Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? (8 page)

As soon as she was settled into her seat, Margalo started off her own topic. “He didn't get to read. No ninth grader did.”

“She said I had a good drop shot.”

“There was never any chance he'd get a part. I should have known.”

They were ninth-grade girls, best friends since fifth grade, and they could carry on two conversations at one time, listening to both and talking about both almost simultaneously. Two was about Mikey's outside limit, but Margalo could carry on as many as four different conversations on different topics before she lost her way.

“I'd have thought it would have been my backhand cross-court,” Mikey said.

“They moussed his hair into—a whole headful of spikes. Then they frog-marched him to Drama,” Margalo reported. “They got off on people laughing. It's going to just make them worse.”

“At least,” Mikey said, “they've stopped taking his knapsack. So, what's Hadrian going to do?”

“Understudy some parts probably. Which means he won't appear onstage, which means . . .” She got distracted by another dismal thought. “Probably, if they've given up taking his knapsack, they'll move on to something more. As we just saw.”

Mikey turned to look right into Margalo's face, as if it was Margalo she was angry at. “I don't like it one bit.”

“And the rest of us do?”

But Mikey had returned to her own dismal thoughts. “I don't even have a good drop shot.”

The bus motor rumbled to life, the long iron arm closed
the front doors, and the bus pulled out, swaying a little as it made the turn onto the main road. Margalo and Mikey clutched at the knapsacks they held on their laps.
ME
was stenciled in big red letters on the front of Mikey's bright hunter's orange knapsack, the color that kept you from being shot at, if you happened to be carrying your knapsack through the woods during hunting season. She had bought it last summer in Texas, where hunter's orange was a common color. When the bus lurched forward into traffic, a few girls gave little screams and a few boys cheered the driver. “Rock on!”

After things had settled down—at least, settled down as much as a busload of high school students could—Mikey remembered to ask Margalo, “What
about
Aurora and a GED? Is she really going to try to do it? Why?”

“Lily's in school all day, and Aurora would like a job. She's already taking a class, two classes in fact, English and History. She wants to work with little children so she might even take college courses, after.”

“I thought she wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.”

“That's what Esther says. Esther says if Aurora is going to go to school, she's going to run away and live with her father, because she wants a mother who stays at home to be a mother.”

“But Aurora's not Esther's mother, she's her stepmother,” Mikey reminded her.

“I know.”

“And, her father doesn't want her living with him anyway. He's got a whole new family.”

“She knows.”

“What does Aurora say?”

“She says she wants Esther to let her try it, to see how much difference it actually makes.”

“Aurora doesn't stick up for herself enough,” Mikey announced, then asked, “What does Esther say to that?”

“She says she'll go live with you.”

That shut Mikey up.

Margalo enjoyed being one up for just a couple of minutes before she introduced her own concern. “I know we all have folders, records, but do you think all of our teachers have read them?”

“I don't think they're that interested,” Mikey said, offering as proof, “Coach Sandy wouldn't have ignored me.”

“You think not?”

“Why would she?” Mikey asked, and answered herself, “There's no possible reason.”

Margalo could think of at least two possible reasons, but she was concerned about something else. “Don't you think that's an invasion of privacy?”

Put that way, Mikey got it immediately. “Do you want me to ask Jackson?” Jackson was someone who knew a lot about almost everything. They guessed that you couldn't be a successful venture capitalist for all the years he'd been one without being pretty smart, and learning a whole lot too.

“No, not unless you want to. School records are open, I think. Even to students. At least, our own records.”

“What about teachers' records? Are they open too? Can we read
their
folders? That would be fair, and administrators too.”

“But maybe I'll take a look at mine, to make sure it's only about, like, having the required shots, and grades.”

“Disciplinary measures will be in there too,” Mikey said, and she smiled. “I hope mine is a really fat folder.”

“You could work on that.” Seeing it from that new point of view, Margalo relaxed. Let the folder-keepers keep themselves busy keeping folders, and that would keep them out of her hair. “We could both work on it.”

“Yeah, but Louis Caselli is way ahead.”

“We could try to catch up.”

They were both laughing now, just like any other high school students going home on the late bus after a long school day. This was the kind of idea they liked to think about, figuring out how to do it—get a fatter student record folder than Louis Caselli—without getting into real trouble themselves with the school authorities or into real trouble with grades.

“Or maybe, maybe we should work on helping Louis increase his,” Margalo suggested.

“Louis can always use help,” Mikey agreed.

Margalo admitted, “I wish we could help Hadrian.”

“Yeah, but how? That Sven and his two friends—”

“Toby and Harold.”

“They're . . .”

Neither of them knew the best way to end that thought. Upperclassmen? Really mean? Much bigger than we are? Unstoppable—even by the school authorities? Too smart to get caught in the act?

No, probably not that last one. They weren't too smart for anything, in Margalo and Mikey's opinion.

“But Mikey,” Margalo said, the unexpected comparison causing her to turn in her seat and face her friend and cohort, as if having a friend and cohort made the idea easier to have. “Are they acting all that different from the way we . . . I mean, remember getting Louis thrown out of our fifth-grade class?” she reminded Mikey, and herself, and then remembered too, “And getting him brought back in?”

“Rhonda and the roadkill,” Mikey agreed happily. She was untroubled by the comparison. “But we were getting even,” she pointed out. At all the memories she added, “I miss fifth grade. I wouldn't mind being back in fifth grade.”

“Yes you would,” Margalo said crisply. “Think about it. Fifth grade is eight years from graduation, and ninth is only four.”

“Actually, it'll be only three and five-sixths years when this marking period ends next week,” Mikey said.

“But are we really any different?” Margalo asked again. “When we were getting even, like—remember seventh grade?”

“They were picking on us,” Mikey reminded her, and
smiled at the memories.
Those were the days.
“We were just picking back.”

“They thought we were weak. Powerless.”

“We weren't.”

“But Hadrian is. I really hoped he'd get a part. And so did he, I think. That just makes it all the worse that she wouldn't even let him read for one, when you hope for something and don't get it.”

“Hoping's pointless,” Mikey told Margalo.

“You sound like Cassie,” Margalo said, not as a compliment.

Mikey just went on. “The point is to
do
something.”

“The only thing I can think of to do is murder them.”

Mikey was willing to consider that option. “All three? How would we do it?”

“In books people use rat poison.”

“We've got the rats,” Mikey observed. “Now all we need is the poison.”

Mikey was giving this idea such serious consideration that Margalo felt the need to point out its obvious drawback. “I'm not about to go to jail for those three.”

“Yeah, but we might not get caught.”

“Unless,” Margalo said, “we could be like the seven-at-one-blow little tailor? Who got the ogres fighting among themselves?”

“You're having a nervous breakdown,” Mikey told her. “I can't even sew.”

Looking out the window, she saw that the bus was nearing Margalo's stop. “Are you baby-sitting tonight?”

“And tomorrow night too.”

“In the morning, then,” Mikey told her. “I'll be over tomorrow morning then. Tell Aurora I'll make breakfast.” Mikey and her divorced father, with whom she lived, had organized their weekends. Saturday afternoons they did something together, which these days meant doing something with his girlfriend and her two little boys; Sunday mornings they cleaned house; and Sunday afternoons Mikey had league tennis practice. So Saturday morning was about the only time she and Margalo had for getting together. “Maybe I'll make omelets. Will Lily and Stevie eat omelets, do you think?”

Margalo was getting ready to stand up. “As long as there's nothing weird in them.”

“For the rest of us I'll make cheese omelets with herbs,” and Mikey was off, planning a meal.

Margalo followed her, suggesting, “Chives and parsley.”

“Plus biscuits.” Mikey liked getting the last word, even if they were in total agreement.

Rising from her seat, her knapsack held against her stomach, Margalo turned to join the others lining up in the aisle. She was almost at the door when Mikey remembered, and stood up to shout down the length of the half-empty bus, “What do
you
think about Aurora's GED? Margalo!”

But Margalo didn't hear her. Mikey groaned. Now either she was going to have to telephone Margalo's house, and risk being talked at by Margalo's adoring stepsister, Esther, or she was going to have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out. She couldn't decide which would be worse, waiting or Esther.

T
hat year Halloween fell on a Saturday, and it was on Friday the thirtieth of October—week eight, by Mikey's count; twenty-eight weeks left—that the homeroom teachers handed out to the students their report cards for the first marking period, first thing in the morning. Perhaps it was the combination of pre-Halloween excitement with hot news of bad grades, or good grades, or good-enough grades, that caused Hadrian's catastrophe. Grade news certainly exacerbated the usual high school nerviness, and everyone knew that Sven had been caught copying answers on the History unit test, so he was flunking History for sure and his parents required him to get at least a C in everything, so he was going to get it when he got home. On the whole, people were pleased that Sven was going to get it from someone. Also, people—especially the Varsity players—were nervous about
Saturday's football game against Benjamin Franklin High School, a team with a 5-0 record. Nobody liked to be wiped out, not even by a really good team. Also, there was the usual weekend excitement and anxiety about who was going out with whom, what parties were being given, who was being invited to which, and if they were going to continue getting away with the things that they had—so far—been getting away with.

By the time Mikey sat down beside Margalo for Lunch A, slowed down as she had been by students clustering in the halls to discuss their grades, or celebrate them, or bemoan them, Casey was already there and Cassie was approaching, with Tim, Felix and Jace close behind.

Margalo looked up from her bologna sandwich and opened her mouth to say something, but Mikey didn't give her a chance. “She gave me an A minus in Spanish.” To Margalo's inquiring expression,
There's something wrong with an A minus?
Mikey said, “I shouldn't get over a B. You know I haven't gotten anything better than a B on any of the tests.”

“Does she give a lot of credit for homework? Or weight class discussion grades?” Margalo suggested.

Mikey shook her head. “It's a bad A, Margalo.”

What Margalo thought about the concept of a bad A (could there be good Ds?) Mikey never found out because Cassie had news to tell, news so important that she didn't even sit down before she announced it. “Did you hear about Hadrian?”

“Where is he anyway?” Mikey asked. “He wasn't in Math and he's never absent. Was he in English?”

“What's happened?” Margalo asked, shaking her head, No, to answer Mikey's second question.

Tim slammed his tray down on the table, announcing, “It's just not right.” But Cassie wanted to be the one to tell them, it being something that revealed once again what rotters human beings could be, so she told the story.

“Those guys—I don't even
want
to know their names—Eenie, Meenie and Minie—Larry, Curly and Moe—Tom, Dick and Harry—”

“Mean, Stupid and Immature,” Casey suggested. She had looked up from
Crime and Punishment
and her lunch; she had even closed the book, although she kept a finger in it to mark her place. “I heard about it.”

“The juniors,” Margalo guessed. She did know their names, but that wasn't the point. “What did they do to him now?”

Cassie said, “The story is they broke his arm.”

“They
what?”

“That's not what I heard.”

“I thought it was his leg.”

“I heard his wrist.”

Cassie raised her voice to drown them out. “Whichever limb it was, there was an ambulance.”

This caused a silence.

Margalo broke it. “Is he all right?”

“Well, he walked to the ambulance.”

“Some girls found him in the hallway,” Tim reported. “It was a couple of seniors.”

“But why didn't someone stop them?” Mikey asked.