Besides, how can you respond to that kind of question?
By lunchtime Mikey had thought of how. She joined Margalo in the sunshine, sitting on the low brick wall, and unpacked her lunch bag onto her lap, asking at the same time, “What do you think is so wrong with me? Because I don’t agree.”
“Two things,” Margalo said. “One is you’re so self-involved you didn’t even ask about what I wanted to tell you, and two is the way you only think of one answer.”
“One’s all there is. That’s what makes it the answer.”
“Wrong—that’s what makes it an answer. Look.” She passed Mikey a sheet of paper with names written on it, the last two, Hadrian and Margalo, in parentheses. Margalo bit off a mouthful of sandwich—it looked like supermarket packaged sliced ham—so Mikey had to wait until she had swallowed to say, “I thought you had rehearsals.”
“Sometimes we can get away early.”
“Do you really think all of these people would be willing to help me?” Mikey asked, because whatever was wrong with her, it wasn’t being so dim she couldn’t figure out what the list was for. Neither, however, was it being unaware of how people felt about her.
“A lot of them, maybe, would want to help. Ronnie, for example—and Louis owes us. Louis would bring in Sal. Cassie liked doing the posters. She likes being an activist, and Jace—well, Jace might not, it depends on how he and Cassie are getting along that day. But Casey might if she thinks it’s a good cause.”
“It’s a good cause.”
“And I bet Tim will, so probably Felix, too, and that’s already eight.”
“Nine with me.”
“Eight without Jace.”
“Tanisha,” Mikey announced, and Margalo nodded. Encouraged, Mikey suggested, “Derrie? Annaliese? Do you think Shawn Macavity, because it’s sort of a spotlight position?”
“You can always ask,” Margalo answered, “but I wouldn’t.”
“We don’t have to call the lines on every court,” Mikey decided. “I’m going to have to explain things, how to make the calls, how the games are scored.”
“When is the next match?” Margalo asked.
“Tuesday.”
“So we have the weekend.”
“We should start asking people right away,” Mikey said. “What do you think, together or separately?”
“Together,” Margalo decided. “It’ll be harder to say no to both of us.”
That settled, Mikey set about proving that she wasn’t self-involved by asking, “What did you want to tell me this morning?”
“Nothing about tennis.”
“Then, let’s get going,” Mikey said.
They moved off in search of whoever they saw first.
Many students were eating lunch outside on this warm Friday. They were all over the place, sitting in rows on the low wall, sitting in clusters on the grass. Upperclassmen had claimed the seven picnic tables the school had set out for good weather. The school had also set out half a dozen faculty members, who stood drinking water out of bottles in the shade of the trees that had been planted when the school was new, twelve years earlier.
Mikey sighted Tan, having a picnic lunch on the grass with Loretta, just the two of them. Both wore jeans and short-sleeved tees, with sandals that displayed bright red toenails. They sat cross-legged, facing each other, involved in a serious discussion. What were they talking about? Margalo wondered, but Mikey hunkered down on her heels beside Tan and said, “I need you to help me out.”
“I told you, I don’t have any interest in tennis.”
“Excuse me, we were having a conversation,” Loretta said.
“It’s a favor,” Margalo said.
“A private conversation, wasn’t it, Tan?” Loretta said.
“Here’s my idea,” Mikey said before the conversation could veer off course. She explained about teaching people how to call the lines during tennis matches.
This being high school, word had already spread about her being dropped from the team and why, although there were many different versions of that going around, ranging from Coach Sandy being jealous of Mikey’s ability (the way some teachers are made uneasy by intelligent students) to Mikey being jealous of Coach Sandy’s successes (the way some students need to feel as if teachers can’t do anything and don’t know anything either).
“Yes, sure. I’ll do it,” Tan said immediately, but Loretta was an upperclassman, more cautious, more experienced. “You know they’re not going to like it,” she warned Mikey.
“Especially Coach Sandy,” Mikey agreed cheerfully.
Loretta’s warnings continued. “I don’t think you know what you’re getting into.”
Margalo answered that. “I don’t think they know what they’re getting into.”
“I don’t think you want to get mixed up in this, Tan,” advised Loretta.
Tan, however, had gotten mixed up in things with Mikey and Margalo since fifth grade, sometimes on the same side, sometimes not. “But I do,” she said. “It’ll be fun. A lot more fun than sitting around waiting to get older. And Mikey’s in the right about this,” Tan said.
“Suit yourselves,” Loretta said.
“I do,” Mikey said, and, “We will,” Margalo said, and they went off to see who else they could find.
Ronnie found them. Mikey and Margalo were in front of the library on their way to see who was in the cafeteria when Ronnie caught up with them from behind. She put one arm around each of their shoulders—a little awkwardly because Margalo was a lot taller and Mikey so much shorter. “You two!” she said. “I owe you!”
They all stopped, making an inconvenient little island of three in the center of the hallway. People moved around them. If it hadn’t been Ronnie Caselli, there would have been some audible complaints and maybe even some shoving. But it was Ronnie, so there weren’t.
“How can I thank you?” Ronnie asked, glowing with happiness.
In their experience, when Ronnie glowed with happiness it had to do with falling in love with someone. Mikey looked at Margalo. Margalo looked at Mikey. If Ronnie was in the process of falling in love with someone, she’d be pretty useless as a line caller. But Mikey answered her question anyway: “You can be one of the people who calls lines in the tennis match on Tuesday.”
Ronnie’s arms fell back to her sides. “What?”
“You asked how you could thank us,” Mikey reminded her. “You said you owe us.”
“I know, but—”
“Let me explain,” Margalo said. She reminded Ronnie about what had happened to Mikey in tennis and explained how if lines were called by impartial people, it would be fairer for everybody.
“But do you have permission?” Ronnie wondered.
“Why would they object?” Margalo asked. She didn’t answer the exact question, on the principle that it was always preferable to avoid an outright lie. Mikey had already said, “Why would I need permission?” but Ronnie usually listened to Margalo, not Mikey.
“Well, okay, I guess,” Ronnie said. “Who else is doing it?”
“So far, Tan,” Margalo said.
Ronnie smiled then, radiant with white teeth and self-confidence. “I could ask Chet.”
“Chet?” Mikey echoed, appalled.
Margalo told her: “That’s what I wanted to tell you. Ronnie called me last night. Chet’s backed off. He apologized.”
“Not Chet,” Mikey said.
“It’s not like we’re going together anymore,” Ronnie explained quickly. “Although he’d like to, and he’s asked me out for Saturday. Lunch,” she told them. “Only lunch, so I said I would. He says he’s really sorry, he didn’t mean it the way it sounded, but he doesn’t blame me for being upset. In fact, he admires me for it, he says.” She looked happily from Margalo to Mikey and back again. “He’s pretty scared. That was a great plan you guys came up with.”
“I don’t want Chet calling lines with me,” Mikey told Ronnie. “I mean it,” she said, to make sure she had gotten throu
gh.
“Well, all right, but . . . He says he’ll do whatever I want, and I think I’m going to have him take me to the Prom.”
“You’re still dating him?” Margalo asked.
“No, of course not. What do you think of me? Chet knows I’m not, but other people don’t. I really, really want to go to the Senior Prom. I’ll be the only freshman there,” Ronnie explained. Then she looked at Mikey and back at Margalo and admitted, “I know it’s shallow. But what do you want me to say?”
Mikey kept to the point. “I’ll call you about when we’re meeting to learn line calls.”
“I’m busy Saturday lunch.”
Cassie and Casey and Jace and Felix were together in the cafeteria at the usual table. Tim was with them and so was Hadrian. Mikey and Margalo took chairs at opposite ends of the group and at opposite sides of the table. They hadn’t planned this in advance, but they worked it out that way so that they could send the conversation back and forth between them, like a tennis ball.
“Mikey has an idea,” Margalo said, and the heads turned to her to hear what she was saying.
“Listen to this,” Mikey said, and the heads turned to look at her. “What if we had people calling the lines in our tennis matches, like the pros do?”
“Good idea,” said Tim.
“Who?” Casey asked, and, “Us,” Margalo answered. The heads turned to look at her.
“But we have rehearsals,” Hadrian said, dismayed, and, “Not on Saturdays and not always,” Margalo assured him. “Sometimes we can leave early.”
“Plus”—the heads turned to look at Mikey—“Tanisha Harris.”
“Mikey”—the heads turned back to Margalo—“can teach everybody how to do it.”
“Yeah, but it’s not like they’ll give us permission,” Jace pointed out.
“It’s not like I’m asking for permission,” Mikey answered. The heads turned.
“Also”—and Margalo waited until the heads turned back to her—“it’s not like they’d want to make a big scene to stop us, I don’t think.”
“You can count me in,” Cassie offered, and she was echoed by everybody at the table.
Tim was obviously impressed. “I don’t know where you two get your ideas.”
Cassie knew this. “Ideas are easy. Ideas are all over the place. You see something and it gives you ideas.”
“Yeah, like I see one of those Victoria’s Secret catalogs and it gives me lots of ideas,” Jace joked.
“We know,” said Cassie, not joining in the laughter. “We’ve seen your artwork.”
“Yeah, but who’s the one Peter Paul’s saying has the talent to get into art school?” Jace asked her back, and when Cassie answered, “Who wants to go to art school?” Margalo wondered if competitiveness was going to accomplish what common sense, infidelity, boredom and constant quarreling had not yet been able to—that is, cause Jace and Cassie to end their long-term (since the start of eighth grade) romance.
Tim said, “If I have to write an op-ed piece, the topic is by far the hardest part for me.”
“This one popped into my head while I was asleep,” Mikey admitted.
“That’s your unconscious,” Casey explained.
“What would I want with an unconscious?” asked Mikey.
Margalo’s curiosity had been aroused by Tim’s question, and she told them, “To have an idea, I think about where I want to end up, and then my mind goes backwards to find a way to end up there. You know?”
They were so engrossed in this conversation that they were all startled when Brenda Means leaned over between Tim and Felix to ask, “Tim? I’m not interrupting, am I?”
Brenda also wrote for the paper, humorous poems with clever rhymes, about love or the weather, sometimes about styles, of dress or talk or food, sometimes about families, sisters and brothers, parents and grandparents, pets.
Brenda said, “I’m wondering if—I was working on a poem, in the newspaper room . . . But it’s not there now, and I was wondering if you already picked it up? Because it’s not finished.”
Tim shook his head. “What was it about?”
“Oh, spring and a girl whose boyfriend is on the baseball team. I called it Run Home.”
“When did you leave it there?”
“Yesterday. I just forgot about it, and—When I went back just now, because the deadline’s coming up—as you know . . .” She shrugged. “I guess someone must have thrown it out.”
“Don’t you make notes? Don’t you have a draft?” Tim asked.
“No, I just . . . write. Well, maybe, it was on the table, probably somebody just picked it up with some other papers of theirs and didn’t even notice. I’ll ask around.”
“Let me know if it turns up, okay?”
She looked puzzled but agreed, “Okay, sure.”
After Brenda left, Tim turned to Felix and said, “Remember that really good new writer I told you about? Her poem? It sounds just like Brenda’s.”
“I remember.”
“But it was Cathy Johnson who submitted it.”
“You think she stole it? She’s on the paper, isn’t she?”
“A proofreader. But without notes, or without a draft, how can Brenda ever prove it’s hers?”
“What can you do? Accuse Cathy? Throw her off the paper? Because that’s plagiarism, isn’t it? Or does plagiarism have to be copied from something published?”
“I’ll have to talk to Stuart. He can ask Miss Marshall, that’s what advisers are for. We’re not printing it, that’s for sure, so we’ll need something for that space. But about Cathy? I don’t even want to—Why would someone do that?”
“How could someone think she’d get away with doing that?” Mikey asked. “When the paper came out, Brenda would know, everyone would know. So, we meet tomorrow morning to learn how to call lines? Here at school? At nine?”
Cassie objected. “Saturday mornings I sleep late.”
“I’ll call you to make sure you’re up,” Mikey promised. “Meet me at the courts, behind the gym. Let’s go, Margalo. The more people I have, the more courts we can cover.” She rose and Margalo followed her, out of the cafeteria and partway down the hall before they realized they didn’t know where they were going next.
They met up with Louis accidentally. He was thundering down the broad cement staircase, with Sal at his side and Danny Schake right behind them. Louis pretended he didn’t see them, pretending he was engrossed in whatever Sal was telling Danny, but Mikey planted herself right in front of him and he had to stop. He stood on the lowest step, glaring down at them.
Sal and Danny moved on a little ways, then they stopped too. They were curious, since everybody knew how little these three liked one another and for how long. But everybody also knew about the weird bet Mikey and Margalo had going, about getting Louis to pass Math and English, so who knew what might happen next? Sal and Danny were hoping that something might happen, something that might even end up with people getting in trouble, or at least getting into a fight.
Louis took the offensive. “I have until after school. You said, you both said. I’m going to do the work in my free periods.”
Mikey and Margalo just waited.
“It’s not like you’re doing me some big favor,” Louis said, with a glance over at his cousin and their friend to be sure they could see how unwilling a participant he was in this encounter.
“Actually,” Margalo said, “we want you to do us a favor.”
“You owe us,” Mikey pointed out. “You owe us two, three if you count Math separate from English. If you can count as high as that.”
Louis’s face got satisfyingly red, maybe embarrassment, maybe fury, they didn’t care. Either one was equally desirable.
“I did what you asked about Chet,” he reminded them in a low voice.
“That was for Ronnie,” Margalo pointed out, adding, “And for your whole family.”
“For Ronnie’s reputation,” Mikey specified.
“I’m your
bet,” Louis argued.
“Lou-ie! We’re waiting,” Danny called.
Sal said, “Whatsa matter, man? You need help?”
Louis shook his head at them and said to Margalo, “I gotta go.”
“You know,” Margalo said, “if you were tutoring someone in something he didn’t know much about, you could teach him the wrong things. Couldn’t you, Mikey?”
Mikey had never thought of that. “You could.” Already she could think of two ways to do that to Louis.
“You could teach him incorrect spelling and bad grammar,” Margalo suggested.
“Hey,” Louis protested. Then he thought of the argument. “You’d lose the bet,” he reminded Margalo.
“I’d win,” Mikey said.
“And you’d be in a different class from us forever,” Margalo said.
“All right,” Louis said. “So, what is this big favor?” he asked, but as if he couldn’t care less about it. He turned and waved a hand in circles in the air, to show how they were talking on and on and wouldn’t stop, so his friends could see he was cool.
Mikey started to explain. “I was thrown—”
“I already know that and I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t want you on any team of mine.”
“Yes you would,” Mikey said. “If you wanted to win.”
“I’d never want to win that bad,” Louis said.
“Badly,” Margalo said. “Grammar,” she said in answer to the expression on his face.
“All I’m trying to do is get even,” Mikey said.
“Get even with a teacher? With a coach?” Louis wasn’t beyond that temptation. “Let’s get Sal over too. Or is it only me you want?” He seemed to think this might be the case.
“Hey, Sal,” Mikey called quickly. “You too, Danny. Louis needs you.”
They slouched over, cool, and she explained the idea, and Margalo explained why they would have to learn something about how to do it, which meant learning something about how the games were played.
“Yeah, but,” Sal said, looking at Louis for confirmation, “I heard—We all heard you got benched. Insubordination. I thought that was why you walked out on the tennis team.”
Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? Page 26