The Instructions

  They haven’t taken a single shot at me yet.

  “They might just not have had any clear shots to take.”

  I’ve been in front of a million different windows. Not a single shot.

  “You haven’t been near a window in at least twenty minutes, and you don’t know you were clear. Anyway, the stakes, like you said, are much higher now. Those kids on the hill change everything. You need us to go out there to flank you at least.”

  I can’t die, Vincie.

  “No you can’t,” Vincie said, “or we’ll all be fucked.”

  That’s not what I meant.

  “I know what you meant, and it’s as fucken crazy a thing to say now as it’s always been, so I’m ignoring it like always, for the same reason as always, because you’re my friend and it doesn’t matter anyway—You don’t have to die to fuck this up, anyway. They don’t have to kill you. They just have to—what’s the word?”

  “Neutralize,” Starla said—she’d come up next to June.

  “Neutralize. Thank you. All they have to do is get you all neutralized. That’s all it’ll take. Shoot you in the leg, and you’re down, and we’re fucked. We go back inside that gym?—Those kids fucken hate us. You heard fucken Berman. They want to be feared. They’ll tie us up and say that they overcame us at the last minute or something, all badass heroic and—”

  Okay, I said.

  “Okay what?”

  Okay, you’re right.

  And he was. Maybe not about the Israelites waiting in the gym—who knew what they would do if they saw me go down?—but about the rest. My kidness, to the cops, probably was eclipsed by my ringleaderness, my terroristness, and if any one of us could be shot with impunity, that one was me, and the fewer kids available to take a stray bullet, the greater the odds that the cops would shoot. Above all, he was right that I didn’t need to die in order to fail. My father, June, maybe all the world’s Israelites—I could fail them just fine if I got shot in the leg. Neutralized, I couldn’t deliver the prayer.

  I instructed the soldiers to form two lines.

  The hostages stood with their hands behind their backs, their wrists tied loosely with shoelaces. Each was held by the hair and the shirt by a terrorist behind him, and to each one’s right stood a second terrorist aiming an unloaded gun at his carotid.

  The cops will shoot me or they won’t, I told them. If they shoot me, you immediately surrender. You drop your weapons and raise your hands high and sob if you can, smile if you can’t—you act full of gratitude, full of relief. If I don’t get shot, you don’t break formation. Not for anything. The cops might give orders and they might make gestures, but they probably won’t shoot if we stay close together. After the scholars break through the copline, we’ll rush their center and we’ll all head east. I don’t know exactly how far we’ll be going. It might take a while, might start to feel safe. Don’t get bold, though—stay to the center and stay right behind me. Do not stray.

  “What about teargas?” Chunkstyle said.

  You saw the way the hail was slanting before. It’s windy outside and the parking lot’s packed. Too many civilians in breathing range.

  “What about tazers?” Salvador said.

  By the time they’d be close enough to use their tazers, the scholars’ll already be on their heels. Someone gets tazed, we pick him up and continue. I’m telling you, though: they’re either gonna shoot me or part for the scholars. Those are the only two moves that make sense.

  “What if they shoot and they miss you?” said Boshka.

  That’s a good question.

  “Thank you,” said Boshka. “What is the answer?”

  It all depends on how close the scholars are, what the copline’s doing, if the shot hits someone else… we’ll have to see. I’ll tell you when it happens, if it happens, so if it does happen, be ready to listen. We ready? I said.

  “Do you think that they’ll shoot?” Main Man said.

  Do you? I said.

  It was Scott I was asking, but they all answered: “No.”

  I believe you, I said, cause I don’t either. I think we’ll be safe as long as we’re dangerous. I think God will protect us as long as we’re dangerous. I think we’ll forget that one day when we’re old—the second we forget it, we’ll be old, I said. We might even be right when we’re old, I said, but we can’t know now, and we won’t know then. Do you understand me?

  “We might get shot.”

  Right, I said.

  “But we shouldn’t get shot.”

  Right, I said.

  And we all went east.

  We entered Main Hall slow and steady, June and I the center of both of the lines, and as Ben-Wa Wolf unlocked the doors, Boystar was yanked to his feet and held by an Israelite guard at each of his elbows. From over his shoulder, he showed us a face no language I know has a word for. The hyper-dilated eyes were full of black wonder, the battered lips twisted as if in disgust, one eyebrow was skeptical, the other determined, and the nostrils were contracted so hard that the nosetip, diagonally gashed by the keys of his mother, bent itself low enough to touch the swollen philtrum. It wasn’t a face that signified anything other than a random set of malfunctions. Maybe he was trying to express some feeling, or maybe he was trying to hide some feeling, or maybe he was feeling contradictory feelings, one of which he was trying to hide beneath an expression that signified the other. But nutmeg, nerve-damage, or the combination had made of him a kind of shadow-world Slokum whose visage, for all that was scrawled on its features, was so illegible it might as well have been blank. Boystar was broken and Boystar was crazy. The rubber robot had popped.

  At two steps’ distance, his legs gave out

  and, on his knees, still gripped at the elbows, still showing us the face, he said, “Protect me.”

  He was talking to June.

  She stepped up beside me.

  “I love you,” he said.

  She looked away.

  “I love you,” he said. “Remember?” he said. “I know you,” he said. “I know you and love you.”

  She caught him on the chin with the bell of the soundgun, an overhanded blow. He collapsed, knocked out. June got behind me.

  I said, Wake him up. He can’t look dead.

  The guards started slapping him. Boystar came to. Botha’s phone buzzed. Persphere’s number. I let it buzz twice, hit TALK, then END.

  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.

  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 journalists. 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 parking 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 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 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—departments 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 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.

  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 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 B
ARRICADE 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 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” to Lonnie by the pool. The Side getting born at the end of Group. Getting hold of the passpad. My hoodie being stolen. EVEN IF I FALL—ESPECIALLY IF I FALL—LET NOTHING STOP YOU. I WILL BE STRENGTHENED. I’LL GET BACK UP. De-sapping Maholtz. Ending Vincie’s hand-twitch. Any of the hyperscoots, especially the first. Kissing June onstage. Kissing by her locker. Kissing in the field. Learning from the Five that they’d received Ulpan. Eliyahu with the leaf, at the fountain, chasing Baxter. Leevon’s broken silence after Slokum held me up. The scholars in my kitchen, believing all I told them. “DOWN ON THE GROUND WITH YOUR HANDS IN PLAIN SIGHT.” The Side rising up to protect me from Botha. Getting called a tzadik by Emmanuel on the platform. My father Thursday morning telling jokes about goyim, singing punk in the car, inviting June to join us. Samuel Diamond holding 37 high. My mother saying June should be whatever I determined. Flowers’s exegesis of Lauryn Hill’s cursing. Rabbi Salt telling me he had to drink coffee. The Cage-wide petition delivered by Chunkstyle. BARNUM on the juice machine. “Gurion’s my boy!”