Everybody else had left the auditorium, but Mikey remained in her seat, like a lifeless life-size model. She stared at the empty stage.
Margalo knew pretty much exactly how her friend was feeling, but they had class to get to. “Time’s up, Mikey,” she said, and stood. “Mikey?” she asked. No response. “Miykee!”
“All right,” Mikey groused. “I hear you. I don’t know what’s—” Then her face lit up—she had an idea! It was with this same gleam in her eye that she connected for a cross-court forehand winner. Mikey surged up out of her seat and shoved past Margalo, dumping her backpack on the floor. “See you in seminar”—and she ran up the aisle.
By the time Margalo got to the hall, carrying both of their backpacks, Mikey had made her way to the front of the flock of girls who hovered around Shawn Macavity like seagulls circling a fishing boat. Most pretended to be doing something else—tying a sneaker, talking to a friend, tidying hair, or even, in one case, reading a book, although that was Casey Wolsowski, and she might not have been pretending.
Mikey, however, didn’t pretend anything. She walked right up to ask, “How do you spell your name?”
“M-a-c-” His eyes were sparkling and his mouth couldn’t stop smiling, although he lounged back against the wall as if all this attention didn’t interest him much. His body language said, I’m unbelievably cool, but his face asked, Isn’t this great? “A-v—”
Mikey didn’t let him finish. “I mean the Shawn part. What kind of a Shawn are you?”
“S-h-a-w-n,” he spelled agreeably.
“I knew you wouldn’t be like the rest of them!” Mikey crowed.
Margalo hung back by the auditorium doors, watching this. She didn’t want anyone thinking she was included in this scene of mass pursuit, but she didn’t want to miss anything either.
“What sport—” was Mikey’s next question.
“Listen, Mikey,” Heather McGinty interrupted, with such heavy tactfulness that if it had been a tray, it would have taken both her hands to carry it. She stepped close to Mikey, as a friend might step close to give private good advice to stop her friend from making a fool of herself. Heather smiled up at Shawn; they were two superior beings dealing with a dork. “Nobody wants to be pestered with questions,” she said to Mikey. To Shawn she explained, “You have to excuse her.”
Mikey smiled back at Heather, but nobody would have mistaken it for friendship.
At that sight Shawn backed off from both girls, one step, two. “Hey,” he said with a What-can-a-boy-do? look around at the watching faces, backing up another step.
Heather followed him, one step, two, three. “Mikey doesn’t know anything about guys,” she told Shawn, and her eyes promised him without words, But I do. She giggled. “She doesn’t even like them.” But I do.
Mikey paid minimal attention to this and shouldered her way in front of Heather, looking right into Shawn’s face. “But what sport do you—”
Rhonda Ransom interrupted to advise Shawn, “You better come with me. Before she punches you. You don’t want to mess with Mikey.”
Shawn shrugged, looked at Rhonda, looked at Heather, looked at Mikey, and shrugged again. “We’ve got science,” he said to Mikey. He was apparently blind to the victory smirk Heather and Rhonda exchanged as they carried him off between them, the three going down the hall like the President and two Secret Service agents. His attendant blondes kept four alert and wary eyes out, warning off anybody who might come too close to their man.
And Mikey just stood, watching. Not making a snide remark. Not even snorting in disgust. Just watching them walk away from her.
Not Mikey, Margalo said to herself. She wanted to deny it. But she couldn’t. Mikey looked every bit as goopy as the skunk in Bambi, or the rabbit—Thumper, that was his stupid name. Margalo could practically see red cartoon hearts circling around Mikey’s head. “C’mon, Mikey,” she said again. “Let’s get going.”
At last Mikey registered Margalo’s voice and took the backpack Margalo shoved at her. They were going to have to motor to get to their lockers and then the classroom before the bell rang.
As Margalo clanged her locker door shut she heard Mikey ask a quiet question. Usually you could hear Mikey through steel walls, down whole corridors, over tall buildings, but this time Margalo had to turn to face her friend and ask, “What?”
“He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” Mikey asked again.
Margalo stayed calm. “I don’t know about that, but he sure is handsome.”
“Who?” Tan wondered as she walked by. She thumped Margalo on the shoulder. “Congrats.”
“Shawn,” Mikey said, her voice licking the name as if it was some delectibly delicious ice cream cone. “Macavity,” she said, and then repeated the whole tasty thing. “Shawn Macavity.”
Tan looked at Margalo. “Is she for real?”
Ronnie Caselli joined them to tell Margalo, “I wouldn’t want to do it, but you’ll be good,” and ask, “Mikey? Are you all right? You look weird.”
“I’m great,” Mikey answered goopily.
“Really weird,” Ronnie said. “What’s wrong?”
“Would you call him handsome? Or beautiful,” Mikey answered.
Ronnie didn’t even have to ask who. She knew. “Once you look, definitely beautiful. I mean, he’s got great hair, and that nose, and his mouth and . . .” She looked at Mikey and giggled in that I’m-thinking-what-I’m-too-embarrassed-to-talk-about way, the kind of giggling people do together.
And Mikey did not tell Ronnie to get real. Neither did she stomp on her foot to stop her from being such a typical eighth-grade-girl twit. Instead, Mikey got stone-faced furious. Margalo could guess what her friend was thinking: Mine.
Ronnie could guess too, and she didn’t stick around to hear about it, not even to say, Oh, yeah? Tan went off with her, and Margalo almost went with them. But she didn’t.
“What if it only gets more complicated?” she asked Mikey. “People,” she explained, although Mikey hadn’t asked her what she meant. “School. Life. What if year after year, the older we get, it never gets easier?”
Mikey shrugged; she couldn’t be bothered. “I think beautiful,” she told Margalo.