Bad Girls in Love (3 page)

“I'll save you a seat,” Cassie said, passing on by.

“Why does she think because we're in the same homeroom, she should save me a seat?” Mikey demanded.

“She doesn't mean it,” Margalo explained. “She won't do it.”

“Then why does she say she's going to? People,” Mikey said, disgusted.

Being disgusted with people reminded her of something else. “What committee are you going to be on for the play?” she asked Tan.

Tan was rising, and it really was time to start over to the auditorium. She said, “Promotion—you know, getting advertisers for the programs, finding stores that'll let us put up posters. The committee only meets during lunches, and we can sign up the advertisers and ask at stores during the weekends. It's Mrs. Sanabria's committee so you know it's not going to interfere with the basketball schedule,” she said as she joined up with Ronnie Caselli and others from the team.

Watching the cafeteria get empty, Mikey looked at Margalo and smiled, a grim
Let's-look-for-a-bright-side
smile. “The sooner it starts, the sooner it'll be over.”

Like someone about to step into the dentist's office, Margalo tucked her straight, chin-length hair behind her ears and squared her shoulders. “If you say so.” She rose from her seat.

Slowly, reluctantly, they got going, drifting out of the cafeteria, drifting down the hallways, drifting into the auditorium, just two jellyfish riding along on tidal waters.

W
ith the seventh and eighth grades both present, the auditorium aisles were clogged with students, especially the narrow passages separating the rows of seats. People yelled greetings to one another, yelled responses back, gathered together to talk. Groups lingered in the aisles and individuals moved back and forth along the rows. Seated students leaned forward across seats, leaned backward or sideways, whispering for private conversations, speaking loudly if they wanted to be overheard, shouting if they felt like it. Everybody looked around to see who everybody else was talking to, sitting with, looking at.

As Margalo predicted, Cassie hadn't saved Mikey a seat. Mikey and Margalo checked in with their homeroom teacher then took seats directly behind Cassie. Orange streaks in Cassie's artificially black hair were the only color she wore; the rest was black and shapeless—black sweatshirt, black
sweatpants tucked into thick black socks. Cassie turned around to greet them (“Whazzup?”) and to not wait for a response—which made sense since it had been practically all of four minutes, maybe eight, since they'd last met. “This is just like the Oscars isn't it?” Cassie said. “Or would you say it's closer to Cannes?”

“Give it a rest, Cass,” the boy next to her said, twiddling the two silver rings in his right ear. Jason, who wanted people to call him Jace, was Cassie's boyfriend and had been since the start of the year, when a boyfriend, or girlfriend, became as necessary to your public image as having shaved legs or a good working vocabulary of dirty words. Couples littered eighth grade like loose trash in a vacant lot on a windy day—somebody always getting together or breaking up with somebody else, giving everybody else something to observe and talk about, creating a constant need for new notebooks on which to erase newly paired initials.

Mikey and Margalo slouched down in their seats, backpacks on their laps, paying no attention to anybody around them (Mikey), and paying surreptitious attention to everybody, students
and
teachers (Margalo). The 431 students (allowing for a probable absentee rate of about 5 percent) settled down as soon as the principal appeared.

Mr. Saunders ascended the four steps leading up to the microphone. He ran his glance over the audience until the students got quiet, and quieter, and finally fell into a resigned silence. Mr. Saunders was good at principaling, but boring at
assemblies. He always started out with the same announcements about upcoming meetings and events, then repeated his same concerns, about littering, about school spirit, about supporting your teams, about taking responsibility. But he coached the school's two best teams, soccer and baseball—the best, some people said, only if you didn't count girls' teams, or the tennis team—and he kept things running smoothly at school; also, he seemed to think students were OK, mostly.

Mr. Saunders made his announcements and then talked about the scores of last Friday's basketball games, praising the teamwork of the players, claiming, “Winning isn't everything, people.”

Mikey, who disagreed, grunted. Margalo, who didn't want Mr. Saunders noticing them, jammed her elbow into Mikey's arm. Mikey turned her head, just slightly, just enough so Margalo could see the smile she had put on, or at least half of it; and half of that
I' ll-get-you-later
smile was enough for Margalo. She retracted her elbow.

Then came the speech about litter in the bathrooms. Mr. Saunders didn't mention food throwing in the cafeteria or smoking; he didn't need to because everybody knew that when you indulged in either one of those errors in behavior, you were out the door—
boom
—immediate suspension—
boom, boom—
your parents arriving to take you home while you were still trying to think up a good excuse. “I run a tight ship,” Mr. Saunders assured them, his usual speech conclusion. “And that's the way I like it. So straighten out, people. Straighten out and fly right.”

Next, he praised the seventh-grade bake sale offerings—although they weren't half as good as last year's, as every eighth grader knew—and at last he said, “I know how everybody is looking forward to the dance, but don't forget—we also have a play to look forward to, and today our director is ready to announce her cast. Ms. Larch?” he called, looking out over the auditorium as if the drama teacher weren't already planted in the front row, having given responsibility for her homeroom—this was Margalo's guess—to handsome Mr. Schramm.

Ms. Larch taught C-level English classes to the seventh grade and a creative writing class at each grade level, and she was responsible for Drama Activities. She dressed droopy dark—dark reds, dark browns, dark greens and golds—and she draped scarves around herself, keeping them in place with long, old-fashioned hat pins. She wore beginner ballet slippers, with an elastic across the top. She took the microphone from Mr. Saunders and stood alone on the stage, silent, for a long moment, smiling down on her audience. Then, “Well,” she said.

Ms. Larch had been a real actress. She'd appeared on a television soap opera and once had a part in a play that went from Boston to New Haven to Broadway, where it stayed for fourteen months. Her voice was low and husky, like she was a singer in a nightclub. The microphone carried her voice close to each person in her audience, making her public speaking sound like private conversation. It was Ms.
Larch's voice that convinced people she really had been a professional actress. “Lieblings,” Ms. Larch said, spreading out her arms in welcome.

“I'll liebling
you”
Mikey muttered. “Frankensteins is more like it.”

“Frankenstein was the doctor,” Margalo pointed out quietly. “You're thinking of Frankenstein's monster. What you should say is, Frankenstein's monsters, in the plural.”

Muffled laughter spread out around them—of which they were not unaware.

“Oh, what a day this is!” Ms. Larch spread her voice as wide as her arms, to encompass everyone. Then she took a deep breath to announce, “As you know, the eighth grade will be giving two performances of
The Lady's Not for Burning
. This will not be until May, so lest you forget, I ask you to mark it on your calendars. Tell your parents, your friends and relations. The play we have selected is a modern comedy”—Ms. Larch waited for the seventh-grade boys to subside (“Phew, not Shakespeare”)—”and a romance,” she said, her glance daring anyone to say what they were thinking, “about witch hunts.” (“All
right.”)
“It's a play about being different, about the good and the bad in human nature, and about truths that live deep in the human heart.”

“I thought she said comedy.”

“I thought she said romance.”

Ms. Larch ignored the malcontents. “Only the eighth-grade A-level English students have read
The Lady's Not for
Burning
, and they have promised not to give away the story. Let our actors tell the tale, when their time comes. The only thing I will add now, to whet your appetites, is that it takes place in approximately 1400
A.D
.—or if you prefer,
M.E
., modern era—”

“I always prefer m-e,” Mikey said, and dodged Margalo's elbow.

“—in a small English village at the very end of the Middle Ages, or if you prefer, the very start of the Renaissance, so there will be wonderful costumes with swords, doublets, long gowns for the ladies, high boots for the gentlemen.” Her hands flowed, describing these words with gestures. “Lieblings,” she assured them, “I promise you a rare treat.” She smiled down on all of them with barely contained excitement.

“I have to admit, I'd've liked you to be a star in this play,” Mikey said. “I'd have liked one of us to. It's a fame and fortune op. Well,” she amended, “fame, anyway.”

Margalo shrugged, as if she didn't care. And, really, she didn't. Really, in fact, she had been satisfied to read Jennet Jourdemayne's lines in the tryout, and imagine Thomas Mendip. She could still feel how it felt that day, hearing her own voice, saying to her imagined companion, “I have come suddenly upon my heart, and where it is I see no help for.” She could still imagine him standing close before her. Until she tried out for the role of Jennet Jourdemayne, Margalo had not known how powerful imagination could be, how delicious—as real—almost—as dreams.

Margalo brought her attention back to Ms. Larch, who was saying, “I know how eager you are to hear who my coconspirators in this production will be, and we're ready to confess all.” She laughed lightly at her own joke. “So now I'll call on my actors to come and join me here on the stage. But I will not name their roles or give away their parts in the story. Let some mysteries remain, I say. So that we might be open every day of our lives to surprise, and so that curiosity may not die out in us.”

“What's
wrong
with the woman,” Mikey demanded, but in a muted voice. “Hasn't she ever heard of less is more?”

“Maybe she thinks less can't be more,” Margalo suggested.

“Maybe she doesn't think,” Mikey suggested.

“Maybe she likes the sound of her own voice,” Margalo suggested.

“Maybe she should be struck dumb,” Mikey said. “By which I mean ‘mute.' Because she's already dumb.
Now
what's got you going?” she challenged Margalo.

Ms. Larch interrupted them, calling: “Louis Caselli.” Louis strutted from his aisle seat down to the steps, strutted up the steps, but then ruined the effect by stumbling. He staggered into place onstage. Once there, he grinned, a stocky figure in full-legged jeans, Airwalk sneakers, and an outsize T-shirt, entirely pleased to have everybody's attention.

His name and approach had been accompanied by surprised murmurs (“Caselli can't act, he can't even act like a human being”) and cries of encouragement from his friends
(“Go get ‘em, man”); then there was laughter as he staggered, stumbling, strutting to center stage. “Take your bow, Louis,” Ms. Larch reminded him. Louis almost fell over as he bent from the waist while still trying to look up and see how everybody was looking at him.

“Hadrian Klenk,” Ms. Larch said next. “You come on up here right now, Hadrian.”

Hadrian, who was younger than anybody else in the eighth grade, looked lost as he approached the steps. He looked totally confused. Some people groaned softly, which was the usual response to Hadrian Klenk. If there was a wrong way to do something, Hadrian Klenk found it. If there was something useless to say, that's what Hadrian said, and in a weird, creaky voice you couldn't ignore. The groans got shushed—some people really
did
try not to be mean to Hadrian—as he got up to the stage and started wandering off to stand, wavering a little, beside the teacher. Ms. Larch whispered something to him, and Hadrian drifted over toward Louis.

“What is that kid
taking?”
was one question and “Why would she choose Hadrian?” was another.

At that point Hadrian seemed to become aware that there was an audience, and he bobbed his head at them.

Margalo, who thought she had figured out Ms. Larch's casting choices, wanted to applaud Hadrian; he was exactly right for the little priest.

The next names puzzled her, partly because they were
paired, but mostly because they were girls, and if Margalo was correct in her guess, they should have been boys. “Rhonda Ransom—”