All-American Girl (11 page)

But what else was I supposed to do? It would have been rude just to leave it there on my plate.

The problem with the napkin, which was soaked through with crabmeat juice, was easily solved by the fact that the bathroom, which was very fancy, had all these cloth hand towels laid out for guests to use, and a gilt basket to throw them in when you were done. I washed my hands and used a couple of the hand towels, then threw them into the basket over the napkin. Whoever emptied the basket would just think I forgot and threw a napkin in there.

I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing—except for the fact that, you know, I was practically starving, having almost nothing in my stomach except a tomato garnish—when, on my way back to the dining room, I practically ran into David, who appeared to be headed toward the same bathroom I had just vacated.

“Oh,” he said when he saw me. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I said. Then—because it was weird, him being the president's son, and all—I tried to sidle away as quickly as possible.

Only I wasn't quick enough, since he gave me that little smile of his and went, “So. You didn't flush the napkin, too, did you?”

I couldn't
believe it. Busted! I was so busted!

I felt myself blush all the way to my horse-conditioned roots.

Still, I tried. I tried to pretend like I didn't know what he was talking about.

“Napkin?” I asked, thinking that, with my red hair and scarlet face, I probably resembled a big bowl of strawberry ice cream. “What napkin?”

“The one you hid your entire meal in,” David said, looking amused. His eyes seemed greener than ever. “I hope you didn't try to flush it. The pipes in this building are pretty old. You could cause a massive flood, you know.”

It would be just my luck to cause a flood in the White House.

“I didn't flush the napkin,” I said quickly, with a nervous glance at the Secret Service agent standing not far away. “I put it in the basket with the dirty hand towels. I just flushed the food.” Then I had a panicky thought. “But there was a lot of it. Do you really think it could clog the pipes?”

“I don't know,” he said, looking serious. “That was one big piece of flounder.”

Something about his expression—maybe the way one of his dark eyebrows was up, while the other was down, kind of the way Manet's ears look when he's ready to play—made me realize that David was kidding around.

I didn't think it was so funny, though. I'd really been scared that I'd maybe broken the White House.

“That,” I said in a whisper, so the Secret Service agent down the hall wouldn't hear me, “isn't very nice.”

I didn't even think about the fact that he was, you know, the first son or anything. I mean, I was just mad. They say all this stuff about redheads being hot-tempered. If you are a redhead and you get mad, you can just bet that someone is going to say something like “Oooh, look out for the redhead. You know they've all got tempers.”

Which usually just makes me madder than ever.

Of course, I
had
flushed most of the dinner David's mom had served to me down the toilet. In fact, maybe that was why I was so mad…because David had caught me doing something so wasteful. Yeah, I was mad, but I was pretty embarrassed, too.

But I was more mad. So I turned around and started back toward the dining room.

“Aw, come on,” David said with a laugh, turning around and falling into step with me. “You have to admit, it was kind of funny. I mean, I really had you going there. You totally thought the pipes were going to explode.”

“I did not,” I said, even though that was exactly what I had been thinking. Also about the headlines in the paper the next day:
GIRL WHO SAVED PRESIDENT'S LIFE CAUSES WHITE HOUSE PLUMBING TO BLOW BY STUFFING ENTIRE DINNER DOWN TOILET
.

“Yeah, you did,” David said. He was so much taller than I was, he only had to take one step for every two of mine. “But I ought to have known you can't take a joke.”

I stopped dead in my tracks and whirled around to look up at him. He was pretty tall—taller than Jack, even—so I had to tilt my chin way up to look into those green eyes that Lucy admired so much. I didn't even want to look at that other part of him she'd commented on.

“What do you mean, I can't take a joke?” I demanded. “How would you even know whether or not I can take a joke? You barely know me!”

“I know you're the sensitive artist type,” David said with that same know-it-all grin he'd given his mom (“I
did
change for dinner”).

“I am not,” I said hotly, even though of course I totally am. In fact, I don't even know why I bothered denying it. It was just that the way he said it made it sound like something bad.

Except of course that there's nothing wrong with being a sensitive artist. Jack Ryder is a living testament to that.

“Oh, yeah?” David said. “Then how come you didn't come back to the studio after the Pineapple Incident?”

That was exactly how he said it, too. Like it was capitalized. The Pineapple Incident.

I could feel myself turning red all over again. I couldn't believe he was bringing up what had happened my first day at Susan Boone's. I mean, talk about insensitive.

“I'm not disputing that you're a really good artist,” David went on. “Just that, you know, you're kind of a hothead.” He cocked his head back toward the dining room. “And a bit of a picky eater. You hungry?”

I looked at him like he was crazy. In fact, I was pretty sure he
was
crazy. I mean, his taste in music and footwear notwithstanding, it seemed to me that the first son had some screws loose.

Although he had admitted that I was a really good artist, so maybe he wasn't
that
nuts.

Before I had a chance to deny that I was feeling hungry, my stomach did my talking for me, letting out, at just that moment, the most embarrassing rumbling sound, indicating that all it had in it was some lettuce and a tomato garnish and that this was unacceptable.

David didn't even pretend, like a normal person, that he hadn't heard it. Instead, he went, “I thought so. Listen, I was going to go see if I could round up some real food. Want to come?”

Now I was
sure
he was crazy. Not just because he had gotten up and left the table in the middle of dinner to go look for alternative food, but also because he was asking me to look for alternative food with him.
Me.
The girl he'd just caught throwing away a napkinful of perfectly good dinner.

“I,” I said, completely confused. “I mean, we…we can't just
leave
. In the middle of
dinner
. At the
White House
.”

“Why not?” he asked with a shrug.

I thought about it. There were a lot of reasons why not. Because it was rude, for one thing. I mean, think how it would look. And because…because you just don't
do
things like that.

I mentioned this, but David looked unimpressed.

“You're hungry, aren't you?” he asked. Then, backing down the long, Persian-carpeted hallway, he went, “Come on. You know you want it.”

I didn't know what to do. On the one hand, that dinner in there was for me, and as the guest of honor, I knew I couldn't just dine and ditch. Also, the first son was clearly a crazy person. Did I want to go wandering around a strange house with a crazy person?

On the other hand, I was starving. And he
had
said I was a good artist….

I looked at the Secret Service agent to see what she thought. She smiled at me and made a motion like she was locking the side of her mouth and throwing away the key. Well, I decided, if
she
didn't think it was such a bad thing to do, and she was an adult and all—one responsible enough to carry a side arm—maybe it was all right….

I turned around and hurried after David, who was halfway down the hall by that time.

He didn't seem very surprised to see me there beside him. Instead, he said, like he was continuing some conversation we'd been having in a parallel universe, “So what happened to the boots?”

“Boots?” I echoed. “What boots?”

“The ones you were wearing the first time I met you. With the Wite-Out daisies on them.”

The boots he'd said were nice. Duh.

“My mom wouldn't let me wear those boots,” I said. “She didn't think they were appropriate for dinner at the White House.” I looked at him out of the corners of my eyes. “
None
of my own clothes are appropriate for dinner at the White House. I had to get all new clothes.” I tugged uncomfortably at my navy blue suit. “Like this thing.”

“How do you think I feel?” David asked. “I have to eat dinner at the White House every single night.”

I looked sourly at his shirt. “Yeah, but they obviously don't make you dress up.”

“Only for state dinners, not private ones. But I have to dress up all the rest of the time.”

I knew this wasn't true, though. “You weren't dressed up in drawing class.”

“Occasionally I get a reprieve,” he said with another one of those grins. There was something kind of mysterious about those grins of David's. Most of the time, they seemed to be over some private joke he was having with himself. They made me kind of want to be let in on it. The joke, I mean. Whenever Jack thought of something funny, he just blurted it right out. Sometimes three or four times, just to be sure everyone had heard it.

David seemed perfectly content to keep his witticisms to himself.

Which was kind of irritating. Because how was I supposed to
know whether or not it was me he was laughing at?

Then David hit a button in a door, and an elevator slid open. I probably shouldn't have been surprised there was an elevator in the White House, but I was. I guess because for a minute I forgot where I was, and thought I was just in a regular house. Also, they never showed the elevator on the school tours.

We got into the elevator, and David hit the down button. The door closed, and we went down.

“So,” he said as we rode. “Why'd you skip?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. Though of course I should have. “Skip what?”

“You know. Drawing class, after the Pineapple Incident.”

I swallowed hard.

“I thought you already had that all figured out,” I said. “You said it was on account of my being a sensitive artist, and all.”

The elevator door slid open, and David gestured for me to get out before following me. “Yeah, but I want to hear your version of why.”

Yeah, I bet he did.

But I was fully not going to give him the pleasure. He would only, I knew, make fun of me. Which would, in essence, be making fun of Jack. And that I would not stand for.

Instead I just went, lightly, “I don't think Susan Boone and I exactly see eye-to-eye on the issue of creative license.”

David looked at me, one eyebrow up and one down again. Only this time, I was pretty sure he wasn't being playful.

“Really?” he said. “Are you sure? Because I think Susan's pretty cool about that kind of thing.”

Yeah. Real cool. Cool enough to blackmail me into coming back to her class.

But I didn't say this out loud. It seemed impolitic to argue with
someone who might momentarily be supplying me with food.

We went down another hallway, this one not carpeted or very fancy. Then David opened another door, and we were in a big kitchen.

“Hey, Carl,” David said to a guy in a chef's outfit who was busy putting whipped cream on a bunch of glasses of chocolate mousse. “Got anything good to eat around here?”

Carl looked up from his creations, took one glance at me, and cried, “Samantha Madison! The girl who saved the world! How you doing?”

There were a lot of other people in the kitchen, all busily cleaning and putting things away. Theresa, I saw, had been wrong about the gold-rimmed plates. You could totally put them in the dishwasher, and in fact, the White House kitchen staff was doing so. But they all stopped when they saw me, and gathered around to thank me for keeping their boss from taking one in the head.

“What was the matter with the flounder?” Carl wanted to know, after congratulations had been issued to me from his staff. “That was real Maryland crab stuffed into it, you know. I bought it fresh this morning.”

David went over to the industrial-size fridge and yanked it open. “I think it was just, too, you know.” For a guy who went to Horizon, David certainly didn't talk much like a certified genius. “You got any more of those hamburgers we had for lunch?”

I brightened at the word
hamburger
. Carl saw this, and went, “You want a burger? The lady wants a burger. Samantha Madison, I will make you a burger the likes of which you have never had in your life. You sit right there. Don't move. This burger's gonna knock your socks off.”

I was wearing panty hose, not socks, of course, but I didn't feel it was necessary to point this out. Instead I sat down on the stool
Carl had indicated. David sat down on the one next to it, and we watched as Carl, moving so fast he was almost a blur, threw two enormous hamburger patties onto a stovetop grill and started cooking them for us.

It was weird to be in the kitchen of the White House. It was weird to be in the kitchen of the White House with the son of the president. It would have been weird to me to be with a boy anywhere, since I am not exactly popular with boys. I mean, I am not Lucy. I do not have boys calling me every five minutes…or ever, for that matter.

But the fact that it was
this
boy, and
this
place, made it especially weird. I couldn't figure out why David was being so…well, I guess
nice
was the only word to describe it. I mean, teasing me about having potentially clogged a White House toilet hadn't been so nice. But offering me a burger when I was practically starving had been pretty decent of him.

It had to be because I had saved his dad. I mean, why else? He was grateful for what I had done. Which was fully understandable.

What wasn't so understandable to me was why he was going so out of his way.

I became even more puzzled about this when, after Carl slid two plates in front of us—each of which contained a huge burger and a big pile of golden fries—and went, “Bon appétit, ya'll,” David picked up both his plate and mine, and said, “Come on.”

Taking hold of two cans of soda Carl passed to me from the big industrial fridge, I followed David back down the hallway to the elevator.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“You'll see,” David said.

Ordinarily this would not have been enough of an answer for me. But I didn't say anything more about it, because I was in too
much shock on account of a boy's being nice to me. The only boy who had ever been remotely nice to me in the past was Jack.

But Jack has to be nice to me, on account of my being his girlfriend's sister. Also, Jack is of course secretly yearning for me. It is even possible that the only reason he stays with Lucy is because he doesn't know that I return his ardor. If I could ever get up the guts to tell him how I feel, everything could be completely different….