It's Not Easy Being Bad (6 page)

Ken—or whatever his name was—backed off from Rhonda like she'd tried to kiss him or something, and she tossed her head of big hair before she flounced off to join her formerly jealous friends.

Margalo joined Mikey at the table.

“I'm saving my coleslaw for Heather,” Mikey told her.

“You ought to eat the coleslaw and give the hot dog to Heather,” Margalo advised.

“I like hot dogs,” Mikey protested. “Even boiled, like this, as long as there's mustard and onion—”

Margalo shrugged. You never could tell Mikey anything.

“What about Linny?” Mikey asked.

As soon as the question was asked, Margalo had the answer. “Linny's my new best friend.”

First Mikey's face pinched with anger. Then she got it and “She should be mine,” Mikey said.

“Why? It's my idea.”

“Because I'm the one she'll hate having around the most. You could turn out to be okay, but I'm permanently out of it.” As Margalo opened her mouth to say,
So what?
Mikey pointed out, “It's your own fault for being well-dressed,” and then added, “You know I'm right.”

Margalo shrugged. That day she was wearing a red-and-white-striped sweater over a calf-length black skirt, and she thought her shrug must make her look even more French.

Mikey didn't notice that. “You really know how to get people where it hurts, Margalo,” she said, admiringly. “You really understand people.”

“You could, too,” Margalo told her friend.

“Maybe, but it would take too much time. And most people aren't worth the trouble. Except for you,” Mikey said. “I understand
you
.”

“What makes you so sure about that?”

“You're like Machiavelli,” Mikey said.

At that point, Frannie joined them at their table so they could go to seminar together, and asked, “Who's like Machiavelli?”

“Margalo.”

“I don't think so,” Frannie said, and turned her brown spaniel eyes on Margalo.

“You never think anything bad about anyone,” Mikey pointed out.

Frannie didn't care about that. “Margalo wants people to like her, so she can't think it's better to be feared than loved. And that's Machiavelli's main point, isn't it? So you're the one like him, not Margalo.”

Margalo was impressed. “She's right, Mikey. You're right, Frannie. I thought I was, but it's really Mikey.”

“He was wrong, anyway,” Frannie went on.

“Oh, yeah? Take a look at recent history,” Mikey advised her.

Frannie didn't argue. “I know,” she said.

“Or like gangs,” Mikey added. “Even kids in gangs run people by fear.”

Frannie pointed out, “It's no big deal, scaring people. Everybody can be frightened. But Machiavelli was saying was that it's better government to be feared than loved, and all I'm saying is, I don't agree.
Are you two ready to go to seminar? Because you haven't finished your coleslaw, Mikey. Unless you're going to dump it on Heather? Or is this a dumpless day?”

That inspired Margalo's next revenge. It was easy steps from dumpless to dumpling, from dumpling to the Miss Dumpling Award, and from that to the Little Miss Muffin Award.

*    *    *

Margalo only included Mikey in the planning of this final revenge because she had to, but she had to admit that with the two of them working on it, it improved. Mikey had her dad's computer graphics program, and a color printer, so the award certificates looked pretty professional. “They're terrific,” Mikey informed Margalo.

“You always think that what you do is terrific.”

“Usually it is.”

“You're pretty cheerful these days,” Margalo remarked.

“It's a load off my mind not trying to be popular. And what's so funny now, Margalo Epps?”

“You. You are.” She changed the subject. “These certificates are going to look great.”

“All we have to do now is find out which lockers—”
Mikey started to say, but Margalo was way ahead of her on that. “I already did. It wasn't exactly high espionage, Mikey. You just watch people.”

“I've got better things to do.”

“Oh, yeah? Like what?”

“Like right now, trying this on a yellow background. Yellow or orange, what do you think?”

Margalo thought yellow, against which the image they had made contrasted well, the plump, white, bubble-headed muffin wearing a jolly red-lipstick smile and happy half-moon eyes with long, stiff eyelashes, with its stick-figure legs under the pink ruffled skirt of its muffin cup. The certificate was pretty simple, like all good advertising graphics. It had a blue ribbon border ending at the bottom of the page in a blue first prize rosette. The merry muffin on its long dancing legs appeared at the middle of the page, slightly below center. Below her was a slogan Mikey and Margalo had argued over until they both liked it:
THERE'S NOTHING MORE SWEET AND SMILEY THAN MY MORNING MUFFIN
. And along the top ran the title: THE LITTLE MISS MUFFIN AWARD.

Against the bright yellow background, the bright red title in 24-point Old Gothic font would be readable from yards away, as their awards greeted Heather,
Annie, Stacey and Lacey and Tracey, and Linny, especially, because Linny had changed from being a not-stuck-up queen of their sixth-grade class to being someone who wouldn't even say hi to you if you weren't in some in-group. Margalo's job that morning was getting those six award certificates taped up on the six lockers, and herself to gym not suspiciously late. She was in such a hurry, she didn't even stand back to admire their work.

Later, Margalo didn't have a chance to stand back and admire, because there were groups of people crowding the hall, reading and laughing; either that, or watching the papers being ripped off and ripped up, and laughing.

Mikey and Margalo arrived from different directions, so they had to watch the scene separately. “I think the real winner is Linny,” some boy said. Another argued that Heather was the roundest, most muffin-like, and another that Tracey had the most stick-like legs. “But Linny's the one who dances like that,” insisted the first boy.

This turned into a chanting, cheering contest—“Miss Muf-fin, Miss Muf-fin, Miss Muf-fin”—with rhythmic clapping, and each candidate with her own group of supporters, both boys and girls. “Sta-cey,
Stacey,” battled with, “La-cey, La-cey,” for airspace, while one group maintained, “Annie's eyes, Annie's eyes.”

The six contestants were bunched together in the center of all this, trying to look like good sports, looking to one another for reassurance, trying not to be caught getting angry, or weepy, or embarrassed. “Ha, ha-aha, ha, ha,” they pretended to laugh.

“Who—?” they muttered to one another, and, “Where's—?”

Heather McGinty leaned over to whisper something into Annie's ear, and Annie's eyes swung to Mikey like a compass needle finding north. “Mikey,” she muttered to the other five, and Mikey smiled right at them.
Gotcha!

Margalo watched Rhonda Ransom slip up beside Heather McGinty, big blond hair next to sleek blond style, and whatever Rhonda said to Heather, Heather looked at Margalo and didn't believe it. Margalo thought she knew what Rhonda was saying, and if Heather McGinty had asked Margalo's advice, it would have been, “Believe it.”

Gradually, the group dispersed to all show up late for their next classes, temporarily unconcerned with getting into trouble, because they had all—with six
exceptions—been having such a good time. Mikey and Margalo exchanged a satisfied glance and went their separate ways. They could have made more copies and kept posting and re-posting the award certificates, but Margalo had convinced Mikey that once was enough, once was the way to do it, once would get exactly the ongoing humiliation that Margalo and Mikey hoped for.

So that when Rhonda turned on Margalo in gym the next morning, shrieking like some demented mother whose children won't behave in the supermarket, her eyes filled with tears as she cried out, “You're ruining my life!” when all Margalo had done was ask, “How's it going, Barbs?”—that was the end of their revenges.

They had gotten even, and maybe a little ahead.

But what Mikey didn't ask Margalo, and Margalo didn't ask Mikey, although both of them wondered it, was this:
That probably blows it for both of us, don't you bet?
Neither one of them needed to say out loud to the other,
I'm not a bit sorry.
They both already knew that.

M
ikey arrived at school the next morning ready for a fresh start. Not a fresh start at being popular—or even a fresh start at being less disliked. No, she was finished with the whole popularity question. What difference did it make, anyway, if people liked you? She couldn't think of anything she wanted that being popular would make it easier to get. Being unpopular could make it
harder
to get certain things, she did understand that. But she wasn't convinced that
harder
was an insurmountable obstacle.

And, besides, she didn't have anything against obstacles. In fact, she kind of liked them. So as long as she had Margalo for a friend, Mikey was as popular as she needed to be.

Mikey did understand that it wouldn't be quite as
easy for Margalo. Margalo
had
been sort of quiet on the bus going home the day before, and her voice had been sort of little on the phone last night, when she said the few things she had to say. But Mikey had been feeling more and more energetic, and had lots to say, the more she thought out what was bound to happen after what they had done. Mikey's opinion was, people could dislike her as much as they wanted now that they knew they couldn't ignore her.

In fact, Mikey would prefer
not
to be someone people liked.

She hopped down off the school bus, eager to explain this to Margalo, and convince her how great things were going to be, from now on. Halloween was behind them and Thanksgiving only a couple of weeks away, and it was a cold, gray November morning with a few little flurrying flakes of snow drifting down in the air. Her grandmother had called to ask could she fly over and spend Thanksgiving with her only son and her favorite granddaughter, to which both Mikey and her father had said, “Yes! Great!” Then Mikey's father had asked, if he hadn't been the only son, would she have gone to a brother's instead; and Mikey had demanded to know why she wasn't the favorite grand
child;
and Mrs. Elsinger had cackled
away on her end of the phone while they cackled back at her.

So things were looking pretty good, Mikey thought, looking around for Margalo—who wasn't there.

Mikey went inside to find her. It could be that Margalo's bus was late, but it might also be that Margalo was too cold to wait outside for Mikey because she hadn't yet gotten herself a winter jacket, or whatever she was going to wear that year. Margalo could probably come to school wearing an old blanket pinned at the neck with a baby's diaper pin, one of those big pins with a yellow duck on the end, and she'd look good. Mikey thought she'd tell Margalo that.

Mikey went to the library and stood inside the door, looking around, but she didn't see Margalo. Nobody noticed Mikey; at least, nobody looked at her, or smiled at her. So she went to the art room, where the arty-smarty clique spent their free time, and just stuck her head in. One or two people who didn't know her looked up, without any interest, and the rest ignored her.

You didn't think junior high was going to be warm and snuggly
, Mikey reminded herself, going back to her
locker. Because she was uncomfortable, as if the skin of her body didn't fit right, as if it were too tight, maybe. Or as if her skin were too baggy and loose, dragging around after her.

But where
was
Margalo? She wasn't at the lockers, either. Mikey went to homeroom.

When Margalo's desk was unoccupied, Mikey had to notice how everybody else was talking to somebody, and how nobody said anything to her.

Okay
, Mikey said to herself.
So nobody in this room likes you. Big surprise.

Margalo never showed up for homeroom, so that by the end of it Mikey had to admit that she was absent. And would probably not show up all day.

And hadn't called Mikey to warn her.

Mikey was angry, which was a lot more comfortable than being alone. Her anger got her to math, and once the teacher came in, everything was pretty much normal. One of the good things about teachers was: When they were running the room, the kids weren't Another good thing was that teachers kept everybody paying attention, so if someone had something to say, even if she wasn't popular she got to say it, and at least one person—the teacher—would listen.

But Margalo had really dropped Mikey in the soup
by being absent, and Mikey wasn't going to forgive her easily; that was what was on her mind as she pulled books out of her locker, put books in, checked to be sure she had her homework, and went back to classes. Lunch, she was beginning to realize—going down the crowded halls in her own little bubble that everybody gave a wide berth to and nobody even looked at—would be the worst.

Standing alone in line. Crossing alone to her table. Sitting alone to eat.

Before she even went near the cafeteria, Mikey went to the pay phones in the hall just outside the main office. She put in her coins and dialed Margalo's number. As soon as Margalo said, “Hello?” Mikey let her have it.

“You could have called me,” she said. “I didn't even bring a book to read.”

“You don't read books, and there's a whole library, anyway,” Margalo answered, as if she was the one who was angry. What did
she
have to be angry about?
She
wasn't the one stranded here, behind enemy lines.