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

know it’s hard to believe that students can change school policy, but sometimes, if the right students go about it the right way, they can really do it. And make a big difference to all the rest of us,” Margalo said, speaking to Annie now, and the Aceys, and the other Heather.
    â€œThat’s true,” Ronnie said. “We never thought Mikey’d get girls on the soccer team in fifth grade. But she did.”
    â€œThat was Mikey?” asked one of the Aceys, Casey Wolsowski. “You guys went to Washington?”
    Margalo nodded.
    Casey turned her beady brown eyes on Heather McGinty to ask, “What do you have against signing?”
    Annie Piers sensed a leadable opposition and rushed forward. “Yeah, Heather. It sounds sort of cool to me.”
    â€œDon’t sign if you don’t want to,” Margalo said now. “I’m not going to give up, we aren’t, so don’t worry about that. It would just—oh, you know, be easier if you people agreed with us, and everyone could see that you did—but—” She reached out to take the paper back.
    Ronnie protested, “I didn’t say I didn’t want to sign.”
    â€œI’ll sign,” Annie said, and signed. “Casey?” Casey signed. “Ronnie? Stacey, Heather, anybody else? C’mon, Heather,” she nudged Heather McGinty with an elbow. “Everybody’s forgotten your little feud with Mikey,” she reminded everyone. “So you should, too. Besides, this has nothing to do with that. This is for all of us.”
    There was no way Heather McGinty could not sign, then, and everybody else followed her example, which gave Margalo seven signatures, now. “Thanks,” she said, when the last pen was put away.
    â€œI’d love a chance to play on the school basketballteam,” Ronnie said. “I’ll go to basketball practice, anyway, but it would be more fun if I had a chance to make the team. Are you playing basketball, Annie?”
    â€œWhere’d you get that jacket?” Annie Piers finally gave in and asked it, so Margalo told her, “Around the house. I’ve got all these older stepbrothers,” she added with a cool, careless shrug, before she went off to join Mikey for lunch.
    Mikey wasn’t interested in anything but the question of how well she would do in her first basketball practice, and whether Margalo would take the late bus with her today, or go home early.
    â€œEarly. I didn’t tell Aurora we’d be on the late bus, so she’d worry.”
    â€œCall her,” Mikey suggested, but Margalo shook her head. She wasn’t wasting any quarter of hers on a pay phone. “You’ll have to wait for hours to hear how it goes,” Mikey argued.
    â€œI think I can stand that.” Also, Margalo needed to get this jacket back into Howard’s closet before he arrived home from school.
    â€œBut what about me having to stand the wait to tell you?” Mikey demanded, chomping down on a slice of pizza, not even offering Margalo a bite.
    â€œWhere’s your petition?” Frannie asked, settingher tray down on their table, asking Margalo, “Want a slice? Their pizza’s pretty good.” So Margalo took just the triangular tip of a slice while Frannie signed the petition and offered to help get more signatures. “We can wait outside the library, one on each side of the doors, in the morning before school starts,” she suggested to Margalo, who hadn’t even hoped for something as perfect as Frannie Arenberg wanting to help out.
    *    *    *
    On Tuesday, Margalo wore one of her stepsister Susannah’s old polos (for which she traded a night’s dishwashing) and jeans for once; she wore her gym sneakers, because even if they weren’t regulation Reeboks or Nikes, sneakers were still athletic shoes. She sat down at Tanisha’s table at lunch—not to unpack her