“Well, OK. OK. O-kay.” Esther’s voice turned away from the phone and Mikey heard her yell, “Margalo? It’s for you. Hurry up, it’s Mikey.”
“I’m busy,” was Margalo’s greeting.
Mikey heard the clatter as Margalo took the phone off its place on a little table in the upstairs hall and carried it into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her for privacy.
“Mr. Schramm loaned me a book on gemstones,” Margalo said, “to understand how opals are formed.” Ordinarily, Mikey would have insisted on being told about this, but today there were more important things than keeping ahead in science.
“I just called him,” she said.
“Mr. Schramm?” Margalo sounded shocked.
“Shawn.”
“Shawn? Why?”
“I got him a present.” And she’d forgotten that entirely. That was something else she could have told him.
“Why would you do that, Mikey?”
“Mom’s going to get married. She has a ring.”
Margalo’s voice was settling down for a conversation, as if she had gotten herself seated on the bathroom floor, leaning back against the door, ready to talk. “Of course she has a ring. I bet it’s a diamond. Is it?”
“About twenty carats.”
“Can’t be. She wouldn’t be able to lift twenty carats. She’d look like some monkey, dragging her hand along the floor—”
They were both laughing then.
“What did you call him about?” Margalo asked.
“Nothing special. Not really.”
“Then why call?”
“To say I thought he was right about how fighting is stupid. And I do.”
“I thought we were going to take martial arts in high school.”
“That’s not fighting. That’s self-defense, against muggers and rapists.”
“And bad dates,” Margalo added. “And bad husbands. But are you expecting to ever go on a date? I mean, before high school.”
“Do we want to?” Mikey answered her own question silently. No, not on a date; but if Shawn Macavity were to ask her to the movies? She’d go like a shot. Or to the dance. “Do you?”
“That’s not exactly a pressing problem,” Margalo said, then asked, “So after that what did you talk about?”
Mikey tried to think of something to say where she wouldn’t look like as much of a numbchuck as she was afraid she’d been. “What?”
“You didn’t have any plan, did you? You couldn’t think of anything to say, could you?”
“So what? And she took me shopping.”
Margalo always knew who Mikey was talking about, which was something Mikey really liked about her. “You let her take you shopping?”
“She gets a lot of boyfriends, if you notice.”
“You go shopping for things, not boyfriends,” Margalo pointed out.
“We went shopping for clothes, as it happens.”
There was a silence. Then Margalo repeated what Mikey had said, only in a deliberately expressionless voice. “You went shopping for clothes. With Ms. Barcley.”
Mikey let up on her friend. “Mostly clothes for her. For her trousseau. They think they’ll live in Dallas.”
“What about her job?”
“The bank has offices everywhere. All she has to do is transfer.”
“Did you like him?”
“His children are grown up. One just had a baby, so he’s a grandfather.”
“It’s not as if you have to live with them.”
“He asked me how I’d like to spend Christmas in the Bahamas.”
“Wow.”
“I know.” Mikey waited, then, “But still,” she said.
“Maybe your mom always wanted to be someone’s trophy wife,” Margalo suggested.
“She said I should tell Dad her news.”
There was another silence.
Mikey broke it to ask, “What kind of a plan would I have had? If I’d had one.”
“What?”
“When I called Shawn. You accused me of not having a plan. As if you would have.”
Margalo had her answer all ready. She was so ready to tell it that Mikey almost cut her off, but she decided not to. What if Margalo had some good advice?
“What you do for a telephone op is, you make a list—so you won’t not have anything to talk to him about. A list of questions, because when you’re talking to someone you like, you lose track of what you’re thinking.”
“How do you know that?” Mikey demanded. “Have you been talking to Aurora about me and Shawn?”
“You didn’t tell me not to. I didn’t think it was such a secret.”
“Why would I want it to be a secret?” Mikey asked. “What kind of a chicken do you think I am?” Having settled that subject, she went on. “I’m going to make some cookies—do you want to hear my idea for a new recipe?”
“No,” Margalo said.
Now what was wrong with Margalo?
“Then, good-bye,” Mikey said. She didn’t have time to waste trying to sweet-talk Margalo into a better mood.
She was creaming a cup of sugar into half a pound of butter when the phone rang. Margalo, she predicted, betting with the odds, although she knew better than to predict an apology. She had to go out to the living room to answer the phone. Although there were two bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms, their ranch-style house had only one television set, and phone. (In order to live within his after-the-divorce income, Mikey’s father had moved them into a smaller house in a much less upscale neighborhood, which suited both of them.) She still would have liked to have a second phone, in the kitchen. In fact, what she really would have liked was a phone of her own again, in her bedroom, her own private line, but she’d settle for a kitchen phone.
She ran to get the phone before the answering machine kicked in. It had to be Margalo, to finish telling Mikey what Aurora had said about Shawn.
“Did she have any ideas?” Mikey asked without even saying hello.
But it wasn’t Margalo. A male voice asked, “Is this Mikey?”
Not her father, either. This voice wasn’t as deep as her father’s, and besides, her dad always started off, Hi honey, it’s me.
“Yes,” she said.
“Oh, good,” he said. “Well, Mikey,” he said. “So . . . how are you?”
“Who is this?” she demanded. “I’m busy making—Shawn?” she asked, although she didn’t think so. It didn’t sound like Shawn. This voice was richer, or heavier, than Shawn’s; it sounded older.
“Not Shawn,” he said. “Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry, though. He sounded smiley.
“I am busy,” she told him.
“Making cookies?” he said. She didn’t answer, so after some empty airtime he asked, “Do you cook other things? Or do you only bake?”
He didn’t sound like any boy she knew. He didn’t sound grown up, but he also didn’t sound like an eighth-grade boy. No eighth-grade boy, for example, would be interested in cooking. “What do you want?” she asked.
“What?” he asked, apparently surprised; at least, his voice gave way a little at the edges, like a stiff gate just starting to open. “I called so we can talk,” he said then, his voice back to normal. If that was normal.
“Who are you?”
“You don’t know me,” he answered quickly. He’d been expecting that question.
“Then how do you know me? Do you play tennis?”
“No, but I’ve seen you play.”
“Creepy,” she said. “Why would you do that?”
“Why do you think?”
Definitely creepy, unless—Was he flirting with her? He was flirting with her! Who would flirt with her? “You said I don’t know you, so how can I know why you do something dumb like watch me play tennis? Or call me up.” A thought struck her. “Is this Louis?”
When he laughed, he sounded—just briefly, just for the time the laugh took—younger than before, the same way her father sometimes sounded like a kid when
he was laughing at some movie they’d rented. “Not Louis Caselli,” he said. “Scout’s honor.”
“Are you a Boy Scout? Who are you? Are you in my class?”
“I’m not your age,” he said, another question he’d expected.
“Are you stalking me? Because I wouldn’t try that if I were you.”
His voice slipped again, as if she’d made some joke. “No. I swear, I’m—I’m just—” His voice deepened. “I’d like to talk to you, just sometimes. But talk—not E-mail or chat-room kind of conversation. I mean, voices. I mean . . . genuine talking.”
“What about?” Mikey demanded.
“Anything. Whatever we want to talk about,” he said, now as confident as if he was reading lines from a script, so he knew exactly what he’d say. “We could talk about Shawn. Or, the Australian Open, or who’ll be your mixed doubles partner this year, or what colleges we like, or—It would be interesting for me to talk to someone like you. You’re smart, and not many girls have . . . such strong personalities. You do”—but Mikey already knew that—”and Margalo, too. But not as much. Or we could talk about your goals, you know, in life. Or Shawn.”
“You already said him.”
“Oh.” And that seemed to run him out of words.
Well, at least she had unsmoothed him a little. But only for a second or two, because he was right back suggesting, “Will you think about it? I mean, you don’t have to want to—talk to me, I mean. I know most people would think this is sort of scary. I’ll call you again—next Sunday?—so you’ll have time to think, and you can tell me what you’ve decided. I mean, about talking to me.”
“How will I know it’s you?” She had him there and quickly put on pressure. “Well?”
“You’ll know,” he told her, not at all trapped. “So you’ll think about it?”
“It’s dumb,” she said. “It’s pretty weird. Not scary,” she told him, in case he thought he could scare her.
“I’ll call you next weekend,” he said.
“Don’t bother.”
“It’s no bother,” he assured her.
“Right,” Mikey said. “If you say so,” she said. “Good-bye,” she said, and hung up, getting the last word.
Then she punched speed dial I.
“Margalo?” she asked.
“No, Mikey, it’s Susannah.” Another stepsister, older, this one from Margalo’s stepfather’s previous marriage. “You talked longer than five minutes last time,” Susannah said, all highschool-junior important. “I’m expecting a call.”
“OK. OK. Get Margalo, will you?”
“An important call.”
“I know the rules,” Mikey answered. Margalo’s family—having not only two adults but also a large number of children, assorted stepsiblings and half siblings, having a lot of people in it, even subtracting the two oldest, who lived away from home—had only one phone and consequently a five-minute limit to all calls, unless it was an exception. Exceptions were possible, but only Aurora and Steven could make them.
“Mikey?”
“I just got this phone call,” Mikey answered. She told Margalo what he had said and what he had sounded like—most importantly, like no one she recognized, especially not Shawn Macavity—and then she waited.
“A secret admirer?” Margalo guessed. “But that doesn’t make sense.”
“And you’d know about that, Miss Popularity.”
“You’re sure he’s not a stalker?”
“He said he wasn’t.”
“What’s he going to say? Why, yes, thank you for asking, I am a homicidal psychopath? I mean, Mikey,” Margalo argued.
“How dumb do you think I am?” Mikey demanded.
“Since you ask? Sometimes you’re not very smart.”
Mikey hung up. Even if she was being stupid, which she wasn’t, it wasn’t very helpful of Margalo not to be more helpful about this. She returned to the kitchen, picked up her wooden spoon, and started to beat the batter. She hadn’t taken more than twenty good strokes before the phone rang again. “Oh, mudpi-ye-es,” she cried, dragging out the last vowels as she ran out to the living room. “What do you want?” she demanded of the telephone.
“Hi, honey, it’s me. What’s wrong?”
“Too many phone calls,” she told him.
“Let the machine answer,” he advised. “Listen, if I don’t make it home for dinner, would you be all right with that?”
“Why?”
“We’re thinking of stopping off for dinner on the way home. We’re almost finished, but it’s getting late—”
“You’re having another date?”
“It’s just a quick dinner,” he told her. Then he asked, “Would you like to join us?”
“On a date? You’ve got to be kidding, Dad.”
“I’ll be home by eight at the latest.” She knew he would be. “I could bring you a carryout,” he offered. “Or there’s lasagna in the freezer, and Swedish meatballs—”
“I know what’s in our freezer, Dad,” she reminded him. “I’ll be fine. See you later. Have a good time—on your date,” she said, and hung up before he could deny it again.
What was the world coming to? Here was her father, who had been socially dead for more than two years, turning into The Mad Dater. Here she was—and she didn’t have any illusions about her popularity rating—with some secret admirer who knew what she’d like to talk about, if she decided she did want to talk to him. These things were not a bit normal.
She wished she could call Margalo again. Maybe she would, after she got these cookies out of the oven. She added eggs and oatmeal to the batter and mixed it together. She added whole wheat flour and white flour. She stirred in raisins, then—the crowning touch—macadamia nuts. And the phone rang again.
“I didn’t mean you’re stupid,” Margalo said. “Just, sometimes you don’t use your common sense, that’s all. So what did he want to talk about?”
Mikey didn’t need any formal apology, not from Margalo. Besides, she wanted to hear what Margalo had to say more than she wanted to hear any apologizing. “I told you,” she answered, “he had all kinds of things we could talk about, if I wanted to.”
“Did it sound like a list he’d made before he called? Because I asked Howie, and he said a list would be a real junior-high thing to do.”
“Your stepbrother is not someone whose opinion on anything to do with romance I trust. Howie’s the one who got arrested for loitering around some girl’s house in the middle of the night, in case you remember. Unless, do you think it could be Howie?”
“I don’t think Howie has a secret crush on you, if that’s what you mean.”
Mikey didn’t say anything.
“Although, I guess if he did, I wouldn’t know about it,” Margalo admitted. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be secret.”
“I don’t think he does either,” Mikey admitted. “Do you think it’s sunspots? Because things aren’t acting normal, everything isn’t.”
“I don’t believe in sunspots, but . . . You know, when you really like someone—”
“Like Shawn,” Mikey said.
“Your feelings—because they’re so strong—they make things seem different. They make everything seem not normal,” Margalo said. “You know? Like rose-colored glasses? Love makes you wear not-normal-colored glasses.”
“How would you know?” Mikey demanded. Then, when Margalo didn’t say anything for a long time, she pointed out, “I never said I was in love with Shawn Macavity,” so that she could have the pleasure of putting those five words together in one sentence, and say them aloud.
WEEK TWO
GIRL CHASES BOY
7
THE PLOT THICKENS
On the bus to school Monday morning Margalo became aware that over the weekend something had happened.
As in, Something Had Happened.
It was impossible to overhear any of the whispered conversations that occupied many of the eighth graders. They talked by twos and threes, heads
close together, one person reporting, the others amazed. Margalo spent the ride in mounting curiosity, trying to think of how to find out what was up, who would know and tell. But when she glimpsed Mikey, that curiosity was driven from her mind.
Because Mikey wasn’t wearing the cargo pants she had worn to school every day for the last year and a half. She was wearing normal jeans. CKs was Margalo’s guess, and if not absolutely normal (they were black, not blue), more normal than usual for Mikey, for whom not at all normal was the norm. And she was wearing black tie shoes—could they be Mephistos?—not sneakers. And who knew what she had on under her jacket after a weekend with her love-struck mother.
If Ms. Barcley could be love-struck, which—in Margalo’s opinion—was about as likely as a teacher admitting ignorance. Although, Mrs. Brannigan was one teacher who seemed OK about not already knowing every right answer. But she’d had her husband taken from her by a younger and prettier gym teacher, so she had a good grip on reality. Mr. Schramm, too, seemed pretty much free of the usual teacher vanities and authority needs. Then Margalo remembered their fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Chemsky, and grinned.
“What’s so funny?” Mikey demanded. They were standing by the bus, letting the cold wind blow at their backs. She clutched a Chez ME bag, a brown lunch bag with the name of their cookie business stamped on it in bright white letters.
“Fifth grade was,” Margalo answered, wondering about the bag. They couldn’t reopen the business until after the seventh-grade bake sales were over, after the dance, so why the bag?
“Fifth grade wasn’t funny,” Mikey told her.
“What do you have? Cookies?”
“They’re not for you,” Mikey said, and started off toward the entrance. “Although,” she added, “fifth grade was fun. Do you think little kids have more fun?”
Margalo stopped. She gathered her eyebrows together and then lowered them toward her pursed mouth, squeezing her features tight in concentration. She dropped her book bag on the ground, bent her head forward, made a fist out of her right hand and leaned her forehead against it. For a minute she held that pose—the famous statue, visibly thinking.
Mikey sighed loudly, and waited.