Maggie Malone Gets the Royal Treatment

by Jenna McCarthy

  I’ve been sitting on the end of the stage waiting for a couple of minutes when Elizabeth and Alicia stroll in, letting the door slam behind them.

  “Easy there, girls!” I say. “This is a secret handmaiden meeting!”

  “Wait, what if Lucy catches us planning official handmaiden business without her?” Elizabeth asks, and I swear the kid is acting like a puppy that’s been spanked on the behind way too many times. Like, if she had a tail, it would definitely be tucked between her legs.

  “Okay, see?” I point out. “That’s the problem right there! You don’t even think you can talk to your two real friends without checking it out with Lucifer first.”

  Alicia and Elizabeth both gasp and take a big step back from me.

  “That’s right, I said it!” I say, hopping off the stage, waving my arms and flashing my hands. “Because—hello—it’s the truth! Lucy St. Claire is as mean as the devil! I bet she keeps a pitchfork in her locker, which is probably full of hot ashes!”

  Alicia and Elizabeth are shaking their heads and have both turned as pale as Duane, the blind albino guinea pig Stella used to have. That girl has some pretty bad pet luck. Whenever she used to let little Duane out of his cage, he would run around like he was on fire everywhere he went and was always bonking his head into doorways and chair legs. Still, Stella loved that ugly little rodent, which I think says something about the sort of person she is.

  “That’s right, girls!” I say, throwing my hands on my hips. “I’ll say it again. Our noble little Lucifer is the meanest, worst princess apprentice ever, and I, for one, am not going to take her ridiculously rude treatment anymore. Now who’s with me?”

  Alicia and Elizabeth say nothing. In fact, they’re not even really looking at me, but sort of past me.

  “Hello?” I shout. “Anyone home?”

  Alicia lifts her arm, really slowly, and points toward the back of the stage.

  I glance over my shoulder.

  Double-decker disaster.

  It turns out Alicia and Elizabeth weren’t outraged by what I was saying as much as they were petrified by the sight of Lucy standing on the stage right behind me—along with her tagalong serf sidekick, Winnie, of course.

  “That’s it!” Lucy spits with a loud stomp that echoes across the MPR. Did she just use her pitchfork to make that kind of noise?

  “You three have given me no choice. You’re all fired—every last one of you. I was planning to keep a couple of you on for a day or two longer to train the new handmaidens,” Lucy says, motioning to three sixth grade girls cowering at the corner of the stage.

  How’d they get in here?

  “You know, to make your trip back to Nobodyville a little less embarrassing. But I can’t do that now, can I?” Lucy says with an evil grin and sideways squinty eyes.

  Look out, people, she’s not even pretending to be fake-nice anymore.

  “Maggie’s right!” booms Elizabeth, loud enough that I think it probably rocked Mr. Mooney’s desk in his office across the school. The girl has definitely found her voice.

  “You’re totally mean and for no good reason!” Elizabeth continues.

  Apparently Elizabeth and Alicia have been as fed up as I have—they just needed a little help saying it out loud. Alicia even throws in a little twist of her own.

  “And actually we had a supersecret handmaiden meeting before this fake handmaiden meeting,” Alicia chimes in. “We quit being your handmaidens at least ten minutes ago so you can’t fire us! You can fire Winnie, if you want to fire somebody!”

  Winnie is terrified, looking around, shifting left to right. Even Lucy looks confused, like she’s not sure what her next move should be. That’s a first. Just then, Elizabeth—the same girl who before today barely spoke above a whisper—pipes up again and quashes the whole handmaiden nonsense once and for all.

  “Hey, you guys,” Elizabeth calls over to the shaky sixth grader handmaidens-in-waiting. “Do you like being yelled at, humiliated, ordered around, and never—I mean ever—getting a thank-you for anything you do?”

  The kid’s really on a roll.

  “If you do, you’re going to love being Lucy’s minion, I mean handmaiden,” she says, walking over to the girls in the corner.

  “You know what, Lucy?” one of the girls says shyly. “I forgot that I have, um, a thing after school…”

  “Yeah, I definitely have a thing too, so you know, maybe you should find some other handmaidens…” says a second.

  “Now look what you’ve done!” Lucy shouts, marching up to Elizabeth until they are eyeball to eyeball. Elizabeth doesn’t flinch, and I silently cheer for her. “Who do you think you are?”

  The not-minions scamper out the back door by the stage.

  “I don’t really know,” Elizabeth says, her voice shaking a tiny bit but still loud and clear. “But I know I’m not anybody’s handmaiden.”

  “Come on, Winnie!” Lucy huffs, dragging Winnie by the shirtsleeve through the MPR and right out the double doors.

  “Did that really just happen?” Elizabeth asks, looking like she’s in shock.

  “It totally did,” I tell her, putting my arm around her. “How great do you feel?”

  “Really great,” Elizabeth says, linking her arm with mine. “And also? I’m starving!”

  “Me too,” Alicia says, falling in on the other side.

  “What do you say we get ourselves some lunch?” I say, laughing. “And maybe even sit down to eat it! We are handmaidens no more!”

  Chapter 24

  When Lucy Puts Down Her Pitchfork

  Word about the Great Handmaiden Rebellion—that’s actually what kids are calling it—spreads across Pinkerton like one of those famous California wildfires. And try as she might, Lucy can’t seem to get anyone else on the entire campus to accept the “honor” of being her servant. Except poor Winnie, of course. That girl is probably at home right now ironing Lucy’s underpants or organizing her multiplication flash cards.

  “Way to stand up to Lucifer,” a super-popular seventh grader whispers to me in the library before school. I’ve got a massive poetry project due next week and the whole handmaiden business put me a bit behind. Did you know that poetry doesn’t even have to rhyme? I just learned that this week. It sort of threw me for a loop. How is it even poetry if it doesn’t rhyme? Even if it is poetry, I like the rhyming kind way better.

  “Yeah, good for you,” her friend adds. “That whole handmaiden thing was pretty stupid.”

  “Thanks, you guys,” I say with a smile, turning back to my page full of perfectly rhyming sentences.

  The first warning bell rings and I start packing up my stuff. Just as I’m sliding The Greatest Poetry of All Time—a title that I’m thinking might be a bit of a stretch—back onto a shelf, I spot Lucy sitting at a table on the other side of the library, all alone. She must feel my eyes on her, because right then she looks up and our eyes meet. She doesn’t give me her famous evil glare or start screaming at me and calling me names, which for a scary, heart-stopping minute, I think she might do. She looks so sad I almost want to say something to her, but I have to get to homeroom. I’m one late slip away from detention as it is, and I’m pretty sure my mom’s head would spin right off her neck if I came home with that bit of good news.

  “Have you seen Lucy today?” Elizabeth whispers, taking the seat right behind me in homeroom.

  “I just did, in the library,” I whisper back. “She looks awful, like somebody just flushed her goldfish down the toilet or something.”

  “I know,” Elizabeth says. “I wonder what’s up. Do you think it’s all of the handmaiden stuff?”

  I don’t have time to answer because the final bell rings then, and Lucy walks through the door just in the nick of time. I notice that for the first time since she was appointed, she’s not even wearing her princess apprentice s
ash. But that’s not even the weirdest thing. Instead of standing over some random person and demanding her seat—which I’ve learned since I got here changes almost daily—she shuffles to the very back of the classroom and sits down without causing even a minor scene.

  I hope this isn’t the old calm before the storm, I think to myself. Then I try to forget about Lucy St. Claire and focus instead on how nice it is not being anybody’s handmaiden.

  Chapter 25

  When I Take Lucy for a Ride

  I’m working my bike lock combination and thinking about the banana sandwich I’m going to make the second I get home when I hear this crazy commotion in the car pickup line. Somebody is banging on their horn like they’ve got a drum solo in a parade and screaming like a banshee. I’m not exactly sure what a banshee is, but my dad’s always given me the impression that they’re famous for yelling their heads off.

  I quit messing with my lock and stroll over to see what’s going on.

  “I mean it,” a girl is shouting from a beat-up blue station wagon. “You have exactly fifteen seconds to get your annoying face into this car or I am leaving you here, do you hear me?”

  “I’ll be right there, Libby,” a voice shouts from the crowd of kids who have gathered. “I forgot my science folder and I have a paper due tomorrow, so I need it. Give me two minutes!” I find the face that’s attached to the voice. It’s Lucy, and she’s looking pretty frantic.

  “I’ll give you nothing,” the Libby person bellows, laying on the horn again. She’s the fourth or fifth car in the line and obviously not happy about it. “Just as soon as I can move this car, I’m out of here! I told you, if you’re not ready when I come to get you, you can walk home!”

  “Libby, please, wait!” Lucy pleads. “It’ll take me an hour to walk home, and Mom will kill me because I won’t have time to do my chores. I’ll hurry!”

  “Not! My! Problem! Peon!” Libby shouts between honks, revving the gas pedal with her foot.

  Lucy races up the stairs and I stand there, wishing there was something I could do. I know, Lucy treated me worse than a speck of dirt on a flea on a tick on a rat, but from the looks of this sister of hers, it’s probably all she knows. Lucy is back in way less than two minutes—in just enough time to see Libby make it to the front of the line and then gun her car right out of the parking lot in a smoky cloud of gravel.

  Lucy sits down on the stairs and puts her head in her hands. I’m not even sure why myself, but I walk over and sit down next to her.

  “Your sister seems really sweet,” I say. Lucy looks up and half-laughs.

  “Yeah, she’s a little sliver of chocolate cream pie, that one,” she says, wiping at her eyes.

  “Where do you live?” I ask her.

  “Over on the west side,” Lucy says.

  “On Windham Hill?” I ask. That’s the fancy part of town where the houses look like castles and you get a country club membership just for living there.

  “No, not anymore,” Lucy says, sniffling. “I live in one of those apartments over behind the mall now.”

  “The ones that have the giant pool with the super-high diving board you can see from the food court?” I ask.

  “Those are the ones,” Lucy says, obviously not as impressed as I am by that diving board.

  “Maybe you could take the bus?” I suggest. “I know for a fact that it goes right by there.”

  “It’s just, well, I’ve never taken the bus before,” Lucy admits, looking embarrassed and a little scared. “My parents used to have somebody pick me up.”

  “Well I’m a pro,” I tell her. “My dad thinks every kid should know how to get around on her own, so I’ve ridden that thing all over town. I could even go with you. You know, to make sure you get home okay. They have a bike rack right on the front of the bus.”

  “Why would you do that for me?” Lucy asks, looking more than a little surprised.

  “Why not?” I say. “I’d want somebody to do it for me if it was my first time!”

  “That’s really nice of you, Maggie,” she says. “Thanks.”

  By the time we both get all of our stuff together, Pinkerton is practically a ghost town, but the stragglers who remain stare us down, looking pretty confused. I’m guessing they think Lucy is going to unhinge her jaw and swallow me whole, like one of those big snakes you see on the Jungle Channel. But I really don’t think she will. I think she’s more like a toothless piranha—you know those tiny fish down in South America that swim in lakes and look perfectly harmless until they open their mouths and you see their ginormous set of choppers. I saw a MeTube video of a pile of those little guys gobble up a deer in about thirty seconds. I really wish I could unsee that.

  I walk my bike alongside Lucy down the sidewalk to the bus stop.

  “Here we are,” I say, propping my bike against the metal shelter and scrolling down with my finger until I find our bus route.

  “And it looks like the bus should be here in about five minutes,” I add, checking my watch. “We just made it.”

  “I always thought this was just a rain shed,” Lucy says, looking around. “You know, for people to get out of the rain?”

  “Um, yeah, well, it’s good for that when they’re waiting for the bus,” I say, realizing that this kid’s got no street smarts at all.

  Our bus comes and the driver is so sweet, he hops right off the bus with a smile and lifts my bike onto the rack for me.

  “Thank you, kind sir!” I say, with a fake British accent that doesn’t sound anything like Princess Mimi. Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying.

  I pay for both our fares since it’s only a couple of bucks and then walk Lucy over to a pair of empty, forward-facing seats. I don’t know if she’s a kid who gets carsick, so I’m not taking any chances with the sideways seating.

  “So this is the bus,” I say, looking around at a guy in a business suit reading the paper, a woman in a Burger Barn uniform, and a teenage boy who probably goes to Franklin High, if I had to guess. “It’s great and it’ll take you just about anywhere you need to go,” I say.

  “You know, we just moved into an apartment,” Lucy tells me.

  “Yeah, you mentioned the ones behind the mall?” I ask, not thinking too much about what she’s just said. “Those look pretty cool. And honestly, I’ve had dreams about that diving board! Is it awesome?”

  “My whole family,” Lucy continues, ignoring my very important diving board question. “We’re squished into a two bedroom with one tiny plastic shower and hot water that only works for about fifteen minutes. So of course Libby always takes the first shower.”

  “Oh, well that’s…” I try to chime in, but I realize Lucy isn’t done.

  “You heard about my dad’s company—well, really my grandfather’s company that my dad was in charge of—it went out of business,” Lucy says, looking down.

  “Oh no, I didn’t know that,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Lucy continues. “The bank sold our house on the courthouse steps—which I don’t really get because it never moved from where it’s always been.”

  “I think that’s a term they use for…” I try to interject, but it’s no use.

  “It all happened a few months ago, right before Libby’s sweet sixteen party where one of Becca Starr’s backup singers was supposed to perform,” Lucy explains. “Of course that all got canceled and some people even said my dad might go to jail for bamboozling money or something like that.”

  “I’m so sorry, Lucy,” I finally say. “I had no idea.”

  “Yeah,” she says, staring off. “You’re pretty new at Pinkerton so you might not know this, but I was the girl who had the biggest birthday parties and gave the best goody bags ever. Like, for my tenth birthday party, my mom rented out Spa Serene—the whole entire place—and every girl at my party got mani-pedis, massages, and facials. And the goody b
ags were sequin purses with real rhinestone tiaras in them.”

  “Wow, that’s really…” I say, trying to find the right words. For my tenth birthday, we bobbed for apples and had a three-legged race, and the gift bags were brown paper lunch bags—Stella and I painted everyone’s names on them and they came out really cute—with plastic rainbow Slinkies and a Bubble Pop inside. “That’s, just, wow.”

  “Yeah, well, now I’m sure no one’s ever going to want to be my friend because what are they going to get out of it?”

  Okay, that’s officially the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. And from Lucy St. Claire. I think my heart is about to crack open, I feel so bad for her. Not because she lives in a cramped apartment, or because her dad lost his company, but because she thinks she has to pass out presents to get friends. Then I realize something.

  “Is that why you came up with the handmaiden thing?” I ask her. “To get friends?”

  “Well, I guess I figured you guys would have to be my friends if it was official royal business,” Lucy explains, looking at her feet.

  “Really?” I ask, and then I wish I could take it back. Lucy’s face turns really red and she looks out the bus window.

  “I know, it was a pretty bad plan,” she says. “But as soon as we lost all of our money, my two supposedly best friends—Kat Witherspoon and Remi Reynolds—dropped me like a dirty diaper. I didn’t know what else to do…”

  Lucy trails off, and of course I think about Stella. My best friend might think she knows everything about everything and sometimes she drives me nuts when she sings her made-up song lyrics over the real ones so I can’t hear them, but she’s as loyal as any dog you ever met. Stella wouldn’t care if I lived in a tent or had to Dumpster-dive for my lunch. Because, really, what did that have to do with anything?

  “Well, I’m sorry about Kat and Remi,” I tell her. “That stinks.”

  Lucy nods.

  “Ooh, your stop is next,” I tell her.

  Lucy starts gathering her stuff.

  “You probably have other plans, but if not, would you want to come over this weekend for a swim?” she says, not looking at me. “I mean, Libby will probably be there, and you already got a glimpse of that, but I could make us some lunch and stuff and maybe she’ll be off with her boyfriend or at the mall or something…”