Read Online It's Not Easy Being Bad by Cynthia Voigt - Free Book Online

you’re not sick?”
    â€œI had to baby-sit Lily and be here for Stevie’s car pool.”
    â€œWhat about Aurora, that’s her job. Or Steven, if she can’t.”
    â€œSteven has to work. Aurora had to go downtown.”
    â€œDowntown? Shopping? And you’re baby-sitting? Talk about skewed priorities.”
    â€œDowntown to get Howie.”
    â€œGet him where?”
    â€œFrom jail.”
    â€œWhat was Howie doing there? ” Mikey demanded.
    â€œHe got arrested last night. Actually, this morning. The police picked him up on Threadwhistle Street—”
    â€œBut that’s all private houses.”
    â€œI know.”
    â€œPrivate houses in a good neighborhood.”
    â€œI know. That’s why the people there get nervous about loiterers. Especially teenaged boys. That’s why somebody called the police.”
    â€œWhy didn’t the cops just bring him home?” Mikey asked, since this seemed to be why Margalo had to stay home.
    â€œIt was the third time,” Margalo explained.
    â€œThe third time they picked him up? What is he doing?”
    â€œThere’s a girl he’s in love with. It’s love.”
    â€œSo he lurks around her house in the middle of the night? Real smart, Howie. Aurora should have left him in jail. You’re missing a day of classes,” Mikey pointed out.
    â€œHe’s home now, anyway. She’s giving him a bowl of soup. Canned chicken-and-rice. He’s going to need a lawyer, and Aurora isn’t sure his father will pay.”
    â€œSend him back to his father. He’s no relation, anyway,” Mikey argued.
    â€œAurora thinks he is. He thinks he is. He might as well be, I guess.” Then Margalo changed the subject. “What did you have for lunch?”
    â€œNothing.”
    There was a silence from Margalo’s end. Mikey waited.
    â€œ I couldn’t call, Mikey. Aurora was on the phone talking to the bail person and lawyers, trying to find Howie’s dad. It was pretty frantic here. I really couldn’t.”
    â€œOkay, okay. Who’s complaining? Don’t get all worked up,” Mikey said.
    â€œHow’s school?” Margalo asked now, and about time.
    Mikey didn’t need anybody feeling sorry for her. “How bad can it be?” she asked. “What can they do, stick needles under my fingernails?”
    She could hear Margalo smiling, and she smiled herself when Margalo said, “Does it count if they only want—really want —to?”
    â€œWhat kinds of needles?” Mikey asked. Maybe she’d just talk to Margalo all through the long lunch period.
    But somebody tapped her on the shoulder and said, “You’re not the only person in the world, Elsinger.”
    Some girl whose name she didn’t even know. Maybe even an eighth grader. Who cared? But there were several people waiting, and there were only two phones. Mikey hung up, but she was wondering: Why didn’t the school have enough phones for the people who wanted to use them?
    And she wasn’t about to go into that cafeteria alone, either.
    Margalo should have called.
    The halls were empty because people were either eating lunch or in class. As Mikey approached her locker, she became aware of a stink. Not a nasty, rotten stink; a nasty sweet stink. Like the smell-advertising in those fancy women’s magazines. Horrible perfumed air was floating around in the hallway near Mikey’s locker.
    Because the smell was coming right from her locker. And the front of it looked wet. She put out her fingers to touch it. Oily. Because somebody had sprayed some oily horrible perfume all over the front of Mikey’s locker, and probably up into the ventilation slots, too; probably it was all over her books and papers, too.
    Mikey opened the combination lock, and her guess was right.
    Somebody—she understood this right away now—wanted to tell her she stank.
    As if she