Read It's Not Easy Being Bad for Free Online

ashamed—again! double ashamed!—to chicken out on Mikey, and furious at Heather McGinty, too, for making her feel this way.
    Things were easier for Mikey.
    She took her foot down, off the bench.
    She shifted her grip on the tray.
    She flipped the tray, sending her whole lunch flying up, spraying chunky soup and skinny sandwich, and milk, and Jell-O, out across the table, so it could rain down over Heather McGinty.
    And all the time Mikey was smiling furiously.
    The preppettes twitched back, chipmunks in retreat.
    Heather stood there with her own tray in her hands, dripping vegetables off her little round chin, a couple of red Jell-O chunks sliding down the front of her little short tee, which used to be misty gray. Her pinky-brown mouth was open in protest, but she didn’t seem to have anything to say.
    â€œJoke,” Mikey said, her teeth bared in a smile. “Get it?”
    Then she strode down the aisle and across the cafeteria and out through the wide doors. Margalo followed.
    Out in the hallway, Mikey slowed down to a walk. “You’ll have to share your lunch with me.”
    â€œWe’re not allowed to eat—”
    â€œWe’ll be by our lockers. Nobody’ll even notice. I can’t get through the afternoon without something in my stomach.” Then Mikey laughed. “I feel so muchbetter—she looked like she got sick all over herself, didn’t she? If I were her, I’d make me sick.”
    â€œMikey, what happened?” Margalo demanded as they went down the hallway to their lockers.
    â€œYou were there,” Mikey explained. “I threw my lunch at her.”
    â€œRats on it, Mikey, I mean yesterday. I mean your party.” Margalo took her sandwich out of her bag, packaged ham with mayonnaise and lettuce, on supermarket white. She gave half to Mikey, who chomped down on it, and chewed, swallowed.
    â€œBad ham,” Mikey said. “Lousy bread. Yellow mustard. Can’t you do anything with Aurora? Nothing happened,” she concluded.
    â€œWhat do you mean, nothing?”
    Mikey went into sarcastic mode. “Let’s see. What does nothing mean?” She tugged at her braid as if trying to pull the answer out of her head. “I guess it means zero. Zip. The big goose egg. It means, not one thing. Happened,” Mikey said, her fury building up again. “Not one person. Came. I cooked, you cleaned, we set the table, Dad was out in the kitchen ready to be my sous-chef, serve up the plates . . . and after a while we realized that nobody was going to show up.”
    Margalo didn’t know what to say.
    â€œ And ,” Mikey added, “I missed the Sunday tennis clinic.” She continued adding to the pile of wrongs done to her. “Which means I also missed two hours of playing time, after.”
    Margalo held her chewed bit of sandwich in her mouth.
    â€œDad felt pretty bad,” Mikey reported. She finished her sandwich half and held out her hand for the paper bag. Margalo passed it to her. Mikey said, “Probably the worst moment of my life. So far. The most humiliating, probably. Is it okay if I take the apple?”
    Margalo nodded.
    â€œI figure,” Mikey said, crunching on the apple, “they did it on purpose. They got together and didn’t come. But they didn’t even call to say so. I said on the invitation, Regrets Only.”
    â€œThere was another party yesterday, at Rhonda’s. And one of the Heathers had a party, too,” Margalo told her.
    Mikey took in that information. “You didn’t tell me.”
    â€œWould it have made any difference if I had?”
    â€œWe’ll never know, now, will we?” Mikey asked. “But you wouldn’t just totally blow off an invitation, would you?”
    Margalo was shaking her head, no, and no, she would never.
    â€œSee? And you haven’t even got anybody to teach you good manners,” Mikey told her. “I wrote it