“Nice one!” said Floyd. “Especially for a beginner.”
“You know me is what I’m getting at,” Nakamook said, “and I happen to have some jetflame lighters that went missing, like ten of them, and I’m trying to tell you that the fire comes out of the firehole like fire from a blowtorch, or the butt of a fighter-jet. On ignition there’s a hissing noise that ramps up the excitement. I want you to have one. I want to give you one. You’ll find new joy when you light your cigarettes.”
That got her to finally look at Benji. I unfolded the note.
“I’m not a smoker,” Miss Pinge said. “And what’s more, I sincerely hope you’re not telling me you have these lighters here at school.”
“G-Gin-P’s right,” said Floyd, “because lighters belonging to students are grounds for actionable disciplination when we’re talking about having them on school grounds, be they inside lockers, desks, or even pockets, which are searchable with due cause of suspection.”
“Would I bring lighters on school grounds?” Benji said to Miss Pinge. “Do you think I’d do that, Floyd?”
“That totally depends on you and only you,” said Floyd.
“Either way, Benji, I’m not a smoker,” Miss Pinge said.
“Of course not,” said Benji. “Smoker is a label. There’s no need to label things. We all know that. And we all know you smoke cigarettes, too, and all I’m saying is I’d like to give you one of these crack-lighters that I have because I’m fond of you, and I hope you’ll accept my offer.”
“If you take that lighter from him, Miss Pinge, you can’t use it to smoke on school grounds,” Floyd said, “because it’s against the rules and you’ll get in trouble, unless of course someone who has the power to look the other way when you use it to smoke cigarettes looks the other way when that happens.”
The note said:
Dear Gurion,
I am an Enemy of Botha and an Enemy of the Indians and of the Cage and Aptakisic. I am an enemy of the whole Arrangement and I want to join the Side of Damage. They said they’d tell you what I did with your gift. If what I did was not enough then tell me what to do and I will do it. I am sick of fuct rules and fuct tears and fuct tapelines. Let me be a soldier.
WE DAMAGE WE
I thought: This note is not a love letter from June.
And then I thought: Your gift?
“Give me the note, Gurion,” Miss Pinge said.
I ripped the writing from the note and handed her the blank part.
Fuct tears? I thought. What was torn? And who did I give a gift to?
“The whole note, Gurion,” Miss Pinge said.
“Bet what would didn’t,” Leevon didn’t mouth but seemed to, while doing the countdown with his hand.
I crumpled the note’s remnant.
Maybe the “ea” was hard and the fuct tears the wet kind? Did gift mean “talent”?
“Gurion,” Miss Pinge said.
I thought: The countdown = “The scoreboard.”
I tossed the remnant to Leevon.
“Leevon,” Miss Pinge said.
Bet what would didn’t — the scoreboard. Wet tears and talent.
Leevon popped the remnant in his mouth.
“Leee eee von,” Miss Pinge said.
I saw I was right the first time: Gift meant “present,” not “talent.” Whatever the note’s writer had done, he could not have done it with any talent of mine.
Bet what would didn’t — the scoreboard.
So wet tears and a present. Or ripped tears and a present. What present had I given?
Brodsky’s door opened.
“Don’t be sad, Miss Pinge,” said Benji. “We like you.”
“Well just speak of the ding-dang devil!” Desormie said from Brodsky’s doorway. Then he made the noise “Tch” at us = “You are immature non-basketballers without intestinal fortitude.”
What I thought had been a “You know” from Leevon had actually been a “You don’t.”
“Bet what would didn’t?” Or “Bet what would did it?”
They said they’d tell you what I did with your gift.
“Ronny D,” said Benji.
“Ronny D,” said Floyd, “I caught that one at the scene, just like our prediction forecasted we would.”
“Wasn’t him, Floydinator — it was them. Or one of them. Or two of them.”
Bet what would did it. And the scoreboard.
“Who’s up first?” said Brodsky, flipping through CASS’s.
“Benji,” Miss Pinge said.
“What’s on first,” said Benji. “Who’s the one on second.”
Bet what would did it — the scoreboard.
“Floydinator is a suck nickname,” said Vincie.
“I’m not the one came up with it,” said Floyd.
“Heck is wrong with you?” said Desormie.
Wet tears from eyes, the Boy Who Cried Wa-Wa.
I’d had Vincie give the kid three blank passes.
Ben-Wa Wolf did it. The scoreboard.
Some minutes later, the pencil-cup jumped as Benji, returning from Brodsky’s office, smacked Miss Pinge’s desk. The jetflame lighter was under her hand before the cup’s contents finished rattling. Pinge was stealth.
Brodsky had startled at the sound of the smack, but instead of looking at the desk, he took a fast breath and said, “Inappropriate, Benji. That’s what we mean by acting out. I asked you if you could live with the way our conversation concluded, and you told me you could and I believed you. Do we need to go back inside and talk some more?”
“No,” said Benji, chewing a half-born smile to death. “I’m content with our mutual decision that I continue serving detention indefinitely. I was just feeling a little hyperactive for a second. It happens. I was acting out, like you said.”
“Get a pass and go back to the Cage,” said Brodsky.
As soon as Brodsky had closed his door for his meeting with Leevon, Miss Pinge pushed the lighter in Benji’s face and told him, “That wasn’t a very smart thing to do.”
“It worked out fine,” Benji said.
“Take it,” she said, waving the lighter, blinkering it.
“It’s yours,” said Benji. “It always has been.”
“And how did you know I’d cover it up when you put it on my desk like that? How do you know I won’t tell Mr. Brodsky that you’ve been carrying a lighter around?”
“You would never do that, Miss Pinge, because then Benji would get in trouble,” said Vincie.
“I’m throwing it away,” she said.
“Whatever you want to do with it, it’s yours,” said Benji. “Just try it out once before you junk it so you can see how cool it is.”
She put the lighter in her purse, saying, “I’m throwing it away as soon as I get home.” She scribbled on a hall-pass and handed it over.
“See you after school,” Benji said to me. “Bus circle, yeah?”
I said, I’m not going there today. I’m meeting June in the cafeteria.
“Nice!” he said. “I’ll walk you.”
Miss Pinge threw her arms up and shook her head side to side = “It will be more aggravating to enforce the no-talking-to-students-in-ISS rule than to just let them say goodbye.”
“I’ll come too,” Vincie said.
No, I said. I said, It’s gonna take too long for you guys to get out of the Cage. By the time we get there, I’ll only have twelve minutes before detention. I want fifteen. I can have fifteen if I go straight there and June also goes straight there.
“You don’t know if she’s going straight there?” said Vincie.
She said she’d meet me in detention today, but we weren’t clear on the time, I said.