The Instructions (72 page)

The driver, who I’d assumed was gossiping like usual with the other drivers on the grassy island in the middle of the bus circle, came down the chunky steps saying “Hey.” I’d never seen him before.

Hey? I said.

“Stop doing that,” he said. “Don’t hit my bus.”

I said, You’re not Marnie.

“Marnie’s got the flu. Don’t hit her bus.”

I said, As long as you don’t tell me not to hit it again, I’ll only hit it once more.

I hit the bus. This time with my head.

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“Jeez,” said the driver. He got back inside.

My friends showed up.

“Your head’s all red,” said Vincie.

Leevon banged his head on Vincie’s backpack, which was huge with textbooks. Vincie met the pavement on his knees and Leevon stumbled backward til he sat on the curb. When they got their bearings they wrestled.

Did you see June? I asked Benji.

“No,” he said, “but calm down.”

I said, I kissed her and I thought she loved it, but then she kicked me and forgot her sketchbook.

“She left it for you,” he said, “so you could bring it to her.”

I said, How would you know that? And why did you call her?

She said you called her last night.

“I know because I called her, and I called her because, I don’t know, man—you’re in love with her and you’re my friend and being in love with her’s making you act a little, I don’t know…

out of character? Uncharacteristically insecure?”

Insecure how? What do you mean insecure?

“
That’s
what I mean. And how you just
had
to be early,
had
to arrive first to detention. And the way you got about Berman. And the super-knit brow thing you’re doing right now, like you’re trying to make your eyeballs explode.
This
is what I mean. And I wanted to make sure she knew you weren’t a dork, that you’re dorked out only in this one specific area because you’re in love and that is new for you, and also I don’t know her that well, 669

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and I wanted to make sure she wasn’t gonna somehow accidentally dissapoint…that she wouldn’t...doesn’t matter. That part was groundless. But look. You’ve got her notebook because she left it for you, but it’s good here to hesitate. It’s good here to wait awhile. Stop bouncing around like a spaz, okay? Joke around with your friend Nakamook and don’t bring her that notebook. Just laugh like I’m saying a bunch of really funny stuff and make her come and get—look out.”

A pebble struck me sharply on the back of my neck. I spun and saw June. She ducked behind a hedgerow halfway to the entrance.

“Don’t go there,” Benji said.

I went.

“At least slow down!” he shouted after me.

June was bundled in her coat, laying down behind the bushes.

I said, Why—

And she swept my legs out at the ankles. I fell next to her, still holding the sketchbook.

“Still love me?” she said. “Even though I’m mean to you? Even though I kicked you twice and hit your neck with a pebble and made you bring me my sketchbook and then tripped you?” she said. She said, “I wouldn’t love you if you did that to me. If you did that to me, I’d think you were a dentist. I would think you were crazy, too, and I wouldn’t trust you and every morning I’d bake a clay doll that was shaped like you, and every night before I slept I would smash it on the floor beside my bed and kneel on its shards 670

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with no pants so my legs would bleed and I could hate you even easier the next time. But don’t worry about it, I disappointed my teacher and she hates me now, too, so at least you’re not alone.”

I was too glad she was talking to me to be angry at her.

Miss Gleem doesn’t hate you, I said.

June said, “I don’t care.”

I said, It’s a little bit like what happened to me in Brodsky’s office yesterday afternoon, and you told me—

“I don’t care!” June said.

I said, If you didn’t perform the hyperblinker action, Miss Gleem would have known you helped destroy the props yourself, and she’d feel even worse—so even though your hyperblinkering was artful, it was kind. You saved her some pain.

June said, “Go away, Gurion.”

I said, Why?

She said, “I don’t want you near me.”

I said, Then you go away.

She didn’t go away. She got up on her elbows like she was going to, but she didn’t.

You just want me to think you’re crazy, I said.

“Get bent,” June said.

You want me to think you’re crazy since I can’t convince you Miss Gleem’s not disappointed, I said. Because if I think you’re crazy, I’ll tell you you’re crazy, and then you might believe it. If you believe you’re crazy, you get to doubt everything that you know to be true but wish were untrue.
That’s
why you kicked 671

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me—because it was the kind of thing a crazy person would do.

And that’s why you’re telling me to go away now—because it would be a crazy thing to tell me if you really meant it. And that’s your secret plan, but it doesn’t make sense.

“Why doesn’t it?” she said. Her voice had less nails in it.

It’s yossarian, I said. If I tell you you’re crazy and you believe it, then you have to doubt that you should trust my opinion to begin with because how can a crazy person judge whose opinion to trust? They can’t. They’re crazy. So then you have to doubt that you’re even crazy because the person who told you you’re crazy—me—might not be trustworthy. And you come out with nothing that way. And so I come out with nothing. So I’m not going to tell you that you didn’t disappoint Miss Gleem. And I won’t tell you anything that would mean that you’re crazy. You did disappoint her—not tons, but a little. And you aren’t crazy.

“I hate that,” June said.

Me too, I said.

I didn’t know what I meant, just that I should agree with her.

“I hate worrying about disappointing people who want me to be a way that I’m not,” she said. “Because I
did
think the stage looked better after we were through with it, you know? It looked fake before. It looked lifeless, but then when we destroyed it, it looked dead—once we destroyed it, it looked, at least, like it
used
to
have life, you know?”

That was exactly how it looked.

We laid there, sighing. The sun was an ugly winter sun. You 672

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had to squint, but it didn’t warm you. June rolled on top of me and pinned me at the wrists.

That’s not how you pin someone, I told her. I said, Look at all this leverage I’ve got.

I shoved my chest up and bumped June’s. Not hard, but just to show her.

“I know how to pin someone,” she said. She pinned me at the elbows. “Keep your arms strong,” she said, “so I can balance.”

Then she did a handstand on my biceps. Her hoods and hair fell down on my face.

Your hair is my favorite smell, I said.

“Mine too,” she said. “It’s not the smell of my hair, though.”

Her voice was croaky, ground-down—the muscles of her neck were flexed, pressing on her voicebox, her air-passage. She said, “It’s amber resin. I put it in my hair.”

How are you doing this? I said.

She came out of the handstand before answering and laid on me. Her stomach pressed on mine and then didn’t, pressed on mine and then didn’t. Her eyelashes were on my ear. She was blinking.

“I used to think I wanted to be a gymnast,” she said, “so I became a master of the handstand.” Her breath made my neck tingle.

I thought you used to want to be a modern dancer, I said.

“I used to want to be a lot of things,” she said.

Me too, I said.

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“Like what?” she said.

I said, I don’t know… I keep spacing out on your body.

“I’m flat,” June said.

I like your body, I said. I said, I like how you’re pressing it on me.

“I can tell,” she said = “Your wang is chung.”

My wang
was
chung. It was supposed to be, because I was heterosexual.

“You said you wanted to be a lot of things,” she said.

I said, I used to think I wanted to be a scholar, then a soldier—but now, whenever I’m near you, I start to think I’ve been confusing means with ends. I think I wanted to be the messiah all along and I didn’t know it. I mean, I knew I wished the messiah would come, and a lot of times I wished I was the messiah, but the wishing—it wasn’t
wanting
; there’s a difference, I think. Like how everyone wishes they could fly, or walk through walls, or be invisible… There’s no pain, you know? To wishing like that, I mean. Because there’s no possibility. With wanting, though—

there’s some pain, I think… This is hard to explain… What I’m saying is I
want
to be the messiah, now. Or at least I want to
bring
him. Whenever I’m near you, I do. And I think that all along I thought that being a scholar or a soldier would help me become the messiah, or bring him, but—

June said, “How can you want something and not know it? I don’t think you can. I got sent to a social worker for a while and he kept telling me I wanted something and I didn’t know it, but 674

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what he said wasn’t true and I stopped going.”

What did he say you wanted? I said.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

Why did you get sent to him?

“Stop asking questions,” she said. “You’re always asking questions when you’re supposed to be answering them.”

I said, Since yesterday—since right after you kissed me on where my sideburns will be—I’ve been thinking that all my life I wanted us to be in love, but I didn’t know it, because I didn’t know you.

“Oh,” June said. Her left eye-socket was cupping my left cheekbone and she squeezed it.

But, I said, that doesn’t make it so. Because you’re right, I think. It is true that all my life I wanted to be in love—I have always known what
in love
is—but how could I have wanted to be in love with you, if I didn’t know who
you
were? I couldn’t have.

You’re definitely right that I couldn’t have. But still, it has seemed that way to me since yesterday—that I’ve wanted to be in love with
you
, with
June
, all along—and that has to mean something.

Now that I’m saying it, though, I think that
want
is the confusing part. It is
need
I mean by
want
, I think. Because you can need something without knowing it. I know that is true. Sometimes when I’m at my desk, I forget to eat and don’t know I’ve forgotten, and my A gets D’d and I get angry and explosive and I don’t think to myself, ‘Gurion, you have forgotten to eat,’ and I don’t think to myself, ‘You are hungry.’ All I think is, ‘You are fucking 675

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up. You are going too slow. In the time it took you to word the previous sentence, which isn’t even a perfect sentence, Israelites have died.’ Eventually my mom will call me downstairs for dinner and I’ll go have dinner, and my A won’t be D’d anymore and my anger and explosiveness subside a little. It is only after eating the dinner that I tell myself, ‘You needed to eat and you didn’t know it.’ So I’m thinking the truth must be that all along, though I’ve
wanted
to be
in love
, what I
needed
was to be
in love with
you
and didn’t know it; and now, because on top of needing it I want it so bad, because I want it to keep happening, because I want to keep being in love with you, the wanting hides the needing and seems to replace it, even though the wanting actually has nothing to do with it. I’m glad I’m in love with you, I love that I’m in love with you, but it doesn’t matter. Whether or not I want to be in love with you, I need to be in love with you. And yesterday, after you kissed me on where my sideburns will be, I started thinking that all my life I hadn’t
wished
, but
wanted
to be the messiah, or to bring the messiah, and didn’t know it, but it can’t be true for the same reason that it can’t be true that all along I’ve wanted you. I cannot have wanted something I didn’t know I wanted, even if I wished for it sometimes. So it may be that all my life I’ve
needed
to become the messiah, or bring the messiah, regardless of what I thought I wanted, or knew I wished for. It may be that all the things I’ve done that I thought I’d done to become a better scholar or a better soldier were things I was doing to become the messiah, or to bring the messiah. It’s like I’ve been a crying 676

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just-born baby who doesn’t know he’s hungry, let alone that he’s hungry for his mother’s milk. The newborn doesn’t know who his mother is, or even what
mother
is. He doesn’t even know what crying is, right? I don’t think he knows he
is
crying, June. He’s just doing what he’s doing and it is only after his mother has begun to feed him that he begins to understand what he was doing, why he was doing it. It is only after he’s been fed that he can know what hunger is. And so it is only then that he can choose to cry when he is hungry. Before he can go after what he wants, he needs to know what he wants, but before he can know what he wants, he needs to get what he needs. The world must come to him first.

I’ve been as dumb as a just-born baby. Do you understand me, June? When I’m near you, I need to become the messiah no matter what I might want. Or at least I need to
bring him
no matter what I might want. But I want to become the messiah—or bring him—because I need you to always be near me. I need you to never die. Do you understand what I’m saying or not? Because I want you to understand. This isn’t just me wishing.

She squeezed my body with all of hers until the buses gave off one-minute-warning honks for stragglers. Then we ran at the circle, June yelling a song that went: