I didn’t tell you to take any hostages, Berman.
“I thought that you… well… I mean I guess you didn’t say ‘hostage,’ but you told us to drag him back into the corner, and then you ran off — to go, like, I don’t know, kill Desormie, I think, and—”
I wanted you to protect him from getting trampled, I said.
“Well, we misunderstood. Or I misunderstood. It’s probably my fault. But I thought that’s what you meant — to take him hostage, I mean. I think the rest of us did, too. Thought that’s what you meant, I mean.”
In the bleachers, they nodded and mumbled their assent, and a few stood up, started heading for centercourt.
Berman said, “I’m sorry. The way things were happening—”
Fine, I said. It’s fine. You misunderstood. Now we have another prisoner.
I didn’t want another prisoner. We didn’t need another prisoner. We didn’t need anything more to control. But it was, like I’d just said to everyone, fine. I didn’t like that they’d gagged him and made him uncomfortable — that hadn’t been called for; it seemed thoughtless at best, potentially malicious — but that part was over. We’d take him to the Cage, where no one could hurt him, the scholars would arrive, and all would be well.
“We were just trying to do what we were supposed to,” said Berman. “If you want us to put him out now, no one’s gonna argue with you. I mean — obviously. Right guys?”
The Israelites behind him said, “Right.” They said, “Yeah.”
“Just tell us and we’ll do it,” Berman said. “Hand me the key and we’ll put him out the door.”
That door stays locked. We don’t know who’s behind it.
“We could put him out the front or the side, then,” said Berman.
We can’t put him out. It’ll look like it means something — like we’re bargaining or something. That’s not our next move, I said.
“So what’s our next move?” an ex-Shover said.
“We should get him some aspirins from the Nurse’s,” Brooklyn said, “and put him in the Cage with Botha — problem solved.”
Exactly, I said. That’s what we’re doing.
By then, most of the Side had come over from the scaffold. They stood in a semicircle to my left with the Five and Vincie. To my right, right of June, stood twenty-odd Israelites. The suckness of this arrangement wasn’t entirely lost on me, scholars — I hadn’t failed to notice where they’d been sitting when I’d returned, nor failed to hear Berman’s us’s and them’s — but it seemed to me an outcome of friendship, not animosity. Rather than staying away from those he didn’t like, each soldier, I’d assumed, was staying near those he did like. If that sounds dim, well — maybe it was. At the time, I was filled with all kinds of hope — we’d taken the school together, I’d scared off the firemen — and hope can confuse you as easy as fear. But I thought of it this way: If I’d entered the cafeteria at Lunch one day to find June at one table and, say, Chunkstyle at another, I’d sit next to June because I preferred June’s company, not because I abhorred Chunkstyle’s, and if Chunkstyle then left his table join us, I’d have certainly welcomed it. And I figured the same would’ve gone for the soldiers; that the only suck thing was that none had behaved like their Chunkstyle analogue — that no Israelite who wasn’t Jelly or Eliyahu moved to my left to be nearer the Side; that no soldier on the Side had moved to my right to be nearer the Israelites. This seemed like a fairly easy thing to repair and I was planning on doing just that in a moment, but standing where I was, amid this thick huddle, I started feeling warm — too warm, too crowded, all too breathed on — and I found myself looking through a gap between torsos to get some relief, some sense of greater space, and my eyes fell on Main Man, sitting on the floor, alone with no soundgun.
I said, Where’s Scott’s megaphone?
“Exactly,” said Nakamook.
Immediately I saw that I’d made a mistake.
“One of them has it,” Jelly said, chinning air at the Israelites.
“Them?” came a voice from among the ex-Shovers. “Who’s this them?” another voice said. “One of us says them!” “Well look who she’s dating.” “What’s one of us doing with someone like him?”
“Come again?” Benji said.
No don’t come again, I said. Don’t come again. First thing’s first: whoever has the megaphone—
Ally handed it over. I brandished it at Main Man. He wouldn’t come and take it.
“He insulted him,” Jelly said.
“I didn’t mean to insult him!” protested Berman. “I just didn’t think he should sing what he was singing.”
You didn’t think he should—
“No one did, Gurion. None of us, at least. He was singing some slow thing by Radiohead. That’s no kind of Israelite victory music.”
So you took his megaphone?
“He gave it to us.”
“After you insulted him,” Nakamook said.
Eliyahu put a hand on Benji’s shoulder. “In fairness,” he said to me, “I don’t think Aleph meant to insult Main Man. He said he didn’t like the songs and, yes, it’s true, he might have been a little nicer about it, but—”
Wait, I said.
At least I thought I’d said it. Maybe I hadn’t. If I had, no one heard me; no one was waiting.
“Who’s Aleph?” said Berman.
“You,” said Eliyahu.
“My name’s Josh Berman.”
“You want me to call you Josh Berman, it’s done — calm down. Calm down, Josh Berman.”
“What’s Aleph mean, though?” Josh Berman said.
“Yeah, what the hell’s it mean?” voices on my right said. “What’s it mean?” “What’s it mean?”
Wait, I said.
“What’s it mean?” said Eliyahu. “It’s a letter. First letter of the Hebrew alphabet, the aleph-bet — like an A, but silent.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“That wasn’t his question.” “Answer his question.” “Don’t dodge the question.”
“Pipe the fuck down,” Vincie Portite told them. “He was trying to explain,” another voice to my left said. “Just let him talk.”
Wait wait, I said.
“Why’d you call me Aleph?” Berman said to Brooklyn.
“Josh Berman, please. Don’t be so testy. I’m not your enemy. Prior to this I’ve only seen you in the hallways, maybe once or twice on the late-bus too. I didn’t even know you were an Israelite, you know? Let alone a Josh Berman. So I called you Aleph. Like an A. Like a variable. That’s all,” he said.
“Oh,” Berman said. “Like an alpha,” he said.
“Sure. Like alpha,” Eliyahu told him.
“You know? I like that,” Berman said. “I like it a lot. Sorry I got all—”
“No, forget it,” Eliyahu said. “We just took the school down together, yes? Anything lousy between any of us here — it needs,” he said, “to be forgiven.”
And at the sound of those words, to be forgiven, nearly every single person in our fifty-head huddle grew visibly relaxed — shoulders falling, face muscles slackening, bodies leaning forward, toward each other… there’d even been an audible collective sigh. And I, to my own great surprise, sighed along. Finding out that Berman — ex-Shover leader, June’s ex-boyfriend, maker of nasty remarks to Jelly’s sister, shooter of nibs into Nakamook’s neck, basher into floors of Nakamook’s face, inadvertant insulter of Main Man’s repertoire… The information that Berman was the same boy as Aleph had performed on me in ways that I couldn’t have predicted. I pictured the following in rapid succession: Berman watching Baxter knock Brooklyn’s hat off; Berman crawling the floor beneath Benji’s legs. But then, instead of thinking: Here’s the mouse who stood by doing nothing while his brother got humiliated, or, Here’s the coward who’d rather crawl on his belly than stand up and fight, what I thought was: Poor Berman, poor Josh Berman. Not poor Aleph—Poor Josh Berman. Coward Aleph had been faceless, scholars. Poor Josh Berman had Berman’s face. And maybe it was just as simple as that: his having a face. Or maybe it was even simpler than that: poor Josh Berman’s face wasn’t just any face; poor Josh Berman’s was an Israelite face. Here the face of an Israelite crawling on his belly, there the face of an Israelite avenging himself. I’d’ve probably done the same, had I been him. Had I crawled on my belly before Benji or anyone, I’d avenge myself too — take the first shot I could, and the second, the third. And I saw that what I’d done was forgiven him. I’d forgiven Berman for having been Aleph and forgiven Aleph for having been Berman. Just like that. And I saw it was good.