Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? (7 page)

Ms. Hendriks did not bend. “Yes,” she said. “But I didn't hear one. Go.”

For a really nice person, and young, and female, and in love, and pretty, too, Ms. Hendriks was being awfully strict. His friends felt they should stick up for Patrick, so they, too, snuck dirty looks at Hadrian, who shrank back into himself to let that wave of blame and anger flow over him.

In fact, probably the only person who still felt sorry for
Hadrian was Ms. Hendriks. Margalo didn't have to feel sorry for him because as soon as he read for a part in the play, Hadrian's school life would be on the road to recovery.

The tryout readings continued, students one after the other going up to sit in the chair facing Ms. Hendriks and read—or occasionally recite from memory—the lines they had prepared. After the last junior had read, Margalo said, without looking at Hadrian, “I don't have a chance.”

Out of the corner of her eye she saw his spiky head nodding agreement.

“But
you
do,” she told him.

However, when the last tenth grader had read, Ms. Hendriks stood up. “Thank you all very much,” she told them. “You've worked hard for this, and it shows. These were good auditions.”

“What about me?” Shawn Macavity asked. He raised his hand, then stood up so she could see him better. “What about my part?”

“And you are?”

“Shawn Macavity,” he answered, with an unspoken
of course
and a wide smile on his handsome face.

“You're not a member of Drama Club, are you?”

“Not a member, but I'm going to be an actor. I didn't want to do all that Shakespeare study,” he reminded her, “but I do want a part.”

“What speech did you prepare?”

“I didn't know I was supposed to,” he explained, and offered, “I can still read.”

“And what grade are you in, Shawn?” she asked.

“Ninth.”

The teacher relaxed. “Oh. Well. In that case, you see, you couldn't be in the play anyway. I've been told that it's school policy not to give ninth graders roles in the plays, unless there are extenuating circumstances. Which there aren't,” she added before he could say anything. “So I'll be casting especially seniors, since this is their last year in Drama.”

“Good,” said Richard and Sally, John Lawrence and Carl Dane, almost in unison.

“In any case, I would always want to offer a part first to someone who is a member of Drama Club,” she told Shawn. “Who has shown interest. Who understands our ideas about the play.”

“But I told you. I want to act, not talk about plays.”

“And I can sympathize with that,” she told him.

This left Shawn standing there looking foolish—handsome, but foolish. Margalo decided that rather than standing up right then to object to Hadrian's not getting a chance, she would wait until the teacher was alone. When teachers weren't worried about looking and acting like authority figures, sometimes they would change their mind.

Ms. Hendriks announced then, “Now, I need to have the names of people interested in working behind the scenes.” With a humorous smile she added, “We accept workers from
all classes for behind-the-scenes jobs. Mr. Paul and some of his Advanced Art students will be making sets for us, so that's taken care of, but we need a stage manager and people to work backstage moving flats, changing furniture, making sure the right props are ready.” She turned to the senior who had read for the Duke, but not at all well, although he had clearly made a real effort, even memorizing his lines. “Carl? I'd like you to take that responsibility. You'll have a couple of assistants, of course—”

“Do I have to?”

“No, of course not. But it is the part I'm offering you in this production,” Ms. Hendriks told him firmly.

She was having an unusually firm day.

The bell rang then, and people got up to retrieve their belongings, although Ms. Hendriks wasn't quite finished.

“Let me know what you'd like to do backstage,” she called over the increasing noise. “I'll post the cast list Monday, first thing,” she promised them. “Remember, we have only seven weeks until performance. We'll also need people to go over lines with the actors, people to help with the costumes, the stage manager usually cues lines during the performance, but we'll need ushers . . .”

They weren't listening. They were talking among themselves. “You were really good, you're sure to get Helena.” “So were you, and Sally didn't want either Helena or Hermia, so you're sure to get Hermia, and we'll be in it together.”

“If I don't get any lines, I'm not sure I want to commit the
time. I might drop Drama and concentrate on Spanish Club.” “Drama's my only activity so I can't drop it. My college applications will look totally lame with
no
activity. I guess I could help Carl.”

Ms. Hendriks called out, “We'll need understudies!”

“
There's
a real waste of time. Maybe in movies, and I guess sometimes in a real play, some understudy gets to go on, but not in a school production. People in school plays really want their chance at the spotlight. Even if they're sick and throwing up.” “Remember Sally whispering Lady MacBeth last year? I could barely keep from laughing.”

“And we need general dogsbodies!” called Ms. Hendriks.

The room had emptied out, and Ms. Hendriks noticed that Hadrian and Margalo were still standing there, still paying attention, apparently waiting to say something.

“Yes?” she asked, stepping off the platform to join them. “What is it, Hadrian?” Like many of the teachers, Ms. Hendriks was especially nice to Hadrian Klenk. “And you are . . . Margalo,” she remembered. “Margalo Epps.”

“Hadrian is ready to read for Bottom,” Margalo said as if she was deciding it. She was as tall as the teacher and could look directly into her hazel eyes, as an equal.

“But I explained—”

Hadrian interrupted. “Actually, I wouldn't mind being an understudy. Because I memorize really well so I could do more than one part. I could do a lot, easily. I mean, what if someone can't perform, I mean, like, in a rehearsal?”

Ms. Hendriks wanted to say yes. She was nodding, thinking about the suggestion, smiling sympathetically. “You could help with lines, too, couldn't you? I'll see who else signs up, Hadrian, but I don't think there'll be a big rush. Most people don't want to be an underling.”

They agreed with her. It was only natural, like not wanting to be a ninth grader.

“Or a groundling,” said Hadrian.

Ms. Hendriks looked carefully at him. “Like in the Elizabethan theater? Are you some kind of a theater nut?”

He nodded, almost as if he was embarrassed at her question. Or flattered.

She ran her left hand through her hair, with a glinting of diamond. “I'd have guessed you for a gamer.”

“I never got into games. They're not . . .”

“Real,” the teacher supplied.

Margalo had had enough of being an underling or groundling or just plain peanut-butter-and-jelly nobody in the conversation. With a little edge of sarcasm in her voice she asked, “Real like the stage?” to let them know that she had ideas too and was worth not-ignoring.

Ms. Hendriks turned to her with a happy expression. “You don't think the stage is real? Then what art is? Because it's not television or most films.” The teacher seemed to be enjoying the talk, which was pretty unusual, a teacher enjoying just talking ideas with students. But this was her first year teaching.

“I didn't say the stage
wasn't
real,” Margalo pointed out. “I just raised the question, because . . . theater isn't common reality, not what most people mean. It's the kind of reality . . . like fairy tales have, psychological reality, sociological.”

Ms. Hendriks nodded, but instead of continuing with that interesting topic, she said, “I want to ask you something. Because I gather you were the assistant director last year for—”

“How do you know that?”

“I read your folder.”

What did that mean? Did every teacher read every student's folder? Did they have to read them? What was in Margalo's school folder for Ms. Hendriks, or any teacher, to read?

Ms. Hendriks seemed to be backtracking, apologizing. “I looked at all of them, to help me understand the people I'm teaching and working with. I probably won't do it again, if I'm asked back for next year.”

Margalo set aside the folder question, temporarily, and said, “Is that the same thing as what you called a dogsbody? I read a book called—”

“A dogsbody does everything. Whatever anybody tells him to do, or her, whatever needs doing.”

Margalo continued stubbornly. “—called
Dogsbody,
and he's one of the stars, I mean the celestial stars, Sirius.”

Ms. Hendriks had been re-distracted and interrupted again. “I know it. I always thought that book would make an
interesting script, for animation—for the old Disney studios, you know?”

“I never read it,” Hadrian said, now inserting himself into
their
conversation.

“It's good,” Margalo told him. “If you don't mind fantasy.”

“I don't mind anything good,” he told her.

“I'll probably be able to use both of you,” Ms. Hendriks told them then, and seemed pleased at the prospect. “After all, it's the underclassmen who are the bedrock of a Drama department, the building blocks, getting trained. But Hadrian? Can I say something about your hair? Because . . . well, you saw how people . . .”

Hadrian seemed to fold back into himself. It was as if, for a few minutes, talking, he had forgotten what he looked like.

And that reminded Margalo. “You should let us read, I mean, let Hadrian, because—”

Ms. Hendriks shook her head definitely. “There just aren't enough parts, and there's policy, too. But . . . Hadrian? The hair?”

He nodded without looking up, then turned away and Margalo followed him, with an apologetic look back over her shoulder at Ms. Hendriks, who for once didn't look cheerful. She looked like someone who thought she hadn't done a good enough job at something.

“I've got a comb,” Margalo said to Hadrian's back as he bent over to pick up his knapsack. She reached down for her own, adding, “I can loan it to you.”

Hadrian said, “I just don't want my mother . . .” He didn't have to finish that sentence.

She accompanied him out into the emptying corridor. Hadrian kept his eyes lowered, but Margalo looked around, looking for trouble, where it might come from. Anybody knew that you could get in trouble being alone with just Hadrian Klenk. Sven and his friend Toby and their friend Harold played football, she thought, so they probably wouldn't be in the building at that hour. As far as she knew, only those three had nothing better to think about than how to torment Hadrian Klenk; so maybe they were temporarily safe. Or Hadrian was safe for the time being. She herself was pretty much safe pretty much most of the time.

As safe, at least, as anybody was, at just about any time. Or anyway, she
felt
safe enough. Maybe safety was like intelligence? Margalo thought, and almost laughed. If you acted like you were smart, most people believed you. So what
was
real?

Thinking about reality, and what was true, and how the real danger of lying was not that you might get caught but that you might start believing your own lies, somehow led Margalo right to an idea. She grabbed Hadrian's arm. “Tell your mother it's a new style you're trying.”

“What?” He pulled his arm away.

“Tell her you and some friends all moussed your hair this way. Tell her everyone did it.”

“But it looks ridiculous.”

“Tell her it was a style experiment. Think about it, Hadrian.”

He did, and she could see relief grow in him as he imagined himself telling his mother this, and what she would say, and what he would say then. His head came up and he was smiling. It was a weak and wavery smile, but still a smile. “She'll hate it,” he predicted. “I can tell her I don't like it much myself. That'll make her happy.”

“She won't ask any questions,” Margalo added.

“Thank you,” Hadrian said then. “You saved my life.”

“I saved your mother's life,” Margalo corrected.

Mikey and Margalo didn't need to consult each other. They moved down the length of the school bus to a rear seat. Not
the
rear seat, which was a long bench where others might join them, or at least adjoin them, and not the seats right in front of that bench, either. They took a two-person seat far enough back in the center section of the bus so a private conversation would be buried in all the noise and confusion.

Mikey started off as Margalo was just sitting down in her aisle seat. “I'm half-way up the sophomore section of the ladder and she actually paid me a compliment today.” Misunderstanding Margalo's expression, she explained, “Coach Sandy.”