Maggie Malone Gets the Royal Treatment (10 page)

When the Handmaidens Start to Break Down

Before I know it, it's Monday morning. When I was at Sacred Heart, we always started the first hour of the week with a school sing-along. It might sound corny, but it was actually really fun, and it made everyone excited to come back to school, even if you'd had the best weekend ever. There's no Monday love at Pinkerton, even on a good week. And this is definitely not a good week, especially if you're a handmaiden. So you can see why I'm taking my sweet time getting to school today.

I pull up to the bike rack at the same time as Elizabeth.

“What's up, buttercup?” I ask Elizabeth, unsnapping my bike helmet and hanging it on the handlebar of my bike.

Elizabeth mutters something I can't really make out. She's fishing around in her backpack and looking like she's about to panic.

“What's wrong, Elizabeth?” I ask, but now she looks like she's having a full-on, freak-out attack.

“I can't FIND it!” Elizabeth screams. Now
that
I heard.

“Whoa. Way to turn up the volume there, Lizzie! Whatcha looking for? Can I help?” I ask.

“Uh-uh…I thought I put it in here last night, but maybe I…oh no…” she trails off.

“And what was
it
, again?” I ask, thinking
it
must be a live hamster she's afraid she crushed with her math book. Poor little guy.

“Lucy asked me to reserve a bike rack space for her on the end and so my mom took me to the Pet Palace and I had a silver, diamond-bedazzled tag engraved with her name on it with a chain that I could hang across the space and now it's GONE!” Elizabeth's face is the color of a fire engine, and I think she's about to actually start wailing. In fact, I think I can hear the sirens warming up.

“Wow,” I say, “That's really…wow! Well, I'm sure she'll understand.” I don't point out to her that Lucy might take offense at the dog suggestion.

“No!” Elizabeth screams, again with plenty of volume and this time with crazy eyes. “You go on to homeroom—it's all my fault—I'll stay here and guard her spot till the bell rings in case Lucy decided to ride her bike today. I'm fine—really!”

But I can tell Elizabeth is not even close to fine. I think the stress of being somebody's handmaiden is starting to wear on her. I get it, I guess. Lucy can be seriously mean when things don't go her way. The other day, she asked Alicia to bring her jean skirt to school so she could wear it—the one with the hot pink ruffle around the bottom. Alicia misunderstood and brought her jean skirt with the star-shaped, leopard pockets instead. Lucy was furious and made Alicia wear the thing
backwards
all day. Alicia acted like it was an inside “handmaiden joke” and pretended not to care, but I know she did. How could she
not
care? It looked ridiculous—all pouchy in the front—plus all day long, kids kept pointing it out. “Hey, Alicia, you've got your skirt on backwards!” Mr. Mooney almost gave her a detention for inappropriate dress, until Lucy swooped in at the last possible second and saved her.
What
a
great
friend.

“Okay, I'll see you in homeroom,” I tell Elizabeth, because I can tell she's fully committed to taking a late slip over a bike rack slot that Lucy
may
or
may
not
need. She's probably afraid Lucy will make her wear that dog collar around her neck if she doesn't follow through on her orders.

Chimichanga! How did things get so out of control?
I wonder, shaking my head. Back in Wincastle, I probably could have figured a way out of this ridiculous mess, but I don't have a clue how to stop the madness in my own life.

“Where's Elizabeth?” Alicia asks just as I take my seat.

“Um, I think she's guarding Lucy's possible parking spot in the bike rack outside,” I say, lifting my eyebrows just a little so she knows I think that's pretty nutty.

“Well, she better get in here, and fast,” Alicia whispers. “Lucy has an announcement.”

Uh-oh
, I think to myself. I'm no psychic, but I'm pretty sure this can't be good.

When I Start to Put the Pieces Together

Mrs. Richter is a good five minutes into morning announcements when Elizabeth slinks in with her late slip.

“Please take your seat, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Richter says. Right then Lucy raises her hand.

“Yes, Lucy?” Mrs. Richter asks.

“I'd like to make an announcement, if that's okay,” Lucy says sweetly. Mrs. Richter doesn't look so sure about this, but like everybody else, she's terrified of Mr. Mooney when it comes to anything involving the royal court.

“Please be quick, Lucy,” Mrs. Richter sighs, taking a seat behind her big, beat-up desk.

Lucy flounces to the front of the room.

“Good morning, everyone,” she says, adjusting her princess apprentice sash. She hasn't been seen without that thing since the day she was appointed. I'll bet she wears it to bed. “As you know, there are only a few weeks left before the Pinkerton Royal Ball and the crowning of the actual Pinkerton Prince and Princess.” Lucy claps her hands frantically, glancing around, encouraging the applause. A few people halfheartedly join in, probably out of fear. “Anyway, I've been speaking to Mr. Mooney about some, well,
problems
the apprentices have been having with some of our handmaidens.” She looks right at Elizabeth here, and poor Elizabeth slumps down in her seat. Her face starts to get that splotchy-red look that means she's probably going to cry. Lucy smiles—one of those mean smiles that send shivers up your neck—and continues. “And Mr. Mooney agreed that the apprentices should be allowed to replace their handmaidens at any time, you know, so that we can maintain the
integrity
of the Royal Court. So I just wanted to let everyone know that I will most likely be appointing at least one new handmaiden this week,” and here she looks at me and then Alicia. “Possibly two or even three. So, good luck everyone! And remember, I'm watching you.”

Lucy gives the class this exaggerated wink and then prances back to her seat, looking pretty pleased with herself. I can't even look at Elizabeth. I just can't.

“Well, thank you, Lucy, for that
very
interesting
announcement,” Mrs. Richter says. I am almost positive I see her roll her eyes just a tiny bit.

Mrs. Richter starts going on and on about state testing and some visit by the Distinguished Schools Committee, but I am so angry that I can't even take in a word she's saying.
Lucy
St. Claire, you've gone too far this time
, I think to myself, wondering if there is actual steam coming out of my ears.
You
must
have
gone
through
the
line
five
times
the
day
they
were
handing
out
nerve. For the love of black licorice bits, Elizabeth bought you a bedazzled, personalized bike-spot holder! And Alicia brought you fresh, gluten-free blueberry muffins every single day last week, and I've lost track of how many Cokes I've bought you from that vending machine. Maybe Elizabeth and Alicia are willing to keep putting up with your demanding, backstabbing ways but I, Maggie Malone, have had enough.

I raise my hand and ask to be excused. Mrs. Richter hands me the giant yellow paddle you have to carry when you're in the halls during class, to show that you've gotten permission to be wandering around and aren't planning to skip across the street to Burger Barn for a vanilla shake. I take the paddle and head out the door, making a beeline for the nearest bathroom.

“Frank!” I whisper, after I've checked under all of the stalls and made sure there are no feet.

This time he appears immediately. He's sitting at a big metal desk with several stacks of papers in front of him and a pencil tucked behind his ear.

“Malone,” he says. “I figured I'd be hearing from you again today. Pardon the mess. It's bookkeeping day.”

I'm about to ask him why genies have to do paperwork—I mean, what good is
magic
if you can't wiggle your ears and have boring stuff like that just taken care of?—but then I remember that I'm in the middle of a major crisis here.

“Frank, this whole handmaiden thing has to stop,” I tell him. “I mean, seriously. It's out of control. And please don't tell me that ‘I've got this' again, because I don't even know what that means.”

“How did you handle Princess Penelope?” Frank sighs, shuffling through one of the piles of papers as if he's looking for something specific.

“I was just
nice
to her!” I practically shout. “I don't really think that's going to work with Lucifer here.”

“It wasn't
just
that you were nice to her, Malone,” Frank tells me, slamming a stapler into a thick stack of papers. The sharp bang makes me jump. “You gave her something that she needed all along. What do you think this Lucifer—uh, Lucy—really needs?”

“A personality transplant?” I say, only half joking.

“Remember, Malone, you can't change anybody else but you
can
change how you react to them,” Frank says. Just when I'm about to ask him for the seventy-seven-hundredth time what in the spinning universe
that
means, an eighth grade girl strolls into the bathroom and into one of the stalls. The whole room echoes when she slams the door.

“You've got this,” Frank mouths silently, fading out.

I've got this
, I repeat, not because I believe it, but because I don't.

When I Accidentally Inspire a Handmaiden Uprising

I go back to class and try to settle in and listen to what Mrs. Richter is saying, but I'm so mad all my ears can hear is “Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah…” above the blood boiling in my brain. Seriously. What in the world could make Lucy want to be that nasty? She's planning on
firing
us?
I
don't think so.
Not if I can shake some sense into my fellow handmaidens first.

It's all I can do to sit through three more classes before lunch. At the end of Spanish class, I slip Elizabeth and Alicia notes asking them to meet me in the MPR by the stage. I give them the option to check the yes or no box and they both check yes.

I've been sitting on the end of the stage waiting for a couple of minutes when Elizabeth and Alicia stroll in, letting the door slam behind them.

“Easy there, girls!” I say. “This is a secret handmaiden meeting!”

“Wait, what if Lucy catches us planning official handmaiden business without her?” Elizabeth asks, and I swear the kid is acting like a puppy that's been spanked on the behind way too many times. Like, if she had a tail, it would definitely be tucked between her legs.

“Okay, see?” I point out. “That's the problem right there! You don't even think you can talk to your two
real
friends
without checking it out with Lucifer first.”

Alicia and Elizabeth both gasp and take a big step back from me.

“That's right, I said it!” I say, hopping off the stage, waving my arms and flashing my hands. “Because—
hello—
it's the truth! Lucy St. Claire is as mean as the devil! I bet she keeps a pitchfork in her locker, which is probably full of hot ashes!”

Alicia and Elizabeth are shaking their heads and have both turned as pale as Duane, the blind albino guinea pig Stella used to have. That girl has some pretty bad pet luck. Whenever she used to let little Duane out of his cage, he would run around like he was on fire everywhere he went and was always bonking his head into doorways and chair legs. Still, Stella loved that ugly little rodent, which I think says something about the sort of person she is.

“That's right, girls!” I say, throwing my hands on my hips. “I'll say it again. Our noble little Lucifer is the meanest, worst princess apprentice ever, and I, for one, am not going to take her ridiculously rude treatment anymore. Now who's with me?”

Alicia and Elizabeth say nothing. In fact, they're not even really looking at me, but sort of
past
me.

“Hello?” I shout. “Anyone home?”

Alicia lifts her arm, really slowly, and points toward the back of the stage.

I glance over my shoulder.

Double-decker disaster
.

It turns out Alicia and Elizabeth weren't outraged by what I was saying as much as they were petrified by the sight of Lucy standing on the stage right behind me—along with her tagalong serf sidekick, Winnie, of course.

“That's it!” Lucy spits with a loud stomp that echoes across the MPR.
Did
she
just
use
her
pitchfork
to
make
that
kind
of
noise?

“You three have given me no choice. You're
all
fired—every last one of you. I was planning to keep a couple of you on for a day or two longer to train the new handmaidens,” Lucy says, motioning to three sixth grade girls cowering at the corner of the stage.

How'd
they
get in here?

“You know, to make your trip back to
Nobodyville
a little less embarrassing. But I can't do that now, can I?” Lucy says with an evil grin and sideways squinty eyes.

Look out, people, she's not even pretending to be fake-nice anymore.

“Maggie's right!” booms Elizabeth, loud enough that I think it probably rocked Mr. Mooney's desk in his office across the school. The girl has definitely found her voice.

“You're totally mean and for no good reason!” Elizabeth continues.

Apparently Elizabeth and Alicia have been as fed up as I have—they just needed a little help saying it out loud. Alicia even throws in a little twist of her own.

“And actually we had a supersecret handmaiden meeting
before
this fake handmaiden meeting,” Alicia chimes in. “We quit being your handmaidens at least ten minutes ago so you
can't
fire us! You can fire Winnie, if you want to fire somebody!”

Winnie is terrified, looking around, shifting left to right. Even Lucy looks confused, like she's not sure what her next move should be. That's a first. Just then, Elizabeth—the same girl who before today barely spoke above a whisper—pipes up again and quashes the whole handmaiden nonsense once and for all.

“Hey, you guys,” Elizabeth calls over to the shaky sixth grader handmaidens-in-waiting. “Do you like being yelled at, humiliated, ordered around, and never—I mean ever—getting a thank-you for anything you do?”

The kid's really on a roll.

“If you do, you're going to
love
being Lucy's minion, I mean
handmaiden
,” she says, walking over to the girls in the corner.

“You know what, Lucy?” one of the girls says shyly. “I forgot that I have, um, a thing after school…”

“Yeah, I definitely have a thing too, so you know, maybe you should find some other handmaidens…” says a second.

“Now look what you've done!” Lucy shouts, marching up to Elizabeth until they are eyeball to eyeball. Elizabeth doesn't flinch, and I silently cheer for her. “Who do you think you are?”

The not-minions scamper out the back door by the stage.

“I don't really know,” Elizabeth says, her voice shaking a tiny bit but still loud and clear. “But I know I'm not anybody's
handmaiden
.”

“Come on, Winnie!” Lucy huffs, dragging Winnie by the shirtsleeve through the MPR and right out the double doors.

“Did that really just happen?” Elizabeth asks, looking like she's in shock.

“It totally did,” I tell her, putting my arm around her. “How great do you feel?”

“Really great,” Elizabeth says, linking her arm with mine. “And also? I'm starving!”

“Me too,” Alicia says, falling in on the other side.

“What do you say we get ourselves some lunch?” I say, laughing. “And maybe even sit down to eat it! We are handmaidens no more!”