The Instructions (71 page)

ADAM LEVIN

THE INSTRUCTIONS

we kissed some more, and it was more of the same tick-tocking, and I stopped again to look at her. The gaps in her top row winked, and we tick-tocked, and I stopped to look, and the lighter color of the hair above her ears that wasn’t long enough to be ponytailed, and tick-tock and stop, the one-stitch scar that notched her cheek beside the left mouthcorner, a permanent dimple…

It was impossible to not want to kiss her while I looked at her, but no matter how bad I wanted that, once I was kissing her the kissing wasn’t satisfying and I’d start thinking: slapslap.

Slapslap’s no fun with your eyes closed, though, and looking at her made slapslap impossible to concentrate on because of how badly it made me want to kiss her. Looking at her, I couldn’t concentrate enough to even talk about slapslap. I was getting H.

There were freckles on her eyelids so I kissed the freckles on her eyelids, and while kissing on her eyelids I pushed her hood back and smelled her hair. It did smell sweet, though not as brightly as strawberries, not as red-and-greenly. It was a better, lazier kind of sweet than strawberries and it seemed to be made of smoke.

If a hammock swaying in slomo between telephone poles in the poppyfield from
The Wizard of Oz
was a smell, that would be the smell of June’s hair.

With my thumbs and pointers I worked her hair-tie back until the ponytail was gone. Her hair curtained down and I slipped my fingers into it, deep, the topjoints touching her scalp. Her hair was as thick as its smell, and I was glad to have my hands in it. I became
more
satisfied than when I was only looking, but still not 659

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really satisfied. I didn’t know what to do.

“Keep your hands there,” June whispered. Her eyes were still closed. She told me, “Close your eyes again.” I did. She pushed my hood back and her palms on the sides of my neck felt fresh and this time our mouths weren’t puckered when we kissed. And we didn’t tick-tock. There weren’t smacking sounds. June’s lips parted to surround my bottom one, to press down on it a little, warm and slippery here, cool and steady there; she did these small pullings on my bottom lip and soon I did the same to her top one at the same time and something splashed bluely across my lobe, left-to-right, and I saw it on my eyelids like a waveform with tracers and these muscles in my temples slackened. I thought: Who knew the muscles in my temples had always been flexed?

Who knew I even had muscles in my temples?

I thought: This is exactly what we should be doing right now.

This is exactly what needs to be done.

June turned her head then, like she was arguing with my thoughts, saying, “No not that, but
this
,” and her tongue brushed mine, and it was such a good thing, my hands fell from her hair.

She squeezed my neck and our tongues brushed again and that is when the kiss became perfect. I couldn’t tell my face from her face. I couldn’t tell the difference between the movements of her mouth and the movements of mine. I couldn’t separate June from Gurion. It was like being in the first and third person at the same time, the kiss not just something we were doing, but something that was happening to us.

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I thought: This is not us kissing; this kiss is ussing.

Ussing? I thought.

Like hyperventilators getting breathed, I thought.

And then I heard this violent
chucketa-cracketa
noise like a helicopter crashing.

And Nakamook was shouting, “Goddamn!”

That was the end of the kiss.

The monitor, I said.

Across the cafeteria, pennygun in hand, Nakamook was racing to the bathroom. Right next to me rocked the rockinghorse he’d shot. It was not the same one that I’d dropkicked. Half this one’s face was gone, and inside its hollow, busted head lay a black wingnut I reached in and snatched.

“That was a serious,” June gasped, “kiss.”

Pink ghost-shapes spreading all over her neck.

I pulled her into the doorway at the side of the stage.

Become the wall, I told her.

“Our stuff,” she said. She kissed my chin and pulled me back out.

Miss Gleem entered the cafeteria, came fast in our direction when she noticed the props.

“Can you believe this?” June said to her. She smacked the wingnut-shot rocking horse on the back of his head. He bounced.

Then rocked. June laughed. Nakamook sprinted from the bathroom to Main Hall.

“Who would do this?” Miss Gleem said.

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“Some genius,” said June.

“Junie!” Miss Gleem said. “Someone destroyed art.”

“It wasn’t art,” June said, “until it was destroyed. It was a very badly executed set for a play, and someone made an installation piece out of it. I was just about to draw it. You see where my sketchbook is?” She pointed at the table by the stage where her sketchbook lay—covering, I noticed, the half-pad of hall-passes, baruch Hashem. She said, “I think that’s the perfect angle to draw it from.

But I want to draw it with this rocking horse rocking—that way it’ll look like it’s just been struck by whatever genius struck it with whatever it was he used to take its face off. That’s good, right?”

“It’s not good at all, Junie,” Miss Gleem said.

I was thinking: Here we are, redhanded, and instead of being stealth about it, instead of hiding, June has shoved our redhands so close to the face of the art teacher that they don’t look red anymore because they don’t look like anything anymore, because they are covering the art teacher’s eyes.

“You’re right,” June said, “it’s not good. I can get it to rock the way I want it to by smacking its head, but the rocking will stop before I can get back to my sketchbook. That’s why I’m showing Gurion how to smack the head. That way I can sit by my sketchbook, and Gurion can smack it, and I can get a sense of how the rocking horse’s motion relates to its surroundings, which is, I’d think, one of the keys to understanding the installation artist’s intentions. So give it a shot, Gurion.

Let’s see what you can do for me. Smack the horse.”

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“I don’t think this is very nice,” said Miss Gleem.

I was thinking: June is doing something new. She is doing a new kind of blinker action.

“Who cares if it’s nice?” said June. “It’s art.”

I thought: GURION AND JUNE DESTROYED THE

PROPS = the construction; GURION AND JUNE ARE

STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO THE DESTROYED PROPS

= the construction horse that draws attention to the construction; and JUNE HAS OPEN CONTEMPT FOR THE PROPS =

the blinker on the construction horse that draws attention to the construction horse that draws attention to the construction…

I thought: The new thing is how THE WAY JUNE KEEPS

GOING ON AND ON ABOUT HER OPEN CONTEMPT =

a surge of electricity so huge that the blinker pops its bulb, and the flash of the pop is temporarily blinding, temporarily disorienting, and by the time Gleem’s eyes adjust, she will be more concerned about the surge and the blinker than the presence of the construction; the more she worries about the surge and the blinker, the less the construction horse will seem to her to signify the presence of the construction.

“Smack the horse,” June said to me.

I love you, I said.

“Smack the horse,” she said. “Smack it on the head.”

I smacked the horse on the head. The horse hopped, then rocked.

“Why’d you smack it like a sister?” June said. “Smack it harder, 663

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like this.” June smacked the horse on the head. The horse hopped, then rocked.

“Junie, please,” Miss Gleem said.

“Smack it!” June said.

I smacked it. The horse hopped, then rocked.

Other detentioners had come to the cafeteria. They filled up the tables in back by the bathrooms and they laughed. Miss Gleem revolved to face them and shook her head left-to-right = “Not funny.”

“Just last night,” June said to Miss Gleem, “Gurion’s friend called me up to tell me how Gurion was all tough, and I believed him, but now—don’t you think he hits like a little sister?”

Who called you? I said.

“Benji. Don’t worry—he said nice things. Anyway,” she said to Miss Gleem, “I need the horse to be smacked the way I smacked it, not the way Gurion smacked it—you saw the difference, right?”

“I think so,” Miss Gleem said.

“Of course you saw the difference,” June said, “but Gurion didn’t.”

“Some people aren’t visual thinkers,” Miss Gleem said. The voice of Miss Gleem sounded flat like a zombie’s—she was so surprised by what June had been saying and by how happy the sight of the busted-up stage made the detentioners, who were shouting new words out like, “Knocking-horse!” and “Deady-bear!” that she was distracted from what she, herself, was saying. The surge had worked.

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June kept it working.

“It’s true,” she said. “A lot of people aren’t visual thinkers—

especially the ones who designed this ugly set—but do you think, Miss Gleem, that since you can see how I want it to rock, that you could maybe smack it for me while I watch from the table?”

“I want you to get off that stage and sit down and I want you to think about what it would be like if some vandal destroyed your art,” Miss Gleem said.

“You mean if my art wasn’t actually art but set-design and my set-design was
suck
?” June said. “Because I don’t think I can imagine what it would feel like if someone destroyed my set-design that was
suck
and I called
art
, because set-design is not
art
and
my
art is not
suck
.”

Miss Gleem said, “Well, you try to imagine it, June. You try until you figure out how.” She wasn’t distracted from herself anymore, just really angry. “Get off that stage,” she said.

While I followed June down the steps to the table where our stuff was, Nakamook was trailing Vincie and Leevon into the cafeteria. All of them showed us victory fists, and I showed them mine back. June kept her head down, her hands in her pockets.

Once we were sitting, she went at her sketchbook like I wasn’t even there, and I thought: It’s important to let her draw, don’t bother her. But then, when Miss Gleem handed us our detention assignments, June started working on hers without saying anything to me, or even signalling anything, and I whispered to her, You are the mother of the hyper blinker action.

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She still didn’t say anything, or give any sign that she’d heard me, and I thought she was being stealth: I thought she didn’t want Miss Gleem to hear us talking. But we had just kissed perfectly and I felt less alive not talking to her. Plus, the worst that could happen would be if we got another detention, and that didn’t seem so bad at all. Still, I waited awhile to say anything else. I waited til Miss Gleem went to the opposite side of the cafeteria to quiet down some kid who’d started whistling.

You really tricked Miss Gleem, I whispered to June.

Again: nothing. Like she hadn’t heard me.

I whispered a little louder: You really tricked Miss Gleem.

“I know that,” June said. “You don’t have to tell me that,” she said. Then she kicked my shin, hard, and my knee banged the table-bottom.

From the other side of the cafeteria, Miss Gleem said “Hey!”

but she didn’t know to who.

“Did that hurt?” June said to me.

I said, Hurt?

I thought she was flirting.

“Hurt,” she said, full-voiced.

She didn’t sound like she was flirting.

“
Hurt
,” she said.

“June!” Miss Gleem snapped.

June was showing me her teeth, but it wasn’t a smile. Her jaw was shut and her lower eyelids were trembling. “Did it
hurt
?” she said, kicking at my shin again.

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I grabbed her ankle before the impact. I was totally confused.

June kicked my grabbing hand with her free foot. I dropped the first foot.

It hurt, I said, it hurt.

June made the noise “Tch” ≠ “I love you.”

“June and Gurion,” Miss Gleem said.

“Sitting in a tree!” sang someone I didn’t spin to look at.

“K-I-L-L—” sang Vincie, who then yelled, “Fuck!” because Nakamook had punched him.

I said, Why are you mad at me?

June said, “Stop talking to me.”

I said, But why?

Miss Gleem said, “You’ve both got detention tomorrow.”

“Tell me what I did,” I said to June.

“Eliza June Watermark,” said Miss Gleem, “you pick your things up and get over here. Now.”

June got away from me so fast, she forgot her sketchbook.

‪

‫

‬

‪

‫

‬

‬

Nakamook disagreed. He said, “She left it for you.”

We were gathered on the curb of the bus circle by then—me, Benji, Vincie, and Leevon. June had cut out of the cafeteria as soon as Miss Gleem dismissed detention. I had run into Main Hall with the sketchbook but wasn’t able to find her, so I went to the front entrance and looked out the window. Just buses in the circle.

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I asked the Deaf Sentinel if he’d seen her.

“Show me your pass,” he said.

Detention’s over, I told him. I said, No one needs a pass anymore.

He said, “I guess I’m off-duty, then.”

Robot, I told him.

He chewed his pencil.

I ran outside to the circle to look in the windows of the buses.

No one was in the buses.

I dropped my backpack and tore my coat off. I swung the coat over my head and let go, but it only made me angrier, and cold.

Puddles were slushy. Molecules were slow. I slammed my fist into the flank of bus 2. Blood went to my knuckles and my fingers got warm. I switched which hand held the sketchbook and hit the bus with the second fist.