It's Not Easy Being Bad Read online

  She explained it patiently. “Because it’s the right thing to do. Don’t you want to make things righter in the world, Louis?” she asked him.

  He didn’t want to say yes, because it was wimpy and do-goody and uncool; but he wanted to say yes to Frannie Arenberg so that she would like him and admire him. So all he could say was, “As if.”

  “We just have to keep on trying,” Frannie smiled at him.

  Louis looked around, in hope that nobody was watching, but he couldn’t help smiling back.

  “Because don’t you think the worst thing is giving up?” Frannie asked.

  Louis nodded his head. He didn’t dare look into her face for very long.

  Margalo was enjoying this. “Would you have made a seventh and eighth grade team, Louis?” She was pretty sure he wouldn’t have.

  He had no trouble looking right at Margalo, glaring hard. “Just because I’m not a wimp, like you.”

  “You know that I don’t play team sports,” Margalo answered, and looked at Frannie to add, “Louis and us were in the same school for fifth and sixth grades.”

  “So you’re old friends,” Frannie said. Then she looked at Louis’s face, and at Mikey’s face, and at Margalo’s face, and added, “Or not.”

  “Not,” Mikey agreed.

  “I’ll second that,” Louis said, with so much feeling that Frannie laughed, and that, too, made him flush. “Porky and me—we’re like matter and anti-matter,” he added, and then left.

  Margalo asked Frannie if she was going to sit down, but Frannie wasn’t. She had promised to eat lunch with some Heathers and the Aceys. “So I’ll see you two in seminar?” Seminar was their last class before early dismissal for the holiday.

  “Or next week,” Mikey said. “In case of disaster. I live in hope of disaster.”

  Frannie laughed again. “You don’t mean that.” She walked away, carrying her tray out in front of her.

  “Oh, yeah?” Mikey called after Frannie. “I live in hope of disaster and I’m almost always disappointed.”

  Tan plunked herself down at the table. “You know why he waited until today, don’t you? Don’t you? Because,” she answered her own question, “by the time school starts again next week, nobody will care anymore. It’ll be forgotten. Like last year’s record breaker. But if the teachers can get what they want, why can’t we?” she demanded. “Anyway, you tried, Mikey. I’m glad we tried, at least.” She got up as suddenly as she had sat down, and strode off.

  “She’d have made the basketball team,” Mikey said. “No question.”

  “Would you have?”

  “Probably. What I lack in skill I make up for in aggression.” Mikey smiled. “Listen, Margalo, my grandmother’s staying until Saturday afternoon; do you want to sleep over Saturday night? If you come in time for lunch, you can meet her.”

  “I’ll ask. I don’t know if Steven and Aurora need me to baby-sit. Maybe you can come to my house.”

  Mikey was shaking her head. “No, you have to come to mine. We have to practice chocolate chip cookies. For the bake sale, remember?”

  Then they were interrupted by Hadrian Klenk, who stood in front of their table, facing them red-faced. Hadrian’s hair had spiky cowlicks, and he had jammed his hands into his pockets. “About your petition,” he said. “I’m sorry, Mikey. And you, too, Margalo, because Frannie said you wrote it.”

  “You didn’t even sign it,” Mikey told Hadrian.

  “Nobody asked me.”

  “Nobody asked anybody,” Mikey said.

  “I did,” Margalo told her.

  “Sometimes,” Hadrian reminded Mikey, “people don’t want other people even to sign their petitions. And other people had better be careful, because sometimes, people can be mean. If they try to sign the petitions. But you should have used stronger graphics,” he said, as if this was the really important part of what he had come to say. “I don’t know what software program you have, Mikey, but the pages could have had a much more effective layout. Did you think about splitting the text? Or using a border, or a background design, to catch attention? Or a font that looks more official, more like a real petition, like the Declaration of Independence, maybe older, like the Magna Carta, maybe—”

  “Slow down,” Margalo advised him.

  Hadrian stopped talking.

  And stood there, silent.

  Until after a while, he said, “I could show you. And you, too, Margalo.”

  “Sure,” Mikey said, and then he did leave, and Mikey said, “unless you think we’d do better with brownies. Or maybe peanut butter cookies? Which do you think are my best cookies, start with that. Which, Margalo?”

  Margalo offered Mikey a couple of Oreos, which is what she had in her lunch that day. Then she offered her orange sections. They were discussing the various cookies Mikey made, or could learn to make, when Hadrian Klenk rushed back to their table. It couldn’t have been much more than ten minutes he had been gone.

  “Look.” He put three sheets of paper down in front of them. “It’s not exactly right, because—my program at home is better, but you can see how different—” He was as excited as a kid in a TV ad, dragging his parents into Disney World. “Which one do you prefer?” he asked, pushing the three petition pages toward Mikey.

  “I’d have to think,” Margalo said, but Mikey didn’t hesitate. “That one.”

  Hadrian picked it up. Studied it. “Okay,” he said, and rushed off.

  “He’ll be back,” Margalo warned Mikey.

  “We’ll be gone,” Mikey said. “But his did look more official.”

  “Is he a computer genius?”

  “How would I know?”

  “The poor little guy’s got a crush on you,” Margalo observed.

  “Too bad for him,” Mikey said.

  11

  California, Here I (don’t) Come

  “She liked you. She’s pretty funny, isn’t she,” Mikey greeted Margalo. It wasn’t a question.

  And that was lucky, because in one afternoon—before Margalo had to be home to baby-sit her younger half sister and half brother—she couldn’t begin to figure out Mikey’s famous grandmother. Who dyed her hair.

  “She liked me?”

  Mikey explained Margalo’s charms. “You’re my best friend.”

  “I’m your only friend.”

  “That’s why we think when I go stay with her next summer, you should come, too.”

  Margalo stopped. Dead. In her tracks.

  After going on for a few steps, Mikey turned around. “What’s the matter?”

  Tanisha Harris went by, turned to say, “Neat pants,” to Margalo.

  “You liked her okay, didn’t you?” Mikey demanded.

  Margalo nodded. She knew she could never go to California. Steven and Aurora couldn’t afford a plane ticket to California. But being invited to go was almost as good, and just as dazzling. She’d never even gotten as close as a chance, before.

  Casey Wolsowski came up to ask, “Are those capri pants? Where’d you find them?” but Margalo wasn’t about to say. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” she asked, Miss Mysteriosa. When Casey had mock-punched Margalo’s arm and then walked away, Margalo went back to being dazzled.

  California. The Pacific Ocean. Maybe an earthquake. Movie stars. “I can’t,” she said, “but—”

  Mikey interrupted. “Why not?”

  Sometimes, Mikey was just stupid.

  “Don’t you want to?”

  “I can’t afford it. Crud, Mikey. Let’s go in,” Margalo said, and they pulled open the big school doors, to enter the long school week.

  “Those pants look dumb,” Mikey remarked at the same time someone walking by, one of the Barbies, said to her friends, “D’you think I’d look good in capris? Or are my thighs too fat?”

  “Your thighs are too fat!” Mikey yelled, and got herself a dirty look. “Well, they are,” Mikey maintained to Margalo. “And I still don’t like them,” she said, staring at Margalo’s black capri pants. �
��I don’t care if everybody else in the world does, I don’t.”

  Why am I not surprised? Margalo chose not to ask out loud. Mikey had no taste. As in, No Taste.

  “You don’t think I have any taste,” Mikey accused her as they put lunch and books into their lockers.

  “Not true.” Margalo grinned. “I think you have bad taste.”

  “Then explain why I’m such a good cook,” Mikey countered. “Did Aurora say you can come home to bake with me on Thursday?”

  “I’ll ask her tonight, when Steven will be there. He’ll think it’s okay. I didn’t have time yesterday,” Margalo reminded Mikey. She’d spent Sunday at Mikey’s house, practicing making cookies. Mr. Elsinger had practiced eating them. They’d both done okay at their jobs. In fact, Margalo was looking forward to impressing her family when she made chocolate chip cookies, from scratch.

  “Tell her we’ll only be alone for a couple of hours,” Mikey said. “Dad will come home early.”

  “I don’t blame her for worrying,” Margalo defended her mother.

  “I don’t, either. But I will, if her worrying keeps us from making cookies. My cookies are going to be really good,” Mikey announced. “And everyone knows that most of the rest of the stuff is going to be made by mothers, anyway, so that’s even better. It’ll be okay with Aurora,” Mikey decided. Then she went back to her main concern of the morning. “If you weren’t always buying new clothes, you’d have the money to come to California with me.”

  Margalo just stared. Mikey didn’t get it. She didn’t know that sometimes people could work and work and barely earn enough to get by—to feed, clothe, and house themselves and their children. She didn’t know how much cheaper margarine was than butter. She didn’t know that you could get a whole grocery bag of clothes for only a dollar, if you knew where to shop. There was so much Mikey didn’t know, she didn’t even know how much she didn’t know.

  At the look on Margalo’s face, Mikey shifted the subject back to baking. “Dad’s taking me shopping Wednesday. We could cook at your house, but I’m not sure about Aurora’s oven. The oven could make a difference, how much I’m not sure. It’s not all that easy to—”

  Margalo was destined never to hear what it was that Mikey didn’t think was all that easy because just then Hadrian Klenk—still in his Polartec jacket—rushed up to them, breathing heavily. “I’m glad I caught you, Mikey. And you, too, Margalo. Look at this—” he said, dropping his knapsack down at his feet right there in the middle of the hall, and rooting around in it to pull out a long, legal-sized manila file folder, labeled MIKEY’S PETITION.

  People milled around them, getting to homeroom, to their lockers, to where their friends had already gotten to. Hadrian didn’t notice.

  “What’s with you, creep?” a couple of boys asked, almost tripping over him.

  Hadrian was opening up the folder.

  A couple of girls maneuvered around him. “Hadrian!” they objected in high voices, and “Honestly!” they said to one another.

  He was in the way, but it wasn’t as if he was blocking the whole hall. It wasn’t as if you couldn’t get around him as he held up a sheet of heavy parchment paper. “Look, Mikey. And you, too, Margalo.”

  The word “Petition” at the top of the paper looked as if it had been written with a quill pen, the ink was so black, the letters so dark and thick. Little curlicues decorated the start and end of the word. It looked like something written by Thomas Jefferson, or any other one of the Founding Fathers.

  Underneath, in smaller size but in the same old-fashioned script, Hadrian had rewritten Margalo’s paragraph. Now it started out, “Know by all men present that we, the students of the seventh grade at West Junior High School . . .” It went on in the same style, as if it were over two hundred years old.

  “It’s just a model,” Hadrian explained. “To show what else you could have done. I know it’s too late,” he apologized.

  Margalo was impressed. “Did you write this out by hand?”

  “How could I do that? My graphics program has lots of fonts, and once I had the right paper . . . see, Mikey,” he explained, “It’s not just the font that gets you the formal effect. It has a lot to do with the kind of paper you use. That, and the size of the type, the darkness of the ink. And the spacing, too, the margins at the sides and top and bottom, between the words, between the letters. All of that can be adjusted.” He pointed to each feature as he mentioned it. “I think it’s the H that really makes this font look good. And the lowercase e,” he said, his finger picking out those letters. “Don’t you think, Mikey? And you, too, Margalo.”

  The bell rang, and Hadrian bent down to collect his scattered possessions, but he looked up to say, “I’m sorry it’s too late.”

  “Probably it wouldn’t have made any difference,” Margalo consoled him as they moved quickly away. It wasn’t smart to be seen standing around talking with Hadrian Klenk.

  “Maybe it would have,” he called after them.

  At lunch, Hadrian came up to them in the cafeteria line, to show them the same design, with the letters of the heading shadowed by bright red. “This was another idea I had,” he said, trailing behind them. “I kind of thought it might be better, don’t you, Mikey? And you, too, Margalo.”

  At the end of school, he was waiting when they emerged from homeroom, to show them, “The best one of all, tell me what you think, Mikey. And you—” But they just brushed past Hadrian Klenk, pretending not to notice him.

  Mikey put their opinion into words. “Just because he’s so much younger, and probably a genius, doesn’t mean he gets to pester me.”

  “Do you think he really could be a genius?” Margalo asked, looking back at him thoughtfully. It was normal for geniuses to be out of it—out of touch with reality, out-to-lunch, way out—in school. But in the long run—and school was the short run, she knew that—the geniuses were better to be friends with than the normal, popular people. She thought about returning to hear what Hadrian wanted to say, but Mikey’s attention had moved on, or, more accurately, it had headed back, toward California. “What about baby-sitting? For money,” she explained. “For your plane ticket.”

  “Aurora can’t afford to pay—”

  “No, I mean for other people. You can charge a lot, especially if you’ve taken the baby-sitting course at the library.”

  “But I haven’t.”

  “But you could. It’s free.”

  “Anyway, how would I get people to hire me?”

  “Put up notices, in the library, maybe at the supermarket? Or”—and Mikey’s face lit up with interest—“this is a really good idea. At your doctor’s. And I’ll do it at mine. I’ll talk to Aurora about you doing baby-sitting work. She thinks I’m a live wire and she’d want you to be able to come out to Grammy’s with me. Let me do the talking, Margalo, okay?”

  Margalo just nodded, because—for the first time—she was thinking about how Mikey wasn’t even slowed down by the difficulties of being a kid. She just crashed on through them, to get what she wanted.

  Mikey was the only person Margalo ever wished she was more like.

  * * *

  “You know what I think?” Margalo asked Mikey, at lunch the next day.

  “Ask me if I care,” Mikey answered.

  “You should,” Margalo answered. That was all she said.

  Mikey waited, pretending not to wait. She pulled her braid around to the front, as if she was checking for split ends, as if she cared if her ends split. She tossed her braid back over her shoulder and turned her attention to the noodle casserole on her plate. This was served mounded up into a hill shape. Chunks of pale yellowy orange carrots were piled beside it, with a piece of buttered bread resting over them. There were specks of beige somethings in the casserole, and Mikey picked one out with her fork and held it out before Margalo like some scientist with an unknown species of bug, asking his fellow scientist for an identification. “All right, all right,” Mikey said. “Why should I care?
What should I care about? What now?”

  Margalo knew a victory when she won it. “If Hadrian really is a genius, maybe we should be nice to him,” she said.

  “No way,” Mikey explained. “All he thinks about is—he’s obsessive.”

  “Although he’s seriously weird,” Margalo pointed out, arguing with herself about this.

  “I don’t mind weird,” Mikey said. “People think I’m weird,” she reminded Margalo, adding, “They’re wrong, but they don’t know it. You’re the one of us who’s weird,” she concluded.

  “Says who?”

  “You just pretend you aren’t.”

  Well, Margalo couldn’t argue about that. A lot of her whole life was a costume she put together, and put on. She was pretty good at it, too, getting people to think they were seeing what she wanted them to see when they looked at her. “So what?” she asked.

  “So what I want to hear about now is what Aurora said after I went home and you had one of your dinner table talks about California,” Mikey said.

  But before Margalo could tell her the bad news, there was Hadrian Klenk, back again, another sheet of paper in his hand to show them. The lettering on it was of the old-fashioned kind that looks like it would be used for writing fairy tales, tall and stiff, with little thin echoes for the crossbars. “What do you think of this?” he asked Mikey, bending over a little to lay the paper out beside Mikey’s tray.

  “Give it a rest, Hadrian,” Mikey said but, “No, what do you think? I changed it, see?” he insisted.

  Hadrian had reversed the design. He had put the places for signatures at the top, with the statement of what the petition was for beneath them. Beneath all of that, at the bottom center of the page, he had printed out in letters large enough to be a newspaper headline, PETITION.

  “Okay, so you changed it,” Mikey acknowledged, and went back to her lunch.

  “No, it’s really interesting,” Margalo said, pulling the paper over to look at it. “This way, the signatures are more important, because they come first.”