.”

Those huddling around me pretended not to hear him.

I spoke fast. I said, We are all against the arrangement, always.

I said, Sometimes we are on the left side of damage and other times on the right. Often we are on both sides, so both of you are correct.

“So I don’t have to fix the bombs?” Ronrico said.

I said, The bombs are good.

“Thank you,” Ronrico said. “Tomorrow I’ll scrape a huge WE

DAMAGE WE into the four-square court with a rock. I would’ve done a four-square one today, but we had indoor recess, so I did the bleachers with a Darker instead—Oh we forgot!”

“Hey!” said Botha.

“Hey back at you!” said Vincie Portite, hand over eye. “I didn’t hear a tone yet!”

“The scoreboard,” Ronrico said.

Mangey said, “It’s smashed.”

Vincie said, “He knows already. God! You don’t listen to Vincie.”

“Did you really know already?” said the Janitor.

289

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

The beginning-of-class tone sounded and Botha scattered the huddlers to their carrels by shouting, “Mind the loin there!” What he meant was my tape-line.

WALL WALL

DESK

DESK

chair

DESK

WALL WALL

WALL WALL

DESK

DESK

chair

DESK

WALL WALL

Forty carrels were bolted to the walls of the Cage; sixteen to the east wall, and twelve to each the north and south. Stuck to the floor behind every student’s chair was a line of masking tape the width of his carrel. The rule was that you were supposed to keep the back legs of your chair in front of your line at all times.

As long as your back chair-legs were in front of your line, your head would be between the walls of your carrel, which rose five feet higher than the surface of your desk and extended two feet beyond the desk’s edge. Because only the thinnest, most flaccid carpet covered the Cage’s concrete floor, and because all the feet of the chair-legs were metal, the noise of the feet rubbing the floor when you’d scoot your chair was a squeaky kind of groan that was wholly distinct from other Cage sounds, so breaking the Tape Rule was a risky move, since Botha—at his desk between the 290

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

bathroom doors, in the middle of the west wall, facing east—or a teacher at the cluster in the center of the room, was likely to look in your groan’s direction. If you were over your tape-line, you’d get step 1. Step 1 was a warning. Three warnings in the same half-day = step 4: detention.

While following the Tape Rule, the only direction you could look that wasn’t walled off and didn’t end in floor or ceiling was behind you = you weren’t able look at anyone else without conspicuously revolving your head. And so there was also the rule of Face Forward, which was exactly what it sounds like. The rules of Quiet At All Times and Always Be Sitting—those were exactly what they sound like, too—combined with those aforementioned to make it near-impossible for students to initiate communication with other students without getting noticed, then stepped, by the robots.

On top of the rules, the stain-colored carrel walls were insulated thickly so that whispers below the robots’ audial threshold couldn’t break through them, and if you wanted to send a written message to someone, not only did you first have to ball the paper (folded notes’ trajectories just weren’t reliable), which got too noisy if you didn’t crumple slowly, but you basically had to be sharing a wall with the intended recipient, for it was near-impossible to arc even a balled note much greater a distance than the next carrel over with any kind of accuracy, which meant that if Benji Nakamook, say, was more than one carrel away from you, a note you wrote him, in order to get to him, would have to be 291