Nakamook plugged his hand in, beneath Ronrico’s chin, and lifted. He lifted swiftly til his mantis-arm was straight, and then, in smaller increments, at less rapid intervals, he lifted higher and higher from the shoulder. This action was called the Impossible because no one else at school could perform it. Also that’s how it looked: impossible. Nakamook often performed the action on people who, unlike Ronrico, were taller than him, and to keep his balance he had to stand bowlegged, which, to the eyes of observers, always made him look shorter. I’d never been Impossibled before, but I didn’t think it would be that hard to disengage. You’d just have to kick him a good one in the torso, or dig your thumbs deep into the soft part of his wrist til the tendons gave. It must have been that the suddenness of the action erased your sense of options though: no one had ever gotten out of a Nakamookian Impossible before Nakamook had let him, and many even seemed to cooperate with the action, bending their knees in midair the way a baby does when you lift it by the armpits.
The Janitor stepped out of the bottleneck as soon as Ronrico’s feet left the ground. Benji hammered down on his skull with his free hand and the Janitor said, “Ow. Ow. Ow.” He half-sat against the crowd, rubbing a sleeved forearm briskly through his hair, his dazed face slack.
Thirteen inches above Benji’s head, the bugged-out eyeballs of Asparagus revolved at me. He wrinkled between his pulsing temples = “Why?”
Nakamook didn’t miss it. “Don’t act ignorant,” he said to Ronrico, shaking him a little.
I set my hand on Benji’s elbow and waited for him to feel it. When he felt it, he one-shoulder-shrugged at me = “Fine.” To Ronrico, he said, “Do not try to be us,” then lowered him slow and let go of his throat.
Ronrico crouched down to gather his books. The Janitor helped him. Botha unlocked the gate. The crush of the bottleneck got heavy, then ended.
I picked a rocketed book up and gave it to Ronrico. I said, This won’t happen again.
Ronrico looked at his feet.
“The fuck!?” Nakamook said to the air next to my face. Then the Flunky walked past us. “Foog,” Benji told him.
The Flunky stalled for a second, walked on.
Benji followed him past Botha, into C-Hall. I followed Benji. C-Hall, lockerless, was always empty after school except for Cage students, who always got out of class last because of the gate.
I told Benji to hold on.
He slowed his pace. “You’re friends with the Flunky now, too?” he said.
He’s not my enemy.
Nakamook stopped walking. He said, “None of these guys are your friends. They’re just scared of you.”
So what? I said.
“Whenever I’m scared? I wait for a chance to damage who’s scaring me, and then I do that. Isn’t that what you do?”
I don’t get scared of people.
Nakamook said, “Well that’s what everyone else does.”
I said to him, Even if you’re right, I still don’t lose anything, having them on my side.
He said, “Listen. When someone’s scared of me, I know they’ll try to damage me the second they have the chance, and that makes me scared of them. And so I think: I better damage them first, while I have the chance — You should be scared of these people because they fear you, Gurion. You should damage them first. You should damage them again and again. You should damage them until they stop being scared of you. Until your dangerousness is undeniable and you’re like highway traffic or the edge of a cliff — something they wouldn’t even consider crossing. Then you make friends. It’s the only way.”
I said, You and I never damaged each other.
He said, “We weren’t ever scared of each other, but look, forget it — my mood just switched. So did yours.”
I touched my face. My face was smiling. We stood at the C-Hall/Main Hall junction. People shouting and shoving and flirting with each other. At the other end, the front doors opened and shut and the hallway had wind. I could look in any direction I wanted.
Benji said, “I feel like a millionaire on the back of an armored jet-ski my samurai girlfriend who loves me is charging at a cartel speedboat to win a game of chicken. Isn’t this the day’s best part? You don’t even have to remember to enjoy it. It enjoys you into itself.”
I could not imagine June as a samurai on a jet-ski, but a ninja — she could be a ninja, hang-gliding. And she could be my wife.
I said to Benji, Walk me to the Office.
“Office shmoffice!” Benji said. “You’re killing the momentum. What’s in the Office, anyway? We’ve only got fifteen minutes before detention — twelve minutes, just — don’t you wanna go outside by the buses?”
I said, I got called.
He said, “That note the new kid brought? That was so long ago — say you forgot.”
I said, You know I did the scoreboard, right?
He said, “I know I didn’t do it, and Vincie and Leevon were in the Cage all day, so…”
I said, Brodsky’s expecting me to come to the Office and get my record. I made this really big deal out of getting my record this morning, and if I don’t go and get it now, then he’ll think I’m avoiding him. It should only take a minute, anyway — then I’ll come out by the buses.
Benji said, “I’ll walk you.”
Eliyahu came up beside us, raving, “…and this Cage should fall — that boy who wet…”
I said to him, This is Benji Nakamook. I said, Don’t fear him.
“And why should I fear him?” said Eliyahu.
I said, You shouldn’t.
He said, “But I don’t. Still, this wet boy, I think it was the second-worst thing I’ve ever seen — with his hand in the air. Did you see his hand in the air?”
It was too hard to think about Ben-Wa right then. Right then, I was thinking about gliders and June and getting my record.
I said, Eliyahu, did your mood just change?
He said, “Why should my mood change?”
I said, Look at Main Hall.
He said, “It’s filled with people who are desperate to get out of it. This I should celebrate? They will get out shortly and I will go to detention. This I should celebrate?”
Benji said, “You drain my buzz, new kid.”
The three of us headed through the Main Hall rush together, Benji in the middle and two steps in front of us, squinting his eyes, cutting a tunnel from the crowd with his elbows.
Halfway to the Office, I saw June putting books in her locker, talking to some shaved-headed girl I didn’t know, and my throat went dry and chokey. I had the poem to give her, and the Coke and the pass-pad I’d risked getting steps for, but I couldn’t give them to her in front of some girl I didn’t know, and even if I could, there was no table there to throw the pass-pad onto while I made the “I thought you might need a coaster” joke. If I threw the pad on the Main Hall floor, the joke would lose conceptual integrity and the pad would get stomped on by the traffic.
What I did then was chomsky. If, after Hashem replaced Isaac with the goat, Avraham, instead of slaying the goat, had thought to himself, “But I was prepared to kill my own son!” and then turned from the goat and slain Isaac, it would have been just a little bit more chomsky than me, once I saw June in my path, thinking, “It’s not time yet,” and then ducking between Nakamook and Eliyahu before she could spot me. But that’s what I did. I mistook a blessing for an inconvenience.
Nakamook said, “She’s right there, klebold. The girl of your dreams.”
I said, Keep walking.
We kept walking.