Just before the bell rang to dismiss them that Friday, Sally King finally raised her hand and asked the question they almost all—you could never tell with Hadrian—had been wondering about. “Ms. Hendriks? We don’t know, if you’re still, like, engaged?”
Ms. Hendriks looked at her left hand, as if she had forgotten it was ringless. “Oh. No. No, I’m not, I’m afraid. We’ve decided not to get married. So I gave him back the ring.”
“Why?” Sally asked.
Ms. Hendriks elected to talk about the ring, not the failed romance. “Because we’re no longer engaged.”
“But I always thought, the ring belongs to the girl,” Sally said.
“That didn’t seem fair to me,” Ms. Hendriks said.
Sally continued explaining it to the teacher. “Like the wife gets the silver and china and glassware, too, if they get divorced. You should make him give it back to you.”
“Look out, Richard,” a low voice said, and people laughed. Sally’s cheeks turned pink, but she pretended not to have heard.
“Well.” Ms. Hendriks smiled. “That’s moot anyway, since he’s moved to Florida.”
“But you came here to be with him,” Sally insisted. “That’s why you took this job. You should never have let him have the ring back. You changed your whole life for him and now look what’s happened.”
“Well,” said Ms. Hendriks, with a quick glance up at the clock. “I found a job I really like. That happened too.” Then she changed the subject before Sally could add any more insistences. “We don’t have as much rehearsal time for this production as we did in the fall, so I hope you’re already thinking about what parts you want to read for. Tryouts will be early next week. Can you be ready?”
They could. Sally wondered if the Stage Manager had to be a man, and Richard reminded her that there was a young couple—“George and Emily, they’re who the play is about”—and that Sally had promised him that after A Midsummer Night’s Dream they could do a couple. “Besides, we’re seniors, this is our last chance to star together, because the spring play’s a musical and you can’t sing,” he reminded her.
“Or dance,” added Sherry Lansing, at which Margalo leaned over to Hadrian where they sat at the rear, near the pile of knapsacks and sweaters and coats by the teacher’s desk, to whisper, “What do you bet Sherry can dance? And she probably sings all right too.”
But Hadrian had his attention on his copy of the play. “Am I too short to play the Stage Manager?” he asked her. “What do you think? I don’t think it matters, do you?”
It was during that week of tryouts, the last week in January, that Tanisha Harris took Margalo aside, Mikey following, as they left lunch A on Wednesday. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you,” she said, “but there wasn’t time.” Monday had been a snow day and Tuesday a late-opening day; in fact, the tryouts were now scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday, which concerned Margalo because Ms. Hendriks had promised them she would have a cast list for them on Friday. Margalo was thinking about if there was anything she could do to help Hadrian get a part, so she just nodded her head at whatever Tan had said. Then Tan got her fall attention. “I need your advice,” she said. “You can’t tell anyone.”
Taking someone aside in high school for a private conversation usually meant withdrawing to the second-floor girls’ bathroom, the smokers’ bathroom, or outside, but in winter outside wasn’t an option. Tan, however, elected to have her private conversation in the middle of the main corridor, which ran from the cafeteria, past the library and main offices, out to the gym entrance. Margalo walked on one side of her, Mikey on the other. Margalo, like Tan, wore tights and a calf-length skirt, with a cotton sweater, while Mikey wore her usual jeans-and-a-T, with a cable-knit sweater over that in honor of cold weather. Margalo and Tan wore dull greens and blues and smoky pinks; Mikey wore bright red, and she had to hurry along to keep up with their longer-legged strides.
Mikey was just about to say something about who should be walking in the middle (her), when Tan announced, “You have to help me.”
Mikey looked across Tan to Margalo, to whom this was probably directed. Hunh?
Margalo looked at Mikey, What?
Mikey’s instinctive response to feeling off-balance and at a disadvantage was a strong offence. “You’re not trying very hard in basketball. How can we get a winning JV team without you?”
Tan didn’t bother answering that question. “I was going to ask you . . . ,” she began. But then she stopped.
She stopped talking and she stopped walking.
They stopped with her, letting people move around and past them.
Tan said, “I need advice. Loretta said it would be smart to ask you, especially Margalo. After the restraining order.”
“What about me?” Mikey demanded but then—after a look at the expression on Margalo’s face—said no more. But what made this Loretta think Mikey wasn’t as smart as Margalo, and who was she, anyway?
“Who’s Loretta, anyway?” Mikey demanded.
“A junior,” Margalo said.
“A friend,” Tan said. Then she changed her mind—about what?—and said, “No, never mind. I don’t think . . .” She fell silent and started walking again. They went along beside her.
“You’ve been weird all year,” Mikey observed.
At that Tan gave them the same glad toothy grin they’d first seen in fifth grade, the smile of a girl who knew what she wanted and knew she could count on herself to work hard to try and get it. In fifth grade it was volleyball, after that it had been basketball and good grades. Now what was it?
“What’s wrong with you?” Mikey asked impatiently.
“William,” Tan answered, saying the name as if it had a sweet and delicious flavor, like a nugget of dark chocolate that had melted on her tongue.
Mikey looked at Margalo, Hunh? (again), and Margalo answered with her same baffled unspoken question, What?
Tan was striding along, looking like she was heading to the library.
“William?” Mikey asked. “William who?”
“William your brother?” Margalo asked.
“I’m in love with William,” Tan said.
“But he’s your brother!” Mikey objected.
“Since last summer,” Tan said. “We’re all adopted, don’t you remember?”
“You said that didn’t make any difference,” Mikey reminded her. “In sixth grade, you said.”
“But now it does, doesn’t it?” asked Margalo, thinking hard.
“And I don’t know what to do about it,” Tan answered.
“Isn’t he much older? Out of college?” Margalo asked.
“He’s going to work in Oslo for at least two years. Oslo in Norway.”
“I know where Oslo is,” Mikey said.
“So what can I do?”
“Forget about him,” Mikey advised.
“I’ve tried. I can’t.”
“Of course you can,” Mikey said.
“I know,” Tan admitted, and added with that grin again, “But I don’t want to. Because . . . Because what if he loves me back?” Just the hope of the chance of that made her voice sing.
“Does he?” Margalo wondered.
“He might. I don’t know. He never . . . But he wouldn’t now because I’m much too young.”
Mikey had suggestions. “Get a job. Work at a sport. Try for honor roll. Have you ever played tennis? You could be good at tennis, Tan, you’re a natural athlete, that would take your mind off William.”
“He should love me back,” Tan told Margalo. “What can I do?”
“Let me think,” Margalo said.
“There’s nothing to think about,” Mikey told them.
By then, they had arrived at their lockers and stopped to get the books they needed for the afternoon’s classes. Mikey decided, “You have to give it up. Because what if he doesn’t love you back?”
“Give me some time,” Margalo asked, and Tan agreed. She left them then, with a quick backward
s wave of the hand.
Mikey looked at Margalo, Hunh? for the third time, and Margalo shrugged and shook her head. Who knows? They watched Tan mix herself in with the moving throng of students.
“People aren’t going to start bringing us their problems, are they?” asked Mikey. “Because I could get pretty tired of that pretty quickly.”
Margalo agreed—sort of. But only sort of, because she liked the kind of thinking she got to do, working on other people’s problems.
“I may already be tired of it,” Mikey decided.
Ms. Hendriks had told them that she would announce the cast of Our Town that Friday, the last Friday in January, and despite the delay in tryouts, she kept her word.
Sally and Richard, of course, got the roles of George Gibbs and Emily Webb, the young couple, whose story lay at the center of the play, surrounded by the typical inhabitants of a small New England village—doctor and editor, choirmaster and policeman, and their wives and children. It was an old-fashioned play, with its three acts taking place in 1901, 1904 and 1913, before the start of the First World War. But unlike Shakespeare, the language was easy to understand. Moreover, there were so many parts that most people who tried out got one, making it the usual crew of actors—plus one.
Hadrian Klenk was the plus one, to the surprise of everyone except Margalo. Ms. Hendriks assigned him the role of Stage Manager. The Stage Manager was always onstage, an actor, but an actor who talked to the audience, not to the other actors, unless he was taking some small part in a scene. The Stage Manager had to be a good enough actor to act not being an actor, like being a good enough singer to be able to sing off-key on purpose. The Stage Manager was like a wise old teacher, explaining the world to his classes. It was a really big part, and people didn’t think it was fair for Hadrian to get it. They didn’t feel that sorry for him, not anymore.
Carl Dane voiced their objections. “He’s a ninth grader, and can he even act?”
Ms. Hendriks smiled, confident. “Hadrian can act.”
“But I thought you said there was a school policy,” Carl said.
“Sometimes, people make exceptions.”
“I bet she didn’t even tell them,” Carl muttered to John Lawrence. “I bet she doesn’t have permission.”
Ms. Hendriks didn’t pretend not to have heard this. “I don’t believe I need permission to cast my own productions.”
An uncomfortable silence fell on the room. This might be her first year, but most of them had been in high school longer and knew better. But because now they felt a little sorry for her—she didn’t know how things went, and with her engagement broken too, and also because she had given them such a satisfying good time with A Midsummer Night’s Dream—they didn’t say any more. She’d find out soon enough.
“You’ll see,” Ms. Hendriks told them. “Won’t they, Hadrian?”
But Hadrian was studying his sneakers, carefully considering how the laces ran through their holes and then crossed, time after time, before emerging into a knot. He wasn’t about to be distracted from this important question—How did shoelaces work, exactly?—to meet the glances of this roomful of people, most of whom were probably wishing he wasn’t there, getting in their way, keeping them from having things the way they wanted.
“I want to warn you. We’ll have to do some weeks of hard work if you want this production to come up to the standard you set for yourselves with Shakespeare,” Ms. Hendriks told them.
That reminder, those memories, made everyone feel better.
“Our performance dates are the twelfth and thirteenth of March,” she said.
“Not Friday the thirteenth,” Richard said, relieved.
“Is the little fellow superstitious?” Sally mocked.
“You’re the one who won’t walk under ladders.” He looked around to assure everyone, “It’s true.”
“It’s Friday the twelfth, so not a problem in any case,” Ms. Hendriks said. “Shall we start the read-through? Actors? Are you ready? Anybody who isn’t an actor can leave now, if you don’t want to stay and listen.”
At the end of the day Mikey and Margalo joined up for a bank run. They walked away from the large school building and into the busier streets of town. They passed in front of store windows, but neither one of them looked at the clothing or the designer foods, the books or the video posters, and certainly not the jewelry. When you had only one class together, and lunch, you took advantage of any other time you could find for talking. They were not distracted by windowfuls of things to want, or by the traffic, or by the people they were sharing the sidewalk with.
“There’s your restaurant,” Mikey said as they passed the big window. “How much are you depositing?”
Both Margalo and Mikey kept a running total of Margalo’s bank account, and they both checked in weekly for the value of shares in the mutual fund Mikey’s stepfather had advised Margalo to buy, in five-hundred-dollar chunks. It wasn’t a great year for the market, but Jackson had forewarned them about that.
“Two hundred and nineteen dollars.”
“Not bad.”
“Not bad at all.”
At the bank Margalo pulled open the heavy glass door, and Mikey followed her inside. This was an old-fashioned bank, with marble on the floor and marble countertops, behind which the tellers stood. At the center of the room there was a high table with slots holding deposit slips and withdrawal slips for various kinds of accounts. Margalo went right up to that table. Mikey came to stand beside her.
With its air as quiet as a library’s—a money library not a book one—Mikey found the bank relaxing. She was conservative in her bank tastes. None of these drive-through windows or ATM machines for her. She looked around, at the Friday-evening customers, at the tellers all in a row, at the closed doors with names and titles painted on them in gold, and at the two guards, dressed almost like policemen, who were also looking around at everybody.
Beside her Margalo selected a deposit slip and filled it out.
“You’re almost ready to make another investment,” Mikey observed.
“Almost,” Margalo agreed. She had finished the form, so she hauled her knapsack up onto the tabletop and started taking her books and notebooks out of it, getting down to the bottom, where she kept her makeup kit and her wallet. Doing her banking, Margalo looked organized and businesslike, partly because she dressed not at all like a high school student (which made sense, since she dressed herself not out of the mall teenage stores, but out of the Next-to-New, a store for grown-ups) and partly because of the way she acted—confident, focused, efficient.
Margalo got down to her wallet, lifted it out and opened it. She always counted out her money one last time to be sure she had the correct number written on the deposit slip. But this week she didn’t take any thick wad of bills out. This week, she opened her wallet and then she just looked into it.
“Mikey?” she asked.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s gone.”
“The two hundred and nineteen dollars?”
Margalo looked at Mikey with a dazed expression on her face, like someone trying to see through thick fog or somebody else’s glasses. All of the rest of Margalo was motionless. All around them the bank noises went on, hushed voices, muted footsteps, rustling papers.
“It can’t be,” Mikey decided. She reached down into the knapsack to find the bills, where they must have fallen out of the wallet.
Margalo didn’t object, but she predicted, “It’s not there.”
“What do you think you did with it?” Mikey asked.
“I put it into my wallet this morning. No, first I counted it, then I put it into my wallet, then I did what I always do, I put the wallet into the bottom of the knapsack. And I did what I always do on a Friday when I’m making a deposit, I kept the knapsack with me all day.”
“You didn’t leave it in your locker?”
“I just said.”
“You didn’t leave it, like, on a bathroom shelf whil
e you were in a stall?”
“I said.”
“So you must have dropped the bills out when you were taking out books for class,” Mikey decided.
“But I didn’t.” Margalo took a breath. “I don’t. They were in the wallet.”
“And besides, if you had dropped them, somebody would have noticed it,” Mikey agreed. “They’d have told you.” A lot of people knew Margalo’s banking patterns, the same way they knew about all the baby-sitting jobs she had and this dishwashing work too. Everybody knew Margalo was already saving for college.
Mikey didn’t want to say out loud what she was thinking, so she didn’t. She didn’t want it to be true and as long as she didn’t say it out loud, it wouldn’t be. She checked the facts. “The knapsack was never out of your sight all day?”
Margalo was thinking the same thing and she also didn’t want it to be true, so she postponed the inevitable by answering Mikey’s question. “No, never except for Drama, but we all put our stuff by Ms. Hendrik’s desk, which is right there in the corner of the drama room, and everybody’s always around, you know? So I couldn’t have lost it there.”
“Except you must have,” Mikey said.
Margalo replaced her wallet in her knapsack and carefully set the makeup kit in with it. Then she put in her books and notebooks, the pens and pencils, her face expressionless.
“What about when you were changing books at your locker?” Mikey suddenly thought. “We should go back and look around the lockers.”
Margalo crumpled up the deposit slip and dropped it into a wastebasket under the high table. Then she turned and walked across the marble floor, going back out through the heavy glass door. On the street, she turned to Mikey and made herself say it. “I was robbed.”
And Mikey had to say it. “You were robbed.”
“Somebody went into my knapsack,” Margalo said.