It's Not Easy Being Bad Page 14

“You’re not going to do anything?” Mikey asked.

  Margalo nodded her head, then admitted, “I felt so—bad—yesterday.”

  “Nobody could tell,” Mikey assured her.

  “With people talking about feeling sorry for me, I felt like—”

  “Not me,” Mikey said.

  “Like I was all shriveled up. I wanted to blow away on some wind, and never have to see anybody I knew ever again.” Margalo stopped speaking. Thought. Added, “Except you. You don’t feel sorry for me.”

  “Nope,” Mikey agreed. Then, to be honest, she added, “Except about being so tall, and bad at math. And caring about what people think,” she added.

  “That’s better than never listening to anybody,” Margalo snapped back.

  Mikey was so glad to have Margalo back snapping back at her, she couldn’t keep up the quarrel. She tried to explain. “I know you want to be popular. In fact, I want you to be. The more popular you are, the better I look, because I’m your friend. You know that’s true, Margalo. And what’s so funny?”

  Margalo shook her head, trying not to laugh.

  Mikey got back to the point. “So you’re just going to let Heather get away with it?”

  Now Margalo smiled, practically the Mona Lisa. “Do you think she’s getting away with it?” Then she got serious. “I thought about it, and all I can do to her is—you know what they say? Living well is the best revenge.”

  Mikey stuck her tongue out at Margalo. She’d been looking forward to hearing some great plan of Margalo’s, for one thing, and for another, whether Margalo wanted to do anything about it or not, Heather had tried to humiliate her. So it looked like Mikey was just going to have to take care of Heather on her own.

  “Don’t you do anything, either,” Margalo told Mikey.

  As it happened, Heather McGinty, in the midst of her clique, was coming down the hallway in their direction, giggling and talking, her pleated skirt swishing around just above her knees. She made a point of not staring at Mikey and Margalo, although she pointed her face in their direction so they’d be afraid she might be staring.

  “Okay,” Mikey said, soft, out of the side of her mouth. She was looking right at Heather McGinty. “Okay, I won’t do anything,” she said, giving Margalo her word, giving Heather McGinty the kind of look an If-looks-could-kill look was named after.

  Heather McGinty walked a little faster and found her path down the hallway veering away from the two girls standing by their lockers, one of them short and round and dressed in dumpy cargo jeans, with a baggy gray T-shirt and staring in a not-at-all-nice way; the other tall and skinny, and wearing that same thrift shop sweater.

  (Wearing the same sweater? How could she dare to do that?

  Maybe she hadn’t heard the story, yet.

  But then why was Mikey staring like that, like some Doberman pincher about to attack?)

  Heather McGinty did not look back over her shoulder as she hustled down the hall.

  By lunchtime, Heather was convinced that Mikey was going to attack her, and maybe beat her up. Although Mikey hadn’t done anything. Just smiled.

  Mikey didn’t need to do anything but smile.

  So that when Heather approached her table, lunch tray in her hands, and saw Mikey standing nearby, smiling at her, she put the tray down quickly.

  Mikey didn’t move. True to her word, she didn’t do anything. But Heather found she had to go to the bathroom, and when she came back, Mikey must have finished her lunch because there she was, standing by the doorway. It looked like Mikey was waiting for someone, probably Margalo, because the two of them were practically inseparable. Mikey looked at Heather McGinty, and smiled, and Heather decided maybe she wasn’t hungry. Since she wasn’t hungry, Heather decided to skip lunch. Since she was skipping lunch, she didn’t need to go into the cafeteria after all.

  Too often, that Thursday, where Heather wanted to go, Mikey blocked her way. “She’s not doing anything,” Heather’s friends pointed out, but nobody had ever looked at Heather like that. “And sometimes she smiles,” Heather said.

  “Just stay away from her,” they advised. Privately, they thought Heather deserved what she was getting.

  “She’s stalking me!” Heather cried.

  Friday morning, Mikey and Margalo brought in six shoe boxes of chocolate chip cookies in two shopping bags. They followed the same marketing plan, leaving one bag with Mrs. Chambers, setting two boxes under the bake sale table, and leaving one out on top. There was no reason to make changes in a successful strategy, Mikey said. Margalo wore her La Scala sweater again, this time over her long, black skirt.

  On her way to the cafeteria for lunch, Margalo lifted the cloth that covered the bake sale table and took a peek underneath, to see that even the third ME shoe box was gone. “Margalo. Hihowareyou?” Annie Piers called to her, from her seat behind the table. Annie leaned around a couple of customers to ask, “Can you help out here? Heather never showed, if you can believe it.” So Margalo guessed she knew where Mikey was. She took a seat behind the table and told people, no, there weren’t any more of Mikey’s chocolate chips, and asked them why didn’t they try one of the brownies instead. “Will there be more of Mikey’s cookies later? Like last week?” they asked, and she smiled, not saying yes and not saying no.

  The anti-Heather campaign continued the next week, through Monday and into Tuesday. Margalo continued to wear the La Scala sweater, and Mikey kept on doing nothing to Heather. On Tuesday, Heather had actually entered the cafeteria, and joined the line, not noticing Mikey crouched beside the table where the jockettes ate. Then Mikey rose up.

  Mikey didn’t say anything, and she didn’t rush, either. In fact, she moved so slowly, one foot in front of the other, that Heather had plenty of time to wonder what was going to happen, and start getting dancey feet where she was standing in line, crowded in by people.

  Mikey approached.

  Heather backed away, just a little.

  Mikey kept coming.

  Heather knew that if she fled, people would laugh at her. So she tried to stay where she was, standing in line.

  But Mikey was moving steadily closer, like some glacier, silent and unstoppable. Her eyes never left Heather’s face. Her grim smile never faltered.

  Heather backed up against the utensil rack. “C’mon, Mikey,” she said. “Cut it out,” she said.

  Mikey didn’t say one word. Her hands were in her pockets, but there was something about her shoulders . . . She wasn’t doing anything, but she might, any minute, start doing something. Something that made her smile to think about, an If-you-think-it’s-bad-now-wait-till-you-see-what’s-next smile.

  Heather’s hands were in front of her, and her backside was jammed up against the metal rack that held silverware. There was nowhere else for her to go, and Mikey was still getting closer.

  Until a large, coppery brown hand fell down on Mikey’s shoulder. But even that didn’t stop Mikey—who was concentrating harder than she did for anything, except tennis—until a matching large hand fell on the back of her neck, ready to squeeze, and Mr. Saunders said, “Come with me, Mikey.”

  15

  Two (bad) Eggs, Sunny-side Up

  “He’s not worried about me getting pregnant anymore,” Mikey announced with satisfaction.

  They were bouncing along homeward on the activities bus. Margalo had had to wait through three afternoon classes and a basketball practice to hear what the principal had said to Mikey. And even now she was having trouble keeping Mikey’s attention focused. Mikey kept wanting to talk about basketball. “But I think I know what you have to do on free throws.”

  “What did he say?” Margalo asked, for about the hundredth time. “You were in there for over an hour.”

  “Most of the time I was waiting outside his office. It’s a matter of attitude,” Mikey said.

  “That’s what he said?”

  “No, for free throws, mental attitude. Oh, all right,” Mikey said as Margalo groaned her frustration. �
�Since you can’t seem to think about anything else. I got called in—finally—and I can tell you, I was tired of Mrs. Chambers giving me the fish eye. It turns out, Mrs. McGinty called up to complain. That’s one of the things Mr. Saunders said.”

  “Why do parents do that?”

  “If Heather was your daughter, wouldn’t you want to call up somebody—anybody?—and complain?”

  “And she’s a snitch, too.”

  “Crikey, Margalo. Who did you think she was?” But Mikey couldn’t think of any girl or woman courageous, quick-witted, and loyal enough to be the shining example of what Heather McGinty wasn’t. She started to grouse at Margalo about that. “Do you realize that there’s no girl—”

  Margalo couldn’t be diverted from this one subject. “What’s your punishment?” she asked. “Because I’ll help with it. Since it’s sort of my fault.”

  “No punishment.”

  That shut Margalo up, but only temporarily. Mikey had barely begun telling Margalo her new technique for free throws, when Margalo turned away from the window to interrupt, again. “If he’s not worried about your teen pregnancy anymore, what is he worried about?

  “He’s worried I’m a terrorist.”

  “Not really.”

  “Not really, and not right now, but—that maybe I might turn into one.”

  “Well, I can see why he’d think of that, but I don’t agree. What did you say?”

  “I told him”—Mikey smiled a You’re-going-to-love-this smile—“I’m not a terrorist, I’m an entrepreneur.’ ”

  Margalo waited a few seconds before asking, “And what did he say to that?” This was like pulling teeth, getting information. “C’mon, Mikey, what’s with you? Just tell.”

  “He said, I was a wise guy. I said, I was just telling the truth. He said, sarcastic, how did I define entrepreneur, and I said—I was very polite, a lot more polite than he was—I defined entrepreneur as someone who tried to create new businesses, and make a lot of money.”

  Mikey stopped.

  Margalo waited, then asked again, “And he said?”

  Mikey sighed, but Margalo didn’t believe that sigh for one second. “He said, he didn’t see much opportunity for new businesses in the seventh grade. And I said”—Mikey beat Margalo to the question—“that was because he wasn’t an entrepreneur.”

  She allowed herself a Game-set-match smile.

  Margalo grinned right back at her. “So you’re not in trouble?”

  “Oh, that. Not exactly. He said, ‘This has to cease and desist. Is that understood?’ ” Mikey reported this last in a deep, mock-principal voice. “If I don’t, he said, he’ll have me pinned to the mat before I know what the name of the game is. I think he forgot he was dealing with a girl,” Mikey announced. “So I said, just as nice as Frannie, ‘Okay, I will.’ And he waited a couple of minutes, sort of looking stem at me across his desk, before he told me I could go. End of story.”

  “Are you going to cease and desist?” Margalo asked.

  “This was already going to be the last day,” Mikey told her. “I figured, in four days I would have done all the damage I could.”

  “He didn’t even give you detention?” Margalo asked.

  “It isn’t as if I actually did anything. Or even said anything. Why should I get detention?”

  “That’s okay, then,” Margalo said. She turned back to the window.

  It was Mikey’s turn to ask, “Do you mind being poor, Margalo?”

  Now Margalo sighed, to let Mikey know how tired she was of this topic. “I’m not poor. We just need everything we take in, from Steven’s job and the child support Howie and Esther’s father sends.”

  “And from my dad, too.”

  “From your dad, too.”

  “But do you mind?” Mikey insisted.

  Margalo blew up. “Of course I do. Jeez Loueez, Mikey, how dumb can you be? Wouldn’t you mind if”—she tried to think of an example that would matter to Mikey—“if you had to buy your sneakers at a discount drugstore?”

  “But those don’t last. They don’t stand up to any serious wear. I’m hard on sneakers.”

  “Or when you wanted to make cookies, if you had to use margarine because it’s so much cheaper?”

  “But that would change the taste.”

  “You’re missing the point.”

  Mikey explained, “But you can’t mind very much, because you’ve never done anything about it.”

  “Like what?” Margalo demanded. “Like what can I do? Rob a bank? I’ll get a job when I turn fourteen, Aurora promised I can, and she says I can use what I earn for college.”

  “What about California?” Mikey wondered now. Were she and Margalo on such entirely different wavelengths?

  “What about California? It’s a state. It borders on the Pacific. The capital is Sacramento.”

  Mikey explained, “You were saving money for a plane ticket to California. For this summer. What is with you, Margalo?”

  Margalo spoke between clenched teeth. “How can I save money? You have to have money to spend in order to have money to save by not spending it.”

  Mikey returned to her main point to be sure that now, at least, she was getting it right. “So you do mind.” She thought some more. “Zut, are you a good actress, Margalo.”

  “Of course I’m a good actress, you nitwit.”

  Mikey decided to change the subject, since this one just seemed to get Margalo het up. There was no sense in having a big fight with the only person who liked you at school, except maybe Frannie Arenberg. “What if we try sugar cookies this week? We could make half sugar cookies and half chocolate chip,” Mikey said, slipping into the satisfying memory. “Because chocolate chip is my trademark.”

  * * *

  “Here’s the plan,” Mikey greeted Margalo the next morning, Wednesday, as she got off her bus, but she was cut off by Margalo insisting that they get inside, out of the heavy rain. “Don’t you have a raincoat?” Mikey demanded.

  “Lay off, why don’t you?” Margalo responded, so Mikey guessed her mood had not improved overnight. Maybe she hadn’t gotten enough sleep.

  “Here’s the plan,” Mikey began again, at their lockers—but Margalo wasn’t wearing the sweater anymore. She was wearing some flowered blouse, dark browny red printed with big, droopy cream-colored flowers, and a large soft floppy collar that spread almost to her shoulders, a really goopy blouse, in Mikey’s opinion.

  “Great blouse,” somebody said. The somebody was Casey Wolsowski, who now said, “Mikey? Love your cookies. I’m Casey, hihowareyou?”

  “Wet,” Mikey answered. “Otherwise, pretty good because I got a really good night’s sleep. Also, my dad got us bagels for breakfast.” She thought about what else Casey might want to know. “I’m staying with my mother this weekend, but I don’t start getting jumpy about that until Friday. She likes me better since the divorce, but I’m not exactly her favorite person a lot of the time.”

  “Oh,” Casey said. “Well. That’s—Hihowareyou, Margalo?”

  “Cool,” Margalo said. Whatever that meant, Mikey thought. “You?” Margalo asked.

  “Equally. Take me shopping with you sometime, will you?” Casey asked. “I mean it. You come too, Mikey. Gotta go.”

  Mikey stared at Margalo, who stared right back. “You could,” Margalo said.

  “Who says I want to?” Mikey demanded.

  But there was no time for a fight, not even time for a little quarrel, because Tan came up to ask them, “Whazzup?”

  “Nothing,” Mikey told her. “Nothing ever is. Except, I had this idea about free throws. See, if I—”

  Tan shook her head and punched Mikey’s shoulder. “Show me in practice. Hey, Margalo, whazzup?”

  “Whazzup?” Margalo answered, and Tan waved over her shoulder as she went off.

  “So do you want to hear the plan? Or—”

  Another interruption, Cassie with blue fingernails. “Hey, Margalo, Mikey. What’s new?”

 
“Nothing,” Mikey said. “This is school, isn’t it?”

  “It was the last time I looked,” Cassie agreed, and Margalo asked her, “What’s new with you?”

  “Some of us are sick of Heather McGinty,” Cassie said. “Probably we’ll never speak to her again. Of course, we didn’t speak to her before this, either.”

  “I don’t plan to even think about Heather McGinty, ever again,” Margalo said. “She’s entirely too uninteresting, isn’t she, Mikey?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Mikey answered. “It’s kind of fun to watch her shoot herself in the feet.”

  Cassie laughed, a sharp, witchy sound. “You’re really bad.”

  Mikey didn’t laugh. “I’m really bad,” she agreed.

  Cassie got serious. “You really are” She turned back to Margalo. “Come around sometime. Mikey, too, if she wants,” and she went off.

  “Come around?” Mikey asked. “Where? What is she talking about?”

  * * *

  In the cafeteria, Mikey told Margalo, “I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Saunders at the end of this lunch. Are you coming with me?” she asked.

  Wednesday’s lunch was supposed to be Mexican—but the casserole had gotten as far south as maybe Amarillo, and stopped there. Or maybe the casserole was still in Tombstone, waiting for a decent burial.

  “I thought he was through with you,” Margalo said, unwrapping a grape jelly sandwich, made with mayonnaise and slices of banana.

  “So did he. But I have this plan—” Mikey stopped, waiting to be interrupted by somebody coming along to talk to Margalo, but nobody did. “There’s not enough time,” Mikey said, and took another bite of her lunch. She looked longingly at Margalo’s Oreos.

  “Not enough time for what?”

  “To explain. Do you want to come with me? Or are you too popular?”

  “Well,” Margalo explained, “it’s easier for people to like someone they feel sorry for than someone they admire.”

  “Are you saying they admire me?”

  Margalo nodded, considered taking a bite of her sandwich, stopped to explain. “They admire you about the petition, and the cookies, and that fight with Ralph.”