It's Not Easy Being Bad (3 page)

But,
what was wrong with dogs, anyway?
Margalo would be privately thinking. Dogs always looked good enough. They just looked like what they looked like. And there was certainly nothing wrong with being way smarter than these toads and turkeys, Margalo thought, keeping it in the animal kingdom as she
bobbed her head up and down, just like all the other girls, “Uh hunh, uh hunh,” and giggled like them, too. Sometimes, Margalo wished she was like Mikey, and couldn't even see the way things really were, so that she wouldn't have to spend so much time trying to convince people that she wanted to be just like them.

Now Mikey asked her, “Do you think I should serve lasagne for the dinner? If not, I could do chili. My mother has a good recipe for chili. I could serve it with rice and corn bread, or the lasagne would have Italian bread, and tossed salad with both. What do you think?” Mikey asked again, as if she would ever listen to any suggestion Margalo made. “For dessert, something light—probably a good idea if we're going out for candy, later.”

Candy? Trick-or-treating? Big mistake, Mikey
, Margalo thought to herself.
Not at all cool.

“I'm telling everyone to come in costume,” Mikey concluded.

“Who have you invited?” When everybody declined her invitation, Mikey would have to face reality, and cancel.

“Nobody yet. I'm mailing the invitations. They're RSVP, Regrets Only, and I'm designing them on the
computer. I'm not all that good yet with the graphics program,” Mikey admitted. “Or I could make pizzas, but those are a lot of last-minute work, and besides the best pizzas come from a pizzeria.”

“When did you turn into such a cook?” Margalo asked, trying again to change the subject.

“When my mother left home. What would you do, chili or lasagne?”

Margalo wouldn't do either, because she wouldn't be having a dinner party if she was Mikey and it was Halloween, and it was seventh grade.

“You aren't very enthusiastic,” Mikey pointed out.

“I'm not sure it's such a good idea,” Margalo responded at last. Added to everything else, she'd also heard about a couple of other parties the same night. Rhonda Ransom was giving one, and one of the Heathers had an uncle with a barn that they were turning into a spook house. Ronnie reported that her cousins and all their friends were going to spend the night running around town, egging car windows and front steps. Louis was going to egg Mr. Saunders's house, Ronnie said—or his car; or maybe both—to get even with the principal for picking on him in the first assembly. Ronnie told Margalo that she was going to Rhonda's party even if Rhonda was the hostess.
“Linny's going, too. I'm going as Cher. I think. I found a black wig I look sort of great in.” She giggled.

“Plus, you've got a great body,” Margalo had said, which was what Ronnie hoped to hear.

“Not really,” Ronnie had protested feebly. “Anyway, all a good body means is that guys harass you. Say things, grab you, you know?” Margalo didn't. “So you have to watch your back a lot,” Ronnie explained. “Either that or go around like Mikey, looking like some—sack of flour.”

“Maybe you should try that, if you're so bothered.”

“I think I'll just stick as close to Franny as I can,” Ronnie said. “Nobody hassles her. You're so smart, Margalo, do you know what it is about her?”

She asked but before Margalo could answer, Ronnie had gone on in a rush of words, “I never see you anymore. Let's see more of each other. Gotta go,” and she ran off to join Heather McGinty, who was passing by in the midst of her clique like some cruise ship surrounded by tugboats.

Remembering that, and because she
was
Mikey's best friend, Margalo gave her some unsolicited good advice about her plan. “You know, Mikey, maybe you shouldn't give this party. You haven't mailed out the invitations yet, have you?”

They had left the library now and were on their way to humanities seminar, the junior high enrichment program for the best students, where they were about to start a Renaissance unit.

Mikey looked around for eavesdroppers before she answered, “I'm mailing them Monday. Mom said that about two weeks in advance is the right timing.”

“If you haven't invited anyone, why don't you wait until later?” Margalo asked. “To give your party.”

“This is the best time for me. I don't want to do New Year's, that's for sure. And Valentine's Day is out. I mean, who wants to celebrate Valentine's Day? At our age.”

“But what about your birthday? What about
my
birthday?”

“Is that what you're after? You want me to give you a birthday party? Well, too bad, Margalo. I don't want people to like me just because I'm your friend. Just because I'm your—sidekick. I'm not anybody's sidekick.
And
I've got our bet to win.”

Margalo repeated her main point. “The party's a bad idea.”

“Thank you for your support, Miss Know Everything
Better Than Me, but don't worry about it. I won't invite you.”

“You know I have to take Esther around.”

“Then why are you trying to ruin my party?” Mikey demanded.

*    *    *

How Mikey's brain worked was a mystery to Margalo. Here Mikey was, eating cafeteria casserole—pale, maggoty macaronis mixed with strawberry pink tomato meat sauce, topped by a stiff layer of yellow cheese, with burned bread crumbs over it all—shoveling it into her mouth as if she didn't mind it, at the same time as she was fussing over a fancy menu for her dinner party.

“I want an impressive dessert; dessert impresses people,” Mikey said. “What do you think?”

“I'm not the home ec expert,” Margalo said. She was
not
going to get sucked into this conversation as if she'd changed her mind about what a bad idea the party was.

“For the main course, maybe I'll have Julia Child's Boeuf Catalan,” Mikey concluded. “That was one of Mom's best dishes, and you can do it ahead, too.”

“If your mother liked cooking so much, why did she leave her cookbooks behind when she left?”

“She said she was tired of being a full-time mother. Well, I was tired of it, too, I can tell you that.”

“But she wasn't. She always had her job, even when you were little, didn't she?”

“Whatever,” Mikey said. “That's why we got the cookbooks and the vacuum cleaner. Mom took the silver, of course, but then she's always had a good eye for value.”

“Aurora's the one who's a genuine full-time mother,” Margalo pointed out.

“Anyway, I'm using the cookbooks, so it's not like they've been abandoned the way me and Dad were.”

“Hairballs, Mikey. It's only a divorce. You've been set free, not abandoned.”

Mikey smiled a
Getting-away-with-it
smile. “You could say that.” Then she had a sobering thought. “If my mother figured that out, she might come back!”

“Not likely,” Margalo said. “It's not like her to retrace her steps. Return to the scene of the crime.”

“I like her better divorced, anyway.”

Margalo peeled four long yellow sections of skin from her banana.

Her home life situation settled, Mikey returned to
real concerns. “Then what about Boeuf Catalan, you remember that one, don't you? It's stew with rice cooked in; you loved it. You
will
help me get ready, won't you? Sunday morning?”

Margalo didn't want to have anything to do with this doomed dinner.

“Although, you're not much use in the kitchen,” Mikey added. “Maybe you'd better clean the house. You're good at that.”

*    *    *

A couple of days after Mikey mailed the invitations, Frannie Arenberg approached Mikey and Margalo's cafeteria table. “Is it okay if I sit here?”

Margalo shrugged, smiled, and wished she had some more distinguished sandwich than peanut butter and jelly on supermarket white bread.

Mikey considered the question, staring up at Frannie.

Frannie looked at Mikey's face and just laughed. “It's only one lunch,” she said. “I don't bite.”

“I might like you better if you did,” Mikey remarked.

Frannie laughed again. She sat down facing Margalo and Mikey. “I can't come to your party, Mikey. I'm sorry.”

“Oh. Oh, well. No problem,” Mikey said, and squeezed open her milk carton, jamming in the straw.

Frannie and Mikey had identical lunches on identical trays: two pieces of fried chicken, one ice-cream scoop of rice, and a bright yellow puddle of corn.

“Anybody want some pb and j?” Margalo asked, offering to share because it was the kind of thoughtful thing a nice person did; but she should have known better, because “Absolutely,” Mikey said, and took half of Margalo's sandwich. Frannie did what you were supposed to and said, “No, thanks,” although Margalo would have bet money—if she'd had any money to bet—that Frannie did want it.

“These are the worst lunches I've ever had at any school,” Frannie said, then, conversationally.

“Me, too,” Margalo agreed. “I mean, they look like the worst I've ever not had.”

“But I was home schooled for the last couple of years, so maybe the field went into a decline while I was gone.” Frannie ate her chicken with a fork and knife, not with her fingers. Margalo made a point of not staring at this breach of manners. Mikey didn't.

After a while, Frannie said, “My father home schooled us.”

“Doesn't he work?” Margalo asked.

“Yes, but at home. He does people's taxes. The schools were so bad in the last place we lived, we'd have been put ahead, and my parents didn't want us to be the youngest in our classes.”

“Like Hadrian Klenk,” Margalo said.

“Hadrian doesn't have much fun at school,” Frannie agreed.

She and Margalo talked away easily, and Mikey ate.

“What does your mom do?” Margalo asked.

“She gets businesses back on their feet, when they're in trouble. They hire her to tell them what's going wrong, and why, and how to get things going right.”

Mikey spoke. “A management consultant?”

Frannie nodded.

“I thought you were Quakers,” Mikey objected.

“Friends have always been successful business-people,” Frannie said. “Because of being so practical.”

“Friends?” Margalo asked.

“That's what Quakers call themselves, the Society of Friends.”

“Did you like home schooling?” Margalo asked. “Or did you miss being with other kids?”

“I had my three sisters, and I saw other kids at the weekly meeting. My dad's a good teacher. He knows
just about everything. So I liked it. The only problem is, I didn't take any of the standardized tests regular schools give in sixth grade.”

“That's why you're not in a seminar,” Margalo guessed.

“You could have taken the tests at the public schools when they were being given there,” Mikey pointed out.

“I'm not complaining,” Frannie said.

“Okay,” Mikey said. “You're not. So what do you want from us?”

“
Zut
, Mikey,
alors!
” Margalo protested.

But Frannie didn't take offense. “You're both in Mrs. Brannigan's seminar, and that's the one I want to sit in on. The school is giving me a two-week trial period, to see if I'm a good enough student to take seminar. Can you believe it took all this time for my parents to persuade Mr. Saunders just to let me try? And that's
after
we finally got an appointment, so we could argue our own case.”

“Why us?” Mikey asked.

“I want to know what you think of her.”

“But why us?” Mikey repeated.

“Because you think for yourselves,” Frannie explained. “Everybody else gossips about her, but if you
two like her, she's probably a good teacher. Do you like her seminar?”

“It's okay,” Mikey said. “For school.” Her attention returned to the chasing of kernels, which skidded around the plate trying to escape her Terminator fork. “We're about to start the Renaissance.”

“I know. I wish I'd been there for Greece. Did you read the myths?”

“Literature's not until next year,” Margalo said. “But we heard about Schliemann's excavations. Even Mikey liked Schliemann. You can admit that, just to us, Mikey.”

“Everybody told him he was wrong,” Mikey explained, “and he wasn't.”

Frannie went along with this conversation as if they
were
friends, the three of them, and knew each other. “So, can I go to class with you for the trial period? What are you reading, or are you doing art now?”

“Art this week,” Margalo said. “Next week we're talking about
The Prince.”

“Machiavelli,” Mikey announced. “I'm looking forward to Machiavelli.”

Frannie shook her head. She'd never heard of him. “I just don't want to go in alone. I know it wouldn't
bother you, Mikey, but it does me. It's okay, isn't it, Margalo? If I stick with you two?”

“As long as you don't stick too close,” Mikey answered, and that set Frannie off again. “You laugh a lot,” Mikey observed.

“People are pretty funny,” Frannie explained.

“You mean they're ridiculous,” Mikey corrected.

“Yeah, sometimes that's what I mean,” Frannie agreed.

T
he Monday morning after Halloween, Margalo waited outside for Mikey's bus, so she could hear about the party, who talked to who about what, how they liked the food, and if—against all probabilities—Mikey had been transformed into a popular person. The day was sunny and crisp, a clear blue sky over the flat roof of the school, people standing around in their down vests and Polartec vests, or their heavy knit sweaters and hooded sweatshirts. Margalo waited for Mikey, and a few people greeted her as they got off buses, “Great sweater.”