Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do?

by Cynthia Voigt

  Mikey assumed position to receive serve and smiled across the net at the redhead. It was not a kind, warm smile, and she didn’t intend it to be. She wasn’t enjoying this match one bit.

  The serve came flat and fast, skimming over the net down along the center line. Mikey had to dive for it and could manage only a weak return, an easy floater for the net person.

  “Out!” Chrissie called.

  The net player pulled her racket back to let the ball go by her.

  Mikey transferred her not-kind smile to Chrissie. “The serve was good,” she said. “It caught the inside of the line. Your point,” she called across the net. “Sorry about the miscall.”

  Chrissie objected, “I thought it was deep.”

  Mikey shook her head. “I’m almost positive it wasn’t.”

  “That’s what I mean exactly. That’s why I called it out,” Chrissie explained.

  Since Chrissie seemed to have missed the point, Mikey said, “If the ball’s not clearly out, then it’s good,” and Chrissie approached Mikey, as if for the kind of between-point conferring that doubles teams always did, to hiss, “That’s not what Coach Sandy says. You can’t overcall me like that, Mikey.”

  Mikey didn’t bother arguing about it. It was clear that she could overcall, and she had, and she hoped Chrissie understood that she would do it again.

  They won the set, but it didn’t feel much like a victory to Mikey. It felt like an endurance test. It felt like she didn’t care if she won or not, and especially she didn’t care if the tennis team made it to the regional championships if this was the way people were going to play.

  Mikey and Chrissie went to the net and shook hands with their opponents. Then they left the court side by side, the way partners did. Mikey repeated her silent mantra, Day forty-one, end of week nine. And it was the weekend, too; it was Friday. TGIF.

  Another wave of irritation and frustration washed over her as she remembered that Margalo was working that evening. Maybe she’d see if she could work at the restaurant too. She was thinking about this, thinking that she’d have to work for free in order not to take income away from Margalo, thinking that there was no point in working and not getting paid, thinking maybe it wasn’t much of an idea anyway, as she and Chrissie bent over to pack up their tennis bags, when Coach Sandy stormed over. “That’s it, Elsinger. You’re on the bench.”

  Mikey straightened up. What? Where did this come from? Coach Sandy, like any other adult, and especially teachers and especially coaches, figured that no answer meant she should lecture on.

  “The team follows its coach’s instructions,” Coach Sandy said. Chrissie stayed hunched over her bag. Coach Sandy continued. “Because the coach knows the game. I’m keeping this simple for you, Elsinger. The team’s job—and the job of every player on the team—is to do what you’re told. It’s like an army, obedience is required.”

  “This isn’t a war,” Mikey pointed out.

  “Teams function when they work together towards a common goal.”

  “It’s a game,” Mikey continued.

  “I was doing you a favor, trying to teach you how to be coached,” the coach announced. “Now I’m doing the team a favor and getting rid of you.”

  “You’re not doing me any favors trying to get me to cheat,” Mikey said. She suspected there might be some other way to phrase it, which Margalo would have thought of, something that would have made the coach stop and think; but Mikey didn’t know how to say what she was thinking any other way than straight out. “Or the team, either, without me on it.”

  Coach Sandy’s eyes sparked, and her short, curly, highlighted hair practically crackled. She beat her hand flat against the side of her pleated skirt. “Get out of my sight,” she said to Mikey, and then mumbled, just like a kid grumbling at unfair adult treatment, “These hotshot kids. They think they’re such hotshots.”

  Mikey could keep her mouth shut, so that was what she did. She went to the bleachers to watch Mark Jacobs play his singles set, and cheer him on, if cheering him on would help his game. “Good match?” somebody asked her, moving down along the bench to give her room. “Ask Chrissie,” she said, and heard Chrissie say, “We won,” as if that answered the question.

  When she heard about Mikey being benched, Margalo wasted no time on sympathy. “Are you positive your shots are in?”

  “No, but . . . but I’m pretty sure they’re not out. Mudpies, Margalo, just think about it, you’re supposed to be so good at thinking. I have to get myself set up to hit a return shot, and hit a good return shot, hit a winner if I can, and I’m supposed to worry about seeing if a close ball is in or out? Nobody can do that,” Mikey announced. “Not and play her best. So in tennis you call it good unless you’re sure it’s out, because we don’t have linespeople to call for us. Nobody in the county league makes bad calls like that,” she argued, but then, remembering some questions she had had, she repeated with a changed emphasis, “Not like that. Probably Coach Sandy’s going to tell people I’m benched because I don’t have school spirit,” she predicted gloomily.

  “You don’t,” Margalo reminded her. They had breakfasted—poached eggs on English muffins, sausage links, home fries—and walked to the elementary school playground. They paid no attention to the boys and girls playing basketball on the asphalt court on a sunny Saturday spring morning. They went straight to the little-kid swings, which offered the pleasing awkwardness of having to bend their legs at the knees to splay them out to the sides, which in turn made swinging difficult. But this wasn’t about swinging. It was about tennis.

  Mikey settled herself into a low rubber seat. “What would you do about it? If you played tennis and Coach Sandy was your coach and she benched you. Because you wouldn’t make bad calls.”

  “What can you do? I thought coaches were expected to rule with an iron fist. If the team is winning, that’s all anybody cares about.”

  “So you think I should tell her I’ll start cheating? But I can win without doing that.”

  “You couldn’t cheat. Could you?”

  Mikey doubted it.

  “I could,” Margalo claimed. “If I wanted to.”

  “She wants me off the team.”

  Margalo couldn’t argue with that; the evidence certainly pointed in that direction.

  “But the team needs me to win. And they know it.”

  Day forty, Mikey reminded herself, week eight. She took a deep breath to announce, before the tennis players could divide up over the courts for Monday’s practice session, “I want to say something.”

  Everybody turned to look at her, then turned to look at Coach Sandy. Some of the boys batted rackets against their calves in either impatience or unused energy. The girls smiled politely. Coach Sandy was not smiling politely, but neither did she look worried. Maybe she didn’t know the kind of person Mikey was so she couldn’t guess the kind of thing the kind of person Mikey was would do.

  Or maybe she wasn’t worried because she knew there was nothing to worry about.

  It was too late to think about that now, even if Mikey had wanted to. “I want to say that Coach Sandy has benched me. The reason she doesn’t want me playing is because of my calls. Because unless I’m sure a ball is out, I call it in,” Mikey told them, in case there was someone who didn’t already know that.

  They didn’t seem too interested. Probably they already knew she’d been benched. A couple of people said, “What’s your point?” and one asked, barely loud enough to be heard, “Who cares?”

  Mikey said, “I’m wondering what you think about that.”

  Then there was a silence. They looked at one another, not wanting to look at her. Now Mikey began to think maybe she should have talked this over with Margalo, what to say, how to say it. But what other choice was there?

  Coach Sandy was the only one looking at Mikey. Everybody else looked embarrassed. But what did they have to be embarrassed about? Mikey was the one speaking out in public.

  “Well,” said Anne Creh
an, “If you’re not sure it’s out then it still could be. Out, I mean. I mean, it doesn’t have to be in just because you’re not sure. So, why call it in?”

  Mark Jacobs answered this, “Giving your opponent the benefit of the doubt.”

  What did that mean? Did it mean he was on her side? Or was he on the opposite side and just explaining her point of view?

  “It’s not as if opponents don’t do exactly the same thing,” Hal Weathersing said.

  Murmurs of agreement greeted this point.

  “Perhaps I can add a different perspective to the question,” Coach Sandy said. “Perhaps if we look at it from the point of view of the team—that being the way a coach is supposed to think—because we don’t play just for ourselves, do we? We play for a team.”

  This discussion was going the wrong way. Mikey tried to get them to see what she meant. “It’s cheating,” she said. “Or, to be perfectly accurate, sometimes it is.”

  With that she lost them entirely. She could see it. Too late she figured it out. They all felt a little guilty because, like everybody else, they hadn’t been perfect all of their lives, and they wondered about some of their own close calls, as well as remembering—maybe—some deliberately dishonest ones. Mikey tried to change what she’d just said. “I know everybody cheats . . . but—”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “What do you mean, do you mean I cheat?”

  “Who cares? Let’s play.”

  Mikey overrode them all. “But I don’t want that to be my policy. Do you?”

  “What makes you so sure I cheat?” demanded Chrissie.

  Mikey could only smile. You’re not asking seriously, are you?

  But others also began protesting. Who needed some ninth-grade squirt coming in and telling them they were cheaters when they weren’t. Were they? “I’m not. Are you?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” Mikey said. “I mean I shouldn’t be benched because I won’t call what I’m not sure I’ve seen.” She glared at Coach Sandy, who was looking calmly at her, the grown-up in a kid-grown-up confrontation.

  “And when did I ask you to do that?” Coach Sandy asked. “I don’t believe that is what I asked you to do. I believe I was talking about being a team player, and how a player is foolish not to take the advice of an experienced coach. Rather than turning it into yet another authority conflict,” she said.

  Mikey ignored her. “Because that’s not what a coach is supposed to do. Is it?” she asked the gathered squad of tennis players. Most of them were looking at their sneakers now, as if wondering about the quality of the knots—would they hold up to two hours of play?—or fingering the strung heads of their rackets like Sampras between points. Although, a few people were staring right at her, too surprised to look away, like rabbits in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

  Only Mark Jacobs was looking at her as if she was saying something interesting, something he found worth thinking about, something he was thinking about right then.

  “A coach is supposed to teach you to play better, and play fair, and play together if you’re a doubles team. A coach isn’t supposed to care so much about winning.”

  Coach Sandy answered this. “Get real, Elsinger. In the real world winning is what matters. Winning is all that matters.”

  “I don’t call it winning when I cheat to do it,” Mikey said. “And I don’t call it coaching when that’s what you tell me to do.”

  “That’s it!” Coach Sandy slammed her clipboard down onto the ground. “I have had it up to here with you, Elsinger,” with her hand raised flat in front of her eyes. “You are off the team. Off the squad. Out of tennis and my life. Get!” she said. “Go!”

  A surprised silence answered her. Mikey looked around. Nobody was going to protest this, she could see. Well, if nobody else was going to argue, she certainly wasn’t. If they were too stupid to see, or too chicken to say anything, or—and this was not a pleasant thought—if they all agreed with Coach Sandy, she was not about to want to be on their team. She nodded her head, slowly, once, turned her back, and walked away. She walked at her usual pace, not faster, not slower. Their loss. Their problem.

  But she really, really didn’t think Coach Sandy should be able to get away with it.

  “I know, but what can you do?” Margalo asked Mikey on the phone that night. “It’s not as if you can ignore what she said and show up and expect to play.”

  Mikey had never thought of doing that. Now she wondered if she could. She pictured it to herself, and she didn’t see how she could pull it off. “They should fire her.”

  “Of course they should, but they won’t.” Margalo had already pointed this out, and more than once.

  “I could get her fired.”

  “Probably not,” was Margalo’s opinion.

  “Remember Louis Caselli in fifth grade?” Mikey reminded Margalo.

  “This isn’t fifth grade,” Margalo reminded her right back. “This isn’t another student. This is a teacher, and teachers don’t side with students against other teachers. It’s like in a business, if you were the CEO of a business, and somebody’s secretary—or something like a file clerk, somebody way low down on the ladder—came to tell you that her boss wasn’t doing his job right, wasn’t talking to customers the right way—”

  “You mean I have no clout.”

  “Partly that. But also, if you think about it compared to a business, you can see why people might not pay any attention to you. Why would they think you know anything? So you have to get people on your side.”

  “They don’t want to be on my side. That’s what I was asking them.”

  “Well then,” Margalo said. They were silent for a few seconds. “And besides,” she said, “you can still play competitive tennis with the league. You already do that.”

  “I know,” Mikey said. “I know. But still—I’m going to talk to Mr. Wolsowski. He’s my adviser.”

  “Waste of time,” Margalo predicted.

  “Or maybe Mrs. Burke.”

  Suddenly Margalo was tired of being negative. “Mrs. Burke gave really sensible advice about STDs and contraceptives,” she agreed. “She might know something.” Although Margalo couldn’t think of what that might be. But they both admired Mrs. Burke, so, “Why not try her?”

  “Unless—Is it too late to accuse Coach Sandy of stealing your money?” Mikey asked, her voice getting excited at this prospect. “Richard and Sally never confessed, so who would know? Do you think Hadrian would say he saw her doing it? They’d fire her for stealing, wouldn’t they?”

  “See you tomorrow,” Margalo said, and hung up.

  As soon as the phone was back on its stand, it started ringing again. Mikey picked it up. “Margalo?” She wondered what sudden new idea Margalo had had.

  “Mikey?” a girl’s voice asked.

  “Who is this?”

  “It’s me. It’s Ronnie Caselli.”

  “Ronnie Caselli?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why are you calling me?”

  “Margalo’s phone was busy. I want to ask—I want to talk to you two tomorrow. Both of you. At lunch, but . . . Can we go somewhere private? Meet me outside, okay? Because you have to help me.”

  – 17 –

  Everybody Can Use a Little Help

  Mikey had agreed to meet up with Ronnie during lunch the next day, Tuesday, day thirty-nine, but that was about all the attention she had paid to the phone call. “What do you think it’s about?” Margalo had asked when Mikey called to relay Ronnie’s request, and Mikey had answered, “I’m going to ask Dad to drive me to school tomorrow, instead of the bus.”

  “It must be serious for her to want to talk to us,” Margalo said.

  “That way I can see Mrs. Burke before homeroom,” Mikey explained.

  Mikey’s father didn’t mind going half an hour out of his way before work in the morning. What did it matter? A half hour, an hour—He and Mikey had lots to talk about, like how they could add on to their two-bedroo
m house to make room for the new, larger family, and like what kind of a wedding everyone wanted, and where, and when. Mikey didn’t even have to pretend to listen. She just sat there while wave after wave of happiness, tireless as an ocean, washed over her. She was glad for her father, but that didn’t distract her from her own concerns.

  At school she didn’t even stop by her locker before running up the stairs to the second-floor faculty lounge. It was Peter Paul who answered her knock on the door. His bright red t-shirt declared ART MATTERS in black letters, and he looked back over his shoulder to finish what he’d been saying when her knock on the door interrupted him. “You don’t expect kids to know anything, do you?” Then he turned to fix Mikey with a bored glance (not an Art student) and ask, “Yeah?”

  Mikey kept it simple. “Mrs. Burke.”

  “Lillian Burke? She doesn’t mingle with us.” Mikey caught the whiff of cigarette smoke—but this was a No Smoking Zone, the whole building! “You could try her classroom,” Peter Paul advised, and had the door closed before she had a chance to say anything else, if there had been anything else she needed to say.

  “Thanks a lot,” Mikey muttered at the door, and as if they had heard her and thought the feeble sarcasm was funny, laughter sounded from within.

  Luckily, Mrs. Burke was in her classroom, correcting papers with a red pen. The door was open so Mikey walked alongside the rows of desks up to the front.

  Mrs. Burke put down her pen and looked up at her. “Mikey?” Mrs. Burke was a fading person, her hair a fading gold, her eyes a fading hazel, and her body fading into shapelessness. “What is it?”

  “Can I ask your advice on something?”

  “Nothing personal.”

  Mikey thought about it and decided that her question qualified. “I’ve been thrown off the tennis team.”

  “This sounds personal,” Mrs. Burke objected. She might look faded, but she had a crisp mind.