Bad Girls in Love (5 page)

Margalo knew pretty much exactly how her friend was feeling, but they had class to get to. “Time's up, Mikey,” she said, and stood. “Mikey?” she asked. No response. “Miykee!”

“All
right,”
Mikey groused. “I hear you. I don't know what's—” Then her face lit up—she had an idea! It was with this same gleam in her eye that she connected for a cross-court forehand winner. Mikey surged up out of her seat and shoved past Margalo, dumping her backpack on the floor. “See you in seminar”—and she ran up the aisle.

By the time Margalo got to the hall, carrying both of their
backpacks, Mikey had made her way to the front of the flock of girls who hovered around Shawn Macavity like seagulls circling a fishing boat. Most pretended to be doing something else—tying a sneaker, talking to a friend, tidying hair, or even, in one case, reading a book, although that was Casey Wolsowski, and she might not have been pretending.

Mikey, however, didn't pretend anything. She walked right up to ask, “How do you spell your name?”

“M-a-c-” His eyes were sparkling and his mouth couldn't stop smiling, although he lounged back against the wall as if all this attention didn't interest him much. His body language said,
I'm unbelievably cool
, but his face asked,
Isn't this great?
“A-v—”

Mikey didn't let him finish. “I mean the Shawn part. What kind of a Shawn are you?”

“S-h-a-w-n,” he spelled agreeably.

“I
knew
you wouldn't be like the rest of them!” Mikey crowed.

Margalo hung back by the auditorium doors, watching this. She didn't want anyone thinking she was included in this scene of mass pursuit, but she didn't want to miss anything either.

“What sport—” was Mikey's next question.

“Listen, Mikey,” Heather McGinty interrupted, with such heavy tactfulness that if it had been a tray, it would have taken
both her hands to carry it. She stepped close to Mikey, as a friend might step close to give private good advice to stop her friend from making a fool of herself. Heather smiled up at Shawn; they were two superior beings dealing with a dork. “Nobody wants to be pestered with questions,” she said to Mikey. To Shawn she explained, “You have to excuse her.”

Mikey smiled back at Heather, but nobody would have mistaken it for friendship.

At that sight Shawn backed off from both girls, one step, two. “Hey,” he said with a
What-can-a-boy-do?
look around at the watching faces, backing up another step.

Heather followed him, one step, two, three. “Mikey doesn't know anything about guys,” she told Shawn, and her eyes promised him without words,
But I do
. She giggled. “She doesn't even like them.”
But I do
.

Mikey paid minimal attention to this and shouldered her way in front of Heather, looking right into Shawn's face. “But what sport do you—”

Rhonda Ransom interrupted to advise Shawn, “You better come with me. Before she punches you. You don't want to mess with Mikey.”

Shawn shrugged, looked at Rhonda, looked at Heather, looked at Mikey, and shrugged again. “We've got science,” he said to Mikey. He was apparently blind to the victory smirk Heather and Rhonda exchanged as they carried him off between them, the three going down the hall like the President and two Secret Service agents. His attendant
blondes kept four alert and wary eyes out, warning off anybody who might come too close to their man.

And Mikey just stood, watching. Not making a snide remark. Not even snorting in disgust. Just watching them walk away from her.

Not Mikey
, Margalo said to herself. She wanted to deny it. But she couldn't. Mikey looked every bit as goopy as the skunk in
Bambi
, or the rabbit—Thumper, that was his stupid name. Margalo could practically see red cartoon hearts circling around Mikey's head. “C'mon, Mikey,” she said again. “Let's get going.”

At last Mikey registered Margalo's voice and took the backpack Margalo shoved at her. They were going to have to motor to get to their lockers and then the classroom before the bell rang.

As Margalo clanged her locker door shut she heard Mikey ask a quiet question. Usually you could hear Mikey through steel walls, down whole corridors, over tall buildings, but this time Margalo had to turn to face her friend and ask, “What?”

“He's beautiful, isn't he?” Mikey asked again.

Margalo stayed calm. “I don't know about that, but he sure is handsome.”

“Who?” Tan wondered as she walked by. She thumped Margalo on the shoulder. “Congrats.”

“Shawn,” Mikey said, her voice licking the name as if it was some delectibly delicious ice cream cone. “Macavity,” she said, and then repeated the whole tasty thing. “Shawn Macavity.”

Tan looked at Margalo. “Is she for real?”

Ronnie Caselli joined them to tell Margalo, “I wouldn't want to do it, but you'll be good,” and ask, “Mikey? Are you all right? You look weird.”

“I'm
great,”
Mikey answered goopily.

“Really weird,” Ronnie said. “What's wrong?”

“Would you call him handsome? Or beautiful,” Mikey answered.

Ronnie didn't even have to ask who. She knew. “Once you look, definitely beautiful. I mean, he's got great hair, and that nose, and his mouth and . . .” She looked at Mikey and giggled in that
I'm-thinking-what-I'm-too-embarrassed-to-talk-about
way, the kind of giggling people do together.

And Mikey did not tell Ronnie to get real. Neither did she stomp on her foot to stop her from being such a typical eighth-grade-girl twit. Instead, Mikey got stone-faced furious. Margalo could guess what her friend was thinking:
Mine
.

Ronnie could guess too, and she didn't stick around to hear about it, not even to say,
Oh, yeah?
Tan went off with her, and Margalo almost went with them. But she didn't.

“What if it only gets more complicated?” she asked Mikey. “People,” she explained, although Mikey hadn't asked her what she meant. “School. Life. What if year after year, the older we get, it never gets easier?”

Mikey shrugged; she couldn't be bothered. “I think
beautiful,”
she told Margalo.

B
y the end of the day, Monday, Margalo was thoroughly bored with the topic of Shawn Macavity.

Mikey was not.

“Why don't you know anything about him? You always know about everyone. Do you think he's Irish? Because of the name. There's McDonald's fast food and Macintosh computers, but those aren't Irish, are they? They're Scottish, so do you think he's Scottish? But he has that black hair. Have you ever seen hair so black? I mean, and not dyed. Have you?”

Other people were not so much bored as mocking, because by the end of the day, Monday, word had spread out along the halls, oozing into classrooms and library and gym:
Mikey Elsinger has a major crush on that guy in the play
. Most people agreed,
This is gonna be good
, because
You know what she's like
.

*    *    *

First thing Tuesday morning Louis Caselli came after Mikey
like a pack of hyenas going after the wounded wildebeest on the Discovery Channel. Approaching her locker, he announced, “Mikey and Shawny, they rhyme,” and smirked.

“Get lost, why don't you?” Margalo asked him.

Mikey was busy looking up the hall, and looking down the hall, to catch a glimpse of Shawn. She didn't even seem to hear Louis.

“Mikey likee Shawny,” Louis said, and exclaimed, “It's poetry!”

Beside him, his cousin Sal chuckled. Another friend, Neal, punched Louis in the arm to express how much fun this was.

Mikey didn't react at all, as if it didn't bother her one bit to have Louis Caselli making fun of her.

Well, it bothered Margalo. “I don't know about you, Louis,” she said in a fake-concerned voice. “I worry about you, how you'll survive. You're such a perambulating nit.”

Louis tried to figure out if he'd been insulted in an important way, a way that would require him to save face. “Oh, yeah?” he asked. He chose the one-syllable option. “Whaddaya mean, nit?”

“As in nitwit,” Margalo told him, and pinched with her fingers in the air over his head. “As in baby lice.” By this time more people had gathered to enjoy the encounter, so that when Louis backed away from Margalo's pincering fingers, the onlookers impeded his retreat. “As in pick nits. Pick”—she pincered, picking near his ear—”Pick”—she picked
toward his hair. Then she just stood there, smiling down into his red face, and concluded, “I mean perambulating nit.”

Louis's mouth worked to come up with a squashing response. “You—,” was as far as he'd gotten when the bell rang, and Sal sympathized with his lost opportunity, “Tough luck, man.”

*    *    *

It was odd how people resented Mikey's having a crush on Shawn. The Barbies and preppies scorned her for ambition. “As if,” they agreed, not caring who could hear them. “As if she has a chance.” The jockettes worried that she would lose interest in the basketball team (possible, in Margalo's opinion) or in the tennis team (unlikely): “What about our
games?”
The arty-smarties wouldn't have minded if Mikey got Shawn, because
that
would show everybody, but they hated to see her acting like everybody else: “She can't mean it. Do you think she's scamming us?”

“Better him than me,” was the general opinion among the boys. “I wouldn't want Mikey Elsinger after me. Scary.”

The only one who didn't seem to mind—or even notice—was Shawn. Overnight, Shawn Macavity had become the most popular boy in school—more popular even than Ralph or Ira or even Jason Johnston, the leading scorer on the boys' basketball team, single-handedly responsible for their 5-1 record. Shawn became the undisputed king of eighth grade, and he took to the role. He was even kingly in the way he ignored the nickname Louis came up with for him, which
some of the other boys also adopted by the second day of Shawn's meteoric rise to total popularity. “Mr. Tooth Decay,” Louis named him. “Get it? Cavity, get it?”

But Louis did not call Shawn this to his face. To his face Louis and the others asked Shawn, Didn't he want to try out for the baseball team, since he'd given basketball a pass, or for the track team? Or didn't he like sports? Had he ever played a sport? That's right, he took gym, didn't he, what was he, a brain? Was he, like, on the honor roll? They hadn't thought so, but what was it, did he take art? “You're, like, some chick magnet,” they told Shawn, and he just grinned, cool, and shrugged his shoulders, careless.

This regal good humor lasted all the way through Tuesday, but by Wednesday, Shawn Macavity expected a little respect from people. After all, he'd landed the big one. He had the starring role.

*    *    *

With Mikey bitten by the love bug, Margalo had no one to compare Shawn-notes with, no one to surprise by the accuracy of her predictions about how long the modesty phase would take to turn into the
I'm-pretty-wonderful
phase, no one to share her desire to prick him like a balloon. Although, she couldn't deny that he
was
handsome; everybody was right about that. Casey Wolsowski declared, “He's what Romeo should look like,” and Cassie said almost the same thing, “He's like looking at art.”

“Art who?” Margalo asked and “Not funny,” was Mikey's
response, then she asked, “What art?” so she could go to the library and look at it.

The good news was: Shawn Macavity didn't have a girlfriend. Which meant: He didn't have a date for the dance. Until he got up on stage on Monday, nobody had particularly noticed him. He never had anything much to say, and he wasn't on any teams. He had nothing to offer a girl, until Monday.

“I'd go to a dance with
him,”
Mikey said.

Margalo tried sarcasm followed by insult. “Big surprise. But would he go with
you?”

Even that didn't get Mikey back to normal. Even Louis couldn't do it, even on Wednesday morning when—with his usual followers—he came up to Mikey's locker and sang, “Way down upon the Shawny River . . .” Or he would have sung it, except Louis couldn't carry a tune. “Far, far away. That's where Mikey's heart is going ever . . .” He cackled with laughter, unable to sing on, doubling over at the sight of Mikey's face.

“You mean Swanee, it's the Swanee River,” Margalo told him. “You massive fraculence.”

“How do you spell that, Margalo?” one of the boys behind Louis asked.

“Look it up,” Mikey suggested. “And I'm getting tired of you,” she said to Louis, but she didn't even smile.