Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do?

Chapter One: At the Bottom of the Food Chain Ninth grade stinks," said Mikey. "Big-time." Margalo agreed. "Stinkius, stinkior, stinkissimus," she said, partly for the fun of trying out her new Latin skills and partly for the fun of irritating Mikey. "It's overloud and overcomplicated and overpopulated. And it's taking a long time." It was the third Friday of ninth grade. The ME twins, Mikey Elsinger and Margalo Epps, best friends since fifth grade, sat at their usual table at the rear of the high school cafeteria. The tables farthest back -- back from the entryway, back from the cafeteria lines -- were, socially speaking, the least desirable, the social cellar of high school. Keeping up her side of the disagreement Mikey reminded Margalo, "Gazillions of people speak Spanish." "As if you care about communicating with people," Margalo said, and bit into her sandwich. "Latin's a dead language," Mikey recited, separating each line of the poem into its own sentence to increase the annoyance value. "It's dead as dead can be. First it killed the Romans." "I told you in June I was taking Latin. You could have signed up for it too.""And now it's killing me," Mikey concluded. She unwrapped her own sandwich triumphantly. They both brought lunch from home, Margalo for financial reasons, Mikey from culinary concerns, so for the moment they were alone at the back of the room and could take advantage of the relative privacy to have a nice little quarrel. In contrast to Margalo's peanut-butter-and-grape-jelly sandwich on lightly toasted supermarket whole wheat bread, Mikey had thick slices of leftover roasted chicken on thick slices of homemade multigrain bread. Between them they also had six Oreo cookies, a banana, an apple, and -- torn between her desire to show off her baking and her disinclination to share, Mikey had brought a double serving -- two generous slabs of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting. "Thanks," Margalo said, accepting the piece of cake, setting aside her sandwich. When you were hungry, the thing that was going to taste best was the thing to eat first. That was one of the few things she and Mikey absolutely agreed on. After the first bite she offered her usual style of compliment, "Pretty good, Mikey," and waited for Mikey's usual style of acceptance, "I know." But, "Uh-oh," Mikey said. Margalo had her eye on the cake in her hands. "Uh-oh what?" "Uh-oh that." By now the tables were filling up. Students from all four grades shared each of the three lunch periods, so that all sizes and ages were represented in the cafeteria, all types and both genders, not to mention the usual variety of teenage humanity: blonde and brunette and redhead, both natural and artificial, the hair short, shorter, and shortest or, conversely, long, longer, and longest. (Blondest and longest being considered the best for the female gender.) There were tall students and short students, ranging from skinny to overweight, buff to totally unexercised, and a large mass of regularly sized and normally muscled. (Tallest and buffest being the most desirable for boys, in general.) Although the majority of students were standard Caucasians of one style or another, they were not an overwhelming majority; more than a third of the school was the usual mix of Asian, African American and Hispanic, and by senior year of high school there were as many mixed-up groups seated together as self-segregated groups seated separately. But even in that big, crowded room, the ninth graders were recognizable. They stood out by standing shorter and scrawnier and fewer. Margalo scanned the room. "Uh-oh, there," Mikey pointed and then Margalo saw.It was Hadrian Klenk, of course. Somebody -- a big, stocky boy wearing aStar Warst-shirt (bright red, with an image of theMillennium Falcon, under which was prinVoigt, Cynthia is the author of 'Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do?' with ISBN 9780689824746 and ISBN 0689824742.