It's Not Easy Being Bad (11 page)

Mikey wasn't interested in anything but the question of how well she would do in her first basketball practice, and whether Margalo would take the late bus with her today, or go home early.

“Early. I didn't tell Aurora we'd be on the late bus, so she'd worry.”

“Call her,” Mikey suggested, but Margalo shook her head. She wasn't wasting any quarter of hers on a pay phone. “You'll have to wait for hours to hear how it goes,” Mikey argued.

“I think I can stand that.” Also, Margalo needed to get this jacket back into Howard's closet before he arrived home from school.

“But what about me having to stand the wait to tell you?” Mikey demanded, chomping down on a slice of pizza, not even offering Margalo a bite.

“Where's your petition?” Frannie asked, setting
her tray down on their table, asking Margalo, “Want a slice? Their pizza's pretty good.” So Margalo took just the triangular tip of a slice while Frannie signed the petition and offered to help get more signatures. “We can wait outside the library, one on each side of the doors, in the morning before school starts,” she suggested to Margalo, who hadn't even
hoped
for something as perfect as Frannie Arenberg wanting to help out.

*    *    *

On Tuesday, Margalo wore one of her stepsister Susannah's old polos (for which she traded a night's dishwashing) and jeans for once; she wore her gym sneakers, because even if they weren't regulation Reeboks or Nikes, sneakers were still athletic shoes. She sat down at Tanisha's table at lunch—not to unpack her sandwich and eat, just to greet Tanisha and everybody else there, a long table of jockettes, “Hey, Tan, hey, everybody. Whazzup?”

“Whazzup?” they asked her back, and she told them. They signed the petition enthusiastically.

*    *    *

Wednesday, Margalo wore black over black. She drifted into the art studio before morning homeroom. She'd left Frannie sitting at a table in the library,
reading the
Monitor
to find current events topics for civics, with a copy of the petition beside her in case anybody wanted to come up and sign. Frannie didn't pick out targets and talk them into it; she just sat there and the targets came humming up to her, like bees to a flower.

Margalo preferred moving around, getting people to want to do what she wanted them to want to do.

In the art studio, nobody noticed her entry. Students, both boys and girls, both seventh graders and eighth, drooped beside the windows in boredom and drooped over desks in anticipation of more boredom to come; three were talking intently about a painting set out on an easel. Margalo approached a group of girls. One of them—Cassie—was in her math class. All looked curiously at her. “Hey, Cassie, what's new?” Margalo said.

“What ever is?” Cassie answered. “You guys know Margalo?”

They shook their heads, no, they didn't know her, but, “Like the skirt,” one of them said.

“We're in the same math,” Cassie explained to her friends, and, “I'm more impressive in English,” Margalo explained to Cassie.

“Hey, that's not a criticism,” Cassie said. “There
should always be a couple of us who just don't get it, in every class. It lowers the teacher's expectations.”

“But I'm not
playing
dumb,” Margalo said, and Cassie laughed. “Do you guys want to sign a petition?” Margalo asked then. She had decided that it would be stupid to try to conceal or misrepresent the petition's nature from these girls. They were the arty-smarty clique; maybe not top students, but no dummies. “Any of you? Because we're trying to get the policy about seventh-grade girls not being allowed to play on the basketball team changed. Because it's not at all fair and it's maybe even discriminatory,” she explained.

“That's sports,” one of the girls said, but another took the bait. “Discriminatory?”

“Yeah,” Margalo said. “You know, though, what really puzzles me? Why the boys haven't tried to do anything about it. Oh, well. Maybe they're too busy worrying about winning. Anyway, do any of you want to look at the petition?”

They did, and three of them wanted to sign, and they all knew other people who would probably be interested. “So, where are copies of these things posted?” they asked.

“I have one, and Frannie Arenberg has one. We're usually in the library after lunch,” Margalo said.

Cassie responded, “Frannie's always helping out, isn't she?” and one of the group added, “Next time you want to do a petition, or anything like that, you ought to talk to me. The layout of this really sucks.”

*    *    *

By Wednesday lunch, both Margalo and Frannie were on their third petition pages, and things had slowed down a little. In the cafeteria, Margalo saw Frannie sitting at a table with Heather James and Annie Piers, Heather McGinty and Casey Wolsowski; and she watched Louis Caselli approach them. He was wearing a green, roll-neck J.Crew sweater, trying for a preppy look. He tapped Frannie on the shoulder and said something to her. She smiled up at him, then reached down to her pile of books to take out the petition. Louis took it from her and stood there, at her shoulder, reading it.

He read for a long time.

He was a slow reader, Margalo thought, but not that slow.

Frannie just went back to talking with her friends.

Then Louis tapped her on the shoulder again, and asked her something else. Frannie shook her head and said something, at which Louis looked over to where Margalo was watching.

He tried to argue with Frannie, but Frannie just smiled and shook her head. He gave her back the petition, without signing, and headed for Margalo.

Margalo nudged Mikey, who was eating the pale brown hamburger as if it actually had a taste. “Look who's here,” Margalo said. Mikey grunted.

Louis timed the beginning of what he planned to say to match his last step toward their table. But the moment he opened his mouth to speak, Mikey chomped a big bite of her hamburger, and Margalo said, “Nice sweater.”

Louis looked confused, briefly, then muttered, “Thanks,” to Margalo. He tried to talk to Mikey. “I read—”

Mikey held up a french fry, streaming with catsup. “Want one?”

Louis stepped back as if she had pulled a knife on him, a limp and bloody knife. “This petition,” he said, and now he sounded angry, which was more like him.

“What about it?” Margalo asked. “Nobody's asking you to sign,” she added, because Louis was more fun when he was on the defensive.

“Yeah, well, maybe I won't. Since it's all about girls.”

“So it's nothing to do with you,” Mikey said. “So what do you want, Louis?”

“Nothing.” The word was out of his mouth before any thought had entered his brain. He turned away. Then he had to stop, and turn back around, and approach them again, strutting along, as if this was exactly what he'd planned. “If you hadn't left us out of it, I could talk a lot of the guys into signing this.”

“I don't know,” Margalo said. “The boys' program is the high profile one. If we ask for both, see, we might have less chance of getting what we want for ourselves.”

Louis thought hard. “You'd have more signatures,” he argued.

“I don't know,” Margalo said again.

“I could borrow Frannie's copy,” Louis offered, “and ask the guys, ask around. I bet I could get you a lot of signatures, if it was for our team, too.”

“It's not fair to leave the boys out,” Margalo allowed. “Do you care, Mikey?”

Louis waited.

Mikey took her time. She rubbed at her temples with her fingers. She shrugged, and popped three fries into her mouth. She chewed. When she'd swallowed, she said to Margalo, “I guess, if he wants to.”

Margalo was doubtful now. “Are you sure, Mikey?”

Louis lost it. “She just said so, didn't she? Miss Interfering Epps.”

Margalo didn't say anything, just stared up at him.

“
What?
” Louis demanded, after a while. “
What?”

Margalo sighed, a
Too boring for words
sigh. “I guess you can tell Frannie we said it's okay to change ‘girls' to ‘students' and ‘her' to ‘their.' Have you got that?” Margalo asked, going back to her bologna sandwich. “Go tell her now.”

“But don't try anything funny,” Mikey warned him. “No fake signatures or stuff like that. It's Frannie's copy, so she'd get in trouble, and besides, Frannie hates cheaters,” she concluded with a big
Would-I-rag-on-you?
smile.

Louis turned pink. He got away, fast.

Mikey finished her hamburger. “That was fun. Did you think he'd?”—and she realized—“you already knew what the changes had to be. You
knew
the boys would ask.”

“I thought probably.”

“Oddzooks,” said Mikey admiringly.

“So, do you want to ask Mrs. Sanabria tomorrow?”

“Are you're sure she'll go along?”

“
Crikey
, Mikey, what do you think I am, a mind
reader? I have no idea if she will. Nothing any teacher did would surprise me.”

As if they had heard her and wanted to prove her wrong, the very next day, teachers surprised Margalo twice. First, Margalo was surprised to hear that Mrs. Sanabria had yelled at Mikey for asking her to sign the petition. “She got really griped,” Mikey reported, not unhappily. “She made me sit out the whole gym class and told me to think about—and I quote here, Margalo—‘Think about other people, for once.' I had to think about more than my own desire to be on a team. She wanted me to think about the eighth grader whose place I'd take away. So, see? Mrs. Sanabria agrees that I'm a natural athlete,” Mikey concluded as they met up by the lockers at midmorning.

“Nobody said you aren't,” Margalo pointed out. “So I don't know what you're boasting about.”

“I'm not boasting. It's a fact.”

The second teacher-induced surprise was a speech from mild-mannered Mr. Cohen, in civics, about Henry Thoreau, and civil disobedience, and the weekly dance-planning assemblies, which always preempted his class. Margalo had figured that the teachers were as eager as students to miss classes as
often as possible, but not Mr. Cohen, it turned out. He was going on strike, he told them. He was protesting all of the missed classes, which were making it impossible for this section to keep up with the others. He was protesting the only way he knew how, which was to refuse to teach.

Mikey's hand shot up, and she asked him, “How can refusing to teach be a protest against not being allowed to teach?”

“Why don't you go stand in the hall, and see if you can't work that out for yourself,” Mr. Cohen shot right back, in a not at all mild-mannered way.

This was not like him. It was much more like him to add, as he did before Mikey had gotten out of the room, “Be sure to get the homework assignment from someone. For when I'm not here.”

*    *    *

Later, Margalo asked Mikey what had happened, “when you were exiled from civics.”

“Nothing,” Mikey said. “It was even more boring than class. Except Mr. Saunders came by. Striding.” She mimicked the principal's way of walking the hallways of his school. “Striding, striding,
I'm so important
, you know, the way he does. He sort of glanced at me sideways. Didn't stop. Probably, he figured he
already knew what I was in trouble for. Talking in class, because I'm a girl,” Mikey explained, although Margalo hadn't asked. “Do you think my petition is ruining his day? Or maybe it's Mr. Cohen's rebellion. Or maybe it's both, maybe both are ganging up together to make Mr. Saunders's life a misery,” she said happily.

“Y
ou
have
to come with me,” Mikey told Margalo. “It's all your idea.”

“Is not,” Margalo argued. “Do not.”

“Yeah, but you made the plan different from how I was going to do it.”

Margalo agreed. “Made it better.”

Mikey wanted to argue about that. Margalo could tell. But Mikey also wanted Margalo to go to Mr. Saunders's office with her, to co-present the petition and co-argue in its favor.

“My appointment's at the end of first lunch tomorrow,” Mikey told Margalo.

Then Mikey opened her mouth and instead of letting words out she put food in, a forkful of lasagne.
When she tasted it, she swallowed quickly and asked, “You want to trade?”

But Margalo was happy with her egg salad sandwich. Her anti-sog experiment of toasting the bread had proved successful. She just ate on, and didn't say anything.

So when Frannie put her tray down on the table beside Margalo, and pulled out the chair to sit, one-track-mind Mikey started right in. “Don't you think that Margalo should come with me to present the petition to Mr. Saunders?”

“
I'll
go with you, Mikey,” Frannie answered. “Come with us,” Frannie urged Margalo.

“Okay,” Margalo said, because Frannie was the kind of person you wanted to say yes to.

“When is this?” Frannie asked.

But before Mikey could tell her, Tanisha slipped into a chair to ask, “What did Saunders say?”

“I haven't talked to him yet,” Mikey answered her.

“He probably already knows about the petition,” Tan remarked. She reached over to take a piece of lettuce from Frannie's salad—“Okay, Fran?”—and eat it like a potato chip, bite after bite. “They always know everything. D'you think they have spies?”

“I think they have friends among the students,” Frannie said.

“Teachers can't be friends with students,” Margalo pointed out.

“They're the boss,” Mikey explained. “Bosses and workers can't be friends. They're natural enemies, like, owls and mice.”