Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do?

  “Yes, you do,” Margalo said.

  Mikey was already walking away.

  Margalo thought it out. If she embarrassed Louis, he’d just get stubborn, or if she threatened him or made him feel like he looked stupid. Louis wanted to feel like he was looking cool, looking good. “Somebody wants me to tell you something,” Margalo told him, Miss Mysterioso.

  “Woo-woo-Lou!” one of the boys said.

  Louis grinned happily.

  “In private.” Margalo smiled just the smallest smile, switching to Miss Mona Lisa.

  “It’s not Mikey, is it?” Louis wanted everyone to know he wasn’t that desperate. He bent over to pick up his knapsack. “Not any of your scaggy friends.”

  “You’ll be surprised,” Margalo promised, Miss Flirtorama.

  Louis’s eyes lit up then, as if he actually believed what she was pretending to be hinting. Could he have forgotten the tutoring bet they had? Could he have forgotten that he was about to fail ninth grade and have to repeat the year? “Who is it?” he asked.

  Margalo shook her head, she couldn’t say.

  “Maybe I won’t go with you unless you say who,” Louis said, setting his knapsack back down on the ground, taking a deep pull on his cigarette, letting the smoke out from his nose slowly.

  What did he think he was, a dragon?

  But Margalo was fascinated by this conversation because she was just figuring out that Louis Caselli didn’t think more than five minutes ahead. It was as if she had been given that fairy-tale gift of understanding the speech of animals, only this gift was that she could see into Louis Caselli’s brain and watch what was going on. There wasn’t much to see when his memory range was about five minutes, and his forward-thinking distance the same—Otherwise why was he smoking? And why wasn’t he doing the homework they’d assigned him?

  Then Margalo got it: All Louis Caselli had in his life to feel good about was what his friends thought of him. That was it, everything, the whole enchilada. Louis would hate losing face, and he was afraid of it too.

  “I promised,” lied Margalo, wide-eyed with fake sincerity. “I can’t tell anyone but you, Louis.” And at that little victory for his coolness Louis shrugged, pinched the end of his cigarette to put it out, and then put it into his t-shirt pocket for later consumption.

  “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” he said, and followed Margalo off to where Mikey awaited.

  They took him into the library, where none of his friends were liable to see him, and sat him down at one of the small tables behind the stacks. Louis leaned back in his chair. “So. Who’s the chick?”

  “Get real,” Margalo advised him. And this was the best advice anyone could offer Louis, if he could just figure out how to take it. But that wasn’t her present problem. The present problem—the thing they could do something about and were going to do something about—was English for her and Math for Mikey.

  “You mean you were lying?” Louis glared and crossed his arms over his chest. “Were you in on it?” he asked Mikey.

  “Probably,” Mikey said.

  “Yeah, well, I knew all along,” Louis assured them. “You didn’t fool me for one minute. So, what do you really want? I thought—Now Ronnie’s going to the prom with Chet, did she tell you?—I thought everything was fixed.”

  “You’re not fixed. Our bet is still on,” Mikey reminded him.

  “And we can’t risk Chet figuring out that he was scammed,” Margalo added.

  “Oh. Okay, but . . . I thought I didn’t have to do anything until Friday. Today’s Wednesday, in case you forgot. You said Friday.”

  “We changed our minds,” announced Margalo. She added a one-page essay to his assignments, at which he grumbled, “As if I didn’t have anything better to do.” Then, “Mikey? Your turn,” she said.

  “Isn’t one subject enough?”

  “No,” Mikey answered. “The plan for Math is you review the basic operations, then take the unit tests, one after the other. Mr. Radley said he’d take the unit tests into consideration as makeup work—if you pass them—but they have to be taken under his supervision—”

  “He wants to flunk me.”

  Mikey didn’t blame the teacher if he did. She’d want to flunk Louis too, a student who never did his homework, never tried to learn, cracked disruptive jokes in class and generally seemed to like being a buffoon.

  Buffoon, that was Louis exactly. She started to write it down for Margalo so Margalo could enjoy it too. B-u-f—two fs or one? She’d never been much of a speller. One, she decided—o-o-n.

  “Precisely,” Margalo murmured, adding a second F.

  “I’m pretty sure you can’t pass,” Mikey told Louis. “But I’ve got a bet to win here and I want to win fair and square.”

  “Maybe I don’t care,” Louis asked. “What’s in it for me?”

  “Summer school,” Margalo told him.

  “I’m going to kill Ronnie.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Mikey said. “You’ll like jail.”

  “Didn’t you tell your father you were going to pass?” Margalo asked him, a guess, but a confident one. “At least enough to be able to do summer school for the remaining credits?”

  “How’d you know that? Did Ronnie tell you?”

  Margalo nodded. This would count as a white lie, wouldn’t it?

  “How else was I going to get him off my back?” Louis demanded, but then he realized, “All right. All right, you don’t have to be such a pair of nags.”

  “Tomorrow, here, same time,” Margalo told him.

  “With the work completely done,” Mikey said.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Louis grumbled, getting up and—after carefully looking to be sure no one was observing him—stepping from behind the stacks. He strutted out into the hallway.

  Mikey remembered then, and she ran after him, ignoring the way he was trying to ignore her. “Louis? Wait up.”

  “Bug off!”

  “No, I wanted to ask, will you call lines again on Friday?” Mikey was talking at the round back of his head, but her question stopped him. He wheeled around to tell her, publicly and loudly, “Look, I’m in enough trouble already without you trying to add to it.” He looked around to be sure everybody noticed this, him shoving Mikey Elsinger off his back. “So count me out. O-u-t, out. And stop trying to get me thrown out of school.”

  They found Ronnie in the girls’ bathroom, talking shopping with a couple of upperclassmen. “I looked there,” Ronnie was saying, “but—you know—it’s only a prom. It’s not, like, it’s not a wedding or something. Those dresses were ex-pen-sive. And they didn’t look any better on.”

  “Yeah,” one of the seniors answered, “but you could wear a paper bag and look good.”

  “No, seriously,” Ronnie said. She sounded like she was apologizing for her looks, and maybe she was. “I found mine at T.J. Maxx. They had a great selection. You can probably wear deep colors like burgundy or forest green or—have you ever tried on gold? Hey, hi, Margalo. Hi, Mikey. What do you want?”

  The upperclassmen picked up their books and left, continuing to talk about prom dresses. Ronnie smiled in the mirror at Mikey and Margalo. “Aren’t you pleased?” she asked.

  Happiness always looked good on Ronnie. Mikey glanced briefly at Ronnie’s reflected face, then her own, and then Margalo’s. Mikey was round faced, and her nose was sort of stubby, and her eyes were sort of small, and her eyebrows—which she privately liked—were sort of too straight and thick. The kind of prettiness Ronnie had was in her bones. Margalo had strong bones shaping her face, but her face was more square than oval, her mouth more wide than full, her eyes not so dark or deep and all those small differences made a big difference in the total effect.

  “Pleased about what?” Margalo asked. She met Mikey’s eyes in the mirror and crossed hers, which Ronnie, studying her lipstick, didn’t notice.

  “It’s thanks to you I’m going to the prom. And don’t think I’ll forget that.”

&nb
sp; “Actually, it was Chet I was hoping would never forget it,” Margalo remarked.

  “Can you call lines on Friday?” Mikey asked.

  “But I thought . . .” Ronnie turned away from the mirror to remind Mikey, “Mr. Robredo said not to do it anymore.”

  “I know. But . . . I’m going to do it anyway.” At Ronnie’s doubtful expression Mikey added, “You just said you wouldn’t forget.”

  “But Mikey”—Ronnie turned to Margalo, who was someone who would understand—“I have an appointment right after school on Friday to try an updo.” She lifted her heavy, dark hair up off the back of her neck to show them. “To see how it will look with my dress, and if I like it, that’s the way we’ll have it done Prom Saturday. Because that’s in only three and a half weeks,” she told them, her eyes in their pleased excitement shining as darkly as her hair. “Less than that, really.”

  “What’s in less than three and a half weeks?” asked Tan, who had burst into the bathroom, but before Ronnie could answer she said to Mikey and Margalo, “I want to talk to you two.”

  In the mirror the warm dark brown of Tanisha’s skin, together with her height, her long neck and short, curly hair, her strong features—full lips, square chin, large black eyes—made her just as satisfying to look at as Ronnie. Mikey wished they would both go away so she could talk with Margalo about this, about what made people attractive to look at. She knew, for instance, that she had thick, heavy hair, and that was good; but what about her face?

  “I’m leaving,” Ronnie said, not offended. “Guess who’s going to be Chet Parker’s date for the prom, Tan.”

  Tan couldn’t be made jealous about this achievement, nor was she any more interested than to say, “Funny. I heard you were taking him to court.”

  “That was all a misunderstanding.” Ronnie gave a conspiratorial smile in the mirror to Margalo first, then Mikey, before she said, turning and exiting, “Sorry about the line calling, Mikey.”

  “What about line calling?” Tan asked when they were alone.

  Margalo was disappointed. She’d hoped Tan wanted to talk to them about something more interesting than the line calling.

  “I’m going to keep on doing it,” Mikey answered. “Will you help?”

  “Maybe,” Tan said. Then, “I’m going to Oslo!” she announced, and waited for their reactions.

  “Norway?” Mikey asked.

  “You aren’t running away, are you?” Margalo asked.

  “The whole family is going, this summer, because William will be there—”

  “I remember,” both Mikey and Margalo said.

  “And that means I’ll see him,” Tan concluded.

  “Yeah, but what difference will that make?” Mikey asked.

  “It’s just going to make you feel worse,” Margalo predicted.

  “That doesn’t matter if I can see him,” Tan told them. “I can’t wait!”

  Mikey knew what was really important. “So will you call lines? It’ll make the time pass more quickly.”

  The next day, Thursday, Louis had almost made it into the cafeteria when they grabbed him. “We’re going to the library,” Margalo said, on one side of him, and from the other side Mikey told him, “You better have that work done.”

  “Hey!” Louis protested.

  Margalo could see the gears working: Did he want to push them away and make it a rejection scene? That would mean he’d flunk ninth grade for sure. But did he want to be seen going off with Mikey Elsinger and Margalo Epps? Definitely not cool. Did he have a chance of its not being noticed? Only if he kept his mouth shut, which would mean running a brief risk of looking un-cool, but maybe he could get away with that. “Hey,” he protested again, but he walked a little faster and a little ahead of them. After all, who could blame him if Mikey Elsinger and Margalo Epps were walking along the hallway in the same direction he happened to be walking in?

  Louis didn’t say anything until they had entered the library, where nobody who mattered would see who he was with and talking to. Margalo led him to a table and sat him down. They had their plan ready. Margalo would go first, trying to explain to Louis how to take notes on a short story. While Margalo did that, Mikey would look over the problems Louis had done, drilling the four most basic math operations. In the next two weeks Mikey intended for Louis to have taken—and passed—all the unit tests of the first semester.

  But as soon as they were seated, with Louis in the middle, and Margalo had taken out her notebook, Louis started to make difficulties. “What about my lunch?”

  “You don’t need it,” Mikey answered.

  “You’re one to talk,” Louis said. He watched her circling errors on his Math paper and protested, “I worked hard on that!”

  “You can get something after,” Margalo said. “They leave it set up for second lunch.”

  “But everything good will be gone,” Louis complained.

  “Too bad,” Mikey said.

  “And besides, see?” Louis indicated the paper Mikey was marking on, and the paper in front of him covered with scratched-out words and sentences. “I couldn’t write that essay,” he told Margalo. “And I didn’t even want to.” He leaned back, crossed his arms over his chest, and glared.

  Margalo took a breath and looked at Mikey. “Okay,” she said to Mikey, and, “Okay,” again to herself. “Take out a sheet of clean paper, Louis, and write down first the tide and author.”

  “You already know that,” Louis groused.

  “After that write ‘I won’t complain’ a hundred times,” Mikey muttered.

  “Next make a list of all of the characters,” Margalo continued. “With the most important ones first, then”—she held up a hand to stop him from speaking—“a list of all the different places where the story happens, in order. I have to go to the bathroom. Come on, Mikey,” she said.

  Louis smirked. “What is it with girls never going to the bathroom by themselves?” At the look on Mikey’s face he added, “Everybody says that.”

  “Just do it,” Margalo ordered him. “Mikey!” she urged, since Mikey was still sitting there, looking up at her, not moving.

  Mikey had her role to play in this scene, so she followed. But as soon as Margalo was out in the hallway, she stopped. “I thought you had to go to the bathroom,” Mikey protested.

  “Remember Dumbo?” Margalo answered.

  “Dumbo? Are you having a nervous breakdown? Are you worried about your play?”

  “The movie. You remember, the elephant with big ears.”

  “You want me to rent a video of Dumbo for you?” Mikey guessed. This was weird, even for Margalo, whose mind was a natural bungee-jumper.

  Margalo shook her head impatiently.

  “It’s playing downtown and you want to go?” Mikey guessed. “You want me to go, and take Stevie and Lily?” What was this, twenty questions? “Is it bigger than a bread box?”

  “No, don’t be so . . . .”

  Stupid, Margalo was going to say stupid, and Mikey wasn’t about to take that, even from Margalo, because if there was one thing she knew she wasn’t, it was stupid. She was about to tell Margalo just that, when Margalo went on.

  “I mean, remember Dumbo’s magic feather?”

  “The one the crows gave him?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But it wasn’t magic,” Mikey pointed out, trying to figure out where Margalo’s wavelength was so she could get on it. “You didn’t do any funny drug stuff, did you?”

  “Mikey!” Margalo protested, exasperated. “Just listen. Louis needs a magic feather.”

  “Oh, of course.” Mikey knocked on her head with her knuckles. “Silly me. I can loan him mine.”

  “Not literally, not a real feather. But . . . what if he really believed he could do this work? Learn this material. What if he really believed he could do well enough to pass the exams?”

  “He’d have to be even stupider than I think he is if he can’t. But he doesn’t work.”

  “That’s becau
se he’s afraid it’s too hard. He’s afraid that even if he works, he’ll fail, and then he’ll look seriously like a loser, if he’s trying. But he’s not abnormally stupid. He might not even be stupid at all once he gets out of school,” Margalo said. “So I think we ought to try a magic feather. Not literally,” she said again. “But I mean, what if we can persuade him that he can do it?”

  “But he can. We already know that.”

  “So could Dumbo,” Margalo pointed out.

  “Oh,” Mikey said. “Oh, okay. Okay. I get it, but . . . What’s this non-literal feather going to be?”

  “I think we should tell him we think he can.”

  “He’d believe us?”

  “He’d want to believe us.”

  “But he still won’t do the work.”

  “He will if he thinks it’s easy.”

  Mikey worked it out. “And if we convince him he can do it, he’ll be convinced it’ll be easy—because if it wasn’t, he wouldn’t be able to do it—so he’ll do it.”

  Margalo smiled as if Mikey was a student who had been having trouble learning and finally got it, as pleased as any teacher.

  Mikey returned that smile, You are very close to a punch in the snoot, and Margalo stepped back a little. “Let me do the talking,” she said.

  “With pleasure,” Mikey said.

  But when they had seated themselves again, and Margalo had taken the sheet of paper Louis had shoved across at her, Mikey had an idea. She charged in.

  “You shouldn’t have made all these mistakes,” she said to Louis, indicating the Math homework.

  He shrugged. He could care less. Getting him through these courses was their job.

  Mikey waved the imaginary feather. “You’re too smart to make this kind of mistake in long division.”

  “Yeah. Right,” Louis answered.

  “So do the first three problems again,” Mikey told him. She copied them onto a clean sheet of paper.

  “I already did them and got them wrong.”

  “You couldn’t have been paying attention. What is it, were you watching television at the same time? Because nobody as good at weaseling out of situations as you are would make those mistakes, unless he was trying to watch television and do homework at the same time.”