“That’s smart casting,” Margalo agreed.
“Did she tell Aimi all that?” Mikey asked.
Tan just looked at her, eye sarcasm.
“Yeah, but then how do you know?” Mikey insisted. Then she said, “Wait. OK. I do get it.” In case they didn’t believe her, she explained. “The play’s set in the Middle Ages, and the Middle Ages are a lot like junior high. The Middle Ages are the junior high of history. In both places, if you look different, or act different, people are nervous, scared of you. Get people scared of you and they’ll start doing things to make themselves feel un-scared, like—burning you at the stake. It’s as simple as math: Different is scary, new is scary, change is scary—burn, burn, burn.” Each time she said burn, Mikey pointed at Margalo or Tan, as if she was sentencing somebody to be tied to a stake and roasted alive. “I’ll tell you what scares me,” she said, as if either Margalo or Tanisha had asked. “People.”
“The Salem witch trials weren’t during the Middle Ages,” Margalo pointed out.
Mikey ignored her. “By ‘they’ I mean mostly men,” she said. “Because women couldn’t do much of anything back then. Well, they could, and some of them did. Joan of Arc, for example, and look what happened to her because she acted different from other people, and looked different, especially dressed different. Things haven’t really changed at all since then, have they?”
Margalo considered deflating this R&R, which was what her mother called it when Mikey got going on some topic, because it was the opposite of Rest and Recreation. With Mikey, Aurora maintained, R&R stood for Rant and Rave. Margalo was about to advise Mikey to put a lid on it, when Frannie Arenberg, who’d stopped on her way out of the cafeteria to listen, did it for her. “I think the human race has made some good progress since the Middle Ages,” Frannie said.
“Yeah, but you also think Louis Caselli isn’t so bad,” Mikey pointed out.
“That’s because Louis has a giant crush on her,” Tan said.
Frannie never minded being teased, not about her plain, Quaker style of dressing, not about her reputation as the nicest person in school, not even about Louis Caselli’s crush. She said, “I feel sorry for Louis.”
“Louis has the brains of a mushroom,” Mikey agreed. “We have to forgive him. At least,” she added, “the rest of you have to. I don’t think I will.”
“Besides, as we all know, Louis is no competition for . . .” Margalo lingered on the silence before she uttered the name in a breathless, sighing voice, “Gregory Peck.” Frannie’s crush on Gregory Peck had begun when they’d been shown the movie of To Kill a Mockingbird last year. She didn’t care if he was old enough to be her grandfather—or great-grandfather by now; and Margalo did agree that he was incredibly handsome. But there was old, and there was way old, and Gregory Peck was definitely in the second category.
As soon as Margalo mentioned the one, Mikey leaned toward Tanisha to murmur the name of the other: “Tiger Woods.” In eighth grade you wanted to be half of a couple, so if they didn’t have a personal boyfriend, girls could get crushes on celebrities. The important thing was to have a name linked to yours. Almost all eighth graders were linked to someone. Not Mikey, and not Margalo, and there were a few others, too, although not many. Casey Wolsowski was one of these—unless you counted linking your name up to the hero of some book, which most people didn’t. This far into the year everybody knew about Frannie’s crush and Tanisha’s ideal man, so they got teased a lot.
Frannie and Tan looked at each other. “Their time will come,” Tanisha promised.
“In your dreams,” Mikey answered, and Margalo let Mikey speak for her in this, as if she and Mikey were in exactly the same position, untouched, and untouchable.
“Anyway, I’m not about to waste time and erasers on a notebook,” Mikey declared. Eighth-grade girls erased their boyfriends’ initials onto the fronts of their spiral notebooks. It was practically an eighth-grade art form, initialing anything you could get an eraser on. “Haven’t you seen Ronnie’s notebooks, with Doug’s name all over them? And Rhonda—it’s pitiful. She’s pitiful. She always was, but this year she’s reached new levels of pitifulness. Or Heather McGinty, the way she drools around after whoever scored highest in the last game, whoever everybody’s talking about. Acting like she’s some movie-star irresistible sex goddess, hinting about how hot she is.” Mikey concluded this R&R, “The whole thing’s—it’s really embarrassing, and Heather’s not even embarrassed.”
Then she grinned. “I’m enjoying eighth grade.”
Then she glared at Frannie. “What’s so funny?”
Frannie stood up, shaking her head. “I have to get an aisle seat for the assembly,” she apologized, “because I got a part.”
“Which one?” Margalo asked, making a silent guess, The mother.
“The mother,” Frannie said.
“Typecasting,” Mikey announced.
“No it isn’t,” Margalo said. “The mother isn’t—”
Mikey held up both hands, palms out like a policeman facing traffic, Stop. “Leave me something to be surprised at, why don’t you? Who else got parts?” she asked Frannie.
“I thought you wanted to be surprised. Anyway, we’re not supposed to tell,” she added, leaving.
“Are you trying to get rid of the few friends you have?” Tan asked Mikey.
“What did I do to you? I just said his name, just Tiger. Tiger, Ti-ger.” Mikey ducked out of Tanisha’s reach. “I didn’t say anything about, That’s a weird name, or, How dumb is it to think you’re in love with some sports hero who never even heard of you and never will.”
“No different from a movie star or a rock star,” Tanisha maintained.
But Margalo disagreed. “Tiger Woods is a whole different story from Tyrese.” Then she was diverted. “Denzel Washington. I could go for Denzel Washington.”
“Or Will Smith,” Tanisha agreed.
Mikey groaned. They ignored her.
Margalo didn’t remember when it had become fun to make lists of handsome guys, fun just to think about who should be on the list; but she didn’t deny that she enjoyed it. It was more interesting than listing all the boys in your class, ranked in order of who you’d like to kiss, or go on a date with, or marry, which one you’d most want to be marooned on a desert island with, or—this was the currently popular list—dance with, or slow dance with or super slow dance with, which were all the same unspoken question: Who do you want to go to the dance with? If every boy was going to ask you, who would you choose?
As some art-room kids passed by, Cassie Davis—front-runner for the title of eighth grader with the worst attitude—stopped to ask Mikey, “You coming to assembly? Or what?”
“Is there an or what choice?” Mikey asked, then “I’m not joking,” she protested.
“I know,” Cassie said. “That’s what makes you so funny.”
“I’m not funny,” Mikey told her.
“I’ll save you a seat,” Cassie said, passing on by.
“Why does she think because we’re in the same homeroom, she should save me a seat?” Mikey demanded.
“She doesn’t mean it,” Margalo explained. “She won’t do it.”
“Then why does she say she’s going to? People,” Mikey said, disgusted.
Being disgusted with people reminded her of something else. “What committee are you going to be on for the play?” she asked Tan.
Tan was rising, and it really was time to start over to the auditorium. She said, “Promotion—you know, getting advertisers for the programs, finding stores that’ll let us put up posters. The committee only meets during lunches, and we can sign up the advertisers and ask at stores during the weekends. It’s Mrs. Sanabria’s committee so you know it’s not going to interfere with the basketball schedule,” she said as she joined up with Ronnie Caselli and others from the team.
Watching the cafeteria get empty, Mikey looked at Margalo and smiled, a grim Let’s-look-for-a-bright-side smile. “The sooner
it starts, the sooner it’ll be over.”
Like someone about to step into the dentist’s office, Margalo tucked her straight, chin-length hair behind her ears and squared her shoulders. “If you say so.” She rose from her seat.
Slowly, reluctantly, they got going, drifting out of the cafeteria, drifting down the hallways, drifting into the auditorium, just two jellyfish riding along on tidal waters.
2
LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
With the seventh and eighth grades both present, the auditorium aisles were clogged with students, especially the narrow passages separating the rows of seats. People yelled greetings to one another, yelled responses back, gathered together to talk. Groups lingered in the aisles and individuals moved back and forth along the rows. Seated students leaned forward across seats, leaned backward or sideways, whispering for private conversations, speaking loudly if they wanted to be overheard, shouting if they felt like it. Everybody looked around to see who everybody else was talking to, sitting with, looking at.
As Margalo predicted, Cassie hadn’t saved Mikey a seat. Mikey and Margalo checked in with their homeroom teacher then took seats directly behind Cassie. Orange streaks in Cassie’s artificially black hair were the only color she wore; the rest was black and shapeless—black sweatshirt, black sweatpants tucked into thick black socks. Cassie turned around to greet them (“Whazzup?”) and to not wait for a response—which made sense since it had been practically all of four minutes, maybe eight, since they’d last met. “This is just like the Oscars isn’t it?” Cassie said. “Or would you say it’s closer to Cannes?”
“Give it a rest, Cass,” the boy next to her said, twiddling the two silver rings in his right ear. Jason, who wanted people to call him Jace, was Cassie’s boyfriend and had been since the start of the year, when a boyfriend, or girlfriend, became as necessary to your public image as having shaved legs or a good working vocabulary of dirty words. Couples littered eighth grade like loose trash in a vacant lot on a windy day—somebody always getting together or breaking up with somebody else, giving everybody else something to observe and talk about, creating a constant need for new notebooks on which to erase newly paired initials.
Mikey and Margalo slouched down in their seats, backpacks on their laps, paying no attention to anybody around them (Mikey), and paying surreptitious attention to everybody, students and teachers (Margalo). The 431 students (allowing for a probable absentee rate of about 5 percent) settled down as soon as the principal appeared.
Mr. Saunders ascended the four steps leading up to the microphone. He ran his glance over the audience until the students got quiet, and quieter, and finally fell into a resigned silence. Mr. Saunders was good at principaling, but boring at assemblies. He always started out with the same announcements about upcoming meetings and events, then repeated his same concerns, about littering, about school spirit, about supporting your teams, about taking responsibility. But he coached the school’s two best teams, soccer and baseball—the best, some people said, only if you didn’t count girls’ teams, or the tennis team—and he kept things running smoothly at school; also, he seemed to think students were OK, mostly.
Mr. Saunders made his announcements and then talked about the scores of last Friday’s basketball games, praising the teamwork of the players, claiming, “Winning isn’t everything, people.”
Mikey, who disagreed, grunted. Margalo, who didn’t want Mr. Saunders noticing them, jammed her elbow into Mikey’s arm. Mikey turned her head, just slightly, just enough so Margalo could see the smile she had put on, or at least half of it; and half of that I’ ll-get-you-later smile was enough for Margalo. She retracted her elbow.
Then came the speech about litter in the bathrooms. Mr. Saunders didn’t mention food throwing in the cafeteria or smoking; he didn’t need to because everybody knew that when you indulged in either one of those errors in behavior, you were out the door—boom—immediate suspension—boom, boom—your parents arriving to take you home while you were still trying to think up a good excuse. “I run a tight ship,” Mr. Saunders assured them, his usual speech conclusion. “And that’s the way I like it. So straighten out, people. Straighten out and fly right.”
Next, he praised the seventh-grade bake sale offerings—although they weren’t half as good as last year’s, as every eighth grader knew—and at last he said, “I know how everybody is looking forward to the dance, but don’t forget—we also have a play to look forward to, and today our director is ready to announce her cast. Ms. Larch?” he called, looking out over the auditorium as if the drama teacher weren’t already planted in the front row, having given responsibility for her homeroom—this was Margalo’s guess—to handsome Mr. Schramm.
Ms. Larch taught C-level English classes to the seventh grade and a creative writing class at each grade level, and she was responsible for Drama Activities. She dressed droopy dark—dark reds, dark browns, dark greens and golds—and she draped scarves around herself, keeping them in place with long, old-fashioned hat pins. She wore beginner ballet slippers, with an elastic across the top. She took the microphone from Mr. Saunders and stood alone on the stage, silent, for a long moment, smiling down on her audience. Then, “Well,” she said.
Ms. Larch had been a real actress. She’d appeared on a television soap opera and once had a part in a play that went from Boston to New Haven to Broadway, where it stayed for fourteen months. Her voice was low and husky, like she was a singer in a nightclub. The microphone carried her voice close to each person in her audience, making her public speaking sound like private conversation. It was Ms. Larch’s voice that convinced people she really had been a professional actress. “Lieblings,” Ms. Larch said, spreading out her arms in welcome.
“I’ll liebling you” Mikey muttered. “Frankensteins is more like it.”
“Frankenstein was the doctor,” Margalo pointed out quietly. “You’re thinking of Frankenstein’s monster. What you should say is, Frankenstein’s monsters, in the plural.”
Muffled laughter spread out around them—of which they were not unaware.
“Oh, what a day this is!” Ms. Larch spread her voice as wide as her arms, to encompass everyone. Then she took a deep breath to announce, “As you know, the eighth grade will be giving two performances of The Lady’s Not for Burning. This will not be until May, so lest you forget, I ask you to mark it on your calendars. Tell your parents, your friends and relations. The play we have selected is a modern comedy”—Ms. Larch waited for the seventh-grade boys to subside (“Phew, not Shakespeare”)—”and a romance,” she said, her glance daring anyone to say what they were thinking, “about witch hunts.” (“All right.”) “It’s a play about being different, about the good and the bad in human nature, and about truths that live deep in the human heart.”
“I thought she said comedy.”
“I thought she said romance.”
Ms. Larch ignored the malcontents. “Only the eighth-grade A-level English students have read The Lady’s Not for Burning, and they have promised not to give away the story. Let our actors tell the tale, when their time comes. The only thing I will add now, to whet your appetites, is that it takes place in approximately 1400 A.D.—or if you prefer, M.E., modern era—”
“I always prefer m-e,” Mikey said, and dodged Margalo’s elbow.
“—in a small English village at the very end of the Middle Ages, or if you prefer, the very start of the Renaissance, so there will be wonderful costumes with swords, doublets, long gowns for the ladies, high boots for the gentlemen.” Her hands flowed, describing these words with gestures. “Lieblings,” she assured them, “I promise you a rare treat.” She smiled down on all of them with barely contained excitement.
“I have to admit, I’d’ve liked you to be a star in this play,” Mikey said. “I’d have liked one of us to. It’s a fame and fortune op. Well,” she amended, “fame, anyway.”
Margalo shrugged, as if she didn’t care. And, really, she didn’t. Really, in fact, she had be
en satisfied to read Jennet Jourdemayne’s lines in the tryout, and imagine Thomas Mendip. She could still feel how it felt that day, hearing her own voice, saying to her imagined companion, “I have come suddenly upon my heart, and where it is I see no help for.” She could still imagine him standing close before her. Until she tried out for the role of Jennet Jourdemayne, Margalo had not known how powerful imagination could be, how delicious—as real—almost—as dreams.
Margalo brought her attention back to Ms. Larch, who was saying, “I know how eager you are to hear who my coconspirators in this production will be, and we’re ready to confess all.” She laughed lightly at her own joke. “So now I’ll call on my actors to come and join me here on the stage. But I will not name their roles or give away their parts in the story. Let some mysteries remain, I say. So that we might be open every day of our lives to surprise, and so that curiosity may not die out in us.”
“What’s wrong with the woman,” Mikey demanded, but in a muted voice. “Hasn’t she ever heard of less is more?”
“Maybe she thinks less can’t be more,” Margalo suggested.
“Maybe she doesn’t think,” Mikey suggested.
“Maybe she likes the sound of her own voice,” Margalo suggested.
“Maybe she should be struck dumb,” Mikey said. “By which I mean ‘mute.’ Because she’s already dumb. Now what’s got you going?” she challenged Margalo.
Ms. Larch interrupted them, calling: “Louis Caselli.” Louis strutted from his aisle seat down to the steps, strutted up the steps, but then ruined the effect by stumbling. He staggered into place onstage. Once there, he grinned, a stocky figure in full-legged jeans, Airwalk sneakers, and an outsize T-shirt, entirely pleased to have everybody’s attention.
His name and approach had been accompanied by surprised murmurs (“Caselli can’t act, he can’t even act like a human being”) and cries of encouragement from his friends (“Go get ‘em, man”); then there was laughter as he staggered, stumbling, strutting to center stage. “Take your bow, Louis,” Ms. Larch reminded him. Louis almost fell over as he bent from the waist while still trying to look up and see how everybody was looking at him.