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

unison, “Bo-ring, -ring, -ring.”
    Louis continued explaining his idea as Mr. Saunders, carrying the microphone in one hand, its cord trailing behind like a giant, skinny possum tail, or a giant, skinny umbilical cord, came down to ground level. “See, we could charge an entry fee, for each team to play. All the guys would like it.”
    â€œWhat about the girls?” a girl demanded.
    â€œGirls could have baking contests. Or sewing contests.” Mr. Saunders didn’t stop him and Louis was feeling smart, feeling important. “Or, girls could sell kisses.”
    Groans mingled with “ All-rights ,” while clumps of girls made flurrying flattered noises.
    â€œI’m never going to make it through two years,” Mikey moaned.
    â€œHigh school won’t be any better,” Margalo warned her.
    â€œWe’ll be older,” Mikey said, without enthusiasm. “We can get jobs, and work,” she pointed out. Then she got very quiet.
    This was not because Mr. Saunders was coming up the aisle toward them, spreading silence out behind him like a supertanker spreading its huge wake. The approach of Mr. Saunders was why Margalo got quiet, but not Mikey. Mikey had her own reasons.
    Before he came to the end of the filled rows, Mr. Saunders stopped, facing them.
    Margalo pretended to be riveted to something that was going on, onstage. She raised her hand and waved it frantically in the air, Call on me, please, call on me.
    Satisfied, Mr. Saunders turned around.
    But Mikey had gotten quiet because her brain hadgone into gear. It shifted into first and then sped right up to fifth, and the words burst out of her. “What if—”
    â€œShhsh,” Margalo whispered and waved her hand in the direction of Mr. Saunders’s back.
    The principal turned around again, but Mikey still hadn’t noticed him.
    â€œNo, it’s a great idea—what if I’m a millionaire before I’m twenty?”
    Margalo pretended she was deaf, and interested only in the handout on her lap, and totally alone in the row, sitting next to someone she’d never seen before.
    Mr. Saunders came to stand right beside Mikey. He didn’t say a word.
    Mikey looked up at him and lowered her voice to a stage whisper. “Tell you later,” she said to Margalo, who was pretending to be invisible. Then Mikey looked up at Mr. Saunders, who loomed above her, the microphone in his hand, and stage whispered, “ Zut, alors!”

8
What If—?
    â€œI ’m not going to let them get away with this,” Mikey told Margalo. “I have a plan.”
    â€œI know,” Margalo said, not particularly interested in being ranted at.
    They were jouncing along home on the school bus. Mikey sat by the window, but she wasn’t looking out of it. Nobody paid any attention to them, and they didn’t pay attention to anybody else; at least, Mikey didn’t.
    â€œOkay, Miss I Already Know Everything, what is my plan?” Mikey asked.
    â€œTo make a million dollars,” Margalo said, then she remembered, “unless it’s to make high honor roll.”
    â€œWrong twice,” Mikey answered, then she corrected herself, “wrong once, because I am going to get on the high honor roll. But this is the real plan: I’m going to play on the West tennis team in the spring.”
    Sometimes, Margalo thought Mikey must spend her waking hours figuring out ways to make herself even more unpopular.
    Mikey explained, “They’ll keep me off the team just because I’m not in eighth grade and that stinks. I mean, it really stinks.”
    â€œYou’ll be in eighth grade next year. You’ll get your turn.”
    â€œAlso, it’s hypocritical,” Mikey said. “Because they assign us to classes by ability. Like, the seminars are only for the best students, and the way they do the sectioning for college prep classes. And like even having college prep