Bad Girls in Love (10 page)

When he laughed, he sounded—just briefly, just for the time the laugh took—younger than before, the same way her father sometimes sounded like a kid when he was laughing at some movie they'd rented. “Not Louis Caselli,” he said. “Scout's honor.”

“Are you a Boy Scout? Who
are
you? Are you in my class?”

“I'm not your age,” he said, another question he'd expected.

“Are you stalking me? Because I wouldn't try that if I were you.”

His voice slipped again, as if she'd made some joke. “No. I swear, I'm—I'm just—” His voice deepened. “I'd like to talk to you, just sometimes. But talk—not E-mail or chat-room kind of conversation. I mean, voices. I mean . . . genuine talking.”

“What about?” Mikey demanded.

“Anything. Whatever we want to talk about,” he said, now as confident as if he was reading lines from a script, so he knew exactly what he'd say. “We could talk about Shawn. Or, the Australian Open, or who'll be your mixed doubles partner this year, or what colleges we like, or—It would be interesting for me to talk to someone like you. You're smart, and not many girls have . . . such strong personalities. You do”—but Mikey already knew that—”and Margalo, too. But not as much. Or we could talk about your goals, you know, in life. Or Shawn.”

“You already said him.”

“Oh.” And that seemed to run him out of words.

Well, at least she had unsmoothed him a little. But only for a second or two, because he was right back suggesting, “Will you think about it? I mean, you don't have to want to—talk to me, I mean. I know most people would think this is sort of scary. I'll call you again—next Sunday?—so you'll have time to think, and you can tell me what you've decided. I mean, about talking to me.”

“How will I know it's you?” She had him there and quickly put on pressure. “Well?”

“You'll know,” he told her, not at all trapped. “So you'll think about it?”

“It's dumb,” she said. “It's pretty weird. Not scary,” she told him, in case he thought he
could
scare her.

“I'll call you next weekend,” he said.

“Don't bother.”

“It's no bother,” he assured her.

“Right,” Mikey said. “If you say so,” she said. “Good-bye,” she said, and hung up, getting the last word.

Then she punched speed dial I.

“Margalo?” she asked.

“No, Mikey, it's Susannah.” Another stepsister, older, this one from Margalo's stepfather's previous marriage. “You talked longer than five minutes last time,” Susannah said, all highschool-junior important. “I'm expecting a call.”

“OK. OK. Get Margalo, will you?”

“An important call.”

“I know the rules,” Mikey answered. Margalo's family—having not only two adults but also a large number of children, assorted stepsiblings and half siblings, having a lot of people in it, even subtracting the two oldest, who lived away from home—had only one phone and consequently a five-minute limit to all calls, unless it was an exception. Exceptions were possible, but only Aurora and Steven could make them.

“Mikey?”

“I just got this phone call,” Mikey answered. She told Margalo what he had said and what he had sounded like—most importantly, like no one she recognized, especially not Shawn Macavity—and then she waited.

“A secret admirer?” Margalo guessed. “But that doesn't make sense.”

“And you'd know about that, Miss Popularity.”

“You're sure he's not a stalker?”

“He said he wasn't.”

“What's he going to say?
Why, yes, thank you for asking, I am a homicidal psychopath?
I mean, Mikey,” Margalo argued.

“How dumb do you think I am?” Mikey demanded.

“Since you ask? Sometimes you're not very smart.”

Mikey hung up. Even if she was being stupid, which she wasn't, it wasn't very helpful of Margalo not to be more helpful about this. She returned to the kitchen, picked up her wooden spoon, and started to beat the batter. She hadn't taken more than twenty good strokes before the phone rang again. “Oh, mudpi-ye-es,” she cried, dragging out the last vowels as she ran out to the living room. “What do you want?” she demanded of the telephone.

“Hi, honey, it's me. What's wrong?”

“Too many phone calls,” she told him.

“Let the machine answer,” he advised. “Listen, if I don't make it home for dinner, would you be all right with that?”

“Why?”

“We're thinking of stopping off for dinner on the way home. We're almost finished, but it's getting late—”

“You're having another date?”

“It's just a quick dinner,” he told her. Then he asked, “Would you like to join us?”

“On a date? You've got to be kidding, Dad.”

“I'll be home by eight at the latest.” She knew he would be. “I could bring you a carryout,” he offered. “Or there's lasagna in the freezer, and Swedish meatballs—”

“I know what's in our freezer, Dad,” she reminded him. “I'll be fine. See you later. Have a good time—
on your date,”
she said, and hung up before he could deny it again.

What was the world coming to? Here was her father, who had been socially dead for more than two years, turning into The Mad Dater. Here she was—and she didn't have any illusions about her popularity rating—with some secret admirer who knew what she'd like to talk about, if she decided she did want to talk to him. These things were not a bit normal.

She wished she could call Margalo again. Maybe she would, after she got these cookies out of the oven. She added eggs and oatmeal to the batter and mixed it together. She added whole wheat flour and white flour. She stirred in raisins, then—the crowning touch—macadamia nuts. And the phone rang again.

“I didn't mean you're stupid,” Margalo said. “Just, sometimes you don't use your common sense, that's all. So what did he want to talk about?”

Mikey didn't need any formal apology, not from Margalo. Besides, she wanted to hear what Margalo had to say more than she wanted to hear any apologizing. “I told you,” she answered, “he had all kinds of things we could talk about, if I wanted to.”

“Did it sound like a list he'd made before he called? Because I asked Howie, and he said a list would be a real junior-high thing to do.”

“Your stepbrother is not someone whose opinion on anything
to do with romance I trust. Howie's the one who got arrested for loitering around some girl's house in the middle of the night, in case you remember. Unless, do you think it could be Howie?”

“I don't think Howie has a secret crush on you, if that's what you mean.”

Mikey didn't say anything.

“Although, I guess if he did, I wouldn't know about it,” Margalo admitted. “Otherwise it wouldn't be secret.”

“I don't think he does either,” Mikey admitted. “Do you think it's sunspots? Because things aren't acting normal, everything isn't.”

“I don't believe in sunspots, but . . . You know, when you really like someone—”

“Like Shawn,” Mikey said.

“Your feelings—because they're so strong—they make things seem different. They make everything
seem
not normal,” Margalo said. “You know? Like rose-colored glasses? Love makes you wear not-normal-colored glasses.”

“How would you know?” Mikey demanded. Then, when Margalo didn't say anything for a long time, she pointed out, “I never said I was in love with Shawn Macavity,” so that she could have the pleasure of putting those five words together in one sentence, and say them aloud.

O
n the bus to school Monday morning Margalo became aware that over the weekend something had happened.

As in, Something Had Happened.

It was impossible to overhear any of the whispered conversations that occupied many of the eighth graders. They talked by twos and threes, heads close together, one person reporting, the others amazed. Margalo spent the ride in mounting curiosity, trying to think of how to find out what was up, who would know and tell. But when she glimpsed Mikey, that curiosity was driven from her mind.

Because Mikey wasn't wearing the cargo pants she had worn to school every day for the last year and a half. She was wearing normal jeans. CKs was Margalo's guess, and if not absolutely normal (they were black, not blue), more normal than usual for Mikey, for whom not at all normal was the norm. And she was wearing black tie shoes—could they be
Mephistos?—not sneakers. And who knew what she had on under her jacket after a weekend with her love-struck mother.

If Ms. Barcley
could
be love-struck, which—in Margalo's opinion—was about as likely as a teacher admitting ignorance. Although, Mrs. Brannigan was one teacher who seemed OK about not already knowing every right answer. But she'd had her husband taken from her by a younger and prettier gym teacher, so she had a good grip on reality. Mr. Schramm, too, seemed pretty much free of the usual teacher vanities and authority needs. Then Margalo remembered their fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Chemsky, and grinned.

“What's so funny?” Mikey demanded. They were standing by the bus, letting the cold wind blow at their backs. She clutched a Chez ME bag, a brown lunch bag with the name of their cookie business stamped on it in bright white letters.

“Fifth grade was,” Margalo answered, wondering about the bag. They couldn't reopen the business until after the seventh-grade bake sales were over, after the dance, so why the bag?

“Fifth grade wasn't funny,” Mikey told her.

“What do you have? Cookies?”

“They're not for you,” Mikey said, and started off toward the entrance. “Although,” she added, “fifth grade was fun. Do you think little kids have more fun?”

Margalo stopped. She gathered her eyebrows together and then lowered them toward her pursed mouth, squeezing her features tight in concentration. She dropped her book bag on the ground, bent her head forward, made a fist out of her
right hand and leaned her forehead against it. For a minute she held that pose—the famous statue, visibly thinking.

Mikey sighed loudly, and waited.

At last Margalo raised her head, lowered her fist, unsqueezed her face. “No,” she said. And moved on into the school building, with Mikey beside her.

“Ha ha,” Mikey said. Then, as they walked past the policeman watching over the entrance, she started in on how if you want to keep kids from shooting one another in school, you're going to have to get guns out of the hands of grownups. “Kids aren't the problem,” Mikey said. “Grown-ups are the problem.”

“Politicians are the problem,” Margalo contributed.

“This is a democracy,” Mikey reminded her. “Politicians are elected to office.” She got the last word. “By grown-ups.”

It was always refreshing to start the day with a little R&R. It put Margalo's brain on alert. At their lockers she demanded, “Show. Show me what you're wearing.”

Mikey offered her a cookie instead. “Try this.” Then, without unzipping her jacket, she unpacked weekend homework books and papers into her locker, reserving those she would need for the first two periods.

Margalo persisted. “I've noticed the jeans, and that you're wearing shoes.”

“I always wear shoes,” Mikey pointed out.

Margalo wondered what exactly Mikey had hidden under the jacket. “I mean, you're not wearing sneakers.”

“It's a recipe I made up,” Mikey said. “Actually, it's my adaptation of a standard recipe.”

Margalo took a bite and watched Mikey, waiting for the jacket to be unzipped. She chewed, swallowed, taste-tested. “Good.”

“I brought some for Shawn,” Mikey told her, that gleam in her eye again. She had some plan of attack, Margalo thought. The cookies were part of it and whatever was under her jacket was part of it, and there was probably more. Sometimes, Margalo didn't care how tunnel-visioned and self-involved Mikey was; she just admired her for reaching out with both hands to try to grab what she wanted. Mikey didn't play things safe. She didn't worry about what people might think, or say, she didn't get embarrassed about her own feelings, she just went after what she wanted—in this case, Shawn Macavity.

Margalo took another bite. She chewed, swallowed, and watched Mikey, waiting to see what there was to see.

*    *    *

Mikey couldn't delay it any longer, but she kept her back to Margalo while she took off her jacket and folded it into her locker. Then she whipped around to get whatever Margalo was going to say over with. But Margalo didn't say anything. She just looked. Then, after a good long stare, Margalo raised her hand and twirled it in the air, the forefinger raised.