Why should Mikey lie? “Sure.”
Mr. Saunders kept his eyes on her for a long minute, breathing in the smelly air. Then he said, “Come with me, Mikey.”
Before she followed him down the hall, Mikey shut the door of her locker and reset the lock. At least nobody was laughing anymore.
* * *
Mr. Saunders suspended her for the rest of the day, but he had to call Aurora to come take her away since her father was out of the office and not expected back until late afternoon. “I will deal with you tomorrow,” he said to Mikey. “I want your father to bring you to school. Understood?”
“They stank up my locker,” she told him.
“Who?”
She didn’t know.
“You need to get your temper in control,” he warned her.
“It is,” she promised him.
“You need to learn how to get along with people,” he told her.
“Does get along mean I do nothing when they stand around laughing because they stank up my locker?” she asked.
“You weren’t asking for it?” he asked back. “You haven’t been making fools of them? Don’t complain when you get what you ask for,” he told her. “I could suspend you for a week. How would you feel about that?”
Mikey was the first seventh grader to get suspension, and she was a girl. And she was about to leave for the day. The truth was, she felt just fine.
* * *
Mikey was prepared for the second part of the one-two combination punch, principal then parent. But “Ready?” was all Aurora said when she walked into the office where Mikey waited, her book bag at her feet.
Mikey—clearly ready and waiting—didn’t have anything to say, either. They went down the hall and out the main entrance. Aurora had parked her old station wagon in the visitors’ lot, so they had to pass a lot of windows, but Mikey didn’t look up to see if any faces were looking out at her. She was thinking about getting what you ask for. She hadn’t forgotten that the first thing she asked for was a simple RSVP, but that was just the specific cause. In general, if she had a chance to get what she asked for, she needed to think about what she really wanted.
She got into the front seat, strapped herself in, and made herself sit patiently while Margalo’s mother backed cautiously out of her slot, as if the little sprinkling of snow hadn’t melted away hours ago. Once Aurora was out on the street, safely in the right lane, slowing down in case any stoplight they were approaching might turn yellow, Mikey said, “Thanks for getting me.”
“You’re welcome,” Aurora said. As if she didn’t care how much trouble Mikey was in. “I assume you had some reason for fighting.”
“A good reason.”
“I don’t know if I’d assume that,” Aurora said. “But. You’re your own problem, not mine. And your father’s, and maybe a bit of Margalo’s, too.”
“Why Margalo’s?”
Aurora pushed her hair back behind her ears, just like Margalo, and smiled to herself. “I’m glad Margalo has you for a friend,” she said after a while, which might have been her answer to Mikey’s question. “You’ve got broad vision.” She turned her head to look at Mikey and added, “You know?” Then Aurora turned quickly back to face whatever might come at her from the road ahead. “I mean, you live in a wider world.”
Mikey couldn’t figure out what this meant.
“Like, you play tennis,” Aurora explained.
“You mean I’m ambitious,” Mikey said.
“It’ll be easier for you when you’re grown up. Out of school.”
“Ambitious like my mother,” Mikey said.
“Just because you’re ambitious like your mother doesn’t mean you’re just like your mother. You’re pretty fierce,” Aurora told Mikey, as if Mikey didn’t already know that.
“So’s Margalo,” Mikey said, in case Margalo’s mother hadn’t figured that out yet.
“I hope so,” Aurora said.
Luckily, before Aurora could drive Mikey completely crazy trying to have a sensible conversation, they pulled up in front of Margalo’s house. Mikey was out of the seat belt and out of the car before Aurora even had the keys out of the ignition. She had already decided how to tell Margalo about the day. “You should have called me,” would be her first words. Right after, “What’s for lunch?”
7
What Now? What Next?
“I need something to do,” Mikey said to Margalo, about a week after the fight-suspension afternoon.
They were on their way to the auditorium. It was the second week in November, and civics had been canceled—again!—because of having an assembly—again!—for a seventh-grade class meeting. Wednesday, first period after second lunch, seemed to be the official assembly time.
Mikey and Margalo pushed their way to the front of the seventh graders going down the right-hand aisle of the auditorium. They checked in with Mr. Parazzo, who stood by the rows of seats assigned to his homeroom. They each took a copy of the handout he offered. As other students came up, Mikey and Margalo slipped away, to push their way back up to the rear of the room. They would be out the doors long before anybody else, when this assembly disassembled.
Seated, they each opened a big, loose-leaf notebook and impaled the handout on its three rings, as if the paper was a three-hearted Dracula. Each took out a pen and put her initials at the top of the paper. ME, wrote Mikey, in large, dark letters. Me, Margalo wrote, perhaps more modestly.
“Why do they always schedule assemblies during civics?” Mikey wondered as she looked out over the audience, which was busy talking, checking in, talking, finding seats, talking, looking around to see who was looking around at them.
Margalo had an explanation. “It’s because governments prefer their voters uninformed. So, actually, this assembly is a part of civics class: We’re learning to keep ourselves uninformed.” Then she had to admit, “Although it’s not just civics. It’s every seventh-period class, on Wednesdays.”
“You mean some people get to miss English?” Mikey realized, outraged.
“Or gym.”
“I like gym,” Mikey said.
They closed their notebooks. Neither one read the handout.
Onstage, the blue velvet curtain hung closed, but an empty podium waited at center stage. Because this was a class meeting, not an all-school assembly, only half of the auditorium filled up.
Mikey estimated the size of the audience. “About a hundred and ninety?”
“There are two hundred and five people in the class,” Margalo answered.
“Minus the usual absentee rate of five percent.”
Margalo tried to work that out in her head. Divide by ten, she told herself. Now, divide by two. Now subtract.
Mikey figured it out in about one second. “One hundred ninety-five, probably.”
Margalo was slow, but she was accurate. “One hundred ninety-four and three-quarters,” she corrected. Then she had to get grinned at and punched in the arm.
Mikey continued. “So what we have here is about a hundred ninety-five twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys and girls, of varius colors and creeds. A perfect slice of the American pie.”
Margalo pointed out, “At least one of them is only eleven.” This was Hadrian Klenk.
“But he’s probably the smartest kid in the whole seventh grade.”
“Maybe the whole school, maybe the whole school system, but so what?”
“You mean, since that doesn’t make him any less of an unpopular dork?” Mikey asked.
“Although it does make him the smartest unpopular dork.”
“That’s the clique I belong in, Smart Unpopular Dorks,” Mikey said, perfectly happy. “SUDs. You want to be in it? You’re smart enough.”
“I’m not unpopular,” Margalo protested. “Not like you.”
They could talk without worrying about being overheard, since the room was loud with conversations and laughter as the rows below them filled up and Mr. Saunders ascended the four steps to the stage.
“So I win again,” Mikey said in a lowered voice.
As Mr. Saunders looked out over his audience, he noticed Mikey and Margalo. Actually, “noticed” was too mild a word. His attention fell on them, like the blue laser beam out of the eyes of an alien invader. Mikey and Margalo looked back at him from where they sat alone in the empty rear of the auditorium.
Frowning a little, Mr. Saunders raised his right hand, flipped it up into the air—instructing them to stand up—and pointed to the last filled row, half an auditorium away.
Everybody turned to see what he was looking at. But everybody turned right back, because Mr. Saunders started talking. “Good afternoon, boys and girls,” he was saying, as Mikey and Margalo slowly rose from their seats to move up. Mr. Saunders was so tall, he had to lean down a little to get his mouth close enough to the microphone. His voice was so deep and loud that he had to speak softly into the microphone. He told them it was going to be his pleasure to announce the seventh-grade honor roll students, those with B averages. After that, he told them, it would be his pleasure to read them the very short list of high honor roll students, who had straight A’s. Then he had one announcement to make, before he came to the real purpose of this assembly, which was the big seventh-grade class project of the year, which was the eighth-grade dance.
As he spoke, he watched Mikey and Margalo sit down, still three rows back from the rest of the students. He watched, but decided not to say anything as he unfolded a sheet of paper.
Mikey said to Margalo, “High honor roll’s something I could do,” and Margalo whispered back, “Pipe down.”
Mr. Saunders read out the forty-six names on the honor roll, in alphabetical order. When he’d finished, he asked those students to stand and receive the applause of their less fortunate—probably because less hard-working—peers. Mikey and Margalo stood up and applauded one another.
Next Mr. Saunders read off the names of the three girls on the high honor roll list, and the one boy. Hadrian Klenk, the only boy with straight A’s, bobbed up and sank right back down into his corner seat, in the front row.
Mikey refused to stay piped down. “I’ll make high honor roll next marking period.”
“We both could,” Margalo realized.
“Math,” Mikey reminded her.
Mr. Saunders moved on to his next topic, which was the importance of school spirit. He urged all of the seventh graders to come to games, and cheer on the West School teams, just as they hoped to be cheered on next year, when they were the ones playing. “There’s nothing like hometown support,” Mr. Saunders said, “nothing as important as your friends being behind you as you try your hardest.”
“So all I can do this year is sit in the stands?” Mikey asked. “What’s wrong with this picture?”
Those two major topics, academics and athletics, covered, Mr. Saunders got down to the purpose of the assembly: the dance. Every year at West Junior High, the seventh grade hosted a dance for the eighth grade. Mr. Saunders devoted a few seconds to brushing aside his audience’s initial response to this announcement before instructing them to look at their handouts.
Mikey and Margalo obeyed, opening their notebooks across their laps. Under the cover of that diversion, Margalo insisted, “I could work harder and do better in math; I could try harder. I won’t ever understand, but that doesn’t mean I can’t get an A.”
“Hunnh,” Mikey answered, wordlessly doubting it.
Mr. Saunders wanted them to read along with him as he read the handout aloud, probably to guarantee that they understood it, but maybe only to be sure this class meeting didn’t get out early. The items were:
1. It was a tradition at West Junior High for the seventh grade to give this dance, although—
2. Seventh graders couldn’t attend it themselves, unless—
3. They were asked by an eighth grader, as a date.
4. Valentine’s Day was the traditional time for the dance.
5. The seventh-grade class would need to raise over one hundred dollars to cover the cost of music, decorations, and refreshments.
6. Committees would be formed to work on these various aspects of the project. Every seventh grader had to serve on a committee.
7. The usual forms of publicity were what was permitted: posters and flyers, a newspaper interview; nothing beyond that without his approval.
8. The seventh grade would have to find at least ten adult chaperones, preferably from the faculty, and—
9. The most important point: Every homeroom, every seventh grader, was responsible to see that the gym—where the dance would be held—was cleaned up afterward, and ready for the first phys ed class on the Monday morning after the dance.
10. These handouts were to be taken home, shown to parents, signed, and returned to their homeroom teachers. By Friday.
During this, Mikey busied herself writing along the margins of the paper ME, ME, ME, until her initials began to resemble one of those Greek designs around the water jugs they had seen slides of in seminar.
“Any questions?” Mr. Saunders asked, as if he really wanted to hear some.
Mikey looked up, to show that she was paying attention, which she wasn’t; the principal was scanning the audience for raised hands. He didn’t want to miss anybody’s question, no matter what it was. Even if it was the inevitable give-away question, “Does every seventh grader have to participate?”, Mr. Saunders answered it patiently. Even the inevitable giggly question, “If an eighth grade boy asks you”—interrupted by the inevitable sarcastic comment, “In your dreams an eighth-grade boy will ask you”—didn’t shake his calm.
Margalo was busy looking over the audience, noticing how—with Mr. Saunders ready to pounce on them—the boys were neither punching shoulders nor elbowing, but were still visibly restless. The girls had their heads bent over the handout papers, sitting still, whispering without looking like they were. “Why do they make the seventh grade give a dance?” Margalo asked Mikey.
“Because nobody wants to?” Mikey guessed.
They spoke in low voices, stiff-lipped like ventriloquists, and kept their eyes on their handouts, as if they were reading them carefully.
Margalo rephrased her question. “It’s eighth graders who always talk about dances, and dates. They’re the ones who should give a dance.”
“Eighth grade does sound pretty bad,” Mikey agreed. “Except, I’ll get to play on the tennis team.”
“Their class project is a play. But none of them want to do that, either. It’s so perfectly backwards from what the students want to do, it has to be on purpose, don’t you think?” Margalo asked.
Mikey shook her head, denying it. “They don’t know enough about us to do it on purpose.” Then she smiled—lots of teeth, Who-me? Little-old-me?—at Mr. Saunders, whose attention had been attracted by her shaking head.
Mr. Saunders smiled back. Good-girls.
Mikey kept on smiling.
His expression grew wary. His smile changed. I’ve-got-my-eye-on-you, he smiled and went back to his agenda.
“In your committees, you will first estimate your expenses and then consider ways of raising the necessary funds. This two-step process is a good rule to follow for all of life,” he advised them.
That wasn’t bad advice, in Mikey’s opinion. Pay your own way. She agreed one hundred percent about that. She figured, if you were paying your own way, you could go wherever you wanted.
“In our experience,” Mr. Saunders told his audience, “it will cost you at least one hundred and twenty-five dollars to put on a successful dance.”
A few moans and whistles and complaints accompanied this information. “Too muches” bounced around off of “Not enoughs,” like little boats on a sea of “Who cares-es?”
“Other seventh-grade classes have done it,” Mr. Saunders told them. “Do you think you can’t do as well as all the other seventh-grade classes who have been at West Junior High? I know better than that,” he reassured them. He offered the bribe of h
is esteem. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if your class didn’t give the best dance ever.”
His confidence raised their interest.
“So let’s brainstorm about how to raise money,” he exhorted, like a politician urging people to vote for him, or a general getting his troops eager to march off and die. “Let’s just get started and do it. Yes, Louis?”
“A boxing match,” Louis Caselli suggested. He hadn’t changed since the first time Mikey and Margalo had laid eyes on him, in fifth grade. It was almost fun, how predictable Louis Caselli was, when it wasn’t totally boring. “People would pay to see that.”
Mr. Saunders had a yellow pad out, and a pen in his hand, but he wasn’t writing this down. “That’s not exactly—”
“Or wrestling,” Louis suggested. “Or karate, like The Karate Kid,” Louis concluded, speaking loudly now so Mr. Saunders could hear him over the enthusiastic support of those boys who thought this was one great idea.
Mr. Saunders raised his voice two notches. “That’s enough, boys.” As if a wet blanket had been thrown down over them, the boys settled down.
“The guy is good at his job,” Mikey said. “I have to give him that.”
They went through the predictable suggestions, which Mr. Saunders did write down—car washes, bake sales, bottle drives. There were also some more self-interested ones, like Rhonda’s suggestion of a fashion show. “With a lunch. We could set out tables in the gym and—we could see if the department stores in the mall will sponsor us. The girls who were models would all be seventh graders,” she promised.
“What about boys?”
“Boy models?”
“Do you think you’re that good-looking?”
A Heather suggested, “Boys could be the waiters.”
“What about a fair?” a Lindsay suggested. “We did that in my old school, every March. We got our computers with the money we made; we made a lot.”
“My mom could teach dance, ballroom, disco, line dancing. She knows them all.”
“How about a touch football tournament?” Louis asked, without being called on. He’d been waving his hand around for a while without attracting Mr. Saunders’s attention.