It's Not Easy Being Bad (7 page)

“You know what I mean,” Mikey said. “What's wrong with you, anyway?”

“Nothing.”

“I mean, what kind of sick are you?”

“I'm not.”

“Then why don't you come to school?” Mikey leaned her forehead against the cool silver metal front of the pay phone, not letting herself be distracted by the sounds around her.

“I don't want to,” Margalo said, cross.

“Well, neither do I, but I'm here. And you didn't even call me up to tell me you were staying home.”

“I couldn't.”

“Why? Your hand was cut off in the night? Jeepers, Margalo—and why aren't you in school, anyway, if you're not sick?”

“I had to baby-sit Lily and be here for Stevie's car pool.”

“What about Aurora, that's
her
job. Or Steven, if she can't.”

“Steven has to work. Aurora had to go downtown.”

“Downtown? Shopping? And you're baby-sitting? Talk about skewed priorities.”

“Downtown to get Howie.”

“Get him where?”

“From jail.”

“What was Howie doing
there?
” Mikey demanded.

“He got arrested last night. Actually, this morning. The police picked him up on Threadwhistle Street—”

“But that's all private houses.”

“I know.”

“Private houses in a good neighborhood.”

“I know. That's why the people there get nervous about loiterers. Especially teenaged boys. That's why somebody called the police.”

“Why didn't the cops just bring him home?” Mikey asked, since this seemed to be why Margalo had to stay home.

“It was the third time,” Margalo explained.

“The third time they picked him up? What is he
doing?”

“There's a girl he's in love with. It's love.”

“So he lurks around her house in the middle of the night? Real smart, Howie. Aurora should have left him in jail. You're missing a day of classes,” Mikey pointed out.

“He's home now, anyway. She's giving him a bowl of soup. Canned chicken-and-rice. He's going to need a lawyer, and Aurora isn't sure his father will pay.”

“Send him back to his father. He's no relation, anyway,” Mikey argued.

“Aurora thinks he is. He thinks he is. He might as well be, I guess.” Then Margalo changed the subject. “What did you have for lunch?”

“Nothing.”

There was a silence from Margalo's end. Mikey waited.

“
I couldn't
call, Mikey. Aurora was on the phone talking to the bail person and lawyers, trying to find Howie's dad. It was pretty frantic here. I really
couldn't.”

“Okay, okay. Who's complaining? Don't get all worked up,” Mikey said.

“How's school?” Margalo asked now, and about time.

Mikey didn't need anybody feeling sorry for her. “How bad can it be?” she asked. “What can they do, stick needles under my fingernails?”

She could hear Margalo smiling, and she smiled herself when Margalo said, “Does it count if they only want—really
want
—to?”

“What kinds of needles?” Mikey asked. Maybe she'd just talk to Margalo all through the long lunch period.

But somebody tapped her on the shoulder and said, “You're not the only person in the world, Elsinger.”

Some girl whose name she didn't even know. Maybe even an eighth grader. Who cared? But there were several people waiting, and there were only two phones. Mikey hung up, but she was wondering: Why didn't the school have enough phones for the people who wanted to use them?

And she wasn't about to go into that cafeteria alone, either.

Margalo
should
have called.

The halls were empty because people were either eating lunch or in class. As Mikey approached her locker, she became aware of a stink. Not a nasty, rotten stink; a nasty
sweet
stink. Like the smell-advertising in those fancy women's magazines. Horrible perfumed air was floating around in the hallway near Mikey's locker.

Because the smell was coming right from her locker. And the front of it looked wet. She put out her fingers to touch it. Oily. Because somebody had sprayed some oily horrible perfume all over the front of Mikey's locker, and probably up into the ventilation slots, too; probably it was all over her books and papers, too.

Mikey opened the combination lock, and her guess was right.

Somebody—she understood this right away now—wanted to tell her she stank.

As if she cared.

But didn't dare tell her to her face.

As if, even if she did stink, she cared.

What chickens.

That was when Mikey became aware that she was no longer alone. She turned around slowly, to see who had showed up.

Lots of people, lots of familiar faces, lots of faces whose names she didn't know. Preppies and Barbies, arty-smarties and jockettes, and of course jocks, and of course, Louis Caselli's grinning baboon face. People from her old school, and people she hadn't even known existed until this year, and some people she'd seen—and scored goals past—on the soccer field, and a couple she'd played tennis against. What did they think she was, a circus show?

A satisfying anger was building up in Mikey as her smile,
You're-going-to-be-sorry
, fell on the faces at the front of the ring of faces. Rhonda next to Heather McGinty with tag-along Annie tagging along.

Mikey waited for her fury to hit the right temperature and then she went for the person standing right in front of her.

It was some Heather or some Lindsey, nobody she knew. But it was right there enjoying itself, that face, so Mikey dove for it, and punched, once, twice. Somebody pulled her off before she could land anything solid.

“What's she—?”

“What's
wrong
with her?”

“She's the same one who—”

The voices eddied around her, like waves, and she turned to face the person who had pulled her away, a boy. She thought he was in her math class, a brown-haired boy in a blue sweater, maybe his name was Tom. Or maybe she'd never seen him before.

As soon as he let her go, she gripped her hands together, palm to palm, fingers intertwined down beside her left thigh, and brought up a two-handed backhand stroke—and slammed him on the cheek.

He backed off, but he didn't back away. He raised crossed arms to protect his face, hands clenched, and stood his ground. Well, he was a good half-a-foot taller and many pounds heavier; if she'd been him she wouldn't back away, either. Mikey lowered her hands for a two-handed forehand swing at his other ear.

“That's not fair,” he protested.

“As if,” Mikey answered.

She saw Louis Caselli push his way up to the front row of a crowd that was chirruping in gasps, like muppets in a panic. “You come anywhere near me, Louis Caselli,” she warned him, and he didn't.

“I don't hit girls,” the boy she was fighting said.

“Hunh,” Mikey grunted. But she unclasped her hands. “Okay,” Mikey said, and he relaxed a little.

Which was a mistake, because she went after him with her feet, kicking his shins, stomping on his toes. She was wearing sneakers, but if you put enough ankle snap behind it, you could get a good kick off a sneaker. And if you had strong thigh muscles, which Mikey did, and you got up into the air a little, you could really stomp somebody's foot.

“Hey!” he protested. “Cut it—!” and he kicked back at her.

She danced out of his way. She was quicker than he was—until he landed his foot hard just beside her kneecap, so hard that she almost fell over sideways.

She swayed in a circle, to keep on her feet, balanced, and put out her elbows so that when she went back at him she could use both feet and elbows.

“Wow,” somebody said. “It's feet of flame.”

“Pull her hair! She hates that!”

“Man—is that chick coordinated or what?”

“Look out!”

But it was never clear who was supposed to look out for what, because Mr. Saunders had run up on the scene, and suddenly everybody started to be in a big hurry to be somewhere else. He put one hand on the boy's neck, ready to squeeze. “What seems to be the problem, Ralph?”

Ralph?
Mikey had never heard of anyone named Ralph. What was this Ralph stranger doing trying to get into her fight?

“Nothing,” Ralph answered. “Ask her,” he said.

“She hit Heather!” a girl's voice cried.

“Heather didn't do anything!”

“Nobody did anything!”

“She hit Heather first!”

“I was just trying to stop it, sir,” Ralph said.

Mr. Saunders let go of the boy's neck and turned his attention to Mikey. “Is that true?”

Why should Mikey lie? “Sure.”

Mr. Saunders kept his eyes on her for a long minute, breathing in the smelly air. Then he said, “Come with me, Mikey.”

Before she followed him down the hall, Mikey shut
the door of her locker and reset the lock. At least nobody was laughing anymore.

*    *    *

Mr. Saunders suspended her for the rest of the day, but he had to call Aurora to come take her away since her father was out of the office and not expected back until late afternoon. “I will deal with you tomorrow,” he said to Mikey. “I want your father to bring you to school. Understood?”

“They stank up my locker,” she told him.

“Who?”

She didn't know.

“You need to get your temper in control,” he warned her.

“It is,” she promised him.

“You need to learn how to get along with people,” he told her.

“Does get along mean I do nothing when they stand around laughing because they stank up my locker?” she asked.

“You weren't asking for it?” he asked back. “You haven't been making fools of them? Don't complain when you get what you ask for,” he told her. “I could suspend you for a week. How would you feel about that?”

Mikey was the first seventh grader to get suspension, and she was a girl. And she was about to leave for the day. The truth was, she felt just fine.

*    *    *

Mikey was prepared for the second part of the one-two combination punch, principal then parent. But “Ready?” was all Aurora said when she walked into the office where Mikey waited, her book bag at her feet.

Mikey—clearly ready and waiting—didn't have anything to say, either. They went down the hall and out the main entrance. Aurora had parked her old station wagon in the visitors' lot, so they had to pass a lot of windows, but Mikey didn't look up to see if any faces were looking out at her. She was thinking about getting what you ask for. She hadn't forgotten that the first thing she asked for was a simple RSVP, but that was just the specific cause. In general, if she had a chance to get what she asked for, she needed to think about what she really wanted.

She got into the front seat, strapped herself in, and made herself sit patiently while Margalo's mother backed cautiously out of her slot, as if the little sprinkling of snow hadn't melted away hours ago. Once Aurora was out on the street, safely in the right lane,
slowing down in case any stoplight they were approaching might turn yellow, Mikey said, “Thanks for getting me.”

“You're welcome,” Aurora said. As if she didn't care how much trouble Mikey was in. “I assume you had some reason for fighting.”

“A good reason.”

“I don't know if I'd assume
that
,” Aurora said. “But. You're your own problem, not mine. And your father's, and maybe a bit of Margalo's, too.”

“Why Margalo's?”

Aurora pushed her hair back behind her ears, just like Margalo, and smiled to herself. “I'm glad Margalo has you for a friend,” she said after a while, which might have been her answer to Mikey's question. “You've got broad vision.” She turned her head to look at Mikey and added, “You know?” Then Aurora turned quickly back to face whatever might come at her from the road ahead. “I mean, you live in a wider world.”

Mikey couldn't figure out what this meant.

“Like, you play tennis,” Aurora explained.

“You mean I'm ambitious,” Mikey said.

“It'll be easier for you when you're grown up. Out of school.”

“Ambitious like my mother,” Mikey said.

“Just because you're ambitious like your mother doesn't mean you're just like your mother. You're pretty fierce,” Aurora told Mikey, as if Mikey didn't already know that.

“So's Margalo,” Mikey said, in case Margalo's mother hadn't figured that out yet.

“I hope so,” Aurora said.

Luckily, before Aurora could drive Mikey completely crazy trying to have a sensible conversation, they pulled up in front of Margalo's house. Mikey was out of the seat belt and out of the car before Aurora even had the keys out of the ignition. She had already decided how to tell Margalo about the day. “You should have called me,” would be her first words. Right after, “What's for lunch?”

“I
need something to
do
,” Mikey said to Margalo, about a week after the fight-suspension afternoon.

They were on their way to the auditorium. It was the second week in November, and civics had been canceled—again!—because of having an assembly—again!—for a seventh-grade class meeting. Wednesday, first period after second lunch, seemed to be the official assembly time.

Mikey and Margalo pushed their way to the front of the seventh graders going down the right-hand aisle of the auditorium. They checked in with Mr. Parazzo, who stood by the rows of seats assigned to his homeroom. They each took a copy of the handout he offered. As other students came up, Mikey and Margalo slipped away, to push their way back up to the rear of
the room. They would be out the doors long before anybody else, when this assembly disassembled.