Bad Girls in Love (20 page)

“You make up stories?” Cassie asked Margalo, immediately curious. “Do you write? Are you any good?”

Mikey watched Margalo decide how she would answer that question.

I
t snowed Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, a fine, steady snow that the wind sent drifting across plowed roads. They didn't get a snow day out of it, but they did get a delayed opening. Late opening meant confusion and chaos all day long. All the classes were shortened to half the usual time, so nobody was quite sure who was supposed to be where, or when, and the bells—which were electronically programmed for a normal day—had to be manually rung. Everybody already knew that human beings are not as efficient as electricity, and the bells offered more proof of that. People came to school ready for chaos on Wednesday morning, two hours later than usual, planning to enjoy themselves.

Cassie stopped by while Mikey and Margalo were stuffing their jackets into their lockers, to say, “This is gonna be fun,” as if she meant it. Then she added, in case they got the wrong impression, “As much fun as school can ever be. All these
little rooms, little boxes—did you ever think of how much classrooms resemble boxes? With the lids on?”

“No,” Mikey said. “I never did. I don't think I will, either.”

For the cold day Margalo had dressed in a long green corduroy skirt, with a flowery blouse on top, and she knew she looked old-fashioned, and she also thought that old-fashioned looked older, too, as in more mature. Mikey that day wore a V-necked tennis sweater, white with blue and red stripes at the bottom, over a dark blue turtleneck. Margalo commented without thinking, “Nice outfit.”

“The fashion police approve,” Mikey said, sarcastic.

“I mean you look organized,” Margalo said.

“It's too preppy for me,” Cassie remarked.

Mikey denied that. “Am not.”

Cassie ignored her. “Must be the CK jeans.”

“Tell you what,” Mikey said, spreading her feet and putting her hands on her hips. “Let me tell you,” she said, winding up for an R&R.

Margalo stepped back to enjoy this. She always liked to watch Cassie dangle the bait and Mikey rise to it and then, usually, swallow it whole—after which she often jerked Cassie into the water, the fish that got the fisherman.

Mikey folded her arms across her chest and started. “The urban look, you know? Urban black. Arty. The
I'm wearing black because I'm so sad and wise and generally superior to the rest of you clodpoles
. Black boots, black tights, black jeans, black tops—and why women make up their eyes to look like
Egyptian paintings, putting that thick black stuff—” She turned to Margalo.

“Kohl,” Margalo supplied.

“Trying to look like something they're not, like they're exotic or on the stage or like they've been around . . .”

This was a new R&R topic, and Mikey hadn't refined her thoughts on the subject so she was stumbling around a little, looking for the flow.

“What you arty types wear is just another uniform,” Mikey said. She was about to get going on that subject, when they noticed a curious kind of quiet coming down the hall at them. Like dominoes falling over, each domino knocking the next one over, the students crowding the hallway with noise fell silent, one after another, the silence moving from the big entrance doors next to the
A
lockers down through the alphabet toward the
Es
.

“Whazzis?” Cassie asked them. But as soon as they turned and looked, they could see what it was. Or, who.

A young man—actually, a boy, as they looked at him more closely—marched down the hallway. He wore a down vest, jeans, work boots, and a determined expression. He was a perfectly ordinary boy, sort of cute, with a short nose and broad cheekbones, thick, short hair—and older.

“What do you bet Doug?” Margalo murmured to Mikey.

“Oh, I hope so,” Cassie said softly.

“Where's Ronnie?” Mikey asked.

Ronnie stood in front of her locker among a group of
friends, a couple of whom wore shoes that Margalo recognized. Ronnie's shiny, dark hair rested on the blue shoulders of the team jacket. She saw the young man before he saw her, and her eyes widened in alarm.

He strode on down the hallway—people stepping aside to let him go through—scanning faces to find the one he was looking for. He was bigger than the seventh- and eighth-grade boys—bigger arms, bigger legs, taller, wider chest, thicker neck, longer feet—bigger and stronger, and he walked like someone who knows where he's going, even though they could all see he didn't know exactly where he was going.

Then he saw her. “Hey, Babe,” he called. This was a confident greeting, but his voice didn't sound confident. “Look who's here,” he said, spreading out his arms.

Ronnie pretended not to hear him. She pretended to be in some deep and fascinating conversation with Annie Piers—the only friend who hadn't slipped back into the crowd of students in the hallway when they heard the approaching silence and saw Doug. Annie stood in front of Ronnie with her books clutched up against her chest, nodding her head at whatever Ronnie was saying, nodding even when Ronnie wasn't saying anything.

Nice people with good manners went on to their homerooms. There weren't very many of those, so the hallway stayed crowded with normal, not-so-nice people who wanted everybody to think they had good manners, trying to look
like they were talking to one another. Mikey sidled up as close as she could get to Ronnie's locker, and Margalo went with her. They didn't want to miss anything. Cassie stuck with them.

“Babe,” Doug said in a louder and deeper voice than middle-school boys possessed. “I wanna say, no hard feelings.”

Then he seemed to notice there were other people around. It was Annie he focused on. “Do you mind?” he asked her. “This is a private conversation.”

Annie glanced at Ronnie and clutched her books tighter. “I have to . . . it's . . . I'll see you,” she mumbled, backing off, then turning around to disappear into the crowd.

This left Ronnie alone, her chin raised, her dark hair gleaming. She looked like Bambi's mother, noble and helpless. She looked like Joan of Arc, defiant and helpless. She looked right at Doug and then over his shoulder, looking down the hall, moving farther along the alphabet.

Margalo turned to see where Shawn Macavity leaned against his locker door, watching Ronnie. This was better than any soap opera she might have watched if it had in fact been a snow day. Margalo turned back to Mikey's eager face, and both of them raised their eyebrows—eyebrows up, eyebrows down—in anticipation.

Doug came close to Ronnie and leaned one muscular arm beside her head, resting the palm of the hand against a closed locker. “I like to say my goodbye's in person,” he said. “Also, you have my jacket.”

“I didn't want it anyway.” Ronnie pulled one arm free of the jacket and let it fall off of one shoulder, while she got her other arm out of it. The jacket dropped onto the floor and lay there like a dark blue puddle with the name
Doug
floating on it.

Doug bent down and picked it up. “That's more like it,” he said, as if announcing a victory. “Thanks a lot, Ronnie,” he said to her back. “You were a whole lot of fun.” Then he looked around at his audience, hesitating before he added the finishing touch to his thought.
“Not.”

By this time nobody was pretending to be doing anything else but watching, and Doug watched back now, scanning the faces. “Which one of them will you go to this dorkmobile dance with now, Babe? She's available, guys,” he said, and strode out, strode back down the hall and through the doors, which clanged shut behind him.

Ronnie leaned her forehead against the closed locker next to her open one. Her shoulders moved and everybody could see how distressed she was. Shawn Macavity got to her first. He put his arm around her and pulled her to him. She followed his lead, as if they were dancing a slow dance, rotating until she could bury her face in his shoulder. He bent his head over her, protectively, like Thomas Mendip saving Jennet Jourdemayne in the last scene of
The Lady's Not for Burning
.

Everybody watching was totally amazed and totally surprised. Everyone, that is, except for Ronnie's six best friends, and Margalo, and Mikey.

Everybody knew that when he spoke, what Shawn said
was, “You're going to the dance with me.” They knew it even if they couldn't hear it.

Ronnie raised her face then, eyes shining through tears that spilled down her cheeks.

“When I cry, my nose runs,” Cassie muttered. “And I think I drool, too.”

Ronnie nodded her head and smiled, and everybody thought—from the looks on the faces of the two—that they were watching the first moment of the year's big romance. Everybody, that is, except Ronnie's six best friends, and Margalo, and Mikey.

Margalo restrained herself from asking Mikey, “What did I tell you?” She figured, this couldn't be one of Mikey's happiest moments. She thought, Mikey must be feeling like sort of a jerk. Then she thought,
No sort-of about it
.

But when she looked at Mikey's face, there was that same old goopy expression on it. Mikey was looking at Shawn Macavity as if he was some big hero who had acted with incredible bravery and saved the day, saved the girl, saved the world.

Cassie had slouched off, thoroughly disgusted, but Casey Wolsowski was coming up to say to Mikey, sisters in suffering, “I guess we don't have any chance at all now, do we?”

“What are you talking about?” Mikey demanded, but didn't give Casey any time to answer before she said to Margalo, “You'd think he'd be smart enough not to fall for a pretty face. Wouldn't you?”

“No,” Margalo told her.

*    *    *

Mikey knew what Margalo wasn't saying. She also couldn't help but notice how this new development matched up to Margalo's previous information. But that didn't make any difference to her. She agreed with Margalo that it ought to make a difference—although Margalo didn't say that, either—but she didn't feel any change in how she felt.

Margalo must have figured that out too, because she only talked about Doug, and what high school boys might be like, if he was any example, then about the seminar reading and the science unit test, telling Mikey (again!—as if she hadn't heard this 325 times already) about how interesting Mr. Schramm's tests were, and how fair and how carefully graded. But at least Margalo could talk about something besides Ronnie and Shawn, which was all everybody else was interested in that morning, saying how Ronnie and Shawn had been just friends until—
kaboom!
—they looked at each other and just
knew
.

At the abbreviated, late-opening lunch Casey sat with Mikey and Margalo, not at her usual lunch table among her usual lunch companions, which included Ronnie. “It makes me too sad,” Casey admitted. “And now he's there too. I just can't stand it.”

Mikey knew you couldn't expect someone as special as Shawn Macavity even to notice you, if you were as ordinary as Casey Wolsowski. He hadn't even noticed
her
and she was about the opposite of ordinary, so what did Casey expect?
Mikey was getting ready to give Casey some good advice.

Casey sat drooped over her lunch tray like a daffodil at the end of its life span.

“Don't say it,” Margalo warned Mikey.

“What makes you think you know what I'm going to say?” Mikey demanded.

“I don't usually. But this time I do. So don't say it.”

“Who died and made you the Queen of me?” Mikey demanded.

“Ha,” Margalo said, not even trying to make it sound like a real laugh. She got back to her sandwich, which Mikey was pleased to see looked almost as droopy as Casey.

But Mikey had been reminded. “I have a T-shirt for you. You'll like it. I have almost the exact same one, only not the same color. We can wear them this weekend.”

“That'll be exciting,” said Margalo. “I'm looking forward to that.”

What made her so sarcastic these days? Mikey would have asked, but Casey raised her head to say to Margalo in a totally miserable voice, “They're like in a book, aren't they? Like Romeo and Juliet.”

Mikey didn't give Margalo a chance. “What a mean thing to say,” she told Casey.

“Why?” Casey wondered, surprised into a little liveliness.

“Because it means they'll be dead soon,” Mikey answered. “Unless you plan to gun her down, like Frankie and Johnny. Except she gunned
him
down, didn't she?”

“You don't understand,” Casey told her, cross now.

“Yes I do.” Mikey had cured Casey of the droops and was pretty pleased with herself.