The Instructions

  Boystar’s parents looked like monsters in disguises. The mother’s eyebrows were drawn in dried-blood-colored pencil, and the hair of the father looked metal. They stood with Boystar in Brodsky’s doorway, talking to Brodsky in stagey tones.

  “Well this is simply wonderful, Leonard,” the mother said to Brodsky.

  “Yes,” said Brodsky.

  The father said, “We look forward to it with great excitement.”

  Brodsky said, “I’m glad.”

  “Really Leonard, it’s—really looking forward to this,” said the father.

  Miss Pinge stopped typing so she could concentrate on what they were saying. It was exactly what the parents wanted her to do. Brodsky had opened his door because they were finished with their meeting, but the parents started talking about what they’d talked about behind the door in order to brag. The reason they kept using the words “it” and “this” instead of the words that “it” and “this” stood for was so they wouldn’t seem to be bragging. They thought it would look humble to hide what they bragged about, even if the hiding drew attention to itself. I never understood why so many people thought humble = good, but I knew you weren’t humble if you were trying to look humble, so the parents were liars, and even worse, they were really bad liars, and so, for three seconds, I pitied their son, who always showed off, and didn’t pretend to try to not show off, which was probably because they wanted him to show off so they could pretend to not brag about it.

  “So excited about it.”

  “I mean, really… This is… Really!”

  Boystar’s hand was deep in his bag, rummaging loudly. The bag was a black leather messenger bag. His shoes and belt had high-shine buckles that matched its clasp. He always wore outfits. He rarely fought anyone. Vincie Portite said it was because of his face; if something happened to his face he’d have a hard time being famous. Soon he pulled something from the bag and flashed it. It looked like a stack of baseball cards. Baseball was slow and baseball was suck. I wasn’t excited. Neither was June. Boystar came over.

  “So,” Brodsky was saying, “I’m glad the trip to California yielded your son an enviable pop album. We’re thrilled to have him back at school, and, of course, we’re looking forward to this Friday’s performance.” The principal wasn’t a stupid man. He knew they’d stick around til he said what they wouldn’t.

  “He and we look forward to it, too,” the mother of Boystar said through a shiver.

  Her son, before us now, palming the stack, told me some things that were meant for June’s ears. He said, “Whuddup, skid? I guess it’s like this: I’m doing a cut at the pep rally Friday. Second period, they get their first periods. That’s what they’re saying. That’s what I hear. That’s what I’m saying. Want a new sticker? Have a new sticker. Promote the new unit.”

  He gave me a sticker. The stack wasn’t cards. It was stickers of him. On a background of glitter, the photographed Boystar was crouching intensely behind starry footlights. In his right hand he held a mike over his heart, and his left hand was clawed and raised in the air = “Wait, please wait, just give me a second,” and his shades were low on the bridge of his nose, and his mouth half-open to tell you a secret to make you both cry. A banner at the bottom, bombstyle fonted, read: EMOTIONALIZE. The Star’s Reborn. New Album in stores this Christmas.

  June angled to see and her shoulder touched mine. I almost thanked Boystar.

  June said, “Accessorize?”

  Boystar had a silver Star-of-Boystar (*) earring that went with his buckles and bag-clasp. When he turned to June, the earring caught light from an overhead bulb and twinkled.

  “Emotionalize,” he said, and twinkled. “Ee mo shun alize.”

  Like June wasn’t kidding. Like she needed to be corrected. He needed to be corrected.

  You’re on a sticker, I said. There’s a sticker of you. You look really sensitive.

  “I know,” Boystar said. He said, “Girls like it when you look like a pussy, right June? And they’re the ones that buy units, the girls. And girls like stickers. These stickers move units.” He held a sticker out to June and said, “See? She wants my unit. She wants to give me money for it.”

  June said, “Nope.”

  “Only,” said Boystar, “cause you’re a dumb slut and while you’re asleep your father touches you.” The way he said it was really flat. Like the underdog new-kid psycho in a movie who the bad guy would shortly learn not to mess with.

  I thumb-stabbed the hand that was holding the stack and slapped him on the neck. I didn’t hit him hard. It was just a slap. It was just to shock him, to show him how stealth I am and how slow he is and how sudden he would end if he monkeyed with June again. Still, he became pinkish and started breathing fast to keep from crying. Whenever people did that after I’d hit them, it made me feel sad for them, as if I should help them, and then angry because I didn’t want to feel sad for them since I had just hit them. I looked away.

  No one but me and June and Boystar saw the stabbing or the slap, but the father saw the stickers fall and he saw the pinkishness of the face of Boystar. He stepped between us. If I was Boystar’s dad? I would have known what the pinkishness meant and I would have been pissed at Gurion. I would have taken Gurion by the shirt or the front of the hair and said, “Do not make my son feel scared.” It would have been a kind of justice. But the father just stood there and said to Boystar, “Come on.” He said, “Don’t drop the promotional stickers on the filthy floor. That will ruin them. Pick them up.”

  Boystar got on his knees.

  June whispered, “Pick them up.”

  Boystar’s mom huffed air through her nose; she wasn’t embarrassed, she refused to be embarrassed, let them be embarrassed, she wasn’t embarrassed. Brodsky bid them each good luck. Boystar picked up the stickers on his knees. Brodsky picked up the CASS from the desk of Pinge and held it close to his eyes, then at arm’s distance, then in between the two points, like he needed to focus. He didn’t need to focus. His eyes were fine. He was trying to look official. “Fighting again?” he said to me.

  I nodded my head = Ask a real question.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “June’s first,” Miss Pinge said.

  I wasn’t getting up, but Brodsky told me, “Sit down.” Then he said to June, “Come on.”

  June didn’t move for an entire three-count, and when she stood, she leaned over like she would deliver a headbutt to the side of my eye, and I would have let her, but instead she kissed me very fast, just below my ear, where I wanted sideburns to be. It felt wet but was not wet and my jaw hummed and then my head got warm on the inside.

  I didn’t know my eyes were closed until I opened them and saw she was walking away from me, walking slowly, grinding stickers under her Chucks.

  I had to do something, so I stood up and I shouted, I am in love with you!

  Everyone looked at me, except for June, who stopped in Brodsky’s doorway and raised fists of victory before she went inside. Even if the victory fists were sarcastic, it was the prettiest thing she could have done, and I knew it was true what I shouted.

  I would no longer dream of Natalie Portman at night, and I’d quit writing broken-hearted poems for Esther Salt. I would only dream of June and all my poems would be for her. I felt like unwound rubberbands, like how I imagined Main Man felt when he’d do his dance, but I couldn’t sing, plus I wasn’t good at poetry—I didn’t read enough of it to be any good; I didn’t really like it—and even if I wrote a good love poem by accident, the best a good love poem could be was nice, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want to be nice to June, just that… What? Who wouldn’t be nice to her? That was what. I wanted to do something someone else wouldn’t, preferably something that someone else couldn’t. No one thing seemed good enough, though.

  And then I remembered the clock in the gym. How everyone said that it couldn’t be smashed.

  The window onto Main Hall in the wall behind the waiting chairs had wire outlines of diamond
s inside it that suggested it was made of soundproof glass, but it turned out the glass was just sound-resistant. Half a minute after his parents took off, Boystar, from the hall-side, started knocking on the window, and I could definitely hear it. He, however, wasn’t sure if I could—I was sitting in the middle chair, my back to the window—and his knocks grew more and more frantic by the second. He wanted me to turn to see him mouth a threat like “You’re dead” or “I’ll get you” or “I’ll get my friends to get you,” and when attempts to face-save were that conspicuous, it was usually because the person trying to save face was losing even more face by trying—I could think of exceptions (Tyson’s assault on Holyfield’s ear, Simeon and Levi’s massacre of Shechemites), but Boystar’s window-knocking wasn’t an exception—so there wasn’t any way I was turning around.

  The chair I was in, though mostly wooden, was held together by metal bolts that showed at the joints of the legs and the arms. To distract myself from Boystar, I tried to pry the arm ones out with my fingers. This task proved im-possible without any tools, so I did a successful visualization that I would tell Call-Me-Sandy about in Group. Each time his knocks got harder and faster, I imagined that Boystar’s head expanded. Soon it was so huge that his mouth and his eyes became thin black lines between inflated skin-folds and the only thing sticking out was his nose-tip. I flicked it with my pointer and his head popped apart, but no blood sprayed. The visualized Boystar was a rubber robot.

  I timed it perfect, the flick of my visualization. Miss Pinge had been looking at Boystar through the glass while he was knocking, and then she cut her hand across the air, karate-chop style, and the knocking stopped, and it was right when she’d chopped that I’d flicked. I liked it when things went together like that. Not just timing things like the chop/flick/knock-stopping, but space things, too. Like all the man-made products that fit into other man-made products that were not made by the same men or for the same reasons. Like how the sucking wand of my parents’ vacuum held seven D batteries stacked nub to divot, and my Artgum eraser, before I’d worn it down, sat flush in any slot of the ice-cube tray, and the ice-cube tray sat flush on the rack in the toaster oven, the oven itself between the wall and the sink-edge. I liked how the rubber stopper in the laundry-room washtub was good for corking certain Erlenmeyer flasks and that 5 mg. Ritalins could be stored in the screw-hollows on the handles of umbrellas. Wingnuts were the best, though. They fit over pens and many other types of cylinders with perfect snugness, and you could fasten and unfasten them without any tools. I carried many wingnuts in a small drawstring bag. They’d jingle when I walked, and often when I fought, and if I didn’t want to jingle I’d tighten the drawstring.

  There in the Office, I checked my pocket to make sure I had the bag on me—I did—then decided to give a wingnut to June. She could put it on a shoelace and wear it as a necklace or tie it by a lanyard to one of her belt-loops, in which case I’d tie one to the chain of my wallet, and then, sometimes, walking next to each other, our sides might collide and make a new noise, something between a clang and a click, but neither a cling nor a clink nor a clank, nothing any known onomatopoeia described.

  Miss Pinge’s computer beeped long and steady, and Miss Pinge growled. She clapped her hands once and held them clapped, in front of her mouth. She said, “I’m going crazy. Out of my fucking mind. I’m flipping out. I’m going bonkers.” Then she remembered that I was there, and she told me: “I’m sorry. You didn’t need to hear that.”

  I nearly said, “Don’t sweat it, I won’t rat you out,” but Brodsky’s door opened before I had the chance, and that was probably better anyway since Pinge’s worried ears could have easily appended an “at least not right now” to the sentence’s back end. Mine probably would’ve.

  If Brodsky’d heard her cursing, he wasn’t showing it, and she saw I wasn’t ratting, at least not right then, so she went back to typing like nothing had happened.

  By that point, June was already walking toward me. I didn’t stand up til she got close enough that all I could see was the graying black cotton of her message-free t-shirt. She was taller than me, but only a little, and narrow top-to-center, so it didn’t matter anyway. My arms could encircle her torso no problem.

  “Your turn,” she said. “I was told to tell you ‘Your turn.’”

  Brodsky was waiting in his office, at his desk.

  I stayed where I was, admiring June’s face, all the many freckles in their many different forms, none of which clustered blobbily. The biggest was to the right of the curve of her right eyebrow. It was also the darkest. The lightest, beneath her lower lip, on the left, was shaped like the planet Saturn.

  “What?” June said.

  You okay? I said.

  “Yeah. I just got a detention. It’s nothing.”

  Are you sure you’re okay?

  “I’m fine.”

  You’re sure?

  I wanted her to look at my eyes and start crying so I could tell her how everything was okay.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she said.

  Here, I said.

  I removed the drawstring bag from my pocket. Thirteen wingnuts jingled inside it. I felt mean and wrong for wanting her to cry, so I instead of one, I gave her twelve.

  “What’s this?” she said.

  I said, Wingnuts. They jingle.

  I poured them in her hand. They jingled.

  Brodsky coughed fakely to get my attention. It was a habit he had.

  June said, “You should go in there.” She pushed her thumb at Brodsky’s doorway, and I saw the freckle on her wrist and remembered.

  I whispered to her, I have something to show you.

  She said, “Don’t be sick, Gurion, I like you.”

  Not my wang, I said. I wouldn’t show you my wang like that, June.

  She said, “Show me later, then. Don’t get in trouble.”

  I said, I’m in love with you. Be in love with me.

  June said, “You’re in love with me.”

  Yes, I said.

  “Which means you’ll be in love with me forever,” June said.

  Of course, I said. It can’t help but mean that.

  “Exactly,” June said. “It can’t help but mean that. That’s just what it means.”

  We’re in total agreement.

  “Except no one can see to forever,” June said. “And so no one can promise forever,” June said. “So when you say you’re in love with me—it can’t really be true.”

  But it is, I said. It’s true, I said.

  “I’m not saying you’re lying. It’s just—”

  I’m not lying.

  “What you mean is you believe you’ll be in love with me forever. And probably that you’re glad about it—glad you believe it. That’s what you’re saying when you say you’re in love with me.”

  Yes, but also—

  “That’s drastic,” June said.

  The color of her eyebrows was almost blond, and the gaps between her teeth like getting winked at so fast it might not have happened and you hope it did, plus her voice had this scratch that ran underneath it, as though last night she’d hurt her throat screaming and you were the first person she was talking to today in a tone that was louder than a whisper.

  When you touch my head I don’t explode, I told her.

  “Mr. Maccabee,” said Brodsky.

  I said, I’m in love with you, and I have to show you something.

  “Gurion,” said Miss Pinge.

  June said, “You should go. You can show me what you want to show me later, in detention. You’ve got detention today, right?”

  I said, I always have detention.

  “Good,” she said. Then she chinned the air at the wingnuts in her hand. She said, “Thank you for these. And I’m sorry I said ‘Frontier Motel’ before. I was in a bad mood and I thought you’d be mean. You have a reputation.”

  June slid the wingnuts into a pocket and jingled while she walked her June Watermark walk—more than a stroll, b
ut shy of a swagger; just a little bit swaybacked—out into Main Hall, too far away from me.

  Brodsky said my name again. I looked in his office. He was pointing his pointer at the chair before his desk. “Gurion,” he said. Then he blinkered with the finger. “Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee,” he said.

  I am, I said, that I am.

  2

  GUNS AND INQUISITIONS

  Tuesday, November 14, 2006

  3rd Period

  ULPAN

  Lay your cardboard planks down. Lay them down on the lawn. Lay them down so the short side is facing me. Lay them down so that I am facing two rows of you. It does not matter if you are in the front or the back row. From up here, I can see all of you. From down there, you can all see me. Lay the planks on the lawn so that a foot of grass-space separates you from those on all your four sides.

  Sit down on the back half of your plank.

  Remove the two-liter bottle of soda from your plastic grocery sack. Twist the cap off. Put the cap in your pocket. If you don’t have a pocket, put the cap in your sock.

  Empty the soda from the two-liter bottle. Empty it into the grass.

  Remove the serrated knife from the plastic grocery sack. Hold it in your strong hand.

  Lay the bottle sideways on the front part of your cardboard plank. Lay it down so the pouring hole is pointed in the direction of your strong hand. Hold the bottle down at its middle with your weak hand. Hold it firmly.

  Be careful with the knife. Do not cut yourself.

  Here is the neck, and here is the body. Here, between the neck and the body, is a nameless area that is neither as wide as the body nor as narrow as the neck. Touch the serrated edge of the knife to the place where the body becomes the nameless area.

  Press down and saw the bottle in two.

  Set the large piece in the grass to the left of your plank. That is garbage. After we’re finished, you’ll throw it in the trash. No two kids should use the same trash bin. That is an invitation to get caught. We are stealth.