The Instructions

  Leevon shook his head = “No.” He cut his hands through the air and showed me both palms and closed his eyes = “I’m starting over now.”

  “The CASS’s say we’re here because we started wrestling each other on top of the teacher cluster,” Benji said to Pinge, “but that’s not really true.”

  Vincie leaned forward and made his eyes poppy, faking big interest in Benji and Pinge while he formed the note tighter between his clasped hands. I wanted him to throw it. I wanted that note.

  Once again, Leevon showed me his palm ≠ “Stop,” but seemed to.

  Five? I mouthed.

  Leevon lip-bit, nostril-flared, shrugged = “Kinda, but wait. Let me finish the message.”

  “Botha wrote ‘wrestling,’ on those CASS’s,” said Benji, “like we’d just started wrestling, which would be a pretty hyper thing to do, but it was the exact opposite of that—we were totally in control. And plus we were only play-wrestling. And we were only play-wrestling because we heard Gurion had finally gotten to ISS and we wanted to come see him.”

  Leevon made a fist and showed me his palm again, but this time with the thumb down = “Four.” Or “Kinda four.”

  Floyd cleared his throat. “Any working estimation of the length of this meeting of the minds between Chief Brodsky and my man Ronny D?”

  Pinge didn’t reply. She was listening to Benji.

  Leevon made a fist, then he showed me three fingers = “Three.”

  Five (kinda), four (kinda), three (kinda)… Countdown? A countdown?

  Scoreboard? I mouthed.

  Leevon nodded and smiled and stopped counting down.

  But I knew about the scoreboard. Who cared about the scoreboard? I wanted that note.

  At Leevon, I mouthed: I know. It is broken.

  He shook his head and mouthed silent words ≠ “You know,” but seemed to.

  I know, I mouthed. I know, I know!

  Leevon mouthed, “You don’t know,” and I saw that what I thought had = “You know” had actually = “You don’t.”

  What didn’t I know? I wanted to know.

  He mouthed silent words that ≠ “Bet what didn’t,” but seemed to.

  I squinted.

  “Bet what didn’t!” Leevon didn’t really mouth again, but seemed to.

  I wanted to punch him a little. I wanted to punch us all a little. More than that, though, I wanted to understand the message. And even more than that, I wanted the note.

  Vincie wouldn’t look at me.

  “Really, Miss Pinge. How long for the chief and Ronny D?” said Floyd. “Are they having a serious pow-wow? I don’t want to stand around here giving the impression I’m just standing around here is why I ask. Because I love this job.”

  “I’m not sure how long, Floyd.”

  Leevon seemed to mouth, “Bet what would didn’t,” but that could not have been what he was mouthing, and I knew that—it was nonsense.

  I waved Leevon off because I didn’t want to want to hit him, and then I waved my legs around for Vincie’s attention. He pretended not to notice; Pinge was still facing him.

  “See, before we started wrestling,” Benji was saying, “we told Botha to send us to the Office, and he wouldn’t, and so we told him we would have to force him to send us, and still he wouldn’t send us, so we play-wrestled each other on the teacher cluster. The teachers at the cluster scattered because it’s not their job to break up fights, even fake ones, and Botha—he tried to break it up, but we put each other in these diametrically opposed holds that stalemated us and made it hurt when he tried to separate us, and I told him that. I yelled it so everyone could hear. I said, ‘Mr. Botha, we are only playing, and if you keep pulling on my knee my ankle will dislocate between Vincie Portite’s forearms, and Leevon Ray’s throat will fall on my heel and he’ll flatten his trachea and go limp on impact. Vincie Portite will then drop nose-first onto the surface of the cluster and his septum will deviate.’ Finally someone yelled, ‘Lawsuit!’ and Botha backed off.”

  “Sure,” Floyd said, “I mean being the guard of the Aptakisic side entrance ain’t exactly crowd control, but I see it as a kind of apprenticeship and I take pride in it, and the last thing I’d want to do is give you the impression I’m just standing around like a lazy guy who’s looking for any excuse in the book to not do his job.”

  “Stand around all you want,” Miss Pinge said to Floyd.

  “Are you even paying attention to me, Miss Pinge?” said Nakamook.

  “I’m paying attention! Jeez,” she said.

  “It seems like you’re paying attention to Floyd.”

  “I’m paying attention to far too many people at once, Benji, but you’re one of them, okay?” she said.

  I know what you mean, I said to Miss Pinge.

  “Oh meow meow meow, Miss Pinge, my friends got in trouble just to come see me and now I’m complaining,” Benji said.

  Baby, I said.

  “You. Must. Not. Talk. During. I. S. S.,” Pinge said.

  “I’m not the one who’s your baby, baby,” said Benji. “June Watermark’s your baby and you should kiss her before she starts hating you and you should be quiet because you’re in ISS and I’m talking to Miss Pinge.”

  I haven’t even seen her since yesterday, I said.

  “Then she probably won’t hold it against you,” said Pinge. “Benji is yanking your chain.”

  Are you just saying that to be nice? I said. I said, Because it’s something I would say just to be nice, if I thought Gurion’s cause was lost.

  “You’re sweet,” she said.

  So you are just saying it to be nice, I said.

  “No more talking, Gurion,” Miss Pinge said. She said, “Finish your story, Benji.”

  “Something blah blah Ronny D,” said Floyd.

  “Bet what would didn’t,” Leevon didn’t but seemed to.

  Vincie wouldn’t look at me.

  “We were in the stalemate hold, the three of us,” said Benji, “and I told Botha to write up the CASS’s and the passes and put them in my mouth to ensure that he didn’t destroy them while we were busy getting out of the stalemate, and he did exactly what I told him, and I clamped them between my teeth, and then the three of us let go of each other, and Botha unlocked the Cage and sent us down here, but the CASS’s don’t say anything about that is what I’m trying to tell you. They don’t say, ‘I, Monitor Botha, am sending these students to the Office for wrestling because I refused to send them to the Office for not wrestling,’ and they don’t say, ‘I, Monitor Botha, when given the choice between seeing students under my watch do mock violence, and seeing students under my watch do no violence, chose the first option.’ All those CASS’s say is ‘wrestling.’”

  “So Mr. Botha is a liar because the CASS’s say ‘wrestling,’” Miss Pinge said.

  “Exactly,” said Benji. “That’s all I’m trying to say.”

  Leevon seemed to “Bet what would didn’t!” at me.

  I tried to break my fingers with diametrically oppositional force and they wouldn’t break.

  “So what about any updates on Ronny D and the chief, there?” said Floyd. “You got a potentially predictional ballpark figure regarding the time for their pow-wow’s overage, maybe?”

  “No I don’t, Floyd,” Miss Pinge said.

  “You keep saying Ronny D. Is Ronny D Desormie?” Nakamook said to Floyd.

  “You bet,” Floyd said. He was so excited, he forgot to use the cheering cone, and Nakamook had to duck the spray off the “bet.”

  “The two of you go back, don’t you?” said Nakamook. “That’s why you’ve got such a great nickname for him, huh?”

  “Came up with it myself,” Floyd said.

  “Maybe you should be a writer, Floyd, because that’s really something,” Nakamook said. “Don’t you think that’s something, Virginia Pinge?”

  Miss Pinge blushed and looked away. She always blushed when Nakamook called her by her full name. He told me the first time he ever d
id it was the day he came back from juvie. He said he did it to be disrespectful, but that when she blushed he liked it, and after that he was never disrespectful to her again, even though he teased her the exact same way someone else would’ve if they were being disrespectful.

  “I guess she really does think it’s something,” said Floyd, confused by the blushing, taking a couple steps toward Miss Pinge’s desk. “And if Miss Pinge thinks something’s something, well…a little something-something we might have indeed.”

  The spray of the P left purple dots of spit on Pinge’s beige blotter, and her mouth went pinched and I wondered if she was wondering what I was wondering: whether or not it would be better for her to tell Floyd to call her by her first name. If Floyd started calling her Ginnie or Virginia instead of Miss Pinge, he’d have fewer opportunities to pronounce labial plosives, which meant less projectile saliva, but then also Ginnie and Virginia were more familiar than Miss Pinge, and it would probably encourage Floyd to further pursue the investigation of his something-something hypothesis.

  I was weighing the pros and cons when Vincie finally flipped me the note. It landed in my lap and I made a very unstealth startled movement that caused Miss Pinge to look at me, so I left the note be and waited.

  Nakamook picked up the slack. He said, “I think that nickname is a work of genius, Floyd. I commend you. If I had a thousand years, I don’t think I could have ever come up with a pervier name than Ron Desormie. And if you’d have asked me to? I’d have told you no one could do it.”

  “Benji—” Miss Pinge said.

  I grabbed the note, held it on the desk in my fist while Nakamook continued:

  “You, Floyd—you did it. You outdid it, Floyd. Ron nee Dee,” said Nakamook. “If I had a sister?” said Nakamook. “If I had a sister, and she was talking to some guy in our backyard? And if my sister, she said to me, ‘Benji, this is Ron Desormie’? I would kick him in the lower back, and when he fell, I’d drop a knee on his face and drag him out into the street unconscious so a car would run him over, and then he’d be dead and that would be that, but if I had a sister and I came into our backyard, and my sister said, ‘Benji, this is Ronny D’? I would slap him on the neck and slap him across the chops and slap him on the neck again, then across the chops again, and I think it would be the end of me, Floyd. I think that I would die. I’d be like those lab rats from the filmstrip where they hook them to cocaine drips and the rats can step on the lever so the cocaine spikes into them and they always kill themselves fast because they can’t stop stepping on the lever. If I were a rat in a lab, the slapping of Ronnie D would be my cocaine, Floyd. I mean, I could really slap the Jesus outta some Ronny D. Even dead—I’d just keep slapping him; even after he was dead, Floyd. I’d slap him to death, and then a few days later, in the middle of slapping his corpse, it would be me who was dead. I’d lose all interest in hydration and nutrients and I’d just die slapping him. You really nailed it, Floyd. You call it like it is. You tell the truth. His parents might have named him Ron Desormie, but you came to know him, and you saw that he was really Ronny D. I mean, you’re a robot just like Botha, Floyd, you’re a real machine, a total gizmo, but at the same time, you’re also the opposite of Botha, because you tell the truth. You should be a writer. Good job.”

  “Good job, Floyd,” Vincie said.

  Leevon shot Floyd with his pointer.

  Floyd said, “Thanks to all you guys, but especially you, Benji. Sometimes I really don’t know what you’re talking about because you get all abstract like that movie The Matrix Trilogy and I think maybe you’re being condescending to me like how a wiseass does. Same time, though, The Matrix Trilogy does have some pretty great moments in there where they’re doing swords and kung fu and like that. And I like that. I like to think of those parts as ‘the other side’ of The Matrix Trilogy. And I can see that there’s something like that in you. Like the other side of Benji. The other side of Benji N, if you get my drift.”

  Nakamook said, “Will you start calling me Benji N, Virginia Pinge?”

  I was hoping Miss Pinge would face Benji so I could unfold and read the note in my fist, but “Whatever you say, Benji,” she said, looking at me.

  “Benji N,” Vincie said to Miss Pinge. “Ben ji Ennnn.”

  “Don’t talk to Miss Pinge that way, Vincie,” said Benji.

  “Sorry,” said Vincie.

  “Okay, boys,” Miss Pinge said.

  “Okay, Miss Pinge,” said Vincie.

  Benji punched Vincie’s arm.

  “Benji!” Miss Pinge said.

  “Sorry,” said Benji.

  “I was just saying okay,” said Vincie.

  “You weren’t being nice to her,” Nakamook said. Then he said to Miss Pinge, “I’ve got these lighters. These jetflame ones. I know a girl who knows a guy who has a cousin who works at a BP station where they sell ’em, except for the ones that go missing, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Miss Pinge said.

  “Well but who do you know? That’s what I mean. Who do you know, Virginia Pinge? You know me, don’t you, Ginnie-Gin Pinge?”

  “Nice one!” said Floyd. “Especially for a beginner.”

  “You know me is what I’m getting at,” Nakamook said, “and I happen to have some jetflame lighters that went missing, like ten of them, and I’m trying to tell you that the fire comes out of the firehole like fire from a blowtorch, or the butt of a fighter-jet. On ignition there’s a hissing noise that ramps up the excitement. I want you to have one. I want to give you one. You’ll find new joy when you light your cigarettes.”

  That got her to finally look at Benji. I unfolded the note.

  “I’m not a smoker,” Miss Pinge said. “And what’s more, I sincerely hope you’re not telling me you have these lighters here at school.”

  “G-Gin-P’s right,” said Floyd, “because lighters belonging to students are grounds for actionable disciplination when we’re talking about having them on school grounds, be they inside lockers, desks, or even pockets, which are searchable with due cause of suspection.”

  “Would I bring lighters on school grounds?” Benji said to Miss Pinge. “Do you think I’d do that, Floyd?”

  “That totally depends on you and only you,” said Floyd.

  “Either way, Benji, I’m not a smoker,” Miss Pinge said.

  “Of course not,” said Benji. “Smoker is a label. There’s no need to label things. We all know that. And we all know you smoke cigarettes, too, and all I’m saying is I’d like to give you one of these crack-lighters that I have because I’m fond of you, and I hope you’ll accept my offer.”

  “If you take that lighter from him, Miss Pinge, you can’t use it to smoke on school grounds,” Floyd said, “because it’s against the rules and you’ll get in trouble, unless of course someone who has the power to look the other way when you use it to smoke cigarettes looks the other way when that happens.”

  The note said:

  Dear Gurion,

  I am an Enemy of Botha and an Enemy of the Indians and of the Cage and Aptakisic. I am an enemy of the whole Arrangement and I want to join the Side of Damage. They said they’d tell you what I did with your gift. If what I did was not enough then tell me what to do and I will do it. I am sick of fuct rules and fuct tears and fuct tapelines. Let me be a soldier.

  WE DAMAGE WE

  I thought: This note is not a love letter from June.

  And then I thought: Your gift?

  “Give me the note, Gurion,” Miss Pinge said.

  I ripped the writing from the note and handed her the blank part.

  Fuct tears? I thought. What was torn? And who did I give a gift to?

  “The whole note, Gurion,” Miss Pinge said.

  “Bet what would didn’t,” Leevon didn’t mouth but seemed to, while doing the countdown with his hand.

  I crumpled the note’s remnant.

  Maybe the “ea” was hard and the fuct tears the wet kind? Did gift
mean “talent”?

  “Gurion,” Miss Pinge said.

  I thought: The countdown = “The scoreboard.”

  I tossed the remnant to Leevon.

  “Leevon,” Miss Pinge said.

  Bet what would didn’t—the scoreboard. Wet tears and talent.

  Leevon popped the remnant in his mouth.

  “Leee eee von,” Miss Pinge said.

  I saw I was right the first time: Gift meant “present,” not “talent.” Whatever the note’s writer had done, he could not have done it with any talent of mine.

  Bet what would didn’t—the scoreboard.

  So wet tears and a present. Or ripped tears and a present. What present had I given?

  Brodsky’s door opened.

  “Don’t be sad, Miss Pinge,” said Benji. “We like you.”

  “Well just speak of the ding-dang devil!” Desormie said from Brodsky’s doorway. Then he made the noise “Tch” at us = “You are immature non-basketballers without intestinal fortitude.”

  What I thought had been a “You know” from Leevon had actually been a “You don’t.”

  “Bet what would didn’t?” Or “Bet what would did it?”

  They said they’d tell you what I did with your gift.

  “Ronny D,” said Benji.

  “Ronny D,” said Floyd, “I caught that one at the scene, just like our prediction forecasted we would.”

  “Wasn’t him, Floydinator—it was them. Or one of them. Or two of them.”

  Bet what would did it. And the scoreboard.

  “Who’s up first?” said Brodsky, flipping through CASS’s.

  “Benji,” Miss Pinge said.

  “What’s on first,” said Benji. “Who’s the one on second.”

  Bet what would did it—the scoreboard.

  “Floydinator is a suck nickname,” said Vincie.

  “I’m not the one came up with it,” said Floyd.

  “Heck is wrong with you?” said Desormie.

  Wet tears from eyes, the Boy Who Cried Wa-Wa.

  I’d had Vincie give the kid three blank passes.

  Ben-Wa Wolf did it. The scoreboard.

  Some minutes later, the pencil-cup jumped as Benji, returning from Brodsky’s office, smacked Miss Pinge’s desk. The jetflame lighter was under her hand before the cup’s contents finished rattling. Pinge was stealth.