Nothing, Margalo could have answered, taking the questions in order, No, Yes but not that much.
“But can’t you see, Margalo, how bad your attitude is for all of us?” Ms. Hendriks asked.
“What about how bad being robbed has been for me?” Margalo asked the teacher.
“You’re saying you’re the only important one in the room? More important than the rest of us? Put together?”
“Talk about selfish.”
That was about more than Margalo was willing to put up with, even if everybody hated her for all of the next four years. Three, actually, she reminded herself. Three years and fourteen weeks, that was all that was left of high school: She could make it. She said, “You might think about whether it’s good for anybody, or even the whole school, when everybody takes it for granted that people will rip you off.”
“Oh, come off it.”
“Get real.”
“Who cares?”
“I think I do,” said a deep voice from the other side of the auditorium. The deep voice was none they’d ever heard before, not in this class; it was the voice of somebody braver and wiser than the rest, somebody grown up and experienced, trustworthy and strong, Abraham Lincoln or Gandhi.
Everybody turned around to see who it was, but it was only Hadrian. He cleared his throat, and stood up, and suddenly nobody was quite sure just exactly what this Hadrian Klenk person was like. “Margalo,” Hadrian said, like a lawyer in a courtroom. “Tell me about that money. How much was it?”
Margalo looked across over the raised faces to meet Hadrian’s eyes. “Two hundred and nineteen dollars.”
“That’s all? I get more than twice that from my grandmother every Christmas.”
“Well aren’t you the hotshot rich kid.”
Ms. Hendriks tried again. “Isn’t that enough, people? It’s time to stop all this, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, isn’t it time Margalo just accepted what happened?”
Part of Margalo wanted to do that for the sake of this teacher who really loved drama and probably needed to keep her job. But still, “I’m not giving up,” Margalo said to Ms. Hendriks.
“Stopping doing something isn’t necessarily the same as giving up,” Ms. Hendriks told her.
Hadrian’s deep voice overrode them all. “Tell me about this two hundred and nineteen dollars,” he said.
He seemed taller, taller than when he entered the auditorium, taller than he looked onstage. Instead of being younger than anybody else in the room, suddenly it seemed as if Hadrian was older. Even his hair—even though it still stuck up in cowlicks, as anybody could see—seemed to be thick and well cut, like a TV lawyer.
Because Hadrian could act.
Margalo had known that since last spring’s eighth-grade play, but now she really knew it, knew it in her bones. She told this taller, older actor Hadrian the truth:
“Whoever robbed me took my money, as if it didn’t belong to me, as if I hadn’t earned it and saved it up. But it was my money, that I earned by working, and they knew it. It was my money that I need for college—and they knew that, too. Whoever it is, even if he can get away with it, I’m not going to stop trying to figure out who it is. And I’m not going to forget about it either.” She shrugged, thought, and added, “Even if everybody says I should and wants me to.”
“I never said you should.”
“We never said we want you to.”
“What’s wrong with you, Margalo? How awful do you think we are?”
“Except somebody has been that awful, hasn’t he?”
Ms. Hendriks knew when she had lost. “That’s all for today,” she announced, even though it was way early. “Monday I’d like to see some real effort, from everybody. Have a good weekend. Rest up. Drill your lines,” Ms. Hendriks said, but as if that was something she didn’t have much hope for.
Margalo was the first to leave the room.
Hadrian caught up with her before she turned the corner. She’d heard footsteps running after but hadn’t turned to look. She’d expected Ms. Hendriks, telling her not to bother coming to rehearsal Monday, or ever again, since she was single-handedly ruining the whole production. If not Ms. Hendriks, she’d expected one of the junior girls, talking about school spirit and consideration for others and the unfairness of blaming everybody for what one person did. She didn’t at all expect Hadrian Klenk, since he had already done her a huge favor by giving her the chance to say what she was truly thinking. What more could he do?
“Wait, Margalo,” Hadrian said.
“Thanks,” she said, not stopping. “That was—thanks.”
They walked along side by side. He came only about up to her neck, and she couldn’t believe how tall he’d looked just minutes earlier. “You can act,” she told him. “I mean, you can really act, not like a high school actor.”
“I think maybe,” he agreed, his cheeks turning a pleased pink. “My parents want me to be a computer genius, so it’ll be a disappointment to them. There’s no security in acting,” he explained.
Actually, Margalo thought his parents could be right. Hadrian Klenk was short and sort of funny looking, and he had one of those superior intelligences that you can’t miss. He was much better computer-genius-multimillionaire material than leading-man material.
Mikey waited for Margalo by the main entrance to the building, inside for warmth on this chilly March afternoon. They were going to the bank, of course. The week after she’d been robbed, Margalo had started right off saving again. “Maybe they can take my money, but they can’t make me change my program,” she told Mikey. As soon as he saw, Hadrian veered away towards the lockers, even though he was already carrying both his knapsack and his jacket. “See you,” Hadrian said.
“Isn’t your mother going to be waiting?”
“She called and said she’d be a few minutes late.”
“That’s not true.”
Hadrian shrugged. He didn’t care if she knew he was lying. “Mikey’s angry at me.”
“About what?”
“Those phone calls I made last year.”
Margalo looked him square in the eye. “I didn’t even tell her yet.” That surprised him, but she went on before he could get too hopeful. “I’m going to today. I’ve known since fifth grade you had a crush on Mikey.”
Hadrian answered, “It’s not you I’m worried about.”
“Then why don’t you apologize to her and get it over with?”
Hadrian shook his head. He shrugged his skinny shoulders. He backed away from her.
More than a little exasperated at his idiocy, Margalo just went on ahead to join up with Mikey, who asked her, “How much are you putting in the bank today?”
“Two hundred and seventy-two, plus change, and that gives me over seven hundred, which means that after today I can invest another five hundred.”
“You don’t sound particularly interested.”
Margalo shrugged. She didn’t know that she was particularly interested. They left the building, in step, and started down along the sidewalk into town. After a few minutes Margalo said, “It turns out it was Hadrian who kept calling you up last spring. Remember?”
For a few steps Mikey didn’t say anything, then, “That was him? The guy on the phone last year? My anonymous caller was Hadrian Klenk? My secret admirer?” Each time she said it, she sounded more outraged.
“I always said Hadrian had a crush on you.”
“Then why did he stop calling?”
“How would I know?”
“You could have asked him. So it was Hadrian? Who’d have guessed it?” Mikey said. She gave a couple of seconds’ more thought to this unforeseen development and concluded, “Bummer.”
“He said you liked talking to him.”
“I kind of did,” Mikey said. “But I liked it better when I didn’t know it was Hadrian Klenk.” Then she added, admiration in her voice, “You solved the mystery.”
“Not the one I was trying to solve.”
&nbs
p; They walked a little farther in silence, past the restaurant where Margalo would work that evening, where a man smoking in the narrow alley waved to Margalo. He wore a stained white apron wrapped around his waist. Margalo waved back.
“Who’s that?” asked Mikey.
“Angie. The cook.” Margalo fell silent again.
Mikey knew she wasn’t the most perceptive person around, but she thought she could figure out what was turning Margalo so quiet. “I can’t think of any way to find out who stole your money,” she said. “I’ve been trying.”
“I can’t either, and I’m supposed to be good at this. And now Ms. Hendriks thinks I should forget about it, to help the play, and everyone agrees with her. Or almost everyone. The play’s not going well.”
Mikey had never heard Margalo sound so dispirited, or defeated, either, not in all of the—she did the math quickly—four and a half years she had known her. Not even in seventh grade. This started to get her angry. “They can’t do this to you.”
“Hadrian can really act,” Margalo said then.
Mikey couldn’t work that out. “Non sequitur,” she objected.
“That’s Latin!” Margalo protested.
“Meaning, it doesn’t follow, it’s not logically connected,” Mikey told her.
“Sometimes you are really irritating,” Margalo said.
Mikey had thought of something she could do. “I’m cooking breakfast tomorrow. I’ll tell Aurora.”
– 12 –
Mikey the Fist
Mikey thought of herself—when she did think about herself—as like a rock that got thrown at things, to knock them out. Bad things, of course, and admittedly a self-propelled rock, but that comparison sounded about right. Or maybe she was like a punch that got thrown, or maybe she was like a tennis racket used to send the ball off on a winning shot. Pow!
The fist was most like it, she decided. Unless she was . . . not a knife, knives were too small and sneaky. She was a sword, one of those gleaming, sharp blades heroes wielded. The only story she had really liked when she was little was the one about the Gordion Knot. The Gordion Knot was so complex and thick, so complicated and intertwined, that even the wisest men couldn’t unravel it. They all came to try, and they all failed. It was a puzzle that nobody could solve. Then along came Alexander the Great. He walked around it, studying it, figuring it out. Then he raised his sword and cut right through it. Slash! And that was the end of the Gordion Knot.
Slash! Pow! That was what Mikey was like, that was what she did. And that was what she was going to do about Margalo’s money. She was going to go in there and—Pow! Slash!—take care of things.
How she didn’t know. All she knew was that nobody should be able to get away with telling Margalo to forget about something because it didn’t matter to them. Nobody should be able to get away with making Margalo feel as bad as Margalo was feeling, so bad that she wasn’t even thinking of ways to get even. Usually Margalo was a thinking machine, but not now. Usually Mikey counted on Margalo, but now Margalo needed to count on Mikey. Mikey had no idea what she was going to do, but she sure planned to do something.
The first something was to sit Margalo down and get her talking, because Margalo talking led right to Margalo thinking. That meant a pre-first something, which was Saturday breakfast at Margalo’s house. And that meant a pre-pre-first something, which was telephoning Aurora to see what supplies she didn’t have. Mikey was already so impatient at all this pre-planning that she almost bagged the entire operation. But this was Margalo, so she didn’t.
Because it was Friday, Mikey’s father was taking Katherine out for dinner, just the two of them. He entered the kitchen at seven, showered and shaved, wearing a pair of dress slacks and a tweed jacket. “You look good,” Mikey told him.
He came over to where she was chopping onion and garlic for a marinara sauce and put his arm around her. “I’m happy. I like being happy,” he added, unnecessarily. Then he asked, “What would you think if I got married? I mean, you and me, if we married Katherine. I mean, if Katherine wants to marry me, if Bobby and Phil don’t object.”
Mikey decided not to ask his advice about Margalo. Besides, at her age she should be able to take care of things herself. She put her arm around her father’s rib cage, since he was too tall for her to put it around his shoulders, and told him, “I’d put my money on her saying yes.” But what kind of a world was it when she was trying to allay her father’s self-doubts about proposing marriage to a woman who was obviously crazy nuts about him?
Although, she preferred his doubts to her mother’s confident, been-there-done-that, know-it-all-already attitude. Although, since her mother was happy with Jackson and her father seemed happy about Katherine, it looked like both approaches could work.
As soon as her father’s car had pulled away she called Margalo’s house. Of course it was Margalo’s younger stepsister who answered. “Mikey?” Esther always knew it was Mikey calling. Unless she answered every phone call that way, saying “Mikey?” instead of “Hello?” “Margalo’s not here,” Esther said. “She’s got a job. Dishwashing.”
“I know that. I want to talk to Aurora.”
“Do you want to hear about my Science project?” Esther asked. “And I have a friend for a sleepover. Georgie.”
“A boy?” Mikey asked. You could never predict how Aurora and Steven felt about things, except that a lot of the time it wasn’t the same way most other people felt.
“I knew you’d think that,” Esther giggled.
“Tell Aurora I want to talk to her.”
“Georgie’s a girl.” Esther settled in to tell Mikey all about it. Another disadvantage to having somebody think you were wonderful was the way they assumed that if they admired you, you had to like them back and just as much. “She’s my second best—”
“Esther,” Mikey warned.
“She’s good in Math,” Esther offered.
“Save it,” Mikey advised.
Esther had been admiring Mikey for years, so she knew when to give up. “Are you coming over tomorrow morning? You can meet Georgie. I’ll get Aurora.”
Mikey was beginning to wish she’d made this phone call after she’d eaten dinner. But Aurora was efficient on the phone. She almost never chattered, and when she did she preferred to chatter with her children or her husband, not somebody on the phone. “I’ll make pancakes,” Mikey told her.
“We like pancakes.” Not only did Aurora not chatter on the phone, she also didn’t cook. Her usual breakfasts consisted of cold cereal and frozen juice. “But not with things in them. No berries. No chocolate chips.”
“Do you have flour and milk?”
“Hang on, I’ll—Yes, we do.”
“Sugar?” With Aurora’s kitchen, you had to make sure.
“I think so—Yes.”
“Good,” Mikey said.
“That’s it?” Mikey could hear that Aurora was smiling. For some reason Mikey had always amused Aurora, which Mikey didn’t get, but she didn’t mind it either.
“I’m bringing syrup,” Mikey told her, “and butter, and eggs.”
“See you in the morning then,” Aurora said, still smiling away.
“Early,” Mikey said, and hung up.
When Mikey Elsinger said early, she meant early. It was seven o’clock on a clear, cold morning when she walked her bike down the narrow cement path to Margalo’s back door, carrying a knapsack filled with eggs, butter and syrup.
In the kitchen she found Stevie about to serve himself and his little sister bowls of cold cereal. Lily sat in her bumper seat at the table, waiting for the meal to be set in front of her. Lily was the youngest child and she knew how to get herself taken care of.
Stevie had climbed up on a chair to reach into the cupboard. He turned around when Mikey knocked, climbed down to let her in, and then—intent on his breakfast—climbed back up onto the chair.
“Stop!” Mikey cried.
Both of their faces turned to her. Their hair was s
leep-rumpled and they had big trusting eyes, like some dogs do. Stevie had furry slippers on his small feet, Lily wore a faded blue cotton nightgown with yellow chickens printed on it and her feet were bare—When they turned and stared at her, not afraid, not even alarmed, made curious, not cross and confused, by unexpected events, Mikey could see why people liked having little children around.
“Hi Mikey.”
“Hey Mikey.”
“Pancakes,” Mikey announced.
“Only me and her are up,” Stevie reported.
“Then you’ll have to set the table,” Mikey told him. She began preparing the batter, meanwhile heating the heavy iron frying pan that was the nearest thing Aurora had to a griddle and putting the tin of maple syrup into a pan of water over a low flame. When everything was ready to go, Mikey sent Lily off to wake up Margalo. Then she sat down at the table across from Stevie. They stared at each other, until he announced, “I like pancakes.”
“I know.”
“I like our syrup better than yours.”
“No you don’t.”
“Yes I do.”
“No you don’t. Mine’s better.”
Actually, Mikey enjoyed the kind of stupid conversation you could have with little kids, especially boys. She was getting a lot of practice in with Katherine’s sons.
“Nunnh-unnh.”
“Then I guess you don’t want any of it today,” Mikey said. She watched him work his way through that, trying to find a way to have his family pride and eat real maple syrup on his pancakes at the same time.
“I have to have what you brought. Because you brought it,” he explained.
Esther, of course, burst out of bed and down the stairs to the kitchen when she heard that Mikey was there. “You didn’t let me help,” she complained. “You keep saying you’ll teach me how to cook and you keep not letting me help.” A small, pale girl in checked red-and-blue pajamas trailed in, Georgie, it had to be. “This is Mikey,” Esther told her. “She’s my sister’s friend, not yours.”
Mikey turned to the stove and started dropping pancake batter into the pan. She knew that Margalo would be the last one down.
Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? Page 15