I said, Nathan Fein—
But they had only stopped to take a breath.
“And so we thought that, in the language of Snad, MacIntyre had to be Maccabee.” “And Maccabee is almost as uncommon of a name as Gurion.” “And so the combination of the two already uncommon names Gurion and Maccabee…” “Because that was the Schechter Gurion’s last name, Macca-bee.” “Gurion Maccabee was his name.” “So we told Nathan Feingold.” “And Nathan told us to give it up.” “He said, ‘Give it up. Gurion Maccabee does not go to your school. He is either in prison or dead, or working for the Mossad who are disinforming people that he’s in prison or dead so he can go deep cover.’” “And that sounded a little crazy.” “About the Mossad doing that.” “And Nathan is our friend, so we believed that he believed it, but that didn’t mean that we had to believe it.” “So we asked around.” “We asked other Israelites at school.” “We know almost all of them.” “And they all know about Gurion.” “The Gurion who Nathan told us about, that is.” “We asked around to see if any of them had ever seen a boy named Gurion at Aptakisic.” “And some of them had, and the ones who hadn’t — some of those ones had done the same thing as us.” “They’d asked around.” “And we found out a bunch of stuff from asking around.” “And what we found out made it seem like Nathan might be right, after all.” “Because first of all, we found out that Gurion was in the Cage.” “And the Gurion we were looking for was a scholar and why would Mr. Brodsky put a scholar in the Cage?” “The Cage is for retarded people who don’t act right and future killers and con-men.” “No offense, if you’re from the Cage.” “But that’s who it’s for.” “Not scholars.” “And then, from those Aptakisic Israelites who had seen Gurion on the bus or in the halls, we found out that he hung out with Benji Nakamook and Vincie Portite and did not look half-black.” “And the Gurion we were looking for was supposed to be half-black, and Nakamook and Portite are not the kinds of guys Gurion would hang out with.” “Those are mean, scary guys who are not scholars, but please don’t tell them we told you that if you know them.” “The meanest and the scariest.” “They’re not even friends with Bam Slokum is how mean and scary.” “And then plus, the main point is there’s all these Israelites at Aptakisic.” “There’s, like, forty or fifty.” “And that’s just the guys.” “And we know all of them, or almost all of them, and none of them had ever even spoken to this Aptakisic Gurion.” “And so we figured that even if Brodsky or whoever
would put our Gurion in the Cage, and even if, for some reason, our Gurion would be friends with guys like Nakamook and Portite, there’s no way Gurion would go to school with all of us Israelites and not, like, lead us.” “Let alone not even talk to any of us.” “And much less allow kids to sing that rhyme about him living at a motel that they’re always singing. I’m sure you’ve heard it.” “And plus it would be too lucky.” “For us to go to school with Gurion.” “That was really the main thing.” “We’re good guys, all of us, but we’re not that lucky of guys when it comes to certain things like being strong.” “And basketball.” “And girls.” “We’re only lucky because of how we’ve got such great best buddies.” “That’s pretty much the only way.” “And cause our parents aren’t alcoholic abuser people.” “That too.” “But the kind of lucky we’d be if we went to school with Gurion is the exact opposite kind of lucky of the lucky we usually are.” “We’ve never been lucky that way.” “So we decided Nathan Feingold must’ve been right after all.” “But then yesterday afternoon, we get this email from who else but Nathan Feingold himself.” “And Nathan Feingold tells us that on Tuesday night, some kid saw Gurion on a train and Gurion talked to the kid and even did something with the kid’s hat, so he wasn’t dead or in prison after all.” “And if he was in the Mossad, he wasn’t deep cover.” “And Nathan told us that if we heard anything more about this Aptakisic Gurion, we should alert him at once.” “And now, after what just happened to Shpritzy, the timing seems fateful.” “Especially because it was on our way to the computer room that we all stopped to pee.” “We were with Shpritzy, at his locker, right?” “Good old Shpritzy.” “This was just right before lunch started.” “This was barely half an hour ago.” “We were with Shpritzy at his locker and Brad Snad came over to us and told us that this Aptakisic Gurion just saved that chubnik Isadore Momo from that yutzy Blonde Lonnie who’s always saying how he’s funny.” “But he isn’t funny.” “He isn’t funny at all.” “And he’s got three testicles, but no one ever said so, until Isadore Momo did, which got Lonnie pissed.” “Lonnie was gonna tear Momo to pieces, but Gurion was there and he cooled Lonnie’s jets with a punch to the chest.” “And, clutching his nipples, Lonnie fell in the pool!” “But he didn’t drown, but he almost did, except Desormie gave him the kiss of life, which saved him.” “But only barely.” “And so as soon as Snad finished telling us all of that, we decided to go to the computer room in the library.” “To email Nathan, who goes to Hebrew Day.” “We didn’t know for sure, but we thought they probably let you check your email at Lunch at Hebrew Day.” “And we didn’t know when Lunch was over there, but we thought it might be the same time as here, so we wanted to get that team-email out to Nathan Feingold as soon as possible.” “Post-haste.” “But we all stopped to pee on the way to the computer room so we wouldn’t be distracted by the need to pee if we ended up needing to pee.” “And that’s when that jerk attacked Shpritzy.” “While we peed!” “He said Shpritzy bumped into him, but it wasn’t true so Shpritzy wouldn’t apologize.” “And then the jerk attacked.” “And then we attacked.” “And then we got messed up.” “And the jerk told us, ‘Make sure to say hi to Josh Berman for me. Make sure he knows I think his scarf’s real sharp.’ And his jerks friends laughed.” “And I was all, like, ‘What’s Berman’s scarf have to do with us? That’s Shover stuff and it’s not like we’re Shovers. And we’re friends with Berman, yeah, but it’s not like we’re buddies.’” “I was all like that, too.” “We were all all like that.” “But it wasn’t like we said it.” “We couldn’t have said it.” “It was too hard to talk.” “I was choking on spit.” “I was holding my guts.” “I was holding my shoulder.” “I was choking on something.” “And now we’re here.” “And Shpritzy’s a mess.” “And the email to Nathan has been back-burnered.” “Why do you keep leaning forward with your fists balled up?” “Why does he look so tense?”