Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? (42 page)

Through the glass pane of the back door, she saw exactly what she expected, her mother working at the wooden table under a bright fluorescent light while one of the cats walked back and forth across the yellow legal pad on which Aurora wrote. Aurora's hair was held back from her face by clips, and she wore a sweatshirt, probably with jeans. Her feet were up on the chair next to her and Margalo guessed that she was in her stocking feet, dressed for studying.

Aurora had a mug, probably coffee with lots of milk and sugar, on the table in front of her. She was concentrating, just as Margalo expected.

What Margalo didn't expect was to see Steven sitting with his back to the door, bent over his own open book. Steven also wore a sweatshirt and jeans, and the feet she could see the soles of as he leaned forward to read also wore only socks. Neither of them was paying any attention to the other. The little kids had been put to bed; older kids still living at home were upstairs doing homework, except for Margalo, who was with Mikey, as far as Aurora and Steven knew. This was the time of day they had to themselves.

Margalo was sorry to interrupt them, but what was Steven doing in the kitchen and not watching TV? She didn't plan to
interrupt them for long. She had homework of her own to do. When she opened the door, Aurora looked up at her and Steven swiveled around on his seat to say, “You're later than we thought.”

“We didn't worry,” Aurora said, by which Margalo knew that they had.

But since all three of them understood that it had been one of those groundless parental fear occasions—they had known where she was, and with whom, and how she was getting home; they had known better—Margalo just explained, “Mikey got thrown off the tennis team, so she organized a group of people to call the lines—because the reason she got thrown off was the coach wanted her to call everything in her own favor, and she wouldn't do that, not if she wasn't sure. But the assistant principal told her not to do it again, call lines during a match, and she was pretty discouraged.”

Aurora nodded. It all made sense to her. She could understand that this might keep Margalo a little later than planned. “Mikey doesn't have much patience with cheating.”

“Is it really cheating?” asked Steven. “Or just giving yourself the benefit of the doubt?”

“Oh, it's cheating,” Margalo assured him. She pulled out a chair and sat down, just for a minute. She kept her knapsack at her side so they would know she wasn't going to stay long. “I was there, I saw. Other schools do it too.”

“Well,” said Steven sarcastically, “I must say, that makes me feel a whole lot better.”

Margalo laughed. Somehow, that evening, grown-ups were cheering her up about things. And Margalo knew that if she told Aurora and Steven about being robbed, they would react in just the right way, with sympathy and outrage and offers of help. But they had too much to think about already, especially since there was nothing more anybody could do about it, and she had her money back too.

During the car ride home Margalo had thought about what Katherine asked Mikey. She had decided that what she had really wanted was her money back and a public acknowledgment of guilt. What she had been happy enough to settle for was getting the money back.

“I think I'll have a glass of milk,” Steven said.

“I'll get it,” Margalo said. “But don't you want a beer?”

“Not tonight. I'm studying. I need my wits about me.”

“What're you studying?” Margalo asked.

It was Aurora who answered. “Electricity, because he can fix everything. So why shouldn't he get an electrician's license?”

Steven grinned, as if he was a little embarrassed. Then he said to Margalo, “You heard the lady. Why shouldn't I? I can't have your mother getting too smart for me, can I?”

“No danger of that,” said Aurora.

Margalo gave Steven his glass of milk, and he thanked her, then asked, “Does Mikey play baseball? Because you know what they say, there's no use hitting your head against a stone wall. When I come up against a stone wall, I never hit my head against it. I try an end run, or I try to burrow under it,”
he said, waving his hands in the direction of his textbook as his show-and-tell. “Mikey's a natural athlete, and she's pretty fast, I'd think a shortstop.”

“She has league tennis and the county team in the summer,” Margalo said.

“She's too competitive to get through the rest of the school year without playing something,” Steven announced. “As I happen to know, being a pretty competitive person myself.”

“Which in this case,” said Aurora, “is a good thing for all of us.”

“You know,” Aurora added, “sometimes you realize that one phase of your life is over and it's time to start another. Like closing down Café ME.”

Margalo nodded, agreeing but not wanting to talk about it. “How long will it take you to get your license?” she asked Steven. She had thought he was perfectly happy driving his delivery truck. She'd thought he'd do that for the rest of his life.

“A couple of years, studying part-time like I'll be doing. But it's interesting, unlike that stuff your mother has to learn, so I'll get there in the end. Picture me, tunneling under that high stone wall.”

“They called them sappers,” Margalo told him.

“Hunh?”

“The soldiers who dug tunnels under fortifications.”

“Oh,” he said.

“It's a weird word,” Margalo said.

“Nnnhh.” He looked down at his book, a hint. Aurora was
already back at her writing. So Margalo went upstairs to her room.

“Radio off!” she greeted Esther, who plugged in her headphones and put them over her ears. The music ceased. Margalo dropped her knapsack onto her bed and went out to the telephone in the hall.

Esther followed Margalo out of the bedroom, her arm stretched out behind her to hold the headphones, which were still attached to the radio, although now unattached to her head, emitting tinny bursts of noise. “Are you calling Mikey? I want to tell her something. Isn't it too late to call? Isn't it after eight-thirty? Did Aurora say you could?”

The best way to handle Esther was to ignore her, so that's what Margalo did. She dialed the number, pretty sure that Mr. Elsinger would not yet have returned. First he would walk Katherine's baby-sitter home. Then he would return to Katherine's house and see that the boys were all right, maybe even wish them good night if they were awake.
Then
he'd go home, not hanging around at Katherine's because he knew Mikey was alone. So Margalo thought she had time to tell Mikey what she'd just realized.

“Hello?” Mikey answered.

“They're all telling us the same thing,” Margalo said.

“Who all?” Because Mikey had no doubt who this was calling her. “What same thing?”

“I'll tell you in the morning, but I wanted to say right now, you shouldn't give up.”

“Okay,” Mikey said. “If you don't either.”

“You'll have to read the script for
Oklahoma!”
Margalo warned her.

“You'll have to take me to work with you, to the restaurant,” Mikey said. “To let them meet me.”

“We'll figure something out,” Margalo said, and, “I know,” Mikey agreed, and it was as if they had reached out elastic-man arms over the mile and a half between them, to shake on it.

“Yeah, but what?” demanded Mikey. “
What
will we figure out?”

“The world,” Margalo announced. “Our lives. People.”

“How to get rid of Coach Sandy,” Mikey decided.

A
t lunch the next day Mikey announced that it was day thirty-three, and Cassie was off on a rant against the world and the people in it, the school, the students, the teachers, and the administration. You name it, it was rotten. They had occupied one of the picnic tables, and the noontime weather was ignoring, or maybe even contradicting, Cassie's low opinion of how things were. It was the kind of spring day that made you feel that life was good and you could be glad to be alive. Unless you were Cassie.

“When Mikey refuses to cheat, she gets thrown off the team. And when she figures out a way to make sure the line calls are fair—”

“As fair as they can be,” Mikey said, being precise.

“What happens? Do they praise us? Do they thank us? No, what happens is Robredo comes down on us like a ton of bricks. He tells Mikey not to do it again. Or else.”

“He didn't say
or else
,” Mikey pointed out.

“And look at what happened to Margalo and how much help she got,” Cassie went on.

Mikey had something to tell them all. “He didn't say
or else,
and you know what? Even if he had, I'm going to go ahead and call lines on Friday.”

“I'm with you,” said Cassie without hesitation.

“Me too,” said Felix, “and you will too, won't you, Casey? Tim? We can have dinner, after, downtown. We could eat at your restaurant!” he announced to Margalo, as if he was giving her a present.

“And I could wash your dishes!” she announced back.

“Well, I can't risk it,” Jace said. When they all turned to him, he explained, “I'm up for a juried high school exhibit, in the main library, in the city. It's a big deal. I can't afford to be on Robredo's hit list. Or Peter Paul's, either.”

“That's right,” Tim said. “I'm sorry, Mikey, but I'm up for associate editor of the newspaper.”

“And now I think of it,” Cassie said, “I'm not so sure I
should.
It would be hypocritical, acting as if I thought anything would make anything any better.”

Mikey rose to move off. “A bad call is a bad call, and I'm not going to do nothing about it.”

“You know what? You're absolutely right,” Cassie said. “Count me in!”

Mikey didn't answer what she was thinking, which was
that she wasn't about to count on Cassie for anything. “We need to see Louis,” she reminded Margalo.

Louis wasn't hanging around outside with a bunch of boys, being raucous, and he wasn't in the cafeteria with a bunch of boys, being raucous, and he also wasn't in the library working on English or Math. They found Louis behind the school building standing among a bunch of boys, being stupid and smoking.

What he was smoking, and what any of the rest of them were smoking, Mikey and Margalo didn't care about. Frankly. What people got up to was their own business, as long as it didn't interfere with Mikey's life or Margalo's. They had enough to do dealing with their own lives. They didn't need to worry about other people messing up.

“Louis,” Margalo greeted him. “We need to talk to you.”

“Yeah, well, I don't need to talk to you,” Louis responded, and grinned around at his friends.
One for me.

“Yes, you do,” Margalo said.

Mikey was already walking away.

Margalo thought it out. If she embarrassed Louis, he'd just get stubborn, or if she threatened him or made him feel like he looked stupid. Louis wanted to feel like he was looking cool, looking good. “Somebody wants me to tell you something,” Margalo told him, Miss Mysterioso.

“Woo-woo-Lou!” one of the boys said.

Louis grinned happily.

“In private.” Margalo smiled just the smallest smile, switching to Miss Mona Lisa.

“It's not Mikey, is it?” Louis wanted everyone to know he wasn't that desperate. He bent over to pick up his knapsack. “Not any of your scaggy friends.”

“You'll be surprised,” Margalo promised, Miss Flirtorama.

Louis's eyes lit up then, as if he actually believed what she was pretending to be hinting. Could he have forgotten the tutoring bet they had? Could he have forgotten that he was about to fail ninth grade and have to repeat the year? “Who is it?” he asked.

Margalo shook her head, she couldn't say.

“Maybe I won't go with you unless you say who,” Louis said, setting his knapsack back down on the ground, taking a deep pull on his cigarette, letting the smoke out from his nose slowly.

What did he think he was, a dragon?

But Margalo was fascinated by this conversation because she was just figuring out that Louis Caselli didn't think more than five minutes ahead. It was as if she had been given that fairy-tale gift of understanding the speech of animals, only this gift was that she could see into Louis Caselli's brain and watch what was going on. There wasn't much to see when his memory range was about five minutes, and his forward-thinking distance the same—Otherwise why was he smoking? And why wasn't he doing the homework they'd assigned him?

Then Margalo got it: All Louis Caselli had in his life to
feel good about was what his friends thought of him. That was it, everything, the whole enchilada. Louis would
hate
losing face, and he was afraid of it too.