Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? Read online

Cassie reported, “One at a time. Then the police came. Casey, ask your father what happened.”

  “No,” Casey said.

  “Don’t be such a priss. I didn’t mean go ask him now. We all know that at school you pretend not to be related. I mean, this weekend. I mean, tell us Monday.”

  “I don’t believe this,” Mikey announced, although she did.

  On Monday, however, there was no need for Casey to report anything, or for rumors to be sifted and sorted to get at their kernels of truth. On Monday, Hadrian was back in school. His left arm was in a sling—“Luckily, I’m right-handed,” he said—because his collarbone had been broken. “They were shoving me. It’s what they do. It’s one of the things they do,” he reported, in case they wanted the whole picture.

  Cassie demanded, “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I just have to keep it immobilized. I don’t have to return to gym until after New Year’s,” Hadrian told them happily.

  Cassie insisted, “Aren’t you furious?”

  “More likely frightened,” said Felix. “That’s what I’d be.”

  Cassie ignored him, asking, “Don’t you want to go after them?”

  “Him and what army?” Tim asked.

  “Can you sue?” Margalo wondered. She suggested, “Aggravated personal assault.”

  Hadrian shook his head. “Besides, they’re out of school for three weeks. I can relax.”

  At lunch that day many people stopped off to tell Hadrian “Hey.”

  What was that supposed to mean? That now they were going to be his friends? That they felt sorry for him? That it would never happen again?

  Ronnie came by, said, “Hey, Hadrian,” and slipped away. Derrie and Annaliese also lingered long enough to say “Hey,” and “Hey.” Jason said “Hey,” and added, with feeling, “man,” while Shawn just put a hand on Hadrian’s thin shoulder as he walked by behind him.

  The hand made Hadrian jump up from his chair, but once he saw who it was, he sat down again.

  Tan said “Hey” to Hadrian, then turned on Mikey and Margalo. “What are you going to do about this?”

  “What can we do?” Mikey demanded right back, while Hadrian pointed out pacifically, “They’re suspended for three weeks.”

  “That doesn’t change anything. What about after that?” Tan asked. But she answered herself. “Never mind. I know. It’s not anybody’s fault.”

  “Of course it’s not my fault,” Mikey agreed.

  “It’s not Hadrian’s fault either,” Margalo said.

  “That’s what I mean,” said Tan.

  “It’s just the way things are,” said Cassie. “It’s high school.”

  “And that,” declared Tanisha Harris, “is why they’re this way. Nobody ever does anything and it’s never anybody’s fault. The people that can do something don’t want to, and the rest of us don’t dare. Or don’t care.”

  “We care,” argued Tim.

  “Right,” said Cassie, cramming as much sarcasm into one word as most people needed a sentence to use up. “I can tell. So can Hadrian. Can’t you, Hadrian?”

  Hadrian shrank down into his seat, suddenly deaf from birth, and Tan walked away, her skirt swishing a little.

  “What’s wrong with her?” asked Casey, looking up from her reading, which that day was Pride and Prejudice.

  “You have to ask?” Cassie answered.

  “Has anyone ever put a restraining order on your mouth?” asked Felix unexpectedly.

  Margalo looked at Mikey to comment silently on this leaping-to-Casey’s-defense: Did Felix want to be Casey’s boyfriend?

  “Besides me, I mean,” said Felix.

  “Ha, ha,” Cassie countered.

  A couple more people swooped by, hesitating only long enough to say, “Hey, Hadrian,” and “Hey,” as they went on to their destination tables. Ira Pliotes added a little more. “Good to see you back,” he said, and waited until Hadrian had looked up and answered, “Thanks.”

  It was almost a pleasure to have Louis Caselli come strutting up to their table and not say “Hey.” Louis was so pleased with himself that he was dancing from one foot to the other. “I guess you aren’t the only smart people around here,” he announced, as if it was just the three of them—him and Mikey and Margalo—in the room.

  At his news Margalo glanced in wide-eyed mock surprise at Mikey, then back at Louis. “I’m sorry,” she said insincerely, adding dishonestly, “I couldn’t hear you.”

  Louis strutted a step closer. “I said,” he practically yelled, “that you aren’t the only smart people around here. Because I got a B in wood shop. Not a B minus, a straight B. That’s an honors grade,” he told them, in case they had forgotten.

  “Good going, man,” said Tim. “Congratulations.” Then he asked politely, since Louis lingered, “How were the rest?”

  “English and Math don’t mean anything, not in the real world,” Louis informed him. He noticed Hadrian Klenk. “Klenk,” he began, decided against it, and strutted off away, stopping to announce his good grade at another table.

  “That’s gotta be Louis Caselli,” Tim said to Margalo. He turned to his best friend, sitting beside him, “D’you know who that was?”

  Felix had no interest in Louis Caselli. “At the movies on Friday?” he asked the table. “You know who I saw? You’ll never guess.”

  “Just tell us,” Cassie advised him.

  “Chet Parker.” He looked around expectantly.

  Mikey and Margalo weren’t sure who Chet Parker was, although they thought they’d heard the name. Mikey was sure she could take Felix’s way of telling news for only about one half second longer.

  “He’s a senior, Mister Cool. He’s got great facial bones, photogenic, you know? He’s on all three varsities, drives an ’88 BMW,” Felix said. “He’s got everything. And he’s smart, too, or anyway, he gets the grades. He’s applied early admission to Duke, and he’ll probably get in.”

  “The girls are all over him,” Tim added. “He can have anybody he wants.”

  Cassie snorted a Not me snort.

  “He was at the movies with that long-haired blonde. Rhonda?” Felix said. He grinned an I’m in the know grin and said, “Her Mommy’s going to be sorry she didn’t take Sex Ed. But that makes me think, we should all go to the movies next Saturday. Anybody want to? Tim? What do you say, Mikey? Jace?”

  “You’d probably pick something with subtitles,” Mikey objected. “Or aliens.”

  “I’ll hold your hand if you get scared,” Felix offered.

  “I don’t get scared,” Mikey told him.

  “Then you can hold my hand, because I do. Or we could go the week after. That one’s animated. Japanese.”

  Nobody, including Hadrian, made the mistake of thinking he was part of the general invitation. Mikey declined on account of her regular Saturday-afternoon father-commitment, or more precisely, father-and-girlfriend, or most precisely, father-and-girlfriend-and-girlfriend’s-two-little-boys. Margalo had a job interview, although she was pretty sure they wouldn’t give it to her, since the ad specified cash register experience. “You lied?” asked Tim, and she reassured him, “I just didn’t say what kind of experience I have on what kind of cash register.”

  Margalo had a good time telling them about the interview the next Monday, and she didn’t mind a bit their knowing that she didn’t get the job. “They had a test. I was supposed to ring out a basket of groceries, so they figured out right away that I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “Didn’t they even think of teaching you?” asked Tim. “That’s pretty shortsighted of them.”

  “Too bad” and “Tough” and “Better luck next time” were the general opinions on her failure, but it was Mikey who said, “So probably there’s no sense in lying on job applications because it’s pretty sure you’ll get found out. Were you embarrassed?” she asked.

  It had never crossed Margalo’s mind to be embarrassed. “No, why should I be?”

  It was
interesting—to Margalo, at least—that the thing she didn’t like talking about was Drama. She wasn’t like Mikey, who didn’t care how bored you got with her obsessive interests, tennis mostly, with her day-by-day reporting of progress up the tennis ladder. “I’ll be halfway through the juniors, at least, by the end of the fall season,” Mikey promised them, until Cassie finally groaned, “Who cares?” and asked Mikey—who of course didn’t get it—“What are you going to have to talk about in the winter, without tennis?” “Basketball. Why?” asked Mikey.

  In this respect Margalo considered herself about the exact opposite of Mikey. The more something mattered to her, the less able—and willing—she was to talk about it. She could never find the right words for the really important things, things she had a lot of hope attached to, or a lot of pride attached to. Or things that, if she lost them, her whole life would be different, every day of it. When she tried to talk about those things, feelings swelled up inside of her—big, unmanageable feelings, the kinds of feelings words couldn’t convey.

  Whereas Mikey thought the only things worth talking about, and thinking about, were whatever was really important to her. About the exact opposite of Margalo.

  Except, of course, that Margalo could talk to Mikey about those important things, and Mikey, when she and Margalo were just talking, didn’t mind what the subject was. So even while they were opposite to one another, they were also opposite to their usual selves when they were with each other. (People are so interesting! Margalo thought, the kind of thing people say to themselves when what they also mean is, I am so interesting!)

  A couple of days later Margalo could tell them about an interview for a job at a veterinarian’s boarding kennel—“This is for that college account of yours, right?” asked Tim, impressed—and Hadrian’s arm was out of its sling and he had enjoyed ten days of leisurely lunches. It was the second-to-last Friday before Thanksgiving, by Mikey’s count the tenth Friday of the school year. Also, it was Friday the thirteenth. “Are you superstitious?” Casey asked Felix and Tim, and Mikey reminded them, “Remember, we can’t count Friday of Thanksgiving week,” and Cassie said, “Whadda you mean we?” while Hadrian told them all, as if it was an announcement of the utmost importance, “There’s only one more week.”

  The table paid no attention, except for Mikey, who corrected him, “Two until Thanksgiving,” and then corrected herself, “Two weeks minus one day. Thanksgiving’s always a Thursday,” she explained, in case anyone at the table hadn’t grasped this fact.

  Nobody paid much attention to Mikey, either. Including Hadrian.

  He said, “I mean until they come back. Until the suspension is up. I’ve been thinking, and I think I’m going to need some help, at least at first, and maybe for a while after, so I was wondering—Will you help me?” He looked around at all of their faces, one after the other.

  Casey had her nose buried in Gone with the Wind, but the others returned his glance, wondering what he was talking about.

  Hadrian clarified it. “They come back to school next Friday.”

  “Who they?” Mikey demanded impatiently until she realized just as Margalo said it, “The Three Stooges.”

  “And they’re going to be really angry. At me.”

  None of the people at the table had thought of this, but as soon as Hadrian mentioned it they all fell silent, thinking unhappy thoughts. Even Casey looked up from her book to join in, silently.

  He was right. He was right, and they were sorry, but what could they do?

  “Would you like me to write an editorial?” Tim asked Hadrian. “Raise public awareness? Most people—I mean the vast majority—they don’t like this kind of bullying.”

  “I know, but what difference does that make?” Hadrian asked, an entirely reasonable question.

  “It’s pretty dumb of them to be mad at you,” Mikey observed.

  “Pretty dumb just about describes them,” Cassie observed. “So that’s no surprise.”

  “But will you help me?” Hadrian asked again.

  “Help you do what?” Margalo asked him. “What do you want to do? Can you . . . for example, can you get a restraining order to keep them—what is it?—two hundred yards away from you?”

  “I don’t think so,” Hadrian said. “I’d have had to have filed complaints all along to do that. And if I’d filed complaints . . .” He didn’t need to finish that idea. They knew what would have happened to Hadrian if he had had the courage—or the fool-hardiness—to complain to the school authorities.

  “What do you want us to do?” Mikey asked.

  “I was thinking, if you were my bodyguards? You and Margalo.”

  “We don’t have the time. Besides, I have tennis until Thanksgiving, and we’re in mostly different classes. What about Louis Caselli? Could you hire him? He’s probably going to have to repeat the year, so he won’t care about cutting classes.”

  “I could ask,” said Hadrian in a voice so full of doubt they knew he’d never do it. “But it would be three against one, and Louis isn’t exactly big.”

  “Louis is bad at Math,” Mikey observed. “He might not figure out the odds, and you’d have time to get away while they were dealing with him.”

  “It’s more likely that Louis would manage to make everything worse,” Margalo predicted.

  “Can you afford to transfer to a private school?” Casey wondered. “Or you could probably get a scholarship to one, with your grades.”

  “You’re telling him to run away?” Mikey asked.

  “There’s Drama,” Hadrian argued. “And if they send me to private school, what about my sisters?”

  “I thought you were an only child.”

  “They’re both younger,” Hadrian said.

  Margalo had been thinking. “What if you get people in each one of your classes to stick close to you? I will in English, and Casey will too, won’t you?”

  “I’ll do Math,” Mikey offered.

  Hadrian reminded them, “It’s the hallways not the classrooms where things happen. And bathrooms. And outside.”

  They knew that. They didn’t need Hadrian Klenk reminding them. Sometimes, they wished he’d just keep his mouth shut and disappear. They felt sorry for him and all, and they knew it wasn’t fair at all, but still . . .

  Bad feelings—irritated, annoyed, impatient feelings, feelings that blamed Hadrian for their existence, that suspected it was somehow his fault, that just wanted not to have to deal with this—all of those feelings started to rise up, invisible, yes, but they felt like a flooding river rising slowly up over its banks and lapping up around their feet.

  Hadrian pulled his feet up onto the rung of his seat. He hunched his skinny shoulders and dug with his spoon into the bowl of pudding on his lunch tray.

  That was when Margalo had her idea.

  – 7 –

  A Few Happy Moments

  “A restraining order!”

  “But I told you—,” Hadrian started to say.

  “No,” Margalo interrupted him. “I mean, if you can’t get a restraining order from the police, what if you got one from the ninth grade? No, listen. Think,” she said, raising her voice over Cassie’s “Right, like . . .” and Casey’s “No one has ever . . .” “What if the ninth grade, or a lot of us, anyway—I bet a lot of people would, never mind their motives. What if we put our own restraining order on the three of them? To keep away from Hadrian.”

  “But we don’t have the right to do that,” Hadrian pointed out.

  Felix asked, “Why just the ninth grade? Why not include tenth graders too? I mean, those three guys used to go after me sometimes, last year, and not just me. I didn’t even get it all that badly, but it was no fun, I can tell you, so you can count me in. What about you, Tim?”

  “Why would they bully you?” Casey wondered but Tim was saying, “They never went for me personally, but I wouldn’t mind. I mean, in a democracy it’s up to the majority to control the bad elements itself.”

  “Those aren’t
bad elements,” Mikey said. “They’re stupid elements. If there’s a restraining order posted, they’ll believe it,” she told Hadrian. “You write one, Margalo,” she said, giving the order, then explaining to the others, “She’ll know how to make it sound official.”

  Margalo hastened to modify Mikey’s bossiness. She turned to Casey. “Would you be willing to advise me? Would you look at a draft? Or I can call you and read it to you.”

  “Exactly when are they coming back to school?” Tim asked.

  “Friday.”

  “The eleventh Friday,” said Mikey. “Only twenty-five to go.”

  They ignored her.

  Tim said, “We can post copies on the bulletin board outside of the library and by the gym entrance.”

  “One at the main entrance too,” Casey suggested.

  “Like one of those Most Wanted posters in the post office?” Jace suggested.

  “If most people in our two grades enforce it, it’ll be a de facto restraining order,” Tim announced with pleasure.

  “You’re taking Latin too?” Mikey demanded.

  “I can print out as many copies as we want. I’ve got some good heavy paper,” Tim offered. “But we’ll need some kind of images, don’t you think? Felix?”

  “What is it with Latin?” Mikey demanded.

  “Give me negatives and I’ll print pictures,” Felix offered.

  “I can draw pictures,” Jace said while Cassie announced, “Just give me a couple of minutes.”

  Then Tim was having second thoughts. “What do you think the school will say about doing this?”

  “Like I care,” Cassie answered.

  Quietly Casey told them, “My dad would get it, and he’s not the only one on the faculty who would. They mean well, you know. Really, they do.”

  “All we can do is try it and see what happens,” Margalo suggested.

  “Well,” Mikey announced, “I don’t care what the school says, and neither should any of us.”

  Tim pointed out, “But some of us do.”

  Hadrian said then, “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. You don’t have to do this.”