It's Not Easy Being Bad Read online

  “How much could people who were all in grade school last June have changed, in just four months?” Mikey demanded. “They can’t scare me.”

  At that moment, when Margalo’s mouth was jammed full with banana, a bunch of girls streamed by their table, including Derry and Annaliese, in J.Crew sweaters over jeans. Margalo watched them, keeping her mouth closed. The little installment of preppies went on by without a word, but Frannie Arenberg hesitated, and stopped. “Hey, Mikey.” She smiled down, including Margalo in her brown-eyed cheerfulness.

  “Hey,” Mikey mumbled through her own mouthful of banana.

  “Frannie?” Frannie’s friends called back to her. “You coming?”

  “Hey, Margalo,” Frannie said.

  Margalo nodded a little nod, smiled a little smile, and waited. Then Frannie hurried off to catch up with the others, and Mikey muttered, “A real Little Miss Merry Sunshine, isn’t she? It’s like having a cocker spaniel around.”

  “More like a golden retriever,” Margalo suggested.

  “What’s with her?” Mikey demanded.

  “Maybe she doesn’t know any better? Or maybe she’s friendly. Maybe she’s a nice person,” Margalo suggested.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Mikey said. She gathered her trash onto the tray. “What my grandmother calls a good egg.”

  “Which is another name for somebody who is no fun at all.”

  “You would say that. You’re a bad egg.”

  “Well, so are you.” Margalo stuffed crumpled wax paper and the banana skin into her brown bag, getting up, picking up her notebook and texts.

  “Being a bad egg doesn’t mean I can’t get popular,” Mikey said. “Or, at least, more popular than you.”

  “Not a chance.”

  A challenge was just what Mikey liked. It gave her something to do, and something to win. “Oh, yeah?”

  “Not that being more popular than me would make you particularly popular,” Margalo pointed out.

  “I bet I can,” Mikey warned, promising.

  “But you don’t care if people like you,” Margalo reminded her.

  “Neither do you.”

  “Yeah, but I’m a better liar.” Then Margalo added, “You know, it’s not really being popular I want. I just want not to be unpopular.”

  That was it, exactly, which Mikey hadn’t known until Margalo said it. “Me, too,” she said, but didn’t say what else she was thinking: about how if she didn’t have Margalo for a friend, her school days would be about a zillion times more boring. Instead of that, what Mikey said was, “How can you tell if you’re popular? Otherwise,” she explained to Margalo’s surprised face, “how will I know when I am?”

  2

  Can Bad Eggs Make Good?

  “Here’s the plan,” Mikey announced, about two weeks later.

  “Plan for what?” It was raining, a cold, early October rain, so they had gone to the library after lunch. The big room was crowded, and noisier than the librarian usually allowed. The doors to the tutoring rooms all stood open, and people had gathered there, too, horsing around, talking, watching one another.

  Mikey and Margalo wandered along the stacks, as if they were looking for something to read, which they weren’t, since Mikey almost never looked for anything to read and Margalo used the town library to keep the pile of books beside her bed tall enough. “Plan for me getting popular,” Mikey said. “Frannie already likes me.”

  Margalo didn’t say anything.

  So Mikey went on, “But Frannie likes everybody, so she doesn’t count. It’s sort of depressing how nice she is. D’you think it’s because she’s a Quaker? D’you think I ought to be nice? D’you think I ought to be a Quaker?”

  “I don’t think you can be nice,” Margalo said, and Mikey reached up to hit her on the top of the head with the flat side of her big loose-leaf notebook.

  “Do you want to hear the plan or not?” Mikey demanded.

  “Go ahead, shoot. No, don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot—tell.” It always cheered Margalo up to get on Mikey’s nerves.

  “I’m going to have a party. A Halloween party.”

  “Leaping lizards, Mikey,” Margalo said, to buy some time. “Holy cow.” Nobody would want to go to any party Mikey gave, especially on Halloween. This was a bomb of a plan. It was doomed to total failure. Margalo tried to think of how to convince Mikey not to do it, and when she realized that would be impossible, she tried to think of ways to distract her. She asked, “How old do you think is too old to go trick-or-treating? Esther wants to go, and Aurora says I have to take her, but I think she’s too old. I know I am. Are you?”

  “A dinner party.”

  Margalo tried again. “What do you think the chances are that parents will complain about the religious paintings in seminar? Nobody did about the Greek statues and they were nudes, but some people might about religious pictures.”

  “I’m a good cook. I’m the star of home ec.”

  “People do get excited about religion,” Margalo went on, speaking slowly, and thoughtfully. “Of course, they get excited about sex, too.”

  Mikey realized: “But if you take Esther around you won’t come to my dinner party!”

  “Maybe they think nude and sex are synonyms,” Margalo said.

  “A dinner party will make them like me,” Mikey told Margalo, with a smirk of victory.

  Margalo gave up, and pointed out, “You can’t make people like you.”

  Mikey ignored that. “How about Mom’s lasagne?”

  “It’s great.”

  “No, beanbrain, I mean what if I serve that at my party?”

  That Mikey wouldn’t listen if you didn’t agree with her was a given, as they say in math. Margalo had never been able to talk Mikey out of anything. All she could do was hope that Mikey would get bored with the idea, and drop it.

  Besides, if Mikey insisted on giving a party, that wasn’t Margalo’s problem, and maybe it wasn’t even any of her business. Besides also, Margalo had other things to think about right now. She was building herself a reputation at West Junior High School. First it became commonplace for her to arrive at school and be commented on. “Looking good,” or, “Where’d you get those socks?” She kept her style simple and—of necessity—kept it cheap. “Really retro,” they said, and Margalo smiled to herself because if they knew where she shopped they’d know she was weirder than they might already think she was, and pitiful, too—two surefire roads to deepest unpopularity.

  Lately, some people had started asking her opinion, about a haircut, an accessory, a neckline, or a color choice, and when they did, she gave one. Mostly, Margalo would say what people wanted to hear, but she’d also stick in a little advice, the raisin in a bite of cinnamon sweet roll. “How about a funky pin?” she’d suggest, because pins got noticed, and add, “Your skin looks great with yellow, doesn’t it?” She never criticized directly. Who wanted to hear, “Cripes, that green makes you look like you just escaped from a mortuary”?

  Not any seventh-grade girl, that was for sure.

  Unless, maybe, Mikey, because then she could get angry at how opinionated Margalo was, and how Margalo didn’t know everything even if they were going to vote her Miss Mademoiselle Magazine of the Year. Mikey would be just as likely to explain why she wanted to look like a mortuary reject, and how if Margalo had two brains to rub together, she’d have already figured that out, but she thought she was so smart, didn’t she. Just because she always looked good.

  Just thinking about what Mikey might say made Margalo grin.

  The real difference between her and Mikey was that Margalo couldn’t afford to be as different out loud as she was silently, to herself. She was going to need scholarships for college, if she wanted to go to college—and she did because that was a requirement to get a good job. She knew that for scholarships you needed lots of activities, clubs and publications and community services, which meant getting along with people. Getting along with people meant them thinking you were no different from
them.

  Just because you weren’t normal didn’t mean you had to flaunt it. Even if she thought Leonardo Di-Caprio was prettier than Claire Danes, she wouldn’t say that to anyone; well, no one but Mikey. Even if she thought Mrs. Brannigan, their humanities seminar leader, was the best-informed teacher she had, Margalo wouldn’t say that to the girls who made fun of the way the teacher dressed. The girls liked to exclaim about how Mrs. Brannigan had been dumped by her husband for the girls’ basketball coach last summer. “Just, how embarrassing! I’d die! I’d never come back to teach here,” a Lindsey would say, and a Heather would answer, “But she doesn’t even notice. That’s probably why it happened; she doesn’t notice anything. Look at the way she dresses; she doesn’t even notice what a total dog she is.”

  But, what was wrong with dogs, anyway? Margalo would be privately thinking. Dogs always looked good enough. They just looked like what they looked like. And there was certainly nothing wrong with being way smarter than these toads and turkeys, Margalo thought, keeping it in the animal kingdom as she bobbed her head up and down, just like all the other girls, “Uh hunh, uh hunh,” and giggled like them, too. Sometimes, Margalo wished she was like Mikey, and couldn’t even see the way things really were, so that she wouldn’t have to spend so much time trying to convince people that she wanted to be just like them.

  Now Mikey asked her, “Do you think I should serve lasagne for the dinner? If not, I could do chili. My mother has a good recipe for chili. I could serve it with rice and corn bread, or the lasagne would have Italian bread, and tossed salad with both. What do you think?” Mikey asked again, as if she would ever listen to any suggestion Margalo made. “For dessert, something light—probably a good idea if we’re going out for candy, later.”

  Candy? Trick-or-treating? Big mistake, Mikey, Margalo thought to herself. Not at all cool.

  “I’m telling everyone to come in costume,” Mikey concluded.

  “Who have you invited?” When everybody declined her invitation, Mikey would have to face reality, and cancel.

  “Nobody yet. I’m mailing the invitations. They’re RSVP, Regrets Only, and I’m designing them on the computer. I’m not all that good yet with the graphics program,” Mikey admitted. “Or I could make pizzas, but those are a lot of last-minute work, and besides the best pizzas come from a pizzeria.”

  “When did you turn into such a cook?” Margalo asked, trying again to change the subject.

  “When my mother left home. What would you do, chili or lasagne?”

  Margalo wouldn’t do either, because she wouldn’t be having a dinner party if she was Mikey and it was Halloween, and it was seventh grade.

  “You aren’t very enthusiastic,” Mikey pointed out.

  “I’m not sure it’s such a good idea,” Margalo responded at last. Added to everything else, she’d also heard about a couple of other parties the same night. Rhonda Ransom was giving one, and one of the Heathers had an uncle with a barn that they were turning into a spook house. Ronnie reported that her cousins and all their friends were going to spend the night running around town, egging car windows and front steps. Louis was going to egg Mr. Saunders’s house, Ronnie said—or his car; or maybe both—to get even with the principal for picking on him in the first assembly. Ronnie told Margalo that she was going to Rhonda’s party even if Rhonda was the hostess. “Linny’s going, too. I’m going as Cher. I think. I found a black wig I look sort of great in.” She giggled.

  “Plus, you’ve got a great body,” Margalo had said, which was what Ronnie hoped to hear.

  “Not really,” Ronnie had protested feebly. “Anyway, all a good body means is that guys harass you. Say things, grab you, you know?” Margalo didn’t. “So you have to watch your back a lot,” Ronnie explained. “Either that or go around like Mikey, looking like some—sack of flour.”

  “Maybe you should try that, if you’re so bothered.”

  “I think I’ll just stick as close to Franny as I can,” Ronnie said. “Nobody hassles her. You’re so smart, Margalo, do you know what it is about her?”

  She asked but before Margalo could answer, Ronnie had gone on in a rush of words, “I never see you anymore. Let’s see more of each other. Gotta go,” and she ran off to join Heather McGinty, who was passing by in the midst of her clique like some cruise ship surrounded by tugboats.

  Remembering that, and because she was Mikey’s best friend, Margalo gave her some unsolicited good advice about her plan. “You know, Mikey, maybe you shouldn’t give this party. You haven’t mailed out the invitations yet, have you?”

  They had left the library now and were on their way to humanities seminar, the junior high enrichment program for the best students, where they were about to start a Renaissance unit.

  Mikey looked around for eavesdroppers before she answered, “I’m mailing them Monday. Mom said that about two weeks in advance is the right timing.”

  “If you haven’t invited anyone, why don’t you wait until later?” Margalo asked. “To give your party.”

  “This is the best time for me. I don’t want to do New Year’s, that’s for sure. And Valentine’s Day is out. I mean, who wants to celebrate Valentine’s Day? At our age.”

  “But what about your birthday? What about my birthday?”

  “Is that what you’re after? You want me to give you a birthday party? Well, too bad, Margalo. I don’t want people to like me just because I’m your friend. Just because I’m your—sidekick. I’m not anybody’s sidekick. And I’ve got our bet to win.”

  Margalo repeated her main point. “The party’s a bad idea.”

  “Thank you for your support, Miss Know Everything Better Than Me, but don’t worry about it. I won’t invite you.”

  “You know I have to take Esther around.”

  “Then why are you trying to ruin my party?” Mikey demanded.

  * * *

  How Mikey’s brain worked was a mystery to Margalo. Here Mikey was, eating cafeteria casserole—pale, maggoty macaronis mixed with strawberry pink tomato meat sauce, topped by a stiff layer of yellow cheese, with burned bread crumbs over it all—shoveling it into her mouth as if she didn’t mind it, at the same time as she was fussing over a fancy menu for her dinner party.

  “I want an impressive dessert; dessert impresses people,” Mikey said. “What do you think?”

  “I’m not the home ec expert,” Margalo said. She was not going to get sucked into this conversation as if she’d changed her mind about what a bad idea the party was.

  “For the main course, maybe I’ll have Julia Child’s Boeuf Catalan,” Mikey concluded. “That was one of Mom’s best dishes, and you can do it ahead, too.”

  “If your mother liked cooking so much, why did she leave her cookbooks behind when she left?”

  “She said she was tired of being a full-time mother. Well, I was tired of it, too, I can tell you that.”

  “But she wasn’t. She always had her job, even when you were little, didn’t she?”

  “Whatever,” Mikey said. “That’s why we got the cookbooks and the vacuum cleaner. Mom took the silver, of course, but then she’s always had a good eye for value.”

  “Aurora’s the one who’s a genuine full-time mother,” Margalo pointed out.

  “Anyway, I’m using the cookbooks, so it’s not like they’ve been abandoned the way me and Dad were.”

  “Hairballs, Mikey. It’s only a divorce. You’ve been set free, not abandoned.”

  Mikey smiled a Getting-away-with-it smile. “You could say that.” Then she had a sobering thought. “If my mother figured that out, she might come back!”

  “Not likely,” Margalo said. “It’s not like her to retrace her steps. Return to the scene of the crime.”

  “I like her better divorced, anyway.”

  Margalo peeled four long yellow sections of skin from her banana.

  Her home life situation settled, Mikey returned to real concerns. “Then what about Boeuf Catalan, you remember that one, don’t you
? It’s stew with rice cooked in; you loved it. You will help me get ready, won’t you? Sunday morning?”

  Margalo didn’t want to have anything to do with this doomed dinner.

  “Although, you’re not much use in the kitchen,” Mikey added. “Maybe you’d better clean the house. You’re good at that.”

  * * *

  A couple of days after Mikey mailed the invitations, Frannie Arenberg approached Mikey and Margalo’s cafeteria table. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

  Margalo shrugged, smiled, and wished she had some more distinguished sandwich than peanut butter and jelly on supermarket white bread.

  Mikey considered the question, staring up at Frannie.

  Frannie looked at Mikey’s face and just laughed. “It’s only one lunch,” she said. “I don’t bite.”

  “I might like you better if you did,” Mikey remarked.

  Frannie laughed again. She sat down facing Margalo and Mikey. “I can’t come to your party, Mikey. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh. Oh, well. No problem,” Mikey said, and squeezed open her milk carton, jamming in the straw.

  Frannie and Mikey had identical lunches on identical trays: two pieces of fried chicken, one ice-cream scoop of rice, and a bright yellow puddle of corn.

  “Anybody want some pb and j?” Margalo asked, offering to share because it was the kind of thoughtful thing a nice person did; but she should have known better, because “Absolutely,” Mikey said, and took half of Margalo’s sandwich. Frannie did what you were supposed to and said, “No, thanks,” although Margalo would have bet money—if she’d had any money to bet—that Frannie did want it.

  “These are the worst lunches I’ve ever had at any school,” Frannie said, then, conversationally.

  “Me, too,” Margalo agreed. “I mean, they look like the worst I’ve ever not had.”

  “But I was home schooled for the last couple of years, so maybe the field went into a decline while I was gone.” Frannie ate her chicken with a fork and knife, not with her fingers. Margalo made a point of not staring at this breach of manners. Mikey didn’t.

  After a while, Frannie said, “My father home schooled us.”