With the seventh and eighth grades both present, the auditorium aisles were clogged with students, especially the narrow passages separating the rows of seats. People yelled greetings to one another, yelled responses back, gathered together to talk. Groups lingered in the aisles and individuals moved back and forth along the rows. Seated students leaned forward across seats, leaned backward or sideways, whispering for private conversations, speaking loudly if they wanted to be overheard, shouting if they felt like it. Everybody looked around to see who everybody else was talking to, sitting with, looking at.
As Margalo predicted, Cassie hadn’t saved Mikey a seat. Mikey and Margalo checked in with their homeroom teacher then took seats directly behind Cassie. Orange streaks in Cassie’s artificially black hair were the only color she wore; the rest was black and shapeless—black sweatshirt, black sweatpants tucked into thick black socks. Cassie turned around to greet them (“Whazzup?”) and to not wait for a response—which made sense since it had been practically all of four minutes, maybe eight, since they’d last met. “This is just like the Oscars isn’t it?” Cassie said. “Or would you say it’s closer to Cannes?”
“Give it a rest, Cass,” the boy next to her said, twiddling the two silver rings in his right ear. Jason, who wanted people to call him Jace, was Cassie’s boyfriend and had been since the start of the year, when a boyfriend, or girlfriend, became as necessary to your public image as having shaved legs or a good working vocabulary of dirty words. Couples littered eighth grade like loose trash in a vacant lot on a windy day—somebody always getting together or breaking up with somebody else, giving everybody else something to observe and talk about, creating a constant need for new notebooks on which to erase newly paired initials.
Mikey and Margalo slouched down in their seats, backpacks on their laps, paying no attention to anybody around them (Mikey), and paying surreptitious attention to everybody, students and teachers (Margalo). The 431 students (allowing for a probable absentee rate of about 5 percent) settled down as soon as the principal appeared.
Mr. Saunders ascended the four steps leading up to the microphone. He ran his glance over the audience until the students got quiet, and quieter, and finally fell into a resigned silence. Mr. Saunders was good at principaling, but boring at assemblies. He always started out with the same announcements about upcoming meetings and events, then repeated his same concerns, about littering, about school spirit, about supporting your teams, about taking responsibility. But he coached the school’s two best teams, soccer and baseball—the best, some people said, only if you didn’t count girls’ teams, or the tennis team—and he kept things running smoothly at school; also, he seemed to think students were OK, mostly.
Mr. Saunders made his announcements and then talked about the scores of last Friday’s basketball games, praising the teamwork of the players, claiming, “Winning isn’t everything, people.”
Mikey, who disagreed, grunted. Margalo, who didn’t want Mr. Saunders noticing them, jammed her elbow into Mikey’s arm. Mikey turned her head, just slightly, just enough so Margalo could see the smile she had put on, or at least half of it; and half of that I’ ll-get-you-later smile was enough for Margalo. She retracted her elbow.
Then came the speech about litter in the bathrooms. Mr. Saunders didn’t mention food throwing in the cafeteria or smoking; he didn’t need to because everybody knew that when you indulged in either one of those errors in behavior, you were out the door—boom—immediate suspension—boom, boom—your parents arriving to take you home while you were still trying to think up a good excuse. “I run a tight ship,” Mr. Saunders assured them, his usual speech conclusion. “And that’s the way I like it. So straighten out, people. Straighten out and fly right.”
Next, he praised the seventh-grade bake sale offerings—although they weren’t half as good as last year’s, as every eighth grader knew—and at last he said, “I know how everybody is looking forward to the dance, but don’t forget—we also have a play to look forward to, and today our director is ready to announce her cast. Ms. Larch?” he called, looking out over the auditorium as if the drama teacher weren’t already planted in the front row, having given responsibility for her homeroom—this was Margalo’s guess—to handsome Mr. Schramm.
Ms. Larch taught C-level English classes to the seventh grade and a creative writing class at each grade level, and she was responsible for Drama Activities. She dressed droopy dark—dark reds, dark browns, dark greens and golds—and she draped scarves around herself, keeping them in place with long, old-fashioned hat pins. She wore beginner ballet slippers, with an elastic across the top. She took the microphone from Mr. Saunders and stood alone on the stage, silent, for a long moment, smiling down on her audience. Then, “Well,” she said.
Ms. Larch had been a real actress. She’d appeared on a television soap opera and once had a part in a play that went from Boston to New Haven to Broadway, where it stayed for fourteen months. Her voice was low and husky, like she was a singer in a nightclub. The microphone carried her voice close to each person in her audience, making her public speaking sound like private conversation. It was Ms. Larch’s voice that convinced people she really had been a professional actress. “Lieblings,” Ms. Larch said, spreading out her arms in welcome.
“I’ll liebling you” Mikey muttered. “Frankensteins is more like it.”
“Frankenstein was the doctor,” Margalo pointed out quietly. “You’re thinking of Frankenstein’s monster. What you should say is, Frankenstein’s monsters, in the plural.”
Muffled laughter spread out around them—of which they were not unaware.
“Oh, what a day this is!” Ms. Larch spread her voice as wide as her arms, to encompass everyone. Then she took a deep breath to announce, “As you know, the eighth grade will be giving two performances of The Lady’s Not for Burning. This will not be until May, so lest you forget, I ask you to mark it on your calendars. Tell your parents, your friends and relations. The play we have selected is a modern comedy”—Ms. Larch waited for the seventh-grade boys to subside (“Phew, not Shakespeare”)—”and a romance,” she said, her glance daring anyone to say what they were thinking, “about witch hunts.” (“All right.”) “It’s a play about being different, about the good and the bad in human nature, and about truths that live deep in the human heart.”
“I thought she said comedy.”
“I thought she said romance.”
Ms. Larch ignored the malcontents. “Only the eighth-grade A-level English students have read The Lady’s Not for Burning, and they have promised not to give away the story. Let our actors tell the tale, when their time comes. The only thing I will add now, to whet your appetites, is that it takes place in approximately 1400 A.D.—or if you prefer, M.E., modern era—”
“I always prefer m-e,” Mikey said, and dodged Margalo’s elbow.
“—in a small English village at the very end of the Middle Ages, or if you prefer, the very start of the Renaissance, so there will be wonderful costumes with swords, doublets, long gowns for the ladies, high boots for the gentlemen.” Her hands flowed, describing these words with gestures. “Lieblings,” she assured them, “I promise you a rare treat.” She smiled down on all of them with barely contained excitement.
“I have to admit, I’d’ve liked you to be a star in this play,” Mikey said. “I’d have liked one of us to. It’s a fame and fortune op. Well,” she amended, “fame, anyway.”
Margalo shrugged, as if she didn’t care. And, really, she didn’t. Really, in fact, she had been satisfied to read Jennet Jourdemayne’s lines in the tryout, and imagine Thomas Mendip. She could still feel how it felt that day, hearing her own voice, saying to her imagined companion, “I have come suddenly upon my heart, and where it is I see no help for.” She could still imagine him standing close before her. Until she tried out for the role of Jennet Jourdemayne, Margalo had not known how powerful imagination could be, how delicious—as real—almost—as dreams.
Margalo brought her attention back to Ms. Larch, who was saying, “I know how eager you are to hear who my coconspirators in this production will be, and we’re ready to confess all.” She laughed lightly at her own joke. “So now I’ll call on my actors to come and join me here on the stage. But I will not name their roles or give away their parts in the story. Let some mysteries remain, I say. So that we might be open every day of our lives to surprise, and so that curiosity may not die out in us.”
“What’s wrong with the woman,” Mikey demanded, but in a muted voice. “Hasn’t she ever heard of less is more?”
“Maybe she thinks less can’t be more,” Margalo suggested.
“Maybe she doesn’t think,” Mikey suggested.
“Maybe she likes the sound of her own voice,” Margalo suggested.
“Maybe she should be struck dumb,” Mikey said. “By which I mean ‘mute.’ Because she’s already dumb. Now what’s got you going?” she challenged Margalo.
Ms. Larch interrupted them, calling: “Louis Caselli.” Louis strutted from his aisle seat down to the steps, strutted up the steps, but then ruined the effect by stumbling. He staggered into place onstage. Once there, he grinned, a stocky figure in full-legged jeans, Airwalk sneakers, and an outsize T-shirt, entirely pleased to have everybody’s attention.
His name and approach had been accompanied by surprised murmurs (“Caselli can’t act, he can’t even act like a human being”) and cries of encouragement from his friends (“Go get ‘em, man”); then there was laughter as he staggered, stumbling, strutting to center stage. “Take your bow, Louis,” Ms. Larch reminded him. Louis almost fell over as he bent from the waist while still trying to look up and see how everybody was looking at him.
“Hadrian Klenk,” Ms. Larch said next. “You come on up here right now, Hadrian.”
Hadrian, who was younger than anybody else in the eighth grade, looked lost as he approached the steps. He looked totally confused. Some people groaned softly, which was the usual response to Hadrian Klenk. If there was a wrong way to do something, Hadrian Klenk found it. If there was something useless to say, that’s what Hadrian said, and in a weird, creaky voice you couldn’t ignore. The groans got shushed—some people really did try not to be mean to Hadrian—as he got up to the stage and started wandering off to stand, wavering a little, beside the teacher. Ms. Larch whispered something to him, and Hadrian drifted over toward Louis.
“What is that kid taking?” was one question and “Why would she choose Hadrian?” was another.
At that point Hadrian seemed to become aware that there was an audience, and he bobbed his head at them.
Margalo, who thought she had figured out Ms. Larch’s casting choices, wanted to applaud Hadrian; he was exactly right for the little priest.
The next names puzzled her, partly because they were paired, but mostly because they were girls, and if Margalo was correct in her guess, they should have been boys. “Rhonda Ransom—”
“Oh, good,” Mikey said.
“—and Heather—”
“McGinty, say McGinty,” Mikey pleaded, but she was doomed to disappointment.
“—Thomas.”
“Who’s Heather Thomas?” Mikey asked as two girls marched together down the center aisle while many voices called out congratulations to them.
“A friend of Casey’s from the other A-level English class. She likes Ralph. You remember Ralph.”
Mikey did. “Ralph was an OK fighter.” She thought. “I’d have won if Mr. Saunders hadn’t stopped it,” she maintained.
That was last year’s fight over last year’s issues and not current news. Margalo stuck to the current. “Last weekend he asked Heather to go to the dance with him,” she reported.
“Why do you even want to know these things?” Mikey demanded.
While they held their low-voiced conversation, Rhonda and Heather Thomas ascended the steps together, one big and blonde, the other just as blonde but shorter, slimmer, overall smaller. They moved in unison without looking at each other, like two coaches, each one of whom thinks he is the best coach of the most important sport. They walked together like two girls, each one of whom thinks she is the one everybody is looking at and wants to date, but doesn’t want to hurt her friend’s feelings by saying so. They crossed the stage together, to stand together by Louis and Hadrian. They bowed minimally, just a little nod of their heads; they were too important to offer the audience more than that.
“Ira Pliotes and Jason Summerton,” Ms. Larch called out, two names that met with general approval, including Mikey’s and Margalo’s. Ira, who had been in their class since fifth grade, was a pretty well-liked boy, pretty smart, a pretty good athlete; he got along with pretty much everyone. People clapped for Ira, and for Jason, too, since Jason was one of the coolest of the cool and did glamorous things like summer camp in Canada and winter holidays in the Bahamas. Jason was stuck up, no question, and Ira was about the opposite; what they were doing paired up like this was a puzzle. They pushed against each other as they went up the steps and didn’t stop the jostling when they stood side by side on the stage. They had to be the quarreling brothers in the play, Margalo thought.
“Frannie—” Ms. Larch didn’t finish the name before the applause began as Frannie walked up onto the stage in a stately manner. “—Arenberg.”
Of course they all knew that Frannie was their age, fourteen, and an ordinary eighth-grade girl, except for being nice and really meaning it. They were used to the plain way she dressed, because Quakers are plain people in their dress as well as their beliefs, and the styleless style in which she wore her wavy brown hair, parted at the side and held off her face with a barrette, never longer than her chin or shorter than her ears. They all knew Frannie Arenberg, and they knew she was good at math and English, science and seminar, and sports, in the same including way she was popular with both girls and boys, coaches and teachers. They all knew her and counted her a friend, but seeing her onstage was different. She looked like somebody’s mother or a vice principal.
“This is like . . . it’s like some time warp,” Margalo said. “I feel as if I’m seeing into the future. What if this is some science fiction experiment, where going up on this stage shows people as they really, really are? Or who they will be? I wonder what we’d look like up there.”
“Who cares?” Mikey asked. Then she gave herself away by saying, “Louis looks totally sketchy.”
“If Louis ends up an alcoholic, would you be surprised?” Margalo asked.
“Just as long as he doesn’t end up living next door to me,” Mikey said.
“And Rhonda—it’s like we’re seeing who she’ll be when she’s thirty. She’s like her mother, isn’t she? She’s all . . .” Margalo tried to think of the words.
“I know the right way to act,” Mikey supplied. “You had all better behave.”
Margalo finished it. “Or I’ll get you in trouble, because I know important people.”
“Hadrian, at least, doesn’t make me want to leave town. He reminds me of Piglet.”
“Sweet and helpless.”
“But nobody could be that innocent in eighth grade,” Mikey decided.
“Somebody two years younger could be.”
“Mudpies, Margalo. Remember us in sixth grade?”
Margalo didn’t bother arguing. Besides, Mikey was right. So Hadrian was pretending, up there, acting his part, and nobody doubted him—and that was a curious thing, now that she thought of it. If Hadrian Klenk could act, that meant he could probably lie, too—curiouser and curiouser.
“I wish I had gotten the part,” Margalo said to Mikey. “You could have told me what I look like, up on stage.”
“I can tell you now: like a beanpole. An overdressed, underfed beanpole.” Then Mikey had a better idea. “Or a praying mantis. Have you ever heard what they do to their mates?”
Margalo jabbed at her twice with a bony elbow, once for beanpole, once for overdressed.
“They eat them,” Mikey said.
Margalo jabbed again and caught her in the ribs.
“After,” Mikey said.
Jab.
“Starting at the head,” Mikey concluded, blocking the last jab with her arm.
At this point Ms. Larch emptied the stage, sending the seven actors back to their seats before she announced the final four parts, the four biggest roles. First she called Melissa Martinez, who had dark eyes and long brown hair. Melissa had many wanna-be boyfriends in the eighth grade, even though the rumor was that she already had one, from summer camp. There was a lot of applause and a few whistles for Melissa, who curtsied shyly.
Next, Ms. Larch called Timothy Farmer, a quiet, round-headed, blushing boy, the kind of boy who would never even dare to think about having a crush on Melissa. Margalo thought that they must be playing the young couple, and that maybe Ms. Larch was someone who knew how to pick the right people for a play.
“Aimi Hearn, you’re next,” Ms. Larch called, and stepped forward to hold out her hand to the tall, dark-skinned girl who had taken Margalo’s part. Aimi approached the stage and ascended the stairs, like a model or a queen or a dancer, with her long back straight, her head high, proud.
“What do you know about her?” Mikey whispered to Margalo.
“Not much. She keeps to herself. She plays baseball.”
“You mean softball.”
“She looks like she might be interesting,” Margalo said just as Ms. Larch summoned up the last member of her cast.
“Shawn Macavity. Show your face up here, young Shawn.”
Who? Shawn who? For a minute, nobody remembered any Shawn Macavity.
An uneasy silence rose up from the gathered seventh and eighth graders, who turned to their friends in puzzlement, then looked around to figure out who this person might turn out to be, to see who was getting up and starting down the aisle.
Ms. Larch started clapping her hands to fill the silence, and Mr. Saunders joined in, and a few of the students, too, the kind of people who always clap first and ask questions later. But the clapping faded quickly as a boy came striding down the center aisle, a dark-haired, long-legged boy in black jeans and a pale, old blue work shirt. He took the steps two at a time, nodded briefly to Ms. Larch, and then turned to face the audience.
They started to remember. “Oh, yeah, him.” “Didn’t he used to wear glasses?” “He’s in my math class.” “He never says a word in class.” “I think he was in my grade school—but never in my section.” “Who’s he hang out with?”
Shawn Macavity could barely keep from laughing as he looked down at everybody and saw how surprised they were. Surprised, and amazed, and stunned, too. He wasn’t surprised. He had expected to see just what he was seeing, first surprise and then—the expressions changing—almost immediately, amazement that they had never before noticed how cool he was.
After a few long seconds, real clapping began.
Shawn Macavity let it go on for the perfect length of time—a slow count to four, or ten, or fifteen—before he smiled, a smile that fell over them like sunshine, no more concerned with them than sunshine is. Then he bowed elaborately, with a broad flourish of his arm, bowed deeply from the waist, like a prisoner about to be executed by a firing squad because he wouldn’t reveal the names of the other members of his resistance group. “Don’t shoot!” you wanted to cry out, or like Pocahontas with John Smith, run up and throw yourself in front of him, to save him, or to die beside him.
Because Shawn Macavity was handsome. He had dark, dark hair, and skin as white as marble, and bright blue eyes. His nose hooked out, like on an ancient Roman coin. This was the same nose that got him teased when he was younger, like last fall, before everybody could see what a great nose it was, which today they did. When Shawn Macavity smiled carelessly at them from up on the stage, the whole room got brighter and the girls who had boyfriends were sorry. He was so tall—five nine or ten, at least—and so skinny that you worried he wasn’t eating enough. He was so confident, and mocking, that you were afraid he’d never look twice at you.
The applause continued on after Shawn’s deep bow, as if it had forgotten it was supposed to stop.
Mikey wasn’t applauding. For once she had nothing to say. Margalo would have said something to Mikey about her silence, but as the applause was finally dying down Ms. Larch called out one last name—
But there were no more parts in the play—
But the name was hers.
“Stand up, Margalo Epps, and let everyone get a look at you. You’re not shy, are you?”
Furious, Margalo stood up. What was Ms. Larch calling on her for? Loam! Compost! Topsoil! This wasn’t fair, nobody had warned her, and she hoped her face didn’t give away what she was thinking.
“Margalo is going to be my assistant director,” Ms. Larch announced. Her dark, dramatically outlined eyes and hoarse, low voice made this a really big announcement. Nobody applauded or said anything. They waited to hear what made it so big. People in the audience turned their attention back to the stage, so only the five people onstage were still staring at Margalo.
Furious, she sat down. She didn’t want to be the subject of any big announcement, and especially not of any big unexpected announcement. “What—,” she started to ask Mikey, and then, “Assistant director?”
But Mikey was lost in thought. Or lost in dreams. Or just lost, lost in place.
Ms. Larch concluded, throwing her arms out wide, with a rippling of scarves and a falling free of hair, “I am very enthusiastic about this wonderful play with these wonderful actors.” She raised her arms above her head and smiled proudly down on everyone, until they started clapping again, so that she would be satisfied enough to leave the stage and let them get on with their lives.
After that Mr. Saunders dismissed them. The audience got up, in a hurry to leave because they were getting five extra minutes of free time before classes started. Talking, shoving, people crowded into the wide aisles.
Like a bump on a log. Like she’d been beaned with a bat. Like a pet rock, a scoop of mashed potatoes, a dead body.
Unlike any Mikey Elsinger that Margalo had ever seen.
As people streamed out of the auditorium the air filled with the sounds of voices and footsteps. Still, Mikey didn’t move.
Could Mikey be having a blood clot? Margalo wondered. She was too young for a stroke, wasn’t she?
It was as if Mikey had been changed into something entirely different from her usual self, magicked away (but Margalo didn’t believe in magic) or stolen out of herself by aliens (but Margalo didn’t believe in aliens).
It was definitely different, and it was a little anxiety producing because Margalo couldn’t figure it out. She stared at Mikey’s expressionless profile and Mikey stared at the stage, where the microphone stood alone. Margalo had no idea what was going on with Mikey. She tried to think what—
And then she knew. It was the only thing that made sense—even if it made no sense at all—and it made her laugh out loud. Here was an unforeseen development, maybe an unexpected calamity. She had no idea how Mikey would react to falling head over heels. She had no idea how Mikey would land after the fall—on her feet, on her head, or in some horrific belly flop.
Margalo’s laughter brought Mikey out of her daze long enough to inform her friend, “It’s not funny.”