Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? (16 page)

At the sound of his name, even spoken in a low voice, Hadrian's head turned to them. They continued to ignore him.

“How many does that leave?”

Margalo counted in her head. “Twelve? Twenty? I'd have to go over who was reading.” She thought some more and added, “Most of the other people in Drama are upperclassmen and I don't know any upperclassmen.”

“Yeah, but people aren't that hard to figure out. They just want what they want and try to get it. Like taking your money. Which looks complicated to you trying to figure it out but it isn't a bit complicated to the person who took it, I bet. I mean, it's not as if you make a big secret out of going to the bank.”

“Why should I have to? No, I'm serious. There are too
many bad things that you can imagine happening if you start to think like that.”

“You read too many books.”

“I plan to spend my life living it, not worrying about it.
Carpe diem
,” Margalo added.

“Latin.”

Margalo didn't say anything.

Mikey didn't say anything.

Margalo was starting to feel positively cheered up. Irritating Mikey often had that effect on her. “It isn't as if this is the first time somebody's had something stolen. The faculty must have ways to deal with it,” she decided.

So after the bell had ended Drama, Margalo approached Ms. Hendriks. The teacher was standing behind her desk, studying the legal pad on which she had taken her day's notes. She was dressed in her usual loose tunic top and loose trousers. “Yes?” Then, coming out of her distraction, she smiled. “Margalo, good, I meant to ask you. I hope you're willing to be the stage manager for this production? The actual stage manager, I mean, not Hadrian's part. Or would you rather be assistant director?”

Margalo had no trouble with that decision. “Assistant director. But—”

“Good. I meant to ask you on Friday but it slipped my mind. I hope you didn't think I didn't plan to use you.”

“No, but—”

“Because you seem comfortable carrying authority. That's what makes you so effective backstage, you know.”

Margalo didn't know, and she was interested to hear it, but “Ms. Hendriks,” she insisted, “I want to ask you—”

Worry flashed across Ms. Hendriks's pretty face, like the movement of a bird seen out of the corner of your eye, gone almost before you noticed it and wondered,
Was there something?
before you named it,
Only a bird,
by which time it was long gone. She asked quickly, “Is something wrong? Not Hadrian, is it?”

“About last Friday,” Margalo said. “Somebody stole money from my wallet last Friday. At rehearsal.”

Reassured about Hadrian, Ms. Hendriks was immediately sympathetic. “Oh, dear. Oh, Margalo. I
am
sorry.” Then she reminded Margalo, “You shouldn't leave your wallet where people can see it.”

“I didn't. It was in my knapsack. At the bottom.”

“You shouldn't leave your knapsack out.”

“I left it in the pile here.”

“But why did you bring money to school with you?”

“To take to the bank on the way home. Because most banking hours I'm in school,” Margalo explained.

“Of course. That wasn't very bright of me. I'm very sorry about this, Margalo, I really am, but what do you expect me to do?”

“I thought—You could tell me how to get my money back.”

“So you know who took it.”

“No.”

“Are you absolutely sure that you had the money in your wallet? Absolutely, positively sure of it? Because . . . You know, Margalo, we all make mistakes. It would be too bad to get people all upset over something that you weren't absolutely positive happened.”

“I'm positive,” Margalo said.

“Because,” Ms. Hendriks went on, as if Margalo hadn't spoken, “a dramatic production is like . . . like a very delicate ecosystem. We don't want to disturb it. Besides, how can you know it happened here?”

“I know,” Margalo said.

Ms. Hendriks studied her for a long minute. “I'm truly sorry this happened, Margalo. I wish I could help, I really do, but I don't see how. Unless I could give you the money myself, which—believe me—I can't afford.”

Margalo knew a useless conversation when she was having it. And she knew how to get out of it. “I was just wondering.”

Ms. Hendriks decided, “It could just as easily have happened at any time, all day long, anywhere. A school day is so busy, you students have so many different things going on.”

“I have to catch the Activities bus,” Margalo said. She knew where her knapsack had been all day Friday—right beside her, right at her feet, except during rehearsal. When Margalo was at the classroom door, the teacher asked from behind her, “You aren't going to talk about this, are you? Because I'd rather you didn't. You have every reason to be
upset, but will you give me a chance to think about it before you do anything? Please?”

“All right,” Margalo agreed. But why did Ms. Hendriks look so relieved to hear that?

It couldn't be that a teacher was stealing from students, could it? If they wanted to rob someone, you'd think teachers would be smart enough to pick richer students than Margalo.

Margalo waited through the whole first week of February to find out what Ms. Hendriks would recommend, or say, or do, but the teacher never mentioned the subject, not to Margalo privately nor to the Drama group as a whole. It was as if she had forgotten, and maybe she had; but she didn't seem to be the kind of teacher who forgot things. And Margalo didn't forget.

Neither did Mikey, who reminded Margalo at least twice a day, “I'm keeping my promise and I'm getting tired of it.”

In short, all week nothing happened, nothing pertaining to Margalo's problem, that is. Other things happened, of course. The JV basketball team played a game to a tie, causing a day's jubilation among ninth graders. Another event was Cassie arriving at the lunch table carrying a piece of art to show them before she handed it in to Peter Paul. “He thinks I've lost my touch,” she reported. “So look at this, it's my Valentine's Day assignment.”

Everybody recognized immediately that she'd painted a
portrait of Rhonda Ransom in the old Americana style of Norman Rockwell. In the portrait Rhonda stood still in a crowded school hallway, with people walking around her. Rhonda was weeping, but nobody was paying any attention to that. It wasn't that people were ignoring her, they just weren't interested. “The assignment was ‘Love,' ” Cassie told them. She pointed at one of the figures walking away. “That's Chet.”

“How am I supposed to know that?” Mikey demanded.

“You aren't,” Cassie said.

“Then why bother putting him in?” Mikey demanded.

“The artist paints for himself, not for his audience,” said Cassie.

“Does that mean you're an artist?” Mikey asked. “Because if you are, why would you paint a picture of Rhonda Ransom crying?”

Cassie just groaned.

“But who cares about Norman Rockwell anymore?” Jace asked. He showed them what he had painted—a chunk of raw meat with tubes coming out from its top and bottom, a vaguely triangular-shaped chunk of meat set on a plate. The plate looked like it was tilting, and the meat looked like it was about to start sliding off. But not yet. “I call it
Love—1
,” he told them.

“That's a tennis score,” Mikey announced.

Cassie groaned again.

“Are you feeling sick?” Mikey asked, her lips pulled up in a
Don't mess with me
smile.

“Getting there,” Cassie said. “And that picture isn't helping,” she told Jace.

The only other interesting event of that first week in February was another Louis Caselli academic crisis. In an effort to force Louis to do homework, Miss Marshall, his English teacher, had announced that Louis was not welcome back into the class until he had done the reading. Then, when Louis
had
done the reading, he would have to answer questions about the story, questions asked by his classmates. Anybody who wanted to could ask a question. The questions could be as difficult and tricky as anyone wanted to make them. Louis would have to answer at least 60 percent to be allowed to return.

“Not fair,” was Louis's first reaction, but then he figured out, “I might never have to go to another English class all year. That's not bad,” and he strutted around the cafeteria and hallways as if he was the greatest thing the world had ever seen, the envy of all. Because he was on academic probation, he couldn't play basketball, but, “Who cares?” he asked, and ignored people who said, “That's a lucky thing for us.”

In high school you had to get pretty good at ignoring what people were saying about you. In that regard Louis Caselli was doing very well in high school. He ignored what people said about him, and what they said
to
him as well, trying to give him good advice. In that regard, in fact, nobody was doing as well in ninth grade as Louis Caselli. “You're just a bunch of wusses,” he told his friends. “They're not going to throw me
out. They can't, not if I don't actually
do
something. And then it's only suspension, which means I'd get to stay home all day. They never hold people back. They don't want us around any longer than they have to keep us, and besides, it looks bad on their records if people fail. I'm easy,” Louis assured them, as if that had been in doubt. “We know,” was the answer, spoken in ironic or sarcastic tones by his friends, in amusement by people who enjoyed watching Louis Caselli crash and burn, and without surprise by Mikey and Margalo. But the school made Miss Marshall go back on her threat and allow Louis back in class even though he hadn't done the reading or answered the class's questions. “Bummer,” Louis said, strutting off to English again.

The most unexpected event of the week was an announcement during Lunch A on Thursday—and then again during Lunch B, also Lunch C—by the Principal himself, in his own voice. Someone had taken Mr. Radley's grade book out of his desk, and his attendance book too. “Those records are irreplaceable,” intoned the solemn voice of the Principal.

“Who cares?” people mumbled, not loudly enough to be identified by the faculty on lunch duty. Suggestions were made as to who might have taken the teacher's record books, with Louis Caselli the miscreant of choice for most people. “If those records are so important, why didn't he make copies?” people muttered. Another reaction, very low voiced, was, “If it'd been me who did it? I'd have taken it
before
midyear grades were handed in.”

But you could see that the teachers took this seriously. You could see them being much more anxious about their big gray-and-blue notebooks, one filled with their own class lists and grades, the other with their homeroom's attendance records. Teachers who carried briefcases went around looking smug; they always knew where their record books were.

The authorities might have been upset about the theft of record books, but as far as Margalo could determine, they didn't care about the theft of her money, and that
did
gripe her. As Margalo reported to Mikey at Friday lunch, “Mrs. Hendricks is ignoring me. I think she's pretending it never happened.”

“Why would she do that?”

“The play,” Margalo said. “For some reason, or maybe it's just the kind of person she is? Whatever, she really wants this production to be good. It's as if she was going after a Tony or an Emmy. It's like . . . It's like you and every tennis match you play.”

“But it's only a school play,” Mikey pointed out.

“But those are only tennis matches.”

“But tennis is different.”

“Everything is different to the people who care about it. If it's what you care about, it's important.”

Mikey had a sudden question. “What about you? What do you have that you think is so important?”