Is this a can I/may I thing? I said to Miss Pinge. Or a magic word thing? I said.
“Yes,” she said.
May I please have my record?
“Yes,” she said. She reached under her desk and came up with two thick manila envelopes, the kind with the bobbin and the red twine fastener. The red twine fastener gets wound around the bobbin.
I said, Two copies?
“Just one,” she said.
I said, How many envelopes does Nakamook have?
She said, “That would be confidential.”
I said, I bet mine are thicker.
Miss Pinge said, “I bet so, too.”
I said, Lots of people have written about me.
“That’s a very positive way to see it,” she said. “I think Mr. Brodsky wants to talk to you, kiddo.”
In his doorway, I told Brodsky: Miss Pinge said you want to talk.
And then I stepped over his threshold and saw that the wingnut I’d given him was gone from his blotter. It wasn’t anywhere on his desk.
He said, “I’ve been doing some math.”
I unwound the twine from the bobbin of the top envelope and started pulling out the contents — vaccinations, prescriptions for drugs I wouldn’t take, copies of birth certificate, Social Security card, admissions records—
Brodsky stood up fast behind his desk. He said, “The average number of students in Tuesday detention is twenty. Do you know how many students are in detention today?”
I shoved the contents back down in the envelope.
He said, “There are forty-one students in detention today. That’s over one fifteenth of the school. There are so many students in detention today, Gurion, that we had to assign a second detention monitor.”
The top item in the second envelope was my first Step 4 CASS from Botha. The offenses listed were “Destruction of School Property” and “Incitement to Destroy School Property” = I’d bent paper-clips into grasshoppers and taught Main Man and this slow boy, Winthrop, how to sculpt and trigger them.
Brodsky slammed his fist down onto the desk, wishing it was my nose. He said, “You, Ronrico and Mikey Bregman account for three of the students in detention. And Eliyahu, who, this morning, was every bit the tragic posterboy for sweetness and piety, put his fist through some glass some sixty minutes after meeting you. He’s a fourth.”
I said to Brodsky, I like Eliyahu. I said, He’s a scholar.
Brodsky said, “That’s just what he said when I asked him about you. No few people have said that about you, Gurion, but I am beginning to believe that the praise is hollow. You are failing to live up to expectations— Don’t smile!” he said.
I couldn’t help it — I’d found a copy of this letter from the social worker at Northside Hebrew Day that asked my parents for permission to meet with me regularly. I’d seen the letter before, right when my mom received it in the mail, but I hadn’t seen my mom’s response, which was stapled to the copy. The response was in her usual all-caps handwriting, in marker, sideways, on top of the text of the social worker’s original letter: “YOU WERE ALREADY TOLD ‘NO, THANK YOU’ ON THE TELEPHONE. THIS TIME IT IS ‘NO.’ I WOULD RATHER NOT HEAR MYSELF SAY WHAT I WILL SAY IF THERE IS A THIRD POLITE REQUEST. SINCERELY, TAMAR MACCABEE.” I covered my mouth with my hand.
Brodsky said, “Listen to me!” = “Look at me!”
But first I looked to see what the next document was — something by Sandy called “Assessment of a Client: Gurion Maccabee,” and the one under that was a letter to Brodsky from Rabbi Salt; I put both on top — and then, when I looked up, I saw the clock on Brodsky’s desk. It said 3:41. Four minutes til June.
I shoved all the contents back in the envelope.
Brodsky said, “After Eliyahu was sent here? Six other students in the lab advanced from step 1 to step 4 in under thirty minutes.”
Maybe it was because Brodsky’s “I’ve been doing some math” bit, which was about a thousand beats too long to be intimidating, was actually starting to intimidate me a little anyway; maybe it was how Sabra my mom was; maybe it was because I was thinking I’d see June in less time than it takes a beginning-of-class tone to follow an end-of-class tone; maybe it was because that made me nervous; maybe it made me nervous just because I was in love with her or maybe because I was in love with her and had seen her ex-boyfriend who she might have kissed; or maybe I was just nervous… whatever it was, I laughed a little. Something made me laugh a little.
Brodsky hit the desk again and leaned forward and his head was pinker than ever. He said, “Leevon Ray and Vincent Portite are in detention for taking wingnuts off the vents in A-Hall yesterday. They said they were having a contest.” He said, “Don’t interrupt me.”
I hadn’t interrupted him.
He said, “Not including you, eleven of the forty students in today’s detention are there as a result of your influence, whether directly or indirectly. What do you have to say about that?”
I said, I’m not only responsible for the actions of my friends, but for the actions of people who see my friends act — that’s what you’re saying to me.
“And now you choose to speak like an adult,” he said. “You only act like a mensch when your ass is on the line?” He pounded the desk rapidly, five times, once for each syllable in “ass is on the line.”
I said to him, I don’t know what speaking like an adult has to do with being a mensch, and I don’t know how it is that you expect a person to defend himself to you when you don’t even have a handle on free will.
“Free will!” Brodsky said.
I said, If those kids you listed aren’t responsible for their own actions, then why would I be for mine, let alone theirs? If I said there was a bomb in the cafeteria and people got trampled, that would be one thing, but I haven’t done anything like that.
His hands were shaking in the air. He stilled them, then knocked his pencil cup sideways off the blotter. It hit the wall and spilled and I got a little startled.
He said, “Who wrecked the scoreboard?”
I said, I don’t tell on people.
He said, “So you know who it was, then.”
I said, I don’t tell on people.
He said, “Was it Nakamook?”
I said nothing.
He said, “Was it Portite? Leevon Ray? Angelica Rothstein?”
I said nothing.
“Did you wreck the scoreboard?” he said.
I said nothing.
“I asked you if you wrecked the scoreboard,” he said.
I said, I heard you.
His whole face twitched then, like the muscles he was forcing to scowl were losing a rebellion, or starting one. “I will keep you here until I get a sufficient answer to my question,” he said.
It was a completely dumont condition. I’d never heard anything so babylike from Brodsky before, and that is when I understood — he was desperate.
It wasn’t just that he had no proof that I’d wrecked the scoreboard — I’d known he had no proof: I’d gotten rid of the pieces and was the only one who saw me do it = I had total control over all the evidence against me — it was that he actually needed proof.
Wrecking the scoreboard was big. I could get arrested for wrecking the scoreboard, taken to court, expelled. Wrecking the scoreboard was so big that suspicion, no matter how strong or who it belonged to, was not enough to nail me, and it never would be. I’d had the upper hand the whole time and I hadn’t known it.
“Answer me,” Brodsky said.
The clock said 3:45 and I was safe, but being safe was not getting me any closer to June. I knew Brodsky couldn’t keep me there forever, but he could definitely keep me there til the end of detention if he wanted.