Bad Girls in Love (23 page)

T
uesday's rehearsal went more smoothly, now that the dance was over and done with, on its way to being mostly forgotten and maybe not all that important after all. Now the play was the thing. Ms. Larch started out with Shawn, who seemed at least to be trying. Margalo happened to know that Ms. Larch had given the actor an ultimatum: Learn lines, or else. And Ms. Larch didn't need to specify what she meant by
or else
. Margalo started out with Ira and Jason, who were much more prepared than Shawn was, and more attentive, except that Ira was always looking over to where Heather Thomas and Rhonda rehearsed together. Heather, Margalo noticed, was always looking back.

Which probably explained why Heather and Ralph had broken up. But Margalo would never have thought of Ira as a person who would steal someone else's girlfriend.

Although, the person who got stolen had something to do with it too, didn't she?

Halfway through the after-school activities period, Ms. Larch called Heather and Rhonda over to hear them speak their lines, and Margalo got Shawn and Frannie for their Act I scene. Margalo hadn't realized how much time and work it took just to get this first step accomplished; even after two and a half weeks of rehearsals they were nowhere near finished with memorizing. She set her desk to face Frannie's and Shawn's desks and asked Melissa to join them. Melissa, she knew, had learned all her first-act lines, and Frannie knew hers; that would put the pressure on Shawn.

As they got into it Shawn stood up and moved around a little, which seemed to help him remember. “You're making fun of Margaret in that line,” Margalo advised him. “Thomas makes fun of everybody. Including himself.”

Shawn looked down at them as he considered that. “I guess that makes sense, if he's so sick of people. Do you think that makes sense, Frannie?”

Frannie nodded agreement but didn't say anything or look at him. She had been, Margalo thought, immune to Shawn, like there are people who are immune to poison ivy. Melissa spoke her lines, and then it was Frannie again, but when she came to the part about how attractive she found a well-dressed man, and how when she was young, she had often lost her heart to a clean shirt drying on a hedge, without a man
inside it, Margalo saw the way Frannie's brown spaniel eyes rested on Shawn's blue work shirt. Seeing, she realized Frannie wasn't one bit immune.

Margalo was shocked.

At the end of rehearsal Louis Caselli came strutting up to their little group. He spoke to Frannie first, to tell her, “I can't have any girlfriend in Hawaii. Sorry, but—what good would that do me?”

“None,” she agreed.

“Like I said,” he agreed. That settled, he turned to Shawn to ask, “Now that you and Ronnie are together, we're practically cousins. You and me, I mean, because me and Ronnie already are—we've been cousins all my life. So you should let me in on some of the stuff you do that gets you chicks. I mean, man, you dump all over them and they just come back for more. You're
amazing
. I figure, you could be a big help to me, now Frannie's moving to Hawaii. You gotta know something. You know?”

“Well,” Shawn said. “I could try.”

Louis punched him on the shoulder to express his pleasure and excitement and confidence. The others went off, leaving Margalo and Frannie together.

Margalo asked Frannie, “Did you talk to Casey when she came in yesterday?” Frannie nodded. “What excuse did she give?”

“A dentist appointment,” Frannie said. “She had
Lord of the Rings
, and she was reading it.”

“I don't blame her,” Margalo said.

The two looked over to where Shawn and Rhonda were having a little flirt fest.

“Neither do I,” Frannie said. “I blame him. But I never thought he was anything special, not as a person. The only special thing about him is his looks. Although, his
looks . . .”
Frannie knew she didn't have to finish the sentence. “I'll be sort of glad to get away from them,” she told Margalo.

Ronnie came to wait in the classroom doorway. Basketball practice was over and she was there to join up with her boyfriend, but she wasn't going to come into the room to claim him. She was accustomed to having boys coming up to claim
her
.

Shawn stayed right where he was, waiting for Ronnie to come to him.

“I console myself with remembering how many movie stars looked like dorks in high school,” Margalo told Frannie, “and thinking of how that could work the other way around, too.”

Ronnie stayed waiting where she was, and Shawn stayed waiting where he was. Margalo and Frannie stayed where they were and watched.

“I'm going to miss you,” Frannie said.

As they watched, Mikey came to the doorway and walked right through the line of sight connecting Ronnie and Shawn as if it wasn't there—as if, even if it was there, it was something in another dimension that had nothing to do with her
and was of no interest to her. Mikey just strode on through, practically tripping over Hadrian Klenk who tried to ask her something, ignoring everything except what she had in mind.

“And Mikey, too,” Frannie said. Mikey came up and Frannie said, “It won't be the same without you, next year in Hawaii.”

“You could invite us to come live with you,” Mikey suggested, then reassured Frannie, “That was a joke.” She turned to Margalo. “You didn't ask Ms. Larch about the stage manager having an assistant, did you? Because I changed my mind. I don't have the time, I've got tennis and Chez ME. Did you ask her?”

“Not yet.”

“And
you
don't have the time either,” Mikey warned Margalo. “Now what's so funny?” she demanded of Frannie.

Frannie didn't answer. Instead she said, “I like your T-shirt.”

“If Margalo doesn't want it, you can have hers,” Mikey offered.

“Who said I don't want it?” Margalo protested. “That stinks, giving Frannie something you already gave me, Mikey.”

“I said
if,”
Mikey argued.

“And right in front of me,” Margalo pointed out.

“I really am going to miss you two,” Frannie said, laughing.

*    *    *

They jounced along side by side on the leather seat of the late bus. Margalo turned away from the window to tell Mikey—as
the bus lurched to a stop and they surged forward in unison like synchronized swimmers—”I'm giving Shawn and Ronnie three weeks.”

Mikey had a more immediate concern. “You'd think that they'd put seat belts on school buses. Wouldn't you?”

“Write to the President,” Margalo said, as if she'd heard all this before.

“Maybe I will,” Mikey said, although she knew she wouldn't. Margalo
had
heard all this before, she realized, and there were other things Margalo had been wanting to talk about all day, and all yesterday, too, and Sunday. Mikey decided it was time to put Margalo out of her misery. She was ready to do that now. She admitted, “I was wrong about Shawn.”

Margalo didn't try to contradict her. “Everybody makes mistakes,” she said irritatingly.

“I don't,” Mikey said. “Other people might say I do, but usually I don't agree with them.”

“This time almost everybody agreed with
you,”
Margalo pointed out.

“And as usual they were wrong. I was just wrong right along with them for once.”

“Mistakes are how you learn,” Margalo said, which sounded to Mikey like Aurora's lopsided way of looking at things, a little wacko and usually worth thinking about—later. Now she had more interesting things on her mind.

“I'm looking forward to the next time I fall in lurve,” she told Margalo. “It's pretty much fun.”

This, Margalo paid close attention to. “You think so?”

“Only next time I'm choosing someone entirely different.”

“You don't
choose
who you fall in love with,” Margalo told her.

Mikey was about to say, Who appointed you Love Information Center? Then she had a guess, an intuitive leap, and she knew, she just all at once
knew—

“
I
plan to choose,” Mikey argued while the back of her mind chased after this new idea she was having. Speaking from the front of her mind, she told Margalo, “I'm thinking of Ralph now that he and Heather are through.”

She
knew
, and she knew she was right, too.

Margalo was in lurve. And had been, all along, hadn't she? But not with Shawn Macavity; this had started long before Shawn. But Margalo had been so secret and quiet about it, kept it so private to herself—it was impressive how Margalo had kept it to herself. Mikey was impressed. She really admired Margalo sometimes; sometimes she just
really
admired her friend.

“Although, you choose what you
do
about it,” Margalo said.

“He's going to be my mixed doubles partner,” Mikey explained.

“So I guess you could choose
not
to be in love.”

“So we'll have lots in common.”

Mikey decided right then she wasn't going to tell Margalo that she had figured it out. If Margalo wanted it to be a secret,
Mikey wouldn't say one thing. She even had a guess about who, but she wasn't going to tell Margalo that, either. Or her opinion of him. Besides, Margalo already knew what a non-event of a teacher she thought he was.

“So maybe,” Margalo argued, arguing herself around to what Mikey had just said, “you really
do
choose.”

“I think I
should
try for Ralph,” Mikey decided.

Margalo said, sarcastic, “Lucky Ralph. Although, you know what they say: Love is blind.”

“No it isn't,” Mikey said.

“OK, it's half-blind,” Margalo said. “Blind to faults.”

“People are what's blind,” Mikey said.

“Which means that the blinder love is, the better for all of us,” Margalo said.

Margalo always wanted to have the last word. Maybe this time Mikey would let her.

Margalo, of course, had even more to say. “You know what else they say? In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is King.”

Mikey couldn't stand it. “Or Queen,” she said.

ALSO BY CYNTHIA VOIGT

The Bad Girls Series

Bad Girls Bad, Badder, Baddest

It's Not Easy Being Bad

The Tillerman Series

Homecoming

Dicey's Song

A Solitary Blue

The Runner

Come a Stranger

Sons from Afar

Seventeen Against the Dealer

The Kingdom Series

Jackaroo

On Fortune's Wheel

The Wings of a Falcon

Elske

Other Books

Building Blocks

The Callender Papers

David and Jonathan

Izzy, Willy-Nilly

Orfe

Tell Me if the Lovers Are Losers

Tree by Leaf

The Vandemark Mummy

When She Hollers

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

First Aladdin Paperbacks edition January 2004

Copyright © 2002 by Cynthia Voigt

ALADDIN PAPERBACKS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster

Children's Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition. Designed by Ann Sullivan The text of this book was set in Janson Text.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Voigt, Cynthia. Bad girls in love / by Cynthia Voigt.

p. cm.

“An Anne Schwartz book.”

Summary: Now in the eighth grade, best friends Mikey and Margalo try to figure out boys, crushes, and falling in love.

[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.V874 Baf 2002

[Fic]-dc21

2001045898.

ISBN 978-0-6898-6620-3

ISBN 978-1-44248-921-9 (eBook)