“Neither do we,” they said.
“So, will you?” Alice asked. “Because she can’t just stay home from school for the rest of her life, and she wouldn’t talk to me.”
“What makes you think she’ll talk to me?” Mikey demanded, still eating away. Actually, she liked being asked. Ordinarily they’d have chosen Margalo, but today, of the two, they chose Mikey.
“Couldn’t you just try?” Alice asked. “She was really upset. At the dance.”
“I was there,” Mikey reminded them.
“Her mother’s really upset too,” Alice added.
“I don’t want to hear any more about it,” Mikey said.
“I don’t think she’s eaten anything since Saturday,” Alice said.
“All right,” Mikey said to call a halt to this list of pitiful-nesses.
“And I’m really worried,” Alice said. “Really, really worried,” she said, looking at Mikey out of pale blue eyes, like a desperate rabbit. “What if she does something . . . to herself?” she asked, unable to say this above a whisper, unable to give it its real name.
Luckily Margalo spoke up. “I’ll do it if you won’t,” she told Mikey. “But you’d be better.”
“I said I would, didn’t I?” Mikey demanded. “I said all right. I’ll call her.”
“When?” Alice asked. She might be rabbity, but she was also persistent.
“Tonight?” Derrie suggested.
“Now,” Mikey decided. She stood up, abandoning her half-eaten lunch. “Why wait?”
On her way out of the cafeteria she passed the table where Ronnie and Shawn sat at the center. They looked like a couple in a movie, in one of the scenes that show the audience how much they’re in love—eating together; quick cut to walking and talking together, always in good weather; quick cut to shopping for CDs, sharing the earphones, always having a wonderful, wonderful time. Mikey had expected to feel some twinges—jealousy, heart-ache (but not -break; it would take more than Shawn Macavity to break her heart), maybe a little leftover longing—but she could barely remember what all the Shawn Macavity feelings had felt like. “Hunh,” she grunted at them, passing by, and maybe they looked up at her, maybe they didn’t.
Muck and mire, she thought. Feelings that were so strong shouldn’t just end, just be over, just like that. Should they? Was that at all normal for lurve? She wanted to ask someone, but Margalo didn’t know anything about it.
It was early enough in the second lunch period for both pay phones to be available. Alice, who had followed her, knew Casey’s number by heart, and Derrie, who had also followed, had a quarter. That made three girls trailing close behind her, although Margalo barely counted. Mikey ignored them all and punched the numbers Alice told her into the keypad. Punch-punch-punch, punch-punch, punch-punch. It barely rang before a woman picked it up, asking, “Dr. Thomaston?”
“No, it’s Mikey Elsinger,” Mikey said. “Is Casey there?”
“Who?” the woman asked.
“Mikey. From school. Can I talk to her?”
“I’ve never heard of you,” the woman said, puzzled.
“Yes, you have,” Mikey told her patiently. “I play tennis. And basketball. I make cookies.” She thought. “I’m Margalo’s friend.”
“Oh, you’re that one,” the woman said.
Mikey waited, but the woman just waited right back at her, so Mikey asked again, “Can I talk to Casey?” Either Casey had the driftiest mother in all of West Junior High, or this woman was seriously worrying about her daughter.
“But not for long. I’m expecting a call.”
“I know,” Mikey said.
“How do you know?” the woman asked.
Poor Casey, if this dimwit was her mother. Or maybe lucky Casey, to matter so much.
“Is Casey there?” Mikey asked. It was important, in tennis and in conversation, to keep focused. “Can I talk to her?”
“I’ll see. I guess. Wait here.”
Mikey looked at Margalo and rolled her eyes.
“What’s she saying?” Alice asked, and Mikey shook her head, Not now, don’t interrupt.
Then Casey was on the phone. “Mikey?” she asked, her voice thick with tears, unless she had developed a really bad cold on Sunday. But her voice was also a little curious.
“Why aren’t you in school?” Mikey demanded.
“You went to school today?” Now Casey sounded as if Mikey had just discovered the cure for cancer.
“Why shouldn’t I? He didn’t—” Margalo punched her on the arm, and Mikey got it. She shut up. Then she started again. “Face it, Casey, you have to come back sometime, and I can promise you, it’ll be worse tomorrow.”
“It couldn’t,” Casey said, her voice now little, whispery. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“It’s . . . I’m . . . You know why.”
“Tell your mother to bring you in before lunch is over,” Mikey instructed.
“No.” Casey’s voice started thickening again. “I really can’t, I—”
“Then I’ll get my mother to pick me up, and I’ll come get you.”
“Your mother lives in the city,” Casey reminded her sadly.
“So what? She’s got a car.”
“She’s got a job.” Casey was getting impatient.
“So what?”
“And she got married last week and moved to L.A.” Casey announced.
“Dallas,” Mikey corrected. “So, so what? I’ll get Margalo’s mother to—”
“You are so bossy,” Casey said. “I give up.”
“Good,” Mikey said, and slammed the phone back onto its cradle.
She looked at Margalo and warned her, “I’ve done it. Now I’m going to eat my dessert.”
When they were seated again, Mikey told Margalo her not-so-personal news. “He called again.”
“Not Shawn,” Margalo guessed. “Your Secret Admirer,” she guessed.
“You probably already know who it is.”
Margalo shook her head and took out a waxed-paper-wrapped package of homemade peanut butter crackers.
“Neither do I,” Mikey said. “He has some good ideas, though. About . . . I’ll tell you about them—how we could make Chez ME a real business. I asked him how he liked your outfit for the dance, but he didn’t know what it was.”
“He could have been pretending not to know,” Margalo suggested.
Neither one of them considered the unlikely possibility that anybody at the dance wouldn’t have noticed the one girl in pants, long silk pants and a long-sleeved, flowing white shirt, easily the most elegant female there. They both knew that if there had been an Outfit Prize awarded, Margalo would have won it.
“But what was the point of getting so dressed up if all you were going to do was talk to teachers?” Mikey asked, telling Margalo, “You should have come into the bathroom with me for the slow dances.” Then she got back to what interested her. “I told him about you not asking me to be stage manager. He asked me why I didn’t apply to be an assistant stage manager, if I wanted to be involved. I told him, I don’t want to be anybody’s assistant, and he guessed that decided it. But do you think I could?”
“Why would you want to work on the play now? I thought—you are through with Shawn, aren’t you?”
“I don’t want to talk about him.” But how did Margalo know? Mikey wondered, and once she wondered, she couldn’t not ask. “How’d you know that?”
“The way you look,” Margalo said. She shrugged. “What you’re talking about. Who you look at. It’s like, you’re really here. Talking to me. You’re back to being really you, not—the way you were trying to get his attention, buying his favor with cookies—”
“OK. I get it. You can stop now.”
“So I think you’re over him,” Margalo concluded.
“I’m sort of embarrassed,” Mikey admitted. “But I’m not sorry.”
“I know what you mean,” Margalo said.
Mikey believed her, but how di
d Margalo know? She was about to ask, but Margalo changed the subject.
“Want to stop by and congratulate the happy couple?” she asked Mikey.
Sometimes Margalo was just—dense. “Why would I want to do something like that?”
Margalo just smiled.
After a minute Mikey saw the possibilities.
“Abso-grime-ing-lutely,” she said. She should have known better. Margalo was never dense.
They got up, Mikey carrying her tray and Margalo a brown paper bag filled with crumpled pieces of waxed paper. They crossed the cafeteria together and stopped together at the table where Ronnie and Shawn now sat alone. Alone and holding hands; and holding hands on top of the table, for everybody to see and envy them.
“Hey, Mikey,” Ronnie said.
Shawn didn’t say anything.
Ronnie said, “Hey, Margalo.”
Mikey got the first word. “Shawn,” she said. “You know what you said about being friends?”
He looked at Ronnie, raised his eyebrows—Didn’t I tell you?—looked back at Mikey. “Yeah?”
“I should tell you, I’m not interested,” Mikey said. “I’m pretty fussy about who my friends are.”
He considered this unexpected development. “Izzat why you’re wearing my shirt?”
Mikey smiled, a How-dumb-can-you-be? smile. “It’s not your shirt,” she told him. “It’s mine.”
She was ready to go, but Margalo had her own ideas.
“You know, Ronnie,” Margalo said, “you’re a really good liar.” Margalo’s voice was the same one she would have used to tell Ronnie she had great hair or a great body, two indisputably true and obvious things.
Ronnie was trying to figure out whether to swell up with preening or to get angry with insult.
“Probably it’s because you’ve had so many boyfriends to practice on. Do you think?” Margalo asked, as cool as if she was in seminar, thinking about why the ancient Egyptians might have believed that the sky was a cow. “I mean, before this one,” Margalo explained. “Everybody says how good you are at getting a new boyfriend whenever you want. Everybody’s really glad Shawn gets to have a turn.”
Ronnie smiled a tack-sitting smile and extracted her hand from Shawn’s. “Hey,” he protested, “what’s wrong with you?”
Mikey and Margalo left the cafeteria and went out into the hall, and were almost back to their lockers before Margalo announced, “We were good.” And Mikey echoed her, “We were bad.”
* * *
Because Frannie had forewarned them, Margalo saw immediately the differences in Mrs. Brannigan. It wasn’t just the dyed hair or the deep smoky blue turtlenecked sweater over gray flannel slacks—although these made a difference, as did the light makeup the teacher was wearing these days. The real difference was the goofy, lit-from-within look on Mrs. Brannigan’s face.
But the teacher wasn’t any less sharp, Margalo was relieved to notice; Mrs. Brannigan was still teaching full steam. Margalo looked at Frannie across the long table and nodded her head.
Frannie smiled back, a big, toothy grin. The thing about Frannie that took such getting used to was that she really was nice. Frannie was a mystery to Margalo, which was one of the reasons Margalo enjoyed having her around. Why, for example, should it make Frannie so happy for some teacher to get her husband back?
After class, as they gathered up books to go on to earth science, Mikey asked Margalo and Frannie, “Why would she take him back after he ran off with that gym teacher?”
Frannie had the answer. “They’re married.” But she had something else she wanted to talk to them about. “My mother got her next job.”
“You’re moving,” Margalo realized, and then, “Does that mean you won’t be in the play?”
“Mom’s going next month, but the rest of us are staying through the end of the school year. Then we’ll join her in Hawaii.”
“Hawaii?” Mikey said. “I’ve never been there.”
“But I’m going to have a big party before,” Frannie said.
“I’ve never been farther west than California,” Mikey said.
“It’ll be in May, a going-away party,” Frannie said. “So I want you to think about if you’ll come to it.”
Mikey was suspicious. “Like a dance?”
“There’ll be dancing,” Frannie said. “And boys,” she added unnecessarily.
Margalo figured that she knew what Frannie was thinking, telling them this early; and she knew it meant Frannie really wanted them to come to this party of hers.
Frannie said, “I don’t know if you’re—are you ready for boys?”
“Hunh,” Mikey snorted. “Are they ready for us?”
* * *
Mikey wanted to know, so she asked. Frannie and Margalo went off to science, but Mikey went up to Mrs. Brannigan. “Mrs. Brannigan? If your husband is back—”
“Yes?” the teacher asked. She was waiting for her next seminar group. She had her books spread out on the table in front of her—the art book, the mythology book, the Bible—and she had drawn maps of Renaissance cities on the board behind her, arrows marking the routes the armies of the condottieri had traveled. Mikey stood right next to the teacher, and Mrs. Brannigan looked up at her. “Mikey, yes. He is,” she said, and sounded glad.
“Why did you let him?” Mikey asked.
“What?” Mrs. Brannigan asked. “You mean, let him come back?”
“Yeah,” Mikey said.
The teacher looked at the clock and she looked back at Mikey. Her face got pink, but she decided to answer. “Short and simple: I wanted to.”
Mikey nodded. That made sense.
“But,” Mrs. Brannigan said, “I wouldn’t a second time, Mikey.”
Mikey nodded again. “Only two chances.”
Like all the other teachers, Mrs. Brannigan had been at the dance as a chaperone. She’d been there and seen how things went. “More like, two strikes and you’re out,” she said.
Mikey had to let her have the last word, because if she didn’t run, she was going to be late to science, and Mr. Schramm made you stay as many minutes late after class as you had arrived, which made you late for your next class too, and who needed the accumulating aggravation?
Besides, she didn’t have anything better than that to say.
16
THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND
Tuesday’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.