Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? (6 page)

“Why would I see Hadrian? You're the one who's in Drama with him.”

“He's supposed to try out today so he'll get a part, so—”

“We know, we know.”

“I'm reading too, but just for one of the fairies, but maybe I won't.”

Mikey got Margalo back on topic. “Job. Aurora. What's going on?”

“Oh, that. She always said I could get a real job when I was fourteen, and I'm fourteen.”

“But why do you want one?”

“For a regular income, and so when I look for my next job I can say I have experience. And for my résumé.”

“You have a résumé? What are you doing with a résumé? You're fourteen, Margalo. You're in ninth grade.”

“To put on college applications, to show I'm a worker.”

Well, that sounded like Margalo's usual long-range thinking. Mikey relaxed. “So what kind of a job are you looking for?” She wondered if she wanted to look for a job too, and, if she did look for a job, if she would get one. She wondered if she could get a better job than Margalo could get.

“I have to go,” Margalo said. “Really. Because Hadrian—”

“Are you having a crush on Hadrian Klenk?” Mikey demanded. She had to go too, but you didn't see her rushing off, and she had tennis to go to, not just a club. Tennis was a varsity sport.

“Don't be stupid. You know my plan for Hadrian, and the first step is—”

Mikey had heard all this before. “And what's this about Aurora—”

“Tell you later. I'll tell you about that on the bus.” Margalo was already walking away, her olive green knapsack hanging off of one shoulder, pushing her way into the crowd of students, looking back to tell Mikey this before hurrying off.

Mikey finished her question anyway. “—and a GED?”

Nobody wanted to be late for this meeting of Drama Club. A lot would get decided that day. Everybody was a little
jittery, as if before an exam, nervous about how their readings would go, nervous about their chances of being selected for a role, hoping to be chosen, and if they were chosen, hoping to do well. Being in a play was good for your social life, and being in a Shakespeare play was good not only for your social life but also for your academic standing. Whatever else you could say about Shakespeare, he was smart, and everybody—even teachers, who maybe should know better—assumed that you had to be smart yourself to be in a Shakespeare play.

Margalo set her knapsack down on top of a pile beside the teacher's desk. The knapsacks were in almost all colors, each one differentiated from others of the same color by some kind of marking, a drawing, lettering, logo, name or initials, or sometimes even a miniature stuffed animal clipped onto the zipper. Margalo had her own initials in white painted in lowercase letters on the front of her olive green knapsack,
me.
On the back, like a mirror image, she had painted
em.

She waited just inside the door for Hadrian. Ms. Hendriks had asked them to prepare a short reading from the character that they would most like to play. That was no problem for Margalo, whose minor character said about two words altogether. Hadrian, on the other hand, had decided to try for the part of Bottom, and he had asked Margalo to help him prepare. But her family's telephone restriction rule (no conversation to last more than five minutes) made that impossible. Also impossible was getting together during
school hours, since Hadrian spent his non-class time trying to avoid Sven and his two goons, keeping an eye out, keeping to the side, not staying in any one place long enough to go rehearse lines for a play.

Margalo didn't know if she was more nervous and excited for Hadrian or for herself. Although, when she thought about it, for herself she was just nervous.

The clock ticked off the final moments. Ms. Hendriks arrived. She dropped her books and purse on top of the desk and went immediately to the platform stage, on which she had already set up two chairs, facing each other. She seated herself on one of them and set her clipboard on her lap, pen at the ready. The room filled up. Even Shawn Macavity was there, confident that people would overlook his not being a club member for the sake of his star power. He greeted people, although not Margalo, “Some fun, hunh?” They humphed and ignored him.

Because Sven and the goons had gotten bored with taking Hadrian's knapsack from him, hiding or destroying his homework papers, sometimes tossing the knapsack into a cafeteria garbage can, sometimes putting it behind a toilet in one of the girls' bathrooms . . . .

But who did they get to help them with that? Margalo wondered now. She didn't like to think of all the possible answers to that question. She was just relieved that they seemed to have stopped pulling that particular trick, so she could be pretty sure that if Hadrian's green knapsack, with his
initials stenciled on it in big black letters, wasn't there by the desk, he hadn't yet arrived.

But she wasn't sure what the tardiness meant. She was pretty sure he wouldn't lose his nerve, not about acting.

When the bell rang, and people had fallen silent, Ms. Hendriks looked up from her clipboard and said, “All right, then. Seniors first. Who . . .”

She stopped speaking. She stared at the doorway. Different expressions crossed over her face so quickly that the people watching could barely identify one expression and figure out how to react to it before another had replaced it. Irritation was replaced by laughter was replaced by pity was replaced by confusion was replaced by decision, and Ms. Hendriks stood up to ask, “What is going on here?”

By then everybody in the room had turned to look, and seeing, many had shifted themselves around to face the door, and the hallway beyond, so they could really see.

Margalo looked too, and she didn't know what to do. She couldn't even think of anything to say.

Nobody answered Ms. Hendriks' question, not anyone in Drama Club, nor any of the three juniors standing in the doorway, looking even larger than usual compared to the short, slight figure that stood in their midst, as if they were the military guard and he was their captive, brought in for questioning. He wore belted khakis and a plaid short-sleeved shirt. His hair stood up in thick, short spikes all over his head, making him look like a plastic hedgehog toy for some baby's
bathtub. A knapsack hung beside his knees and his face was bright red. Hadrian Klenk.

Why that picture struck them as funny, nobody could have said. Maybe it was because the guards were so big, so tall and broad and thick-limbed, and their prisoner so much littler. It was ridiculous to see all of those great big guards for that one little prisoner, like using three German shepherds to herd a Chihuahua.

Or maybe it was Hadrian's hair, which looked like some moth-eaten hairbrush. Or a cartoon bomb. Or one of those designer fruits their mothers sometimes brought home from the store and tried to convince them to eat.

Or maybe it was how bright red Hadrian's face was, like some teacher about to explode into anger.

For whatever reason—and Ms. Hendriks could have told them that comedy works in a variety of different ways—almost everybody in the room started to laugh. Not Margalo and not Ms. Hendriks, but they were about the only ones left out. Of course everybody knew they shouldn't want to laugh, and shouldn't be laughing, so everybody tried to muffle it, which of course made it even funnier.

Equally of course, when the three comedians saw how successful they were being, they went further. Sven took his big hand off of Hadrian's thin shoulder and beat both fists on his chest, making Tarzan noises.

But when Ms. Hendriks took a step towards the front of the platform and then stepped down onto the floor, they fled.

This left Hadrian alone in the doorway. Then he saw Margalo and scuttled over to sit down beside her. Ms. Hendriks stood staring at the empty doorway. Everyone could see that she didn't know what to do next.

Margalo didn't blame her. Even she, sitting beside Hadrian, a person who was known to be on his side and not even smiling at the way he looked, didn't know which would make it worse for him—to be noticed or to be ignored, to make a big to-do about it or to pretend nothing had happened and there was nothing at all odd about him.

Ms. Hendriks apparently decided on pretending. She stepped up onto the platform and sat back down. “Which senior wants to go first?” she asked, as if the last two minutes had taken place in a time warp that aliens had erased from her memory.

It took a few seconds for everybody to turn around again and face her, and by that time Sally King had already stepped up onto the platform to read for the unisex part of Puck, the mischief-making sprite who was the personal servant of Oberon, king of the fairies. Puck was the one single stand-out part in the play, and even that wasn't a particularly starring role. Puck had a lot of lines and appeared in a lot of scenes, and then—at the very end—he got to speak directly to the audience and claim credit for the whole performance. Puck was the part you remembered, after the play. Well, Puck and Bottom. But Bottom was a jerk, like an old-fashioned redneck hillbilly type, so nobody thought of asking to play Bottom. Nobody except Hadrian, that is.

“When she hears you read,” Margalo murmured to Hadrian. “When they all hear you.” She was sort of excited for him and impatient to get to the turnaround-surprise ending of this scene. Hadrian didn't say anything, but she didn't look at him. If she were Hadrian, she wouldn't want anyone looking at her right now. Instead she listened to Sally King's tryout.

Sally read Puck well, with her usual mischievious
I can get away with anything, just watch
expression. She would make a good Puck, Margalo thought; it was typecasting, one egocentric and self-satisfied character played by another. She thought Sally
should
get the part—even though Sally was the kind of person who you wanted
not
to get what she wanted. She had a slim, boyish build and a bold smile; with her hair in two short ponytails, one on each side of her head, she already looked like Puck.

Margalo had an unexpected thought: What if Sally King really was talented? Just because you didn't like someone, that didn't mean they couldn't be talented. Just because you didn't want them to be, that didn't mean they
wouldn't
be. She wished it was Mikey sitting beside her, not Hadrian, because then she could tell Mikey that idea, and at the end she could add, “And vice versa,” to irritate Mikey, who—irritated on schedule—would respond, “No Latin.”

After Sally came Richard, no surprise. By that time, Margalo dared to sneak a look across at Hadrian, who sat so quiet and lifeless it was almost as if he wasn't there. It was like
sitting next to a pile of mashed potatoes, and no fun at all. And he looked, with his hair like that—it was grotesque, really funny. She wasn't surprised to hear occasional whispers, followed by muffled snorts of laughter, scattered around the room.

Richard took the seat Sally had vacated and told Ms. Hendriks, “First I thought me and Sally could be the Duke and his bride, but those aren't big parts, so then I thought Oberon and his queen. But she wants to be Puck.”

“You could still play Oberon,” Ms. Hendriks offered.

Richard scratched at the back of his neck, where his brown hair curled up a little. “Yeah, but, you know? Like Sally says, who wants to be the King of the Fairies?” He grinned at her and at the gathered students.

Ms. Hendriks didn't grin back, but many people in the room choked back laughter.

“Then what part will you be reading for us today?” Ms. Hendriks asked.

“Demetrius, because the other guy is sort of a noodle, you know?” Richard looked at the teacher's expression and added, “I'll play Oberon, though, if you want me to. I mean, all of Shakespeare's parts are pretty good ones,” he explained to his audience.

“Hadrian should play Oberon,” someone suggested, to increasingly out-loud laughter.

Hadrian sat invisible. Margalo's brain was frozen. It would all get better when they heard him read, she repeated to herself.

“But he's gotta keep that hairdo,” someone else said.

“Hadrian's a natural for fairy king,” someone added, and the whole room—still with the same two exceptions—burst into uncontrolled laughter. Ms. Hendriks, standing again, said, “Patrick. That's more than enough. You're excused from the room.”

“But I haven't read.”

“You heard me,” she said.

“But everybody was—”

“You're excused from Drama, too,” she told him. “I will inform Mr. Robredo of the change in your schedule.”

The room was now completely silent.

“It wasn't just me,” Patrick protested, but he knew nobody would stand up for him. He rose to his feet and looked resentfully around the room, his gaze finally settling on Hadrian Klenk, the invisible boy, who had caused him to be thrown out of Drama. “It was just a joke,” Patrick said, turning back to the teacher. “Can't you tell a joke when you hear it?”