“We don’t get to see enough Desormie in a tight suit, either.” “His love of cheerleading.” “His gameday tent of finest gabardine.” “And don’t forget about the music!” “You’re gonna make us miss the Boystar.”
The air vibrated on my right: Mookus was crying.
I flashed my palm at the Side of Damage.
Some of them didn’t see.
“We won’t get to be in his video now!” “Shucks! Aw shucks!” “And he’ll probably win a Grammy.” “Word on the street’s he’s next year’s favorite for best female vocal—”
Hey! I said.
The Cage went quiet.
To Main Man I said, You’ll be fine.
“Okay,” he said. He kept crying.
“Go to the Owfice, Make-bee.”
“You’ll be fine, Main Man,” said Vincie.
“Go to the—” said Botha, cut off by the beginning-of-class tone.
I decided to give him a chance to be decent. I got up from my carrel and went to the gate — I didn’t even do a three-count — and when I stepped into C-Hall, I said, Tell Main Man he can go to the pep rally.
I said it quiet so that no one could hear, so Botha wouldn’t lose any face for acting decent, so being decent wouldn’t feel like a defeat.
“No,” he said.
As I approached the mouth of 2-Hall, spacing out on dead-end thoughts about who’d ratted me to Brodsky, Call-Me-Sandy turned the corner into C. She had to pull her fingers from her cardigan’s buttonholes to wave hello.
“I’m sorry, Gurion,” she said.
Why? I said.
“You must have been waving at me forever.”
You waved at me first, I said.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
Don’t be, I said.
“I’m — I guess I’m just feeling a little jumpy,” she said. “Distracted. That false alarm. Rattled my bag of caramels, right? Or so you might say… because of how you put it when last we—”
Sure, I said.
“Right,” she said. “And now I tell myself I’m going for a drink of water, but in fact the destination’s arbitrary. I’m on a disguised amble. I tell myself, ‘Sandy, you’re taking a walk to get a drink of water,’ but the truth is I’m not even thirsty. It’s just the water fountain’s the first destination that came to mind.”
Why can’t you just take a walk? I said.
“Because that would be a blatant, undisguised amble and it would defeat it’s own purpose: I’d know I was taking a walk because I was jumpy, and so I’d be thinking about my jumpiness, which would only make me jumpier.”
But you do know you’re taking a walk because you’re jumpy, I said. You just told me that.
Her fingers slid back into her buttonholes. “It’s not kind, what you’re doing. Undermining my healing strategy.”
I wasn’t trying to undermine your healing strategy, I said.
“Well, that’s what you were doing.”
There was nothing worth saying in response, so I made her high-five me, and then I made her high-five me again, and she laughed a syllable and I got away fast, thinking: Rat. Thinking: Deadkid. If Brodsky had seen me in the fight himself, I’d’ve been brought to the Office with the others.
I took a left at Main Hall, which was mostly empty — just a couple or three late kids speedwalking. Jerry in his booth to pass-flash at. WE DAMAGE WE bombs were everywhere: scraped, Darkered, pencilled, lipsticked. Too many of them to count accurately while walking at a leisurely pace, too many for the Side of Damage to have written all of them. I wasn’t sure what to think of that. At first it seemed completely good. The bombs weren’t just enacting damage — which, dayenu — they were actually inciting it.
But then I had to wonder what the taggers who weren’t on the Side of Damage believed their WE DAMAGE WEs signified. I had to wonder how many of them, if any, had even heard of the Side of Damage, and whether that mattered.
If the taggers hadn’t heard of the Side of Damage, and enough of them got in the habit of bombing WE DAMAGE WE, then soon — in the way of the Indian swastika, say — the bomb could stop signifying the Side of Damage. It could end up signifying whatever those who planted it decided it signified.
If the taggers had heard of the Side of Damage, and thought they knew what it was, and intended the tags to signify the Side of Damage, then that meant the taggers considered themselves members — or at the very least allies — of the Side of Damage. Which might or might not be good: it depended who the taggers were. If, for example, they were part of Momo and Beauregard’s Big Ending, that would be fine, but if they were Main Hall Shovers or basketballers or singers of the rhyme of my bus-stop, that might not be fine. It was hard to decide.
Yes, a WE DAMAGE WE tagged by a Main Hall Shover would, for now at least, damage the Arrangement exactly as well as a WE DAMAGE WE tagged by anyone who was actually on the Side of Damage, but if Main Hall Shovers went around signifying the Side of Damage, others would come to think the Side of Damage was made up partially of Main Hall Shovers, which it wasn’t. No Main Hall Shover was one of us, and no Main Hall Shover would ever be one of us. If I let Main Hall Shovers join the Side of Damage, it wouldn’t be the Side of Damage anymore. We’d just be another part of the Arrangement.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t so bad if people who weren’t on our side — even, and maybe especially, our enemies — thought they were. At the rate the bombs were spreading, I’d have to decide soon.
I passed a pink nail-polished *EMOTIONALIZE* under the instructions on the glass of a firehose case, and though I knew I didn’t write it, I wasn’t sure Benji hadn’t. He could have done it on his way from the Cage to see me in Nurse Clyde’s, just before we stopped being friends. Though the color of the nail-polish made the *EMOTIONALIZE* seem devotional, it could have been a Nakamookian joke for my benefit. He could have been feeling arch. Maybe he’d planned to tell me he’d written it only after I told him I’d seen it; or maybe he’d planned to never admit to it, like with his authorship of the “pee so pungent” saying. Then again, it might not have been a joke at all. Maybe he’d wanted to inspire Jennys to vandalism and figured it would seem more heartfelt if he spoke to them in glossy pink.
Although this pink *EMOTIONALIZE* would have marked a kind of victory for the Side of Damage if it had been written by a Jenny — and it probably had been — the thought of Nakamook being clever enough to urge Jennys on with pink nail polish was far more thrilling. But why should I have been thrilled at all about Nakamook’s cleverness if he was no longer my friend? I shouldn’t have been. And I definitely shouldn’t have been more thrilled about it than about a Jenny’s transformation into a vandal, yet still I was more thrilled, out of habit — the habit of admiring Nakamook. It was poison to think of him, and thinking it was poison didn’t make it any less poison.
Rat, I thought. Deadkid. Think about that. Someone got Brodsky to call you to the Office. Someone was a rat. Someone was dead.
Through the sound-resistant glass, I saw Brodsky was standing in front of Pinge’s desk. I entered the Office.
“Gurion,” Miss Pinge said.
“Gurion indeed.” Brodsky revolved and set his hand on my shoulder. “Gurion Maccabee,” he said. He was smiling.
Then we were sitting across his desk from each other, the wingnut I’d given him centered on his blotter. It didn’t seem like I was in trouble, but I hadn’t forgotten Tuesday afternoon — the way he’d outgamed me — and so I stayed cautious.
“Why do you like wingnuts?” Brodsky said.
I said, They hold as well as hexnuts, but you don’t need a tool to fasten them; just your fingers.