The Instructions (12 page)
Authors: Adam Levin
I pissed a lot. Every day of the week, I beat the good sage’s mini-mum, and usually I beat it by the end of dinner.
The Rambam (aka Maimonedes of Cordoba) said you had to 109
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piss at least ten times a day if you wanted to be a good sage. He also said you should keep your stomach in a constant state of near-diarrhea, which is not to be confused with a near-constant state of total diarrhea, which is the way of the stomachs of scoun-drels worldwide. It is also important, according to the Rambam, to keep yourself clean. That is why I’d wash my hands every time.
Even though doing so made people think you got some piss on your fingers. Rambam was a wiseman.
I finished up pissing and scrubbed with pink soap, dried my hands on my pants, and returned to the bright and empty gym, where my every step echoed and my breathing seemed loud. The clock was high on the western wall, ten feet over the basketball hoop, just a few inches below the scoreboard. It was masked by a box of metal rods with spaces between them too narrow for a golf ball, or even a marble, to get through. A coin, though, was thin.
A coin could sneak.
Once, I got a couple pennies through the mask. All that they did was bounce off the glass, but pennies are smooth-edged, and that was the reason, apart from sheer mass, that I’d thought to try quarters. Quarters are rough-edged, and also they weigh more, and I thought that the glass might be like a man, and the edge of a penny like a bed of nails, whereas the one or two points on the edge of a quarter that would impact the glass were more like one nail that, if it was laid on, would enter the flesh.
I dropped a quarter into the balloon and stood at the top of the key. When I kneeled down to aim, it said 10:25 on the clock. I 110
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didn’t know if it could happen, but I wanted the clock to stop when I smashed it, and if it stopped, I thought it would be better—a better gift to June, in case she noticed such things—if it stopped at a time that was interesting. 10:25 was not so interesting. Though 2 x 5 = 10, it’s a cinch. And 10:26 did nothing when you played with it. So I decided to wait for 10:27, since 1+0+2+7 = 10.
While I waited for 10:27, I could only hear my breathing and I remembered June kissing me. Not just that she kissed me, but the way the kiss felt, on my skin, in my skull. I got a shiver.
When it faded, I tried to get another but couldn’t. I’d worn out the memory, at least for the moment. If I thought too much about anything good, it would get less good, and everything good would begin to seem temporary. I did that the most with good songs. They’d stick in my head and go dull. And even when I’d hear one in my ears again, there were no surprises. I’d anticipate all the notes and the beats and the song would be ruined.
So while it wasn’t any big deal that I wore out the memory of that one kiss, I was scared that if I kept remembering the kiss I could ruin future kisses, so instead I remembered June saying,
“Don’t be sick, Gurion. I like you,” and I got another shiver and it was 10:27 and as soon as the shiver stopped I pinched the quarter through the balloon skin and pulled back on it. I was aiming for the most middle space of the mask, the one that had the 3 and the 9 between it.
I let fly and the quarter plinked the bottom of the rod beneath the twelve, then fell straight down onto the floor. It was bad 111
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that I missed, but good to discover that my pennygun could project quarters.
It was still 10:27. I dropped another quarter in the firing pouch. This time I aimed for the space with the 5 and the 7
between it because it seemed from the first shot that I had aimed too high. There were fourteen seconds left in the twenty-eighth minute of ten o’clock. When there were thirteen seconds left, I fired. I got a direct hit, right in the middle between the 3 and the 9. It made the noise
tock
, but nothing else happened. The glass didn’t fall down in pieces like I wanted. The clock didn’t stop. There weren’t even cracklines. Improbably, the quarter came to rest inside the mask; it lay flat on the centermost rod along the bottom.
I’d been wrong about quarters; they wouldn’t do the trick. I’d smashed windows with pennies, so I was surprised. It was 10:28
and 1+0+2+8= 11, so it wasn’t as good as 10:27, but it was better than nothing, and I just couldn’t wait for 10:36. Though the period wouldn’t end for sixteen more minutes, Desormie had to let class out extra early because the showers would bottleneck since even the dirty kids—even some of the shy ones—preferred to get warm and lather the stiff chlorine stink off their skin. If he stayed in his office while everyone showered, Desormie wouldn’t hear me, but he was just as likely to stand in the gym and admire the scoreboard. He did that sometimes.
I’d have to work quick.
Since the pennygun could fire quarters, I figured it could fire 112
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small wingnuts, too. The problem was I’d given all the wingnuts I’d brought that day to June and the principal. I ran to the bleachers to see if I could find one—no. The bleachers’ joints were fixed with welded-on hexnuts.
10:29, nearly 10:30.
I thought about shooting the rivet on my jeans-pocket that I used to call the grommet until my dad said it was a rivet, and then I thought about the bottom eyelet on my Chucks that
was
a grommet, but a specific shoe-kind that was better called an eyelet, but neither of those things was any heavier or pointier than a quarter, plus in order to get one I’d have to tear my jeans or cut my shoes and thus anger my mom, so both ideas were completely dental.
I opened the back door of the gym where there was an asphalt trail. Next to the trail was some mud with rocks in it. I kept my foot wedged between the door and jamb and searched for a rock that would fit in the gun. The effort got me H, but I found three in all, each irregularly shaped: one like a dog’s ear bending in kindness, another like Nevada, a third like some lips with a sore in the corner. I fired Nevada first, because it was the slimmest, and also the pointiest. Nevada got wedged between the bars of the mask. It was 10:31, almost 10:32. I felt all defeated. I felt like exploding. If the slimmest and pointiest of the three couldn’t penetrate… I let fly the dog’s ear without really aiming; I let fly from pique; I fired from the hip. The shot was way high. Not even close. It blew out the E of the HOME on the scoreboard. The E hit the floor in three sharp pieces. The bulb remained. HOME was now HOM.
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Well, that was something. Wasn’t that something? I thought it was something, not much but something. As a tribute to the love that I’d fallen in with June, a broken scoreboard, so easy to engender it could be accidental, was totally worthless, but at least a broken scoreboard would upset Desormie, who if I didn’t have to worry about him coming out of his office to admire the schmuckface scoreboard to begin with, I’d have had another ten minutes to find a suitable projectile to fire at the clock.
So yes, it was something, but it wasn’t enough. The problem was the something wasn’t on purpose. The fact that I
breathed
got Desormie upset.
It was 10:32. I was holding the lips rock. I loaded the lips rock. I had time for one shot to make it on purpose. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to bust out the H so the board would read OM, or the M so instead the board would read HO. So I aimed for the V so the board would read ISITOR, because next to each other the two of them sounded like gods with the bodies of monkeys or donkeys, the kinds of gods you sacrificed virgins for, Hom and Isitor. That’s right, I thought. That’s
right
, I thought. You can worship
that
, you filthy uncircumsized crotch-peeping mamzer pedophile scumbomb.
I knelt, I aimed, I let the rock fly. The rock flew funny, the corner with the sore on it scraping the body of the gun on exit, bancing the vector.
I missed the V. The T got blasted. The scoreboard read HOM and VISI OR. HOM and VISI OR did not sound pagan. It just sounded stupid. And now I had just under a minute to deal with all the evi-114
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dence against me, to blind the world to the source of the stupidity.
I left the rocks and picked up the quarter. Then I picked up all the pieces of the broken E and T and took them to the handicapped bathroom in B-Hall, right outside the gym, and locked the door. Soon some people would see the busted scoreboard and would say that I did it, but they wouldn’t have proof. That usually wouldn’t matter, except since there wouldn’t be any pieces on the floor, Brodsky and them would be looking for the guy who took the pieces. They would think there was a way to prove that I did it by finding the pieces. Because no one would break a scoreboard and then clean up what he broke, they would think. They would think someone would either break the scoreboard and run away fast, or break the scoreboard and take the pieces with him to show them off. Since I’d left no pieces on the floor, they would think the person didn’t run away fast—they would think he took the pieces to show them off. And I was going to throw the pieces away so that if they searched my locker and my bag and my desk and my pockets and did not find the pieces, they would become confused. Because they would think there should be proof since proof was the first thing they thought of and they would think they were smart. But there would be no proof. And they were not that smart. And all my enemies who believed I did it would still believe I did it and would keep looking for proof they would never find. And all my friends who hoped that I did it would ask of my enemies, “Where is your proof?”
I wrapped the pieces of the E and the T in yards of paper towel 115
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so they wouldn’t tear the bag and threw the wrapped pieces into the trashcan and covered them over with wads of goozed tissues and saw it was good. That was all the good I saw, though.
I was walking out of the bathroom when I remembered the quarter that lay inside the clockmask. I didn’t think anyone would notice the quarter, especially since they’d be thinking about the scoreboard, but it wasn’t impossible they’d notice the quarter.
They’d see the Nevada rock wedged in the mask, and if they got on a ladder to get the rock out, they might notice the quarter. Except for Nakamook, I never showed or told anyone at Aptakisic about pennyguns, but Brodsky knew my history, at least that part of it, and if someone found my pennygun while they were searching for the pieces of the E and the T, they might think it was strange and show it to Brodsky, who might draw conclusions based on the quarter, so I took apart the pennygun and threw the balloon in one hallway garbage can and the sawed-off bottle in another one. The rubberband was thick, though, and wasn’t incriminat-ing, so I didn’t ditch it. I turned it into a sideways 8 and wore it on my wrists like a set of handcuffs. I wedged the hall-pass under the left cuff. My fingers throbbed and soon I couldn’t feel them.
I walked toward Jerry, keeping my head down and jerking my body like the warden was shoving me along the white corridor that led to the chair, and I wanted to go as slow as I could because even though I knew that the chair couldn’t kill me, the warden kept shoving and hissing, “Faster!”
I raised my hands to show Jerry the hall-pass.
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They can’t kill me, Jerry, but still, I said, I’ll never forgive them for trying.
The Sentinel nodded.
I felt kind of childish. I felt like a dickhead. A weaponless failure playing pretend. I undid the dickhead handcuffs.
Sent: June 9, 2006, 12:49 AM Central-Standard Time Subject: LAST WORD (pls fwd to any scholar not listed in the CC box)
From: [email protected] (me)
CC: SCHECHTER LIST, NORTHSIDE HEBREW DAY LIST
Scholars:
I know all your parents saw that email, “Important,” that Headmaster Rabbi Kalisch wrote, and it’s only to be expected that after reading that email, they’d forbid you from associating with me, and what I want you to know is that I am not angry at any of you for avoiding me, for not stopping by or writing or calling in these past couple days. There is a difference between avoiding and quitting. Sometimes you have to avoid in order not to quit. I know that. And I know you haven’t quit me. And you would know if I were angry. I would tell you.
For those of you who have reached out to me against your parents’
wishes: Please stop. Although the solace I get from your support is vast, it is nonetheless dwarfed by the sadness that comes over me at the thought of you breaking a commandment for my benefit.
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All of you must honor your parents, and although it is true that in certain situations you must disobey them in order to honor them, no such situation has yet arisen, at least not one concerning me, and that is why, after hitting SEND,
I
will honor your parents by not contacting
you
until that time when honor demands disobedience.
Til then, remain stealth, gain strength, and protect each other.
Your Friend,
Gurion ben-Judah
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3
DAMAGE
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
3rd–4th Period
THE INSTRUCTIONS
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