The Instructions (90 page)

Benji and Leevon and Vincie were in the shadows of the doorway to the locker-room. Ronrico and the Janitor were just outside of it. I thought: They’re all waiting for me. I thought: I am the leader of the Side of Damage. And I decided: If Isadore Momo is not on the Side of Damage, he is at least on the same side as the Side of Damage.

And I saw that it was good.

I walked at the left wing of the eyebrow the long way, hoping to bump a couple laughers, but the laughers moved when they saw me coming and the eyebrow lost its curve. When I got to Lonnie Boyd, he was still pointing at Momo and saying,

“Hermaphrodite.”

So I pointed at Lonnie, and even though I thought I’d say something about his nipple, or Momo being on the Side of Damage, I changed my mind and said, Basketball.

I said it loud. Then I said it again.

Basketball, I said.

The laughers stopped laughing and waited for someone to drown me. They were always waiting for someone to do some-837

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

thing. I kept my finger pointed at Lonnie and said it again: Basketball.

Then I stepped forward until the nail of my finger was close enough to Lonnie’s extra nipple for Lonnie to reach out and break my finger off and I said, Basketball.

“Psycho,” Lonnie said.

I pressed my finger on the nipple. Not hard or anything, but it was my finger and it was his nipple. Extra or not, he should have hit me. I would’ve hit me. He didn’t hit me.

Basketball, I said.

Desormie said, “Class dismissed, guys.”

No one moved. The snat dripped down Lonnie’s chin and I took my finger off his nipple because I didn’t like touching it, but I continued pointing to it.

That’s when Nakamook said, “Basketball.” By then, him and the others had already come over and started a second eyebrow over the pupil that was Lonnie and I.

The original eyebrow fell back into the new one.

And Ronrico said, “Basketball.”

And the Janitor said, “Basketball.”

Vincie said, “Fucken basketball.”

“Hey!” said Desormie.

And Leevon pulled his cheek down to show Lonnie the red part of his eyeball.

Isadore Momo, still holding his nose, came up next to me, and to Lonnie Boyd, Momo said, “Nipple.” It sounded like “Neepo.”

838

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

Someone said, “The chubby bleederkid says that Lonnie’s a nipple!”

“A nipple!” said someone.

Lonnie said, “It’s a mole!”

“
What’s
a mole, Lonnie?”

“My mole,” said Lonnie, “is a mole.”

“Nipple!” said someone.

“Enough!” said Desormie.

“Nipple!”

“Nipple!”

“Nipple!”

“Hey Lonnie?” said a Jenny.

“What?” said Lonnie.

“Your mole?” said another Jenny.

“What about my mole?”

“Oh my God is it a nipple!”

Lonnie’s body jerked, but instead of attacking anyone, he revolved and went to the locker-room. He had to walk around to the end of the new eyebrow to get there since who would step aside for a trickling wonder like that?

“You’re really cruisin’ for a bruisin’,” Desormie said to me.

“You make the rhyme,” Momo said to Desormie.

Laughter boomed from the eyebrow.

Momo bowed.

“That’s it!” Desormie said, looking around.

“That’s what?” said Ronrico.

839

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“Did you just look at Jenny’s nipples?” said Nakamook.

“Hey!” Desormie said.

“Jenny, did Mr. Desormie just look at your nipples?” said Vincie.

“Probably,” said the seventh-grade Jennys. Then they all giggled.

“I thought I was just imagining it?” said Jenny April.

“Sometimes he looks at my cha-cha,” said Jenny Khouri.

“Always the nipples during swimming, though,” Jenny Flagg said.

“Why you always lookin’ at the Jennys on the chest?” said Ronrico.

“I wanna know that, too,” said the Janitor. “Isn’t it illegal?

What do
you
guys think?”

“It’s definitely ickish,” April said. “I agree with Jenny that it’s gross,” said Flagg. Khouri said, “I don’t like the faces he makes at me.”

“Ladies,” said Desormie.

“And he calls us ‘ladies’ which is creepy.” “We’re girls.” “Will you stop looking at us the way Ronrico said?”

“Now, I don’t know what you’re all talking about,” said Desormie. “But,” he said, “all you gotta do if something bothers you? Is tell me. Tell me
while
it’s bothering you. If you tell me
while
it’s bothering you, then maybe I’ll know what you mean, cause right now? I just don’t know what you mean.”

“Stop looking at us like that.”

840

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“Like what?” said Desormie.

“Like that,” said Jenny April.

“You ladies are crazy and I’d go back to the locker-rooms if I was you because I for one am not writing hall-passes for this nonsense so if you’re late, tough luck, it’s your fault.”

While I was getting dressed, kids I never spoke to chinned air at me and showed me power-fists. President Blake Acer wasn’t among those kids, but he wasn’t showing Lonnie any mooky solidarity, either. Nor were his two or three Shover underlings; they all just kept their eyes at ichthi-level.

Then, out in B-hall, by the locker-room entrance, Ronrico and the Janitor were waiting for me beside Nakamook and Leevon and Vincie Portite, all together, like it was the most normal thing to do in the world.

And we all walked back to the Cage together.

At the gate, instead of ringing the doorbell, I pulled the hallpass pad from my pocket.

I asked them: You guys got Darkers?

‪

‫

‬

‪

‫

‬

‬

“WE DAMAGE WE is tired,” whispered Nakamook.

It was ten minutes after the beginning-of-class tone, and Benji and I were on opposite sides of the teachers lounge doorway’s light rhombus. The Chewer was checking his image in the 841

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

glass of the C-Hall firehose case. He’d locked up the side entrance in order to rove. According to Ronrico, the roving had started at lunch on Wednesday.

“You might think it was because of the scoreboard getting killed,” Ronrico’d explained when we first noticed Floyd wasn’t at his post, “but don’t blame it on Ben-Wa. Floyd was roving even before that—because of how I tagged up Main Hall. It’s my fault and I’m sorry.”

“Shut up about it already,” Nakamook had said.

“Sorry, Benji.”

“Stop saying sorry. If you want to brag about tagging up Main Hall, brag about it, but don’t pretend you’re reluctantly confess-ing for the good of Ben-Wa.”

We’d decided to work in pairs so one guy could always be on lookout for Floyd. It would have been more economical in terms of passes and defacement-per-minute rates if we worked as a single group with one guy on lookout and five bombing, but we decided on pairs because two’s the most guys that could hope to hide safely in a doorway. I wrote out one pass for each pair and designated different times to return to the Cage since if we trickled in separate it would look less suspicious.

Tired how? I whispered across the rhombus.

“Everyone’s writing it,” Nakamook said.

I said, Some people are still writing DAMAGE WE and WE

DAMAGE—I’ve seen probably ten of those.

“Yeah,” said Benji, “but those just seem like screw-ups. The 842

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

one kind looks like the tagger was dyslexic, and the other like he got caught before he could finish. That’s not the point, anyway, how many people do one or the other. I don’t like writing what
any
one else writes. It’s team-spirity.”

I said, If the tags all say the same thing, they’ll be more powerful. They’ll look more like a message.

“What’s the message?” said Benji.

It’s what it says, I said. WE DAMAGE WE. It is that it is.

“What does that mean, though?”

I said, Every time someone reads or writes
Damage
now, the Arrangement gets damaged and the Side of Damage gets stronger.

“Maybe that’s what the message does,” Benji said. “Maybe.

But what I’m asking you is what it
means
.”

It means what it does, I said. Beyond that, it doesn’t matter. At least not yet. What matters is the Side of Damage has the power to send messages—that we can send messages the Arrangement doesn’t want sent.

Benji said, “Even if that
does
make sense, someone’s gonna get—”

Here he comes, I said, and became the wall.

Benji did, too.

Floyd paced past the doorway.

When he was out of range, I whispered, Maybe someone’ll get caught, but that’s not so bad. If they rat—and I don’t think they will, but even if they do—we’ll continue. Everyone’ll know we’re unstoppable.

843

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“Not if they kick us out.”

They can’t kick us all out, I said.

“Why not?” he said.

So fine, I said, so say they kick us out—maybe we’re still victorious.

“How’s that?” Benji said, then became his wall.

I became my wall, waited.

Floyd passed by again, hands crossed at the wrists at the small of his back, cheering cone bopping the backs of his thighs. I snuck to the edge of the doorway. The way I cocked my head, I could see C-Hall to 2-Hall before my line of sight got obscured. If Floyd took a right into 2-Hall, we’d wait because there wasn’t much 2-Hall to the right of C-Hall—the side entrance was just three classrooms from the junction, and it wouldn’t give us enough time to deface anything well. If he took a left, though…

I said, If we get kicked out, we’ll get sent to other schools and maybe we’ll do the same thing there with other kids. The Side of Damage could spread out from Aptakisic like—

“First of all, that’s crazy—the only reason all those kids even joined the Side of Damage is because it means that we’ll protect them. If they go to a new school, we won’t be there to do that. Secondly, what do I care anyway? They’re not my friends.

Any loyalty they have to me comes out of fear. And any loyalty I have to them is only by proxy; it’s only cause I know they’re on
your
side.”

I said, That’s good enough, Benji.

844

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

“Loyalty without friendship creates hypocrisy.”

That’s just a whiny word, I said.

Benji said, “There’s only so much loyalty to go around, Gurion.

And there’s even less friendship. If you’re loyal to someone who isn’t your friend, and they come into conflict with someone who is, then what are you supposed to do?”

I said, Be loyal to the friend.

He said, “But you still end up being disloyal to someone who you were supposed to be loyal to, and that’s hypocritical.”

I said, It’s not hypocritical—it’s just how it is. Friendship creates—Floyd’s gone, I said.

We stealthed into C-Hall. It was my turn to play lookout.

Benji led me to the water fountain.

Friendship creates loyalty, I told him, but loyalty doesn’t necessarily lead to friendship. So friendship and loyalty are separate, and it’s better to have both than just one, but it’s better to have one than neither.

“Whatever,” Benji said, gesturing at the water fountain.

He’d written I EXPLODE in the basin, just above the drain.

“You got a problem with that?” he said.

I said, The marker’s gonna wash away if someone takes a drink before it sets.

“No one’s gonna take a drink,” said Benji. He pressed the button and nothing came out of the arcing hole, and I remembered: it was the water fountain Eliyahu had punched. “I was asking about
what
I wrote—you got a problem with it?”

845

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

I said, You’re Benji Nakamook.

“What’s that mean?” he said.

I said, You’re my best friend.

He said, “You sure about that?” = “I saw you talking to Bam by the bus circle yesterday.”

I said, Don’t get subtle on me, Nakamook. You asked me not to fight him.

“That doesn’t mean you’ve gotta be his buddy,” Benji said.

I’m not his buddy, I said.

“You looked pretty friendly.”

We’re not, I said. I said, He thinks we are, but we’re not.

“But you do like him,” said Benji. “Everyone does.”

That’s what he keeps saying, I said, but that doesn’t make it so.

“Let’s drop it. Pride and propriety.”

You’re the one who started talking about him, I said.

“I didn’t start shit. You think I should do more I EXPLODEs or what?”

I said, Write what you want. I said, It’s probably better to change it up, anyway—it’ll confuse the robots.

And when I said that I got an idea.

I said, I just got an idea.

On the wall across from the Cage, I wrote *EMOTIONALIZE*, hugely, using an entire cinderblock for each letter.

“That is just smart as hell, man,” said Benji. He liked it so much.

We admired what I did for a few seconds, then heard human 846

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

noise and ducked back into a doorway. It turned out to be Ronrico and The Janitor, returning to the Cage, right at the time I’d told them to.

The Janitor rang the doorbell and Ronrico noticed the

*EMOTION-ALIZE*.

“‘Boystar Emotionalize Boystar’?” said Ronrico. “He’s biting my fucken steez, Mikey.”

“Gurion’s steez,” said the Janitor.

“Whoever’s steez it is, that kid’s biting it. Hard.”

Nakamook bit into his fist and barely stifled nose-noise.

“Come lunch, I will blot that bullshit out,” Ronrico said.

“Don’t get so emotional,” said the Janitor, “because then you’re just doing what he tells you to do.”

Botha came to the gate then, but Ronrico was still staring at the wall.

“That kid can’t tell me to do anything,” Ronrico said. “I bet he didn’t write it anyway. It was probably one of those Jennys.”