Free It's Not Easy Being Bad by Cynthia Voigt

world.”
    Mikey couldn’t figure out what this meant.
    â€œLike, you play tennis,” Aurora explained.
    â€œYou mean I’m ambitious,” Mikey said.
    â€œIt’ll be easier for you when you’re grown up. Out of school.”
    â€œAmbitious like my mother,” Mikey said.
    â€œJust because you’re ambitious like your mother doesn’t mean you’re just like your mother. You’re pretty fierce,” Aurora told Mikey, as if Mikey didn’t already know that.
    â€œSo’s Margalo,” Mikey said, in case Margalo’s mother hadn’t figured that out yet.
    â€œI hope so,” Aurora said.
    Luckily, before Aurora could drive Mikey completely crazy trying to have a sensible conversation, they pulled up in front of Margalo’s house. Mikey was out of the seat belt and out of the car before Aurora even had the keys out of the ignition. She had already decided how to tell Margalo about the day. “You should have called me,” would be her first words. Right after, “What’s for lunch?”

7
What Now? What Next?
    â€œI need something to do ,” Mikey said to Margalo, about a week after the fight-suspension afternoon.
    They were on their way to the auditorium. It was the second week in November, and civics had been canceled—again!—because of having an assembly—again!—for a seventh-grade class meeting. Wednesday, first period after second lunch, seemed to be the official assembly time.
    Mikey and Margalo pushed their way to the front of the seventh graders going down the right-hand aisle of the auditorium. They checked in with Mr. Parazzo, who stood by the rows of seats assigned to his homeroom. They each took a copy of the handout he offered. As other students came up, Mikey and Margalo slipped away, to push their way back up to the rear ofthe room. They would be out the doors long before anybody else, when this assembly disassembled.
    Seated, they each opened a big, loose-leaf notebook and impaled the handout on its three rings, as if the paper was a three-hearted Dracula. Each took out a pen and put her initials at the top of the paper. ME , wrote Mikey, in large, dark letters. Me , Margalo wrote, perhaps more modestly.
    â€œWhy do they always schedule assemblies during civics?” Mikey wondered as she looked out over the audience, which was busy talking, checking in, talking, finding seats, talking, looking around to see who was looking around at them.
    Margalo had an explanation. “It’s because governments prefer their voters uninformed. So, actually, this assembly is a part of civics class: We’re learning to keep ourselves uninformed.” Then she had to admit, “Although it’s not just civics. It’s every seventh-period class, on Wednesdays.”
    â€œYou mean some people get to miss English?” Mikey realized, outraged.
    â€œOr gym.”
    â€œI like gym,” Mikey said.
    They closed their notebooks. Neither one read the handout.
    Onstage, the blue velvet curtain hung closed, but an empty podium waited at center stage. Because this was a class meeting, not an all-school assembly, only half of the auditorium filled up.
    Mikey estimated the size of the audience. “About a hundred and ninety?”
    â€œThere are two hundred and five people in the class,” Margalo answered.
    â€œMinus the usual absentee rate of five percent.”
    Margalo tried to work that out in her head. Divide by ten, she told herself. Now, divide by two. Now subtract.
    Mikey figured it out in about one second. “One hundred ninety-five, probably.”
    Margalo was slow, but she was accurate. “One hundred ninety-four and three-quarters,” she corrected. Then she had to get grinned at and punched in the arm.
    Mikey continued. “So what we have here is about a hundred ninety-five twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys and girls, of varius colors and creeds. A perfect slice of the