It's Not Easy Being Bad by Cynthia Voigt Page A

out his tweed jacket, the one good jacket he owned. She put it on over her outfit (mid-calf black skirt, jewel-necked peach sweater) and folded back the sleeves. Howie wasn’t that much taller than she was—well, who was?—but his shoulders were broader, so the jacket hung off her just the way it was supposed to.
    She knew how to greet Ronnie, like giving the secret password signal that gets you into the clubhouse. “Hihowareyou?”
    â€œCool,” Ronnie answered. “Great jacket.”
    Margalo told the truth. Sometimes, the truth was a better story than anything she could make up. “I borrowed it from Howie. After he left the house.”
    â€œI know what you mean,” Ronnie said. “My brothers would kill me—and my mother would, too.”
    â€œAurora believes in nonviolence,” Margalo answered, and Ronnie laughed. “I wish my mother did.”
    People were entering the classroom, settling into their usual seats. Margalo took out her notebook and opened it to show Ronnie the petition. “Tell me what you think of this.”
    Surprised, Ronnie read it quickly, then looked around to see who might give her a second opinion. This was just what Margalo had expected, which was why she had chosen English class, where Heather McGinty wasn’t. Annie Piers, Heather McGinty’s henchperson and chief rival, was in the class, however, and Ronnie called her over.
    â€œHihowareyou,” Margalo greeted Annie.
    â€œCool,” Annie answered, and her eyes lingered on the jacket. “How about you, Ron?” she asked, and Ronnie answered, “Cool, how about you?” and Annie said coolly, “As you see.”
    Then Ronnie asked her, “What do you think of this?”
    While Annie bent over the desk to read, Ronnie asked Margalo just the two questions Margalo expected. First she asked, “What’s gotten you interested in sports?”
    Margalo could be as cool as they were, and cooler. “Take a look at the signatures.”
    There were only two signatures, and number one was Mikey Elsinger.
    â€œIs Mikey going out for basketball?” Ronnie asked.
    â€œWhat do you think?” Margalo asked back.
    â€œI can dig it,” Ronnie said.
    â€œI don’t know,” Annie Piers said, now, talking to Ronnie, ignoring Margalo. “Are you going to sign it?”
    â€œWell, when we were in fifth grade and there was a boys’ only soccer team, Mikey—”
    The teacher entered, and everyone scurried to a desk. “Tell you after,” Ronnie called softly to Annie’s back, and to Margalo, who was gathering up her notebook, she asked just what Margalo hoped to hear. “See you at lunch?”
    Ronnie didn’t mean at lunch, exactly, not lunch at her table. She meant “at lunchtime, in the hallway, by my locker.” So Margalo wasn’t surprised to see Ronnie and Annie and Heather McGinty, too, with a couple of the Aceys and another Heather, all gathered together, by the seventh-grade lockers, at the start of first lunch.
    â€œWhat’s this petition?” Heather McGinty asked, and Margalo showed it to her. Heather read it and was about to say No Way, Nix, Nothing Doing, when Margalo spoke.
    â€œI wanted to ask you people first,” she said, talking to Ronnie. “Because it would be so cool to get the rule changed, you know? Student power and all that. Ronnie knows about Mikey,” Margalo said, looking around at all of them, looking right into Heather McGinty’s catlike face with its greeny eyes and little chin. “Mikey makes things happen. Like in fifth grade, remember?” she asked Ronnie.
    â€œWhat you were telling me,” Annie said to Ronnie.
    â€œI don’t know,” Heather McGinty said, doubt in her voice. “I don’t—”
    Margalo pounced, pretending that Heather was about to say what she knew perfectly well Heather hadn’t even thought of. “I