Bad Girls in Love

  As Margalo clanged her locker door shut she heard Mikey ask a quiet question. Usually you could hear Mikey through steel walls, down whole corridors, over tall buildings, but this time Margalo had to turn to face her friend and ask, “What?”

  “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” Mikey asked again.

  Margalo stayed calm. “I don’t know about that, but he sure is handsome.”

  “Who?” Tan wondered as she walked by. She thumped Margalo on the shoulder. “Congrats.”

  “Shawn,” Mikey said, her voice licking the name as if it was some delectibly delicious ice cream cone. “Macavity,” she said, and then repeated the whole tasty thing. “Shawn Macavity.”

  Tan looked at Margalo. “Is she for real?”

  Ronnie Caselli joined them to tell Margalo, “I wouldn’t want to do it, but you’ll be good,” and ask, “Mikey? Are you all right? You look weird.”

  “I’m great,” Mikey answered goopily.

  “Really weird,” Ronnie said. “What’s wrong?”

  “Would you call him handsome? Or beautiful,” Mikey answered.

  Ronnie didn’t even have to ask who. She knew. “Once you look, definitely beautiful. I mean, he’s got great hair, and that nose, and his mouth and . . .” She looked at Mikey and giggled in that I’m-thinking-what-I’m-too-embarrassed-to-talk-about way, the kind of giggling people do together.

  And Mikey did not tell Ronnie to get real. Neither did she stomp on her foot to stop her from being such a typical eighth-grade-girl twit. Instead, Mikey got stone-faced furious. Margalo could guess what her friend was thinking: Mine.

  Ronnie could guess too, and she didn’t stick around to hear about it, not even to say, Oh, yeah? Tan went off with her, and Margalo almost went with them. But she didn’t.

  “What if it only gets more complicated?” she asked Mikey. “People,” she explained, although Mikey hadn’t asked her what she meant. “School. Life. What if year after year, the older we get, it never gets easier?”

  Mikey shrugged; she couldn’t be bothered. “I think beautiful,” she told Margalo.

  4

  HE LOVES ME, HE LOVES ME NOT

  By the end of the day, Monday, Margalo was thoroughly bored with the topic of Shawn Macavity.

  Mikey was not.

  “Why don’t you know anything about him? You always know about everyone. Do you think he’s Irish? Because of the name. There’s McDonald’s fast food and Macintosh computers, but those aren’t Irish, are they? They’re Scottish, so do you think he’s Scottish? But he has that black hair. Have you ever seen hair so black? I mean, and not dyed. Have you?”

  Other people were not so much bored as mocking, because by the end of the day, Monday, word had spread out along the halls, oozing into classrooms and library and gym: Mikey Elsinger has a major crush on that guy in the play. Most people agreed, This is gonna be good, because You know what she’s like.

  * * *

  First thing Tuesday morning Louis Caselli came after Mikey like a pack of hyenas going after the wounded wildebeest on the Discovery Channel. Approaching her locker, he announced, “Mikey and Shawny, they rhyme,” and smirked.

  “Get lost, why don’t you?” Margalo asked him.

  Mikey was busy looking up the hall, and looking down the hall, to catch a glimpse of Shawn. She didn’t even seem to hear Louis.

  “Mikey likee Shawny,” Louis said, and exclaimed, “It’s poetry!”

  Beside him, his cousin Sal chuckled. Another friend, Neal, punched Louis in the arm to express how much fun this was.

  Mikey didn’t react at all, as if it didn’t bother her one bit to have Louis Caselli making fun of her.

  Well, it bothered Margalo. “I don’t know about you, Louis,” she said in a fake-concerned voice. “I worry about you, how you’ll survive. You’re such a perambulating nit.”

  Louis tried to figure out if he’d been insulted in an important way, a way that would require him to save face. “Oh, yeah?” he asked. He chose the one-syllable option. “Whaddaya mean, nit?”

  “As in nitwit,” Margalo told him, and pinched with her fingers in the air over his head. “As in baby lice.” By this time more people had gathered to enjoy the encounter, so that when Louis backed away from Margalo’s pincering fingers, the onlookers impeded his retreat. “As in pick nits. Pick”—she pincered, picking near his ear—”Pick”—she picked toward his hair. Then she just stood there, smiling down into his red face, and concluded, “I mean perambulating nit.”

  Louis’s mouth worked to come up with a squashing response. “You—,” was as far as he’d gotten when the bell rang, and Sal sympathized with his lost opportunity, “Tough luck, man.”

  * * *

  It was odd how people resented Mikey’s having a crush on Shawn. The Barbies and preppies scorned her for ambition. “As if,” they agreed, not caring who could hear them. “As if she has a chance.” The jockettes worried that she would lose interest in the basketball team (possible, in Margalo’s opinion) or in the tennis team (unlikely): “What about our games?” The arty-smarties wouldn’t have minded if Mikey got Shawn, because that would show everybody, but they hated to see her acting like everybody else: “She can’t mean it. Do you think she’s scamming us?”

  “Better him than me,” was the general opinion among the boys. “I wouldn’t want Mikey Elsinger after me. Scary.”

  The only one who didn’t seem to mind—or even notice—was Shawn. Overnight, Shawn Macavity had become the most popular boy in school—more popular even than Ralph or Ira or even Jason Johnston, the leading scorer on the boys’ basketball team, single-handedly responsible for their 5-1 record. Shawn became the undisputed king of eighth grade, and he took to the role. He was even kingly in the way he ignored the nickname Louis came up with for him, which some of the other boys also adopted by the second day of Shawn’s meteoric rise to total popularity. “Mr. Tooth Decay,” Louis named him. “Get it? Cavity, get it?”

  But Louis did not call Shawn this to his face. To his face Louis and the others asked Shawn, Didn’t he want to try out for the baseball team, since he’d given basketball a pass, or for the track team? Or didn’t he like sports? Had he ever played a sport? That’s right, he took gym, didn’t he, what was he, a brain? Was he, like, on the honor roll? They hadn’t thought so, but what was it, did he take art? “You’re, like, some chick magnet,” they told Shawn, and he just grinned, cool, and shrugged his shoulders, careless.

  This regal good humor lasted all the way through Tuesday, but by Wednesday, Shawn Macavity expected a little respect from people. After all, he’d landed the big one. He had the starring role.

  * * *

  With Mikey bitten by the love bug, Margalo had no one to compare Shawn-notes with, no one to surprise by the accuracy of her predictions about how long the modesty phase would take to turn into the I’m-pretty-wonderful phase, no one to share her desire to prick him like a balloon. Although, she couldn’t deny that he was handsome; everybody was right about that. Casey Wolsowski declared, “He’s what Romeo should look like,” and Cassie said almost the same thing, “He’s like looking at art.”

  “Art who?” Margalo asked and “Not funny,” was Mikey’s response, then she asked, “What art?” so she could go to the library and look at it.

  The good news was: Shawn Macavity didn’t have a girlfriend. Which meant: He didn’t have a date for the dance. Until he got up on stage on Monday, nobody had particularly noticed him. He never had anything much to say, and he wasn’t on any teams. He had nothing to offer a girl, until Monday.

  “I’d go to a dance with him,” Mikey said.

  Margalo tried sarcasm followed by insult. “Big surprise. But would he go with you?”

  Even that didn’t get Mikey back to normal. Even Louis couldn’t do it, even on Wednesday morning when—with his usual followers—he came up to Mikey’s locker and sang, “Way down upon the Shawny River . . .” Or he would have sung it, except Louis couldn’t carry a tune. “Far, far a
way. That’s where Mikey’s heart is going ever . . .” He cackled with laughter, unable to sing on, doubling over at the sight of Mikey’s face.

  “You mean Swanee, it’s the Swanee River,” Margalo told him. “You massive fraculence.”

  “How do you spell that, Margalo?” one of the boys behind Louis asked.

  “Look it up,” Mikey suggested. “And I’m getting tired of you,” she said to Louis, but she didn’t even smile.

  “Uh-oh,” Louis said, holding up fake trembling hands to fake protect himself. “What’re you going to do about it? You aren’t going to tell Mr. Tooth Decay on me, are you? He doesn’t even know your name.”

  “Yes he does,” Mikey said.

  Margalo stepped in. “If you need a more user-friendly word, how about idiot? Does that ring a bell? Synonyms: dolt, dummy, dunce, dullard.” She stopped and Louis took a breath, but before he could speak she went on. “Dud, dupe, dingbat.” She stopped again.

  He opened his mouth.

  Before he could say anything, she did. “Dodo.”

  Louis made a strangled sound, but she cut him off. “Doofus.” She thought, then nodded her head. “And that’s just the d’s.”

  By then he had turned around and was walking away. “Spanish,” she called after him, “el stupido. French—” but he was out of earshot, which was lucky because she was out of foreign languages. The bell rang and “What’s wrong with you?” she asked Mikey, then, “Why are you putting up with him?”

  “What does Louis Caselli matter?” Mikey asked her.

  * * *

  Emboldened by success, at lunch Louis attacked again.

  Mikey and Margalo were sitting side by side at their table, just beginning their lunches—Margalo’s a tuna salad on lightly toasted supermarket white bread, and Mikey’s one of the few popular cafeteria meals, two slices of cheese pizza with a side of french fries. Mikey stared across the crowded room in what Margalo had already identified as her in-the-same-room-as-Shawn-Macavity stupor. Shawn was like the magnet, and Mikey’s attention was like the iron filings that line up to point to where the magnet is, if they can’t go flying across whatever space separates them to cling right onto it. Mikey sat, and stared, and didn’t even know how obvious she was.

  No, Margalo corrected herself, biting into the tuna sandwich. Mikey didn’t even care. Margalo had added a little chopped onion to her tuna salad and she would have offered Mikey a bite, so Mikey could admit that Margalo occasionally had good cooking ideas, but when Mikey was having a Shawn Macavity spasm, there was no getting through to her. She hadn’t even taken a bite of pizza, which she usually wolfed right down.

  Mikey just sat. And stared. Margalo sighed, a sigh that was half a groan. She ate some sandwich, then groaned, a groan that was half sigh. She wasn’t sure how much of this she could take. At last Mikey spoke.

  “Why’s he talking to Louis?”

  Margalo didn’t bother asking who. She looked over to where Louis Caselli leaned down over Shawn, and Shawn twisted in his chair to talk up at him. Louis said something, Shawn asked a question, Louis jabbed with his chin in the direction of their table. Before anyone caught her staring at him, Margalo looked hard at her sandwich. Shawn was getting stuck up, just like any overnight rock star sensation, or movie star sensation, or sports star sensation, and Margalo never wanted to contribute to anyone’s sense of stuckupedness.

  “What’s Louis doing?” Mikey asked.

  “I thought you didn’t care about Louis,” Margalo said.

  Margalo had asked her mother how long this first, stupefied, phase of Mikey’s big crush would last, but Aurora was no help. “Love takes different people different ways,” she had said, but Margalo already knew that from her own experience. She announced the obvious. “He’s coming over here.”

  Margalo watched Louis Caselli strut around among the long tables, and she put down her sandwich. It was always good to have your mouth free when you encountered Louis Caselli. She knew it was going to be up to her to take full advantage of this Louis Caselli irritation op, because Mikey barely glanced at Louis before her attention—Ping! Zip! Zap!—swung back to Shawn Macavity.

  Louis strutted over to stand right in front of Mikey, blocking her view. “Hey!” she protested.

  “Hey yourself, Mee-shell,” Louis answered, the first time since fifth grade he’d risked calling Mikey by her detested real name.

  Then she did look at him. And smiled—a bug-squashing smile.

  Louis said, “I was just talking to your heartthrob.”

  “Go away,” Mikey said.

  “Mr. Tooth Decay,” Louis said.

  “Dumb joke,” Mikey said.

  “Don’t you want to know what he said to me?”

  “I want you to go away.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, OK. Maybe I will. Maybe that’s just what I will do. I think it is, because I guess you don’t want to know what he said when I asked him about you.” Louis smirked, strutting in place, turning as if he was about to leave.

  “Good-bye, Louis,” Margalo said. “Good riddance to—”

  “Bad rubbish, ha ha,” he cut her off.

  “I was going to say, soiled sullage,” Margalo answered.

  “What do you do, read dictionaries for fun?” Louis demanded.

  Then Mikey asked just the question Louis wanted her to. “What did he say?”

  “Mikey!” Margalo protested.

  “Who?” Louis asked, playing dumb now. “What did who say?”

  Margalo told him. “You know who.”

  “Shawn,” Mikey said. “Shawn Macavity.”

  “What about him?” Louis asked, smirking.

  Margalo would have liked Mikey to punch that smirk off Louis Caselli’s face. He smirked as if somebody having a big crush—a big, hopeless crush—turned that somebody into someone to make fun of. She couldn’t believe that Mikey was letting him get away with this.

  Mikey gritted her teeth. “What did he say?”

  “Say about what?” Smirk.

  “About me.” Grit.

  “Oh, yeah, that. You really want to know?”

  Grit.

  Smirk.

  “Yes! for scum’s sake.”

  “Enough to trade your lunch for the information?”

  Margalo stepped in again. “How much information is there? It’s not like you were talking very long. I wouldn’t do it, Mikey.”

  “But Mee-shell will. Because she’s dying to know what Mr. Tooth Decay said. When I asked him about her.”

  “I’m not you,” Mikey told Margalo as she pushed her tray across the table toward Louis.

  Margalo sat back, gave up, and butted out. If Mikey was going to be like this, there was nothing she could do.

  The tray rested at the center of the table, with Mikey’s hands on one side and Louis’s on the other, and Louis’s smirking face hanging above it like some baboon hanging down from a branch. “He said,” Louis said, “and I will quote his words exactly, because I know you’d like to hear his exact words. He said, and I quote exactly, word for word: ‘Who’s Mikey Elsinger?’ ”

  Then Louis jerked the tray, fast.

  But Mikey was faster. “I don’t believe you,” she said, pulling it back.

  “You made a deal!” Louis protested.

  Suddenly Margalo felt much better.

  Margalo wasn’t the only audience of this little scene. Many people were curious to see where this would lead, especially those people close enough to listen, and the lunch duty teachers had also taken note. Louis had lost a lot of social ground in the fall, when he decided it would make him popular to jam Hadrian Klenk into wastebaskets whenever he could. After the third jam some of the boys—led by Ira and Ralph, Sean Mitchell and Michael Stone—kept near Hadrian in the halls; and all of the girls refused to speak to Louis, even his cousin Ronnie, who usually felt she had to defend him. Frannie Arenberg, typically, did it differently. She just told Louis to his face that he should be ashamed of himself. It was Frannie’s op
inion that stopped him. Louis was pretty consistent about what girl he liked (Frannie Arenberg, ever since last year), as consistent as he was about the girls he disliked.

  “Cheater!” Louis told Mikey, adding a couple of choices from the list of words Mr. Saunders didn’t want to hear spoken in his school. “You traded it to me.”

  Margalo answered Louis’s accusation. “Oh my goodness,” she said. “He’s right, Mikey. And he clearly needs another lunch, the poor little undernourished thing. Otherwise,” she added to Louis as Mikey, with perfect timing, let go of the tray, causing Louis to stumble backward and the plate of pizza to leap up at his chest in a mute but effective attack, “otherwise, you might not look so much like an unexpurgated slug.”

  At first Louis couldn’t think of a response. Then he decided he ought to threaten, so everybody watching would know he had the upper hand. “I don’t know what you mean by that,” he snarled at Margalo.

  “No,” she answered sweetly. “I didn’t think you would.”

  Mikey had withdrawn from the argument now that she could see the back of Shawn Macavity’s head again. But she had taken the second half of Margalo’s sandwich and was chomping away at it.

  In his best so-there voice Louis closed the argument. “I didn’t think you did.”

  “I know,” Margalo continued it, with more and sweeter patience.

  Louis was losing. He didn’t know how that had happened. He looked around to the watching faces to tell them, “She’s got a crush on Shawn, can you believe it? As if he’d even look at her once.” Then he was seized by an unfortunate inspiration. “Or maybe he would. Because pretty guys like him are usually gay, aren’t they? And gay guys like—”

  Mikey had him by the throat, which limited his ability to verbalize. She was about his height, so he could see right into her eyes. The sight was not pleasant to him.

  “Lgo!” he gurgled.

  “Don’t you ever—,” she was starting to say.

  Then her words, too, were cut off. Called in by one of the teachers on lunch duty, Mr. Saunders had arrived. He put one hand on Mikey’s shoulder, shoving his other arm between the two of them, standing far enough back so that Mikey had time to recognize him and abort the punch she was about to throw at whoever was getting in the way of her choking Louis Caselli to death.