Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Whatcha Gonna Do? by Cynthia Voigt Page A

stepped down onto the floor, they fled.
    This left Hadrian alone in the doorway. Then he saw Margalo and scuttled over to sit down beside her. Ms. Hendriks stood staring at the empty doorway. Everyone could see that she didn’t know what to do next.
    Margalo didn’t blame her. Even she, sitting beside Hadrian, a person who was known to be on his side and not even smiling at the way he looked, didn’t know which would make it worse for him—to be noticed or to be ignored, to make a big to-do about it or to pretend nothing had happened and there was nothing at all odd about him.
    Ms. Hendriks apparently decided on pretending. She stepped up onto the platform and sat back down. “Which senior wants to go first?” she asked, as if the last two minutes had taken place in a time warp that aliens had erased from her memory.
    It took a few seconds for everybody to turn around again and face her, and by that time Sally King had already stepped up onto the platform to read for the unisex part of Puck, the mischief-making sprite who was the personal servant of Oberon, king of the fairies. Puck was the one single stand-out part in the play, and even that wasn’t a particularly starring role. Puck had a lot of lines and appeared in a lot of scenes, and then—at the very end—he got to speak directly to the audience and claim credit for the whole performance. Puck was the part you remembered, after the play. Well, Puck and Bottom. But Bottom was a jerk, like an old-fashioned redneck hillbilly type, so nobody thought of asking to play Bottom. Nobody except Hadrian, that is.
    â€œWhen she hears you read,” Margalo murmured to Hadrian. “When they all hear you.” She was sort of excited for him and impatient to get to the turnaround-surprise ending of this scene. Hadrian didn’t say anything, but she didn’t look at him. If she were Hadrian, she wouldn’t want anyone looking at her right now. Instead she listened to Sally King’s tryout.
    Sally read Puck well, with her usual mischievious I can get away with anything, just watch expression. She would make a good Puck, Margalo thought; it was typecasting, one egocentric and self-satisfied character played by another. She thought Sally should get the part—even though Sally was the kind of person who you wanted not to get what she wanted. She had a slim, boyish build and a bold smile; with her hair in two short ponytails, one on each side of her head, she already looked like Puck.
    Margalo had an unexpected thought: What if Sally King really was talented? Just because you didn’t like someone, that didn’t mean they couldn’t be talented. Just because you didn’t want them to be, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be. She wished it was Mikey sitting beside her, not Hadrian, because then she could tell Mikey that idea, and at the end she could add, “And vice versa,” to irritate Mikey, who—irritated on schedule—would respond, “No Latin.”
    After Sally came Richard, no surprise. By that time, Margalo dared to sneak a look across at Hadrian, who sat so quiet and lifeless it was almost as if he wasn’t there. It was likesitting next to a pile of mashed potatoes, and no fun at all. And he looked, with his hair like that—it was grotesque, really funny. She wasn’t surprised to hear occasional whispers, followed by muffled snorts of laughter, scattered around the room.
    Richard took the seat Sally had vacated and told Ms. Hendriks, “First I thought me and Sally could be the Duke and his bride, but those aren’t big parts, so then I thought Oberon and his queen. But she wants to be Puck.”
    â€œYou could still play Oberon,” Ms. Hendriks offered.
    Richard scratched at the back of his neck, where his brown hair curled up a little. “Yeah, but, you know? Like Sally says, who wants to be the King of the Fairies?” He grinned at her and at the