The Instructions (43 page)

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

the midmorning sun, and bracketed to the front part of the front caster wheel will be a large pane of smoked plexiglass that’ll lay flat, in what do you call it? perpendicular respect to the rhinoncer-ous plane—I have to learn to cut and stain plexiglass, first—but this plexiglass will be cut into the shape of what the shadow of the three-dimensional version of the rhino would be at midmorning, which will basically be the same shape as the 2-D rhino, but foreshortened to account for the rhino’s position relative to the lightbulb, which, like I said, will be at the angle of the midmorning sun, in summer I’m thinking, on the summer solstice, in Illinois.

Don’t you think that would be a funny sculpture, though? A 2-D

rhino with a fixed shadow in a 3-D world? Or is it pretentious? I think it’s funny, but my mom said it was pretentious, but I think that maybe when I told her about it, I did a bad job explaining.”

June looked at me when she said “Jean Dubuffet” and again when she said “rhinocerous” and “midmorning-height,” but didn’t make a face or anything. It was stealth.

“It does sound funny,” Miss Gleem said, “and also completely wonderful!” She said, “I take it you liked the Dubuffets?”

“I loved them,” June said.

Miss Gleem said, “There was an exhibit in Amsterdam a few summers back—I went right when I finished grad school, and they were so amazing.” She fiddled with her combs, remembering. “Did you have any favorites?”

June said, “Of course, and I’d tell you, but I don’t like titles, so I never checked them.”

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Miss Gleem said, “That’s because you think visually, June, and you should be proud of it. Can you describe the paintings you liked? How about the cow ones?”

While June described cows by Jean Dubuffet, the Janitor farted twice with his armpit. I couldn’t see, but I knew it was him.

Miss Gleem turned from June and said, “Mikey Bregman! We know it’s you.”

“Sorry, Miss Gleem,” said the Janitor.

“Sorry, Miss Gleem,” said Vincie Portite, in a sissy voice. I couldn’t see him either, the liar—Vincie was the one who told me no one read the detention assignments.

Miss Gleem said, “Vincie.”

Vincie said, “Miss Gleem.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay then,” said Vincie.

Miss Gleem clicked her tongue and turned back to June.

June said, “I’ve really gotta get out of here for a minute, Miss Gleem.”

Miss Gleem said, “Only a minute.”

“Maybe five or six,” June said.

“Five or six.”

June came toward me, not looking at me.

I heard Ronrico say, “Oh but I’ve got feminine problems, too, Miss Gleem!”

June laughed.

Miss Gleem said, “Just stop, Ronrico.”

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Ronrico said, “Sorry, Miss Gleem,” and June flicked her eyes at me = “Get out of the doorway”/“Come into the hall,” and then turned into the doorway and continued past me.

As soon as I started getting up, I remembered how I was supposed to be suffering and, instead of standing, I crouch-walked along the doorway’s sidewall, and when I made the turn into Main Hall I pressed my spine on the corner as hard as I could.

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We sat next to each other, leaning back against the lockers with our knees up.

“What happened?” June said.

I said, I’m sorry. I said, I got stuck in the Office and—

June said, “That’s fine. What happened to
you
is what I mean?

You look like something happened to you. Or at least you did a minute ago—now you look happy.”

I told her, I said a terrible thing to Brodsky. I said, I hurt him in his own office.

“Why?” she said.

I was trying to speed things up, I said, so I could sit by you in detention.

“It worked out, then.”

How’s that? I said.

She said, “You hurt someone to get something you wanted, and then you didn’t get what you wanted and that hurt you. It’s fair.”

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I said, But you’re here, now. I said, I’m not really hurting anymore.

“Probably Brodsky isn’t either,” she said.

I’d wanted her to look in my eyes and see me suffering, then tell me everything was fine. And, in a way, she did tell me that, but we were next to each other and she was facing forward, and I wasn’t suffering anymore. Still, I wished she would hug me, so I tried to think of something that might evince her sympathies which might become a hug. It was hard to think of anything like that, though. What did I have to complain about, really? If I had failed at something that might undermine my self-image or whatever, that might work, but—boom.

I said, And plus, the thing is, I couldn’t do this action.

June said, “What action?”

I said, Nakamook discovered this action that everyone at lunch could do except for me. I said, Your whole body shakes and your face gets red and tears fill up your eyes. It looks like a seizure.

June was already doing it. She I’m Tickinged for about half a minute. Her face became darker than her freckles and her irises shook inside the whites. I didn’t like to see it, but it was good to see it, because while she was doing it, I thought: If June had a disorder that made her I’m Ticking for minutes at a time out of every hour of every day, would you, Gurion, still want to sleep beside her on the beach of the Dead Sea, even though she would shake you awake every night and probably drool on you while she did it? and I thought: Yes, it would be hard to do, and 396

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sometimes very gross, but I believe I would still want to sleep next to her.

And then I got happy because June didn’t have any disorder like that.

When she was finished with the action, she said, “That’s called the Electric Chair.”

Benji calls it I’m Ticking, I said.

“It’s been the Electric Chair for years now,” she said. “Since 2003. That’s when I invented it.”

How’d you do it? I said.

She said, “I used to want to be a modern dancer, and one time, in the third, while I was home from school with strep, I was watching this amazing video of a solo dance by a choreog-rapher from Philadelphia named Kathryn TeBordo who all she did was sit down in a folding chair and then get up from it, but it took her twenty minutes because the dance was so slow that you could hardly see her moving, and it hurt to watch it, in my sternum. My sternum vibrated and I started thinking how completely in control of all of her muscles Kathryn TeBordo was that she could move that slow, and how I wished I could do that with my body and I would never be able to, but that maybe I could do the opposite. I thought maybe I could be totally out of control of all of my muscles at the same time. But I couldn’t figure out how that would work because if I just started flopping around, it might
look
like I was totally out of control of my muscles, but really I’d be controlling them—I’d be mak-397

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ing them flop around. And so then I thought—and it was only because I had this really sweaty fever that I was able to think it, I think—I thought that in order for a person to truly be out of control of all of their muscles, they first have to be trying to control all of their muscles, and their muscles have to disobey them, because you can’t actually
try
to be out of
control, right? That doesn’t make sense. That was the problem. You can only try to be
in
control, and then
fail
to control—that’s what out of control is, a kind of failure. So I decided I would try to make my muscles do something impossible. I decided I would try to make my muscles tear themselves and maybe even crush my own bones while they tore. And I tried, and then I tried harder, and then I was doing the Electric Chair, which at first I called the anti-Kathryn TeBordo, but I changed that fast because I loved TeBordo’s dancing and

‘anti’ made it sound like I was some kind of hater.”

I said, You’re the smartest girl I’ve ever met.

June looked at her knees and shivered.

You’re my favorite person, I said.

She brought her knees up to her chest.

I remembered how I’d failed to warm her with specialkid visions and took off my hoodie to spread it over her shoulders.

She said, “I’m not cold. Take it back.”

I took it back.

You’re my favorite person, I said again.

But she wouldn’t look at me, so I tried to do the Electric Chair, and I thought I was maybe getting it.

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I touched her left elbow and got a friction shock. When I pulled my hand back, I saw the corner of her mouth lift and fall and lift and fall. She was trying not to laugh.

I said, June.

She said, “You’re just nodding your head and flopping around.

It’s the opposite of what you want to do.”

I stopped nodding and flopping.

She said, “Make a fist.”

I made a fist.

She said, “Close it as hard as you can… See, your whole arm’s shaking.” She said, “Just do that with your neck now, and then the rest of you.”

I did what she said and the brain-blood started whacking itself against my eardrums. A silver dot appeared in the center of June’s forehead and bloomed into a bright white flying saucer shape. I was doing the Electric Chair.

June said, “Stop now. You look gross.” It echoed when she said it.

I stopped.

“In a second,” she said, “I have to go back into detention, and there are still things we have to talk about.”

I said, I love you.

She said, “That’s what I mean. I’ve been thinking about you all day and I believe you, and I like believing you, but it’s too soon to believe you. You don’t really know me.”

Tell me what you think I need to know, I said.

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She said, “I knew you’d say that, and I think that even if I told you, you’d love me anyway, if you really do love me, but the thing is that I don’t really want to tell you, so…”

I said, So then I
don’t
need to know. And so you don’t have to tell me. I love you anyway.

“But—”

All I need to know is there’s things you don’t want to tell me, and that those things are things that I don’t need to know. So now I know that. I know all I need to.

“That’s—well—that’s a pretty good answer, actually, but—”

I said, Good.

She said, “But still, let me finish what I was saying—I was talking to Starla Flangent during lunch, and she thinks you’re not dark enough for me and I think she’s right.”

I said, I’m half-Ethiopian.

She said, “Really? You don’t look Ethiopian.”

I said, Half.

She said, “That’s not what I mean, anyway.” She said, “You have all this joy. There’s nothing wrong with you.”

I said, I get sad all the time lately.

She said, “It’s nice to be sad. You have to have joy to be sad, and if you’re dark you don’t get to have joy, so you don’t get to be sad. You only get to be anguished if you’re dark.”

I said, I’m angry, though. I said, I get in fights all the time.

She said, “Anger’s not anguish and I’ve seen you fight. I saw you fight Kyle McElroy at the beginning of the year. I saw you dance 400

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on his back after you finished choking him—you did a kind of pirhouette. It was fun for you. And this morning, with Boystar—”

I said, I fell in love with you this morning.

She said, “That’s not dark at all.”

I said, But I’ve got all these disorders. I’ve got ADHD and Conduct D. and Intermittent Explosive D. and Antisocial P. D., and you can’t even have the last two ones unless you’re an adult, but I have them.

She said, “You don’t really have any of them, though, and you know it.”

I said, But people think I do have them, so that’s how I’m explained. I said, I’m very dark. I said, I’ve been kicked out of three schools. You should have seen how cruel I just was to Brodsky. I said, It was awful. It was a dark way to treat a person—I’m a tyrant.

She said, “If you were cruel, you wouldn’t think it was awful.”

I said, I’m not cruel—I
acted
cruel. I said, And that is what makes me dark.

I didn’t even know what we were talking about anymore, only that I had to prove to June that I was dark.

June said, “Listen. There’s this thing I just saw that’s carved into the lunch table. It says ‘We Damage,’ right? And I was thinking how that’s not dark, it’s just violent. But right next to it, there’s another carving that says ‘Damage We.’ That’s also violent, but it’s dark too.”

I said, Fine. I said, Why’s ‘Damage We’ dark?

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She said, “Because dark people might do damage, but they’re only dark if damage comes first—if they’ve
been
damaged. You’re not damaged.”

That much was true—if dark meant damaged, then I wasn’t dark.

I said, Fine. So so what? So Josh Berman’s dark?

“Josh Berman?” June said. “Where did that—”

Did you kiss him?

“Bluck!” June said.

Bluck? I said.

“Bluh-luh, bluh-luh, bluh-luh-luck. Did he tell you I kissed him?”

I don’t even know him.

“Did someone else say I kissed him?”

Wasn’t he your boyfriend?

“Yeah,” June said. “Last year. So what? All of a sudden that means that I kissed him?”

Well—

“I guess that’s not crazy. But no. I didn’t kiss him. And no he wasn’t dark. That’s why I went out with him.”

Now I’m confused.

“I thought if I was his girlfriend, I’d get less dark.”

But so—

“I didn’t though. I stayed just as dark. I probably even got darker because of how I stayed just as dark and thought I should have gotten less dark—and I bet he told people I kissed him, that bancer.”

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