Bad Girls in Love by Cynthia Voigt
Ronnie came to wait in the classroom doorway. Basketball practice was over and she was there to join up with her boyfriend, but she wasn’t going to come into the room to claim him. She was accustomed to having boys coming up to claim her.
Shawn stayed right where he was, waiting for Ronnie to come to him.
“I console myself with remembering how many movie stars looked like dorks in high school,” Margalo told Frannie, “and thinking of how that could work the other way around, too.”
Ronnie stayed waiting where she was, and Shawn stayed waiting where he was. Margalo and Frannie stayed where they were and watched.
“I’m going to miss you,” Frannie said.
As they watched, Mikey came to the doorway and walked right through the line of sight connecting Ronnie and Shawn as if it wasn’t there—as if, even if it was there, it was something in another dimension that had nothing to do with her and was of no interest to her. Mikey just strode on through, practically tripping over Hadrian Klenk who tried to ask her something, ignoring everything except what she had in mind.
“And Mikey, too,” Frannie said. Mikey came up and Frannie said, “It won’t be the same without you, next year in Hawaii.”
“You could invite us to come live with you,” Mikey suggested, then reassured Frannie, “That was a joke.” She turned to Margalo. “You didn’t ask Ms. Larch about the stage manager having an assistant, did you? Because I changed my mind. I don’t have the time, I’ve got tennis and Chez ME. Did you ask her?”
“Not yet.”
“And you don’t have the time either,” Mikey warned Margalo. “Now what’s so funny?” she demanded of Frannie.
Frannie didn’t answer. Instead she said, “I like your T-shirt.”
“If Margalo doesn’t want it, you can have hers,” Mikey offered.
“Who said I don’t want it?” Margalo protested. “That stinks, giving Frannie something you already gave me, Mikey.”
“I said if,” Mikey argued.
“And right in front of me,” Margalo pointed out.
“I really am going to miss you two,” Frannie said, laughing.
* * *
They jounced along side by side on the leather seat of the late bus. Margalo turned away from the window to tell Mikey—as the bus lurched to a stop and they surged forward in unison like synchronized swimmers—”I’m giving Shawn and Ronnie three weeks.”
Mikey had a more immediate concern. “You’d think that they’d put seat belts on school buses. Wouldn’t you?”
“Write to the President,” Margalo said, as if she’d heard all this before.
“Maybe I will,” Mikey said, although she knew she wouldn’t. Margalo had heard all this before, she realized, and there were other things Margalo had been wanting to talk about all day, and all yesterday, too, and Sunday. Mikey decided it was time to put Margalo out of her misery. She was ready to do that now. She admitted, “I was wrong about Shawn.”
Margalo didn’t try to contradict her. “Everybody makes mistakes,” she said irritatingly.
“I don’t,” Mikey said. “Other people might say I do, but usually I don’t agree with them.”
“This time almost everybody agreed with you,” Margalo pointed out.
“And as usual they were wrong. I was just wrong right along with them for once.”
“Mistakes are how you learn,” Margalo said, which sounded to Mikey like Aurora’s lopsided way of looking at things, a little wacko and usually worth thinking about—later. Now she had more interesting things on her mind.
“I’m looking forward to the next time I fall in lurve,” she told Margalo. “It’s pretty much fun.”
This, Margalo paid close attention to. “You think so?”
“Only next time I’m choosing someone entirely different.”
“You don’t choose who you fall in love with,” Margalo told her.
Mikey was about to say, Who appointed you Love Information Center? Then she had a guess, an intuitive leap, and she knew, she just all at once knew—
“I plan to choose,” Mikey argued while the back of her mind chased after this new idea she was having. Speaking from the front of her mind, she told Margalo, “I’m thinking of Ralph now that he and Heather are through.”
She knew, and she knew she was right, too.
Margalo was in lurve. And had been, all along, hadn’t she? But not with Shawn Macavity; this had started long before Shawn. But Margalo had been so secret and quiet about it, kept it so private to herself—it was impressive how Margalo had kept it to herself. Mikey was impressed. She really admired Margalo sometimes; sometimes she just really admired her friend.
“Although, you choose what you do about it,” Margalo said.
“He’s going to be my mixed doubles partner,” Mikey explained.
“So I guess you could choose not to be in love.”
“So we’ll have lots in common.”
Mikey decided right then she wasn’t going to tell Margalo that she had figured it out. If Margalo wanted it to be a secret, Mikey wouldn’t say one thing. She even had a guess about who, but she wasn’t going to tell Margalo that, either. Or her opinion of him. Besides, Margalo already knew what a non-event of a teacher she thought he was.
“So maybe,” Margalo argued, arguing herself around to what Mikey had just said, “you really do choose.”
“I think I should try for Ralph,” Mikey decided.
Margalo said, sarcastic, “Lucky Ralph. Although, you know what they say: Love is blind.”
“No it isn’t,” Mikey said.
“OK, it’s half-blind,” Margalo said. “Blind to faults.”
“People are what’s blind,” Mikey said.
“Which means that the blinder love is, the better for all of us,” Margalo said.
Margalo always wanted to have the last word. Maybe this time Mikey would let her.
Margalo, of course, had even more to say. “You know what else they say? In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is King.”
Mikey couldn’t stand it. “Or Queen,” she said.
ALSO BY CYNTHIA VOIGT
The Bad Girls Series
Bad Girls Bad, Badder, Baddest
It’s Not Easy Being Bad
The Tillerman Series
Homecoming
Dicey’s Song
A Solitary Blue
The Runner
Come a Stranger
Sons from Afar
Seventeen Against the Dealer
The Kingdom Series
Jackaroo
On Fortune’s Wheel
The Wings of a Falcon
Elske
Other Books
Building Blocks
The Callender Papers
David and Jonathan
Izzy, Willy-Nilly
Orfe
Tell Me if the Lovers Are Losers
Tree by Leaf
The Vandemark Mummy
When She Hollers
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Aladdin Paperbacks edition January 2004
Copyright © 2002 by Cynthia Voigt
ALADDIN PAPERBACKS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster
Children’s Publishing Division
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www.SimonandSchuster.com
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Also available in an Atheneum Books for Young Readers hardcover edition. Designed by Ann Sullivan The text of this book was set in Janson Text.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows: Voigt, Cynthia. Bad girls in love / by Cynthia Voigt.
“An Anne Schwartz book.”
Summary: Now in the eighth grade, best friends Mikey and Margalo try to figure out boys, crushes, and falling in love.
[1. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.V874 Baf 2002
[Fic]-dc21
2001045898.
ISBN 978-0-6898-6620-3
ISBN 978-1-44248-921-9 (eBook)
Cynthia Voigt, Bad Girls in Love