The Instructions

  Leevon held out a log-shape.

  I looked at the clock. 9:32. Art had started twenty-seven minutes before that. I thought of Main Man’s shrunken chambers. He’d been so nervous by the bus circle, maybe his pump couldn’t take it. If he’d had a heart attack in the bathroom, no one would know.

  I knocked on the boys’ room door. Nothing. I tried the knob—it was unlocked.

  Main Man knelt beside the toilet, spitting. He said, “I think I’ll be okay, Gurion. I have to sing.”

  I said, You don’t sound like yourself.

  “All the guns are ripe for the plucking,” he said. “Twice smitten, one dies but once, yet still we burn the ashes and annihilate all wreckage. Wherever we go we bring the monkey with us.”

  Okay, I said.

  He wretched and I kneeled next to him. “I need to do this for a little while,” he said. “These webs everywhere, green and then purple, but then they go away. The spiders aren’t real because I am real but I wish they were real so I could squash them. Once I get the second one down, I can sing til everything disappears, so just please don’t look at me while I do this.”

  I’ll stay til you feel better, I said.

  “It gets me all ambulance, spiders out the eyeballs.”

  You’re gonna sing great, I said. I said, You’re the best singer in school and you have the best voice.

  Mookus puked, said, “Boystar.” His puke didn’t smell normal. It smelled like a bakery on Christmas.

  Your voice kills Boystar’s, I said.

  “Soon,” he said. “Please go,” he said. “Spiders dance meanly and there’s no place like home.”

  I lingered by the sink, washing my hands so I could watch over him, but he asked me to leave again, so I left.

  “You need to shave yourself,” said Mangey when I sat down next to her.

  “You do got some hairs there,” Ronrico said. “I think they’re good, though. Maybe a little long. You probably shouldn’t grow ’em out til you have some more of them.”

  “Like a thousand more of them,” said Mangey.

  “Okay everyone,” Miss Gleem said. “Roll up.” She meant the tarps.

  The first time we had Art, me and Benji held the rolled-up tarps in our pits and jousted. Shouting “Charge!” and running across a room to knock someone down with a lance made of canvas looked like so much fun that, even after Botha stepped us for it, other kids picked up other tarps and did it. Vincie and Leevon. Mangey and Jesse Ritter. Even Ronrico and the Janitor, who’d been our enemies at the time. And so I’d thought we’d all joust every time we had Art, but stuff that fun rarely happens more than once.

  The Side of Damage returned art supplies to the wheely-cart and rolled the tarps without incident.

  While that was happening, the doorbell rang. Botha, forgetting Miss Gleem had his keyring, went to answer it. At the door, he patted himself down until Miss Gleem said his name, his first name. “Victor,” she said. And then he performed this stream of completely unBothalike actions. He spun on his heel, smiled, pointed at the keyring, and beckoned with his pointerfinger = “Toss the keyring, sexy.” Then, when Miss Gleem tossed the keys underhanded, Botha used his claw to hook the ring overhanded and finished with a bow, flourishing an invisible feathered cap.

  He was flirting.

  Main Man was hallucinating. He had come out of the bathroom and was standing beside me, eyes shut tight, pressing a powdery orange ball against his lips. The ball was no larger than a shooter marble, but Scott’s mouth wouldn’t open to let it in.

  Benji walked over, saying, “What is that?”

  “It’s the second one,” Scott said.

  The second one what? I said.

  “The second medicine to make me sing perfectly.”

  “You look like shit, Scott,” said Vincie, approaching us.

  “What’s the medicine called?” Benji said.

  “I can’t remember,” Scott said. “Boystar eats four before every perform-ance. I’ll eat this one when the ghosts stop stapling my lips.”

  “Boystar gave you that?” Benji said.

  “Yes. And it was nice of him. It’s the secret of all his success at singing good and he let me have the secret. It’s the whole key to the castle of girls peeing on themselves because that is the purpose of singing. You have to eat four of them if you’re the Boystar because he’s not as good as me at singing, he said, and also because he’s taller. All I need to eat is three for the girls to bathroom because I’m already as good as if I just ate one, just by being me, not just because I’m short. I’m trying.”

  I swiped the ball from his hand.

  “He said it was for me,” Scott said, reaching for it.

  I sniffed it. It smelled Christmasy like his puke had. I touched it with my tongue-tip. Bitter. It was nutmeg. And then it was powder, falling out the hole at the bottom of my fist.

  This is amateur poison, I said. It’s what’s making you sick.

  Nakamook bit a thumb-knuckle til it bled.

  “That fuck,” said Vincie.

  Scott knelt before the powder at our feet.

  “Fucken fuck!” said Vincie.

  “It was mine,” Scott whispered down at the powder.

  I tapped his shoulder. When he looked up, I placed a ball of nothing in his palm. He popped the ball of nothing in his mouth, smiling, and swallowed.

  He gave me the third one and I put it in my pocket, replaced it in his palm with another ball of nothing. Again he popped nothing in his mouth and swallowed.

  “All done,” he said. “You fix everything.”

  I heard gratitude, Nakamook an imperative.

  “We will,” he told Main Man.

  “That too,” Main Man said, but a tear bubbled over the scoop of his lashes. “Will I get to sing first?” he asked me.

  You’ll get to sing last, I told him, and wiped the tear with my sleeve.

  The woman who’d rung the doorbell was a Boystar staffer with a headset. She led Scott out the door by the hand. “Alert makeup,” she said into her celly. “The talent’s a little bit monochrome. Over.” Miss Gleem followed them, pushing her wheely-cart. Botha locked the Cage down behind her. I know the announcements had started by then, but I don’t know what they said. I couldn’t hear a word of them. I couldn’t hear anything.

  Then I heard the end-of-class tone.

  I went to the door to wait for Botha to open it. Vincie and Nakamook and Jelly followed me. Botha had returned to his desk. He was sitting on it. I looked his way and, again, he winked at me.

  “Why are we standing here?” Vincie said.

  What do you mean? I said.

  “We’re going to the pep rally,” Benji said.

  “Since when?”

  “I don’t know—Brodsky told Gurion this morning, though.”

  Wait, I said. I said, Botha didn’t tell you guys?

  “No,” they said.

  Come on, I said to the Side of Damage. Line up, I said.

  They got behind us.

  “Where we going?” someone said.

  We’re going to hear Main Man sing, I said.

  To Botha, I said: We’re gonna be late.

  “No one’s going innywhere,” he said. He stood up to say it, winked at me for the third time. “You had your chence,” he said. “But you spant all first period talking. Talking’s against the rules.”

  What? Wait. We always talk during Art, I said. I said, There’s a tacit understanding that—

  Then he winked again, and I saw he was joking.

  “Every one of you talked,” he said.

  It isn’t usually against the rules to talk during Art, I said, playing along with his unfunny deadpan. I said, Not during Art.

  “You and Nakamake more than anyone, Make-bee.”

  Stop joking now, Mr. Botha, come on. We’re gonna be late.

  He shrugged his shoulders = “Jaking? What do you mean, jaking?”

  And he really wasn’t.

  I said, It would be dif
ferent if you’d said you were changing the understanding, but you didn’t.

  “Told your friend Scat,” he said.

  You told Main Man? I said.

  I was beginning to understand.

  “Told him you’d all see him sing, long’s you stayed quoyt. Thought he’d want to tale you himself.”

  Well he didn’t, I said. I said, He didn’t tell us.

  “I don’t belave that for a sackond, Make-bee. Scat was so excited. His smile—bright as the vary sun that warms our planet. He was looking forward to it so vary much, to all his frands seeing him do what he loves to do. He wanted that more than even you, I’d bat. Yeah. I just don’t belave you—course he told you! It meant everything to him.”

  You fuck, Vincie said.

  “Stap four for Vancent Pawtight,” said Botha.

  The beginning-of-class tone sounded.

  “Everyone sit down now,” said Botha.

  Brodsky’s gonna fire you for this, I said. I said, We will rat you out and you’ll get fired. Think about that.

  Botha said, “Don’t be rideckulous, Make-bee. Mister Brodsky knows I got your bast interests in mind. ’Specially yours. After all, you’re the one showed me the error of my ways. Now all you: sit down,” he said. And he extended his arm and panned it, as if to show us where our seats were. “Sit down and help your frand Make-bee cellbrate his very last day in the Cage.”

  No one moved.

  Unlock that fucking door, I said.

  “Sit down,” said Botha.

  We’re going to the gym.

  Botha started giggling. “Jest sit,” he said.

  I said, Where are we going?

  “We’re going to the gym,” said the Side of Damage—they’d encircled us by then.

  We’re going to the gym to see Main Man sing, I said to the Monitor. Give us your keys.

  Attached to him, at his beltline, by a single, flimsy loop of fabric, the chunky keyring swayed and gleamed. We were moving forward, toward each other. We’d been moving forward, toward each other. I think I started it, but I can’t say for sure—it might have been Botha. Once the movement began, though, it felt as much like I was letting my legs carry me as it felt like I was making them carry me. How it felt was right. At the same time, the circle the Side had formed was growing tighter, and this banced my perspective. I wasn’t rushing at Botha, but the gap between us kept closing more rapidly than I was expecting, each step we took appearing to achieve a much greater distance than the previous one.

  Whether I acted too early or from too far away—that there even could be a difference only ever occured to me in the stealthest slo-mo moments—when I lunged for the keys I miscalculated. My fingers tapped metal, but I didn’t get a grip, and Botha had time and space to pivot.

  In the middle of the pivot, he hooked my hood, maybe inadvertantly, maybe only half so. The hood was a good one, stitched tight to the collar. My spine jerked straight, then my body jerked backwards.

  The back of my head struck the keyring, hard.

  My ass hit the floor, I popped up, angled sharp, and I palm-struck the Monitor’s nearer kidney.

  It would not be correct to say—as I fear well-intending scholars may wish to—that this marked a point of no return for me, let alone for the Side of Damage. Apart from death and the moment of Elohim’s pronouncement that man be made in His image, I suspect there has never been any such thing for human beings as a point of no return. But even if I’m wrong about that, I was born an Israelite, I became a Torah scholar, I armed my brothers, I was put in a cage, I fell in love with June, the Side of Damage arose, I fell out with my teachers, was humbled by Slokum, my father was trampled, mothers slapped me, an innocent was poisoned, and the Arrangement double-dealt me. There is no good reason why my delivery of an excellent bodyblow to the Cage monitor should be ajudged the start of the Gurionic War. I will not deny that planting that shot in Botha’s kidney severely narrowed whatever set of Aptakistico-scholastic options I might have wanted to explore if I were someone other than myself, nor will I deny it roughly coincided with my knowing the Gurionic War had started, but that, scholars, is not the same as calling the moment a point of no return. Narrowed options are options nonetheless, even when your chemicals are parching your mouth and swelling your muscles. I had always been at war, whether I’d known it or not.

  As for the Side of Damage, why I’d just hit Botha didn’t matter a billionth as much as that I’d hit Botha, and whatever it meant or didn’t, they knew I was their leader.

  I wouldn’t guess my reasons for hitting him were any more important to the Monitor himself. Holding his kidney, he made an Australian noise and twisted. He shouted about expellable offenses—“axpailable erfences”—and pulled much harder on my hood than the first time. I lost my balance and jerked back into him.

  He got me around the chest and arms. Lifted. The feeling, by then, was not unfamiliar.

  I started to kick and he swung me left. I kept on kicking and he swung me right.

  The circle of soldiers receded toward the carrels. I might have thought: Not again—but I didn’t. What I thought was: Hurry up! And I continued to kick, and the Monitor to swing me, harder at each pass, backer and forther, the claw’s round side gouging deep in my ribs. The faster he swung me, the more my ear fluids swirled. The room lost depth fast and my kicks were barely glancing him. No one said anything. Motion looked blurred, the Cage flat and queasy.

  At some point after the seventh swing—after the seventh, I was too dizzy to count—I landed a lucky heel in Botha’s knee’s sweetspot and, as he dipped to regain balance, a small, smudgy Benji moved in the periphery, did something fuzzy with a chair.

  I bonked Botha’s cheek with the back of my head, and when I bonked it a second time, we three-sixtied clockwise. I saw Vincie and Ben-Wa flip chairs at the teacher cluster, and Benji, now medium-sized, held his by one leg. He approached us like a liontamer, oriented sideways, left shoulder-first, but the chair was where the whip should have been, its seatback dragging the floor behind him.

  “Let him go,” Ben-Wa said.

  “Let him go,” said the Side of Damage.

  Leevon flipped a chair near the doorway.

  Another bonk from my head got Botha on the chin. It stung my scalp, and Botha stumbled us forward.

  Benji got in our way.

  Botha hoisted me shieldlike.

  Benji stepped left fast, then I heard a thick thump with low, boinging echoes as the chair connected with the Monitor’s shoulder.

  Botha, shrieking like a car accident, dropped me. I landed all-fours.

  The Flunky pulled me up onto my feet, and I leaned against him while the dizziness passed. “You’re okay,” said the Flunky, “deep breaths, deep breaths.”

  Monitor Botha was heading for the door now, clutching his shoulder. The shoulder looked low.

  Benji, following, crushed the hand that clutched it. Botha’s knee met the ground, but he stood back up. Stood there, gasping and surrounded. The gasping had rust in it. His pipes were wrecked. Little cuts in his throat that had trailed that first shriek’s soundwaves bled.

  “Axpail—” he hissed.

  Ben-Wa and Vincie took turns attacking. A chair to the back put Botha on his knees. A chair to the chest kept him off his hands. They swung once more each before Nakamook finally chopped him down: an air-abraiding swing (“Fffffffih!” the air screamed) to the broken shoulder. Botha fell on the other one.

  Dropping his chair before he arrived, Leevon punted into Botha’s stomach. Botha curled fetal and Leevon stepped over him, kicked him in the tailbone, straightened him out.

  We stood there, watching the monitor writhe. He rolled onto his back and onto his stomach then onto his back and onto his stomach, crossing his legs and twisting his hips to guard his nuts against phantom wallops. His claw, draped over his face, didn’t hide much. Involuntary muscular actions—overwrought blinking, jumping neck tendon, his forehead wrinkling, his forehead smoothing, his mustache twitch
ing above his pursing then slackening then pursing lips—were manifest.

  “Not brilliant, Botha,” Vincie told him.

  I tore the keyring off Botha’s belt loop and righted the nearest chair. I’d thought I’d stand on it, but once I got it righted, I didn’t feel so worked up. I was glad for what had happened, but it had been so easy. The Monitor had been delivered into our hands. Standing on a chair to shout about it seemed chomsky.

  I sat, cleared my throat.

  Who did this? I said to the Side of Damage.

  About half of them looked at their feet.

  Who did this? I said again.

  “No one,” they said.

  But who did this? I said.

  “Everyone,” they said.

  They wanted to give me the right answer and they didn’t know what it was. They were scared to ask me.

  I did this, I said.

  “I did this,” they said.

  I did this, I said.

  “You did this,” they said.

  Good, I said. Who’s got a knife?

  No one said anything.

  I said, What’s for lunch today, Jelly?

  “Medallions of venison.”

  Get your knife, I told her, and cut the straps off some backpacks.

  Boshka, Chunkstyle, and Nakamook volunteered theirs.

  Pick some guys and drag the Monitor into the bathroom, I told the Flunky. I said, Hog-tie him when Jelly brings the straps.

  “How we gonna hog-tie him?” the Flunky said.

  “Like a hog, foog,” said Nakamook.

  “The claw,” said the Flunky.

  “My bad,” said Benji.

  I said, Take his claw off first, and three-quarter hog-tie him. When you’re done with that, tie him to the radiator.

  The Flunky deputized his brother and Dingle. Ronrico got in on it, too.

  Botha kept mumbling. I pulled his cellphone—a flip—from its holster, put it in my pocket.

  Give us your claw, Ronrico told him.

  Lowering his eyes, Botha said, “Demmeged,” ≠ “I can’t detach my prosthesis with these broken phalanges,” but might as well have.

  Benji did a zippo trick I’d never seen before. He held the lighter sideways in his lefthand and snapped the fingers of his right hand, which opened the lid and sent the lighter falling end-over-end. The wheel scraped Botha’s forehead, which sparked the flint so the flame arose as the lighter slid down Botha’s temple. It landed right-side-up, an inch from his face, flickering. “Once you’re hog-tied,” Benji said, “I’m gonna set you on fire.” He grabbed and closed the zippo with a single swipe of his hand, arm so long he barely bent to do it. Then he placed his foot on Botha’s shattered shoulder, but didn’t lay his weight down. Botha stuttered moans and twitched more.