All-American Girl (12 page)

But David. David didn't
have
to be nice to me. So why was he doing it? It couldn't have been because he liked me, you know, as a girl. Because, um, hello, Lucy was right upstairs and down the hall. What guy in his right mind would rather be with me than with Lucy? I mean, that was like choosing Skipper instead of Barbie.

When we came out of the elevator, instead of turning back toward the dining room, where everyone else was, David turned in the other direction, toward a door at the opposite end of the hallway. Behind it, I soon saw, was a very formal living room-y type place, with big high windows that looked down the sloping lawn of the White House all the way to the Washington Monument, sticking all lit up into the night sky.

“How's this?” David asked, putting the burgers down on a little table in front of the windows, then moving two big chairs close to the table.

“Um,” I said, because I was still in shock about—and plenty suspicious of—the fact that this cute—but somewhat weird—boy wanted to eat with me.
Me
, Samantha Madison. “Fine.”

We sat down, bathed in the outdoor lights from the Rotunda. It would have been almost romantic if there hadn't been a Secret Service agent standing right outside the door. And oh, yeah, if David had been remotely interested in me in that way, which he definitely wasn't, on account of the fact that to him I am just the strange Goth-type girl who saved his dad's life, and who also likes
to draw pineapples where there are none.

And even if he did like me, you know, in a romantic way, there was the little fact that I am completely and irrevocably in love with my sister's boyfriend.

Whatever. I was so hungry by then, I didn't even care that David was only being nice to me because he felt sorry for me, or whatever.

From the first bite, I knew: Carl had been right. He really had made one of the best burgers I'd ever eaten. I bolted down roughly half of mine before surfacing for air.

David, who'd been watching me eat with a sort of stunned expression on his face—on the rare occasions when I do find something I like to eat, I have a tendency to really go for it—went, “Better?”

I couldn't respond because I was too busy chewing. I gave him a thumbs-up with my cast hand, though.

“So, does it hurt?” he wanted to know, indicating my broken wrist.

I swallowed the huge wad of meat in my mouth. I really would like to be a vegetarian. Seriously. You would think an artist would be way more conscious of the suffering of others, even of the bovine variety. But hamburgers are just so good. I could never give them up.

“Not so much anymore,” I said.

“How come nobody's signed it?” he wanted to know.

“I'm saving it,” I said, looking down at the nice vast expanse of white plaster around my wrist. “For German class.”

He got my meaning. No one else had, except of course for Jack. Only true artists understand the lure of a blank white canvas.

“Oh, sure,” he said knowingly. “That'll be cool. So what are you going to go for? A sort of Hawaiian motif? Plenty of pineapples, I'm assuming.”

I gave him a very sour look. “I think I'm going to go for a patriotic theme,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “Of course. What could be more fitting? You being a Madison, and all.”

“What does that have to do with it?” I wanted to know.

“James Madison,” David said, his eyebrows up again. “Fourth president. He's a relation, right?”

“Oh,” I said, feeling like a dork. “Him. Yeah. No, I don't think so.”

“Really?” David looked surprised. “Are you sure? Because you and his wife Dolley have a lot in common.”

“Me and
Dolley Madison
?” I laughed. “Like what?”

“Well, she saved a president, too.”

“Oh, what,” I said, still laughing. “She gave old James the Heimlich, or something?”

“No,” David said. “She saved a portrait of George Washington from being burned up with the rest of the White House when the British attacked it during the War of 1812.”

Wait a minute. The British had burned down the White House? When had this happened?

Obviously during a war we hadn't learned about yet over at Adams Prep. We don't have U.S. History until eleventh grade.

“Whoa. Cool,” I said, meaning it. In history class they never tell you about cool stuff like first ladies running around saving paintings. Instead all you ever get to hear about are the stupid pilgrims and boring old Aaron Burr.

“You sure you aren't any relation?” David asked again.

“Pretty sure,” I said regretfully. How cool would it be if I really were related to someone who had done something as brave as rescue a piece of fine art from a fire? Too cool for words, actually.
Were
we related to Dolley Madison? I mean, my mom frequently pointed
out that I had to have inherited my artistic temperament from my dad's side of the family, since there were no artists on hers. The Madisons had clearly been great art lovers throughout the ages.

Only it must have skipped a few generations, since I was the only one in the family that I knew of who could draw.

All of a sudden David got up and went to the window.

“Come here and look at this,” he said, moving aside the curtain.

I got up to follow him curiously, then saw that he was pointing down at the windowsill. It was painted white, like the rest of the trim in the room.

But embedded deeply in the paint were words that had been carved into the sill. Looking closely, I could make out some of them: Amy…Chelsea…David…

“What is this?” I wanted to know. “The memorial first kids windowsill?”

“Something like that,” David said.

Then he pulled out something from the pocket of his jeans. It was one of those little Swiss Army knives. Then he started gouging something in the wood. I probably wouldn't have said anything about it if I hadn't seen that the first letter he'd carved was an
S
.

“Hey,” I said with some alarm. I mean, I am an urban rebel and all, but vandalism that isn't for the sake of a good cause is still just that. Vandalism. “What are you doing?”

“Come on,” David said, grinning up at me. “Who deserves it more than you? Not only are you possibly related to a president, but you saved the life of one, too.”

I looked nervously back over my shoulder at the door, behind which I knew stood a Secret Service agent. I mean, come on. Son of the president or not, this was destruction of public property. Not just public property, but the
White House
. I'm sure you could go to
jail for years for desecrating the White House.

“David,” I said, lowering my voice so no one would overhear me. “This isn't necessary.”

Intent upon his work—he had gotten to the letter
A
now—David did not reply.

“Really,” I said. “I mean, if you want to thank me for saving your dad, the burger is enough, believe me.”

But it was too late, because he was already starting on the
M
.

“I suppose you think just because your dad is the president,” I said, “you can't get in trouble for this.”

“Not that much trouble,” David said as he carved. “I mean, I'm still a minor, after all.” He leaned back to admire his handiwork. “There. What do you think of that?”

I looked down at my name, Sam, right there with Amy Carter's and Chelsea Clinton's, not to mention David's. I hoped a large family would not move into the White House next, as there would be no more room left on the windowsill for the kids to add their names.

“I think you're insane,” I said, meaning it. It was a shame, too, because he was kind of cute.

“Oh,” David said, folding up the Swiss Army knife and sticking it back in his pocket. “That really hurts, coming from a girl who draws pineapples where there are none, flushes crab-stuffed flounder down the toilet, and likes to throw herself at strange men with guns.”

I stared at him for a minute, completely taken aback.

Then I started to laugh. I couldn't help it. It
was
pretty funny, after all.

David started to laugh, too. The two of us were standing there, laughing, when the Secret Service agent from the hallway came in and went, “David? Your father is looking for you.”

I stopped laughing. Busted again! I looked guiltily down at the windowsill—not to mention the empty plates where the burgers had been.

But I didn't have time to dwell on my misdeeds, because we had to get back to the dining room in a hurry. I mean, you don't keep the president of the United States waiting.

When we got in there, though, it turned out the president hadn't been the only one waiting. Every face was turned expectantly toward the doors. When David and I walked through them, to my very great surprise, all the people in the room burst into applause.

At first I couldn't figure out why. I mean, were they clapping because David and I had finally found our way back from the bathroom (they couldn't possibly have known, could they, about the burgers, unless whoever had served the chocolate mousse had told them?).

But it turned out the reason they were clapping had nothing to do with that. I found out why they were clapping when, on my way back to my seat, my mom suddenly stopped me and leaped up to give me a big hug.

“Oh, honey, isn't it great?” she asked. “The president just named you teen ambassador to the United Nations!”

And all of a sudden that delicious burger felt like it might come right back up.

“So where'd
you go, then?” Lucy asked me for, like, the nine hundredth time.

“Nowhere,” I said. “Leave me alone.”

“I'm only asking,” Lucy said. “Can't I ask you a simple question? You don't have to get all upset about it. Unless, of course, you were doing something, you know, you weren't supposed to be doing.”

I had been, of course. Only not what Lucy thought. I'd just been eating burgers with—and having my initials carved into a White House windowsill by—the son of the leader of the free world.

“It's just that you two looked, I don't know…” Lucy was examining her lips in the mirror of her compact. She had spent about half an hour lining them that morning—her lips, that is—conscious that today, my first day back at school after the whole saving-the-president thing, a lot of people were probably going to be taking her picture.

A lot of people did take her picture—and mine—as we walked out of our house and down to the station wagon (the Secret Service had suggested that for the next few weeks or so, it might not be such a good idea for Lucy and me to take the bus to school, so Theresa was driving us). So Lucy had been right about that, anyway.

What she wasn't right about was that there was anything going on between me and David.

“Chummy,” she finished, snapping the compact shut. “Didn't you think they looked chummy, Theresa?”

Theresa, who is not the world's greatest driver, and who had
been completely unnerved by all the photographers who had thrown themselves across the hood of the car in an effort to get my picture, only said a bunch of Spanish swear words as the car ahead of us cut her off.

“I think you looked chummy,” Lucy said. “Definitely chummy.”

“There was nothing chummy about it,” I said. “We just ran into each other on the way out of the bathroom. That's all.”

Rebecca, seated in the front seat, remarked, “I detected a frisson.”

Lucy and I both looked at her like she was crazy. “A
what
?”

“A frisson,” Rebecca said. “A tremor of intense attraction. I detected one between you and David last night.”

I was flabbergasted. Because of course there'd been no such thing. I happened to be in love with Jack, not David.

Only of course I couldn't say that. Not out loud.

“There was no
frisson.
There was absolutely no
frisson
. Where would you even get an idea like that?”

“Oh,” Rebecca replied mildly. “From one of Lucy's romance novels. I've been reading them in an effort to improve my people skills. And there was definitely a frisson between you and David.”

No matter how many times I denied the existence of any frisson, however, both Rebecca and Lucy swore they'd seen one. Which doesn't even make sense, since I highly doubt frissons, if they even exist, are detectable to the human eye.

And while David is cute and everything, I am totally one hundred percent committed to Jack Ryder, who, okay, does not exactly seem to love me back, but he will. One of these days, Jack will come to his senses, and when he does, I will be waiting.

Besides which, David so fully doesn't like me that way. He was just being nice to me because I saved his dad. That's all. I mean, if they'd heard the way he'd been teasing me about the whole pineapple thing, they so totally would give up on this frisson business.

But whatever. Everyone, it seemed, was determined to make my life a living hell: my sisters; the reporters staked out on my lawn; the manufacturers of certain brands of popular soft drinks, who would not stop delivering samples of their products by the caseload to my home; my own family. Even the president of the United States.

 

“What exactly does the teen ambassador to the United Nations do?” Catherine asked me later that day. We were standing in the lunch line, where we had stood together every weekday of my life, with the exception of my pre-K days, summers, national holidays, and that year I had spent in Morocco.

But unlike all the rest of those times, today everyone standing around us was staring at me and speaking in reverently hushed tones. One particularly shy freshman girl had come up and asked if it would be all right for her to touch my cast.

Oh, yeah. Nothing like being a national hero.

I was trying to downplay the whole thing. Really, I was. For instance, in direct defiance of Lucy's orders, I had not risen an hour earlier for school in order to apply horse conditioner to my hair. I had not donned any of my new slacks from Banana Republic. I had on my normal, everyday, midnight-black clothes, and my hair was its normal, everyday, out-of-control mess.

Still, everyone was treating me differently. Even the teachers, who made jokes like, “For those of you who weren't dining at the White House last night, did you happen to see the excellent documentary on Yemen on PBS?” and “Please open your textbooks to page two hundred and sixty-five—those of you who did not break your arm saving the life of the president, that is.”

Even the cafeteria workers were in on it. As I stepped up with my tray, Mrs. Krebbetts gave me a conspiratorial wink and said, “Here, honey,” then slipped me an extra slice of peanut butter pie.

In the history of John Adams Preparatory School, Mrs. Krebbetts had never slipped anyone an extra slice of peanut butter pie. Everyone was scared of Mrs. Krebbetts, and with good reason: aggravate her, and she might deny you pie for a year.

And here she was, giving me extra pie. The world as I had once known it came crashing to an end.

“I mean, you must do
something
.” Catherine, having recovered from the pie incident, followed me to the table we traditionally shared with a number of girls who, like Catherine and me, were on the outer fringes of popularity—like the frozen tundra of the social geography of Adams Prep. Too antiestablishment to join the student council and not athletic enough to be jocks, most of us either played instruments or were in the drama club. I was the only artist. We were all just trying to get through high school so we could hurry up and get to college, where, we'd heard, things were better.

“I mean, teen ambassador to the UN. What are you in charge of? Is there a committee, at least?” Catherine wouldn't let it go. “On world teen issues, or something?”

“I don't know, Catherine,” I said as we sat down. “The president just said he was appointing me as representative from the United States. I assume there are representatives from other countries. Otherwise, what would be the point? Does anybody want an extra piece of pie?”

No one responded. That's because everyone at the table was staring, but not at the pie. Instead, they were all staring at Lucy and Jack, who had suddenly plunked their trays down at our table.

“Hey,” Lucy said breezily, as if she sat at the unpopular girls' table every day of the week. “What's up?”

“How'd you get that extra piece of pie?” Jack wanted to know.

The thing of it was, Lucy and Jack weren't the only ones from, you know, the other side of the caf who sat at our table. To my
astonishment, they were joined by about half the football team, and a bunch of other cheerleaders, too. I could see that Catherine was completely unnerved by this invasion. It was as if a bunch of swans had suddenly taken over the duck pond. All of us mallards weren't quite sure what to do with ourselves in the face of so much beauty.

“What are you doing?” I whispered to Lucy.

Lucy just shrugged as she sipped her diet Coke. “Since you won't come to us,” she said, “we came to you.”

“Hey, Sam,” Jack said, whipping a pen out from the pocket of his black trench coat. “I'll sign your cast for you.”

“Ooh,” cried Debbie Kinley, her pom-poms twitching excitedly. “Me, too! I want to sign her cast, too.”

I yanked my arm out of their reach and went, “Uh, no, thanks.”

Jack looked crestfallen. “I was just going to draw a disaffected youth on it,” he explained. “That's all.”

A disaffected youth would have been cool, I had to admit. But if I let Jack draw on my cast, then everybody would want to, and soon all that lovely whiteness would be a big old mess. But if I said only Jack could draw on it, then everyone would know about my secret crush on my sister's boyfriend.

“Um, thanks anyway,” I said. “But I'm saving my cast for my own stuff.”

I felt bad about being mean to Jack. He was, after all, my soul mate.

Still, I wish he'd hurry up and realize it, and quit hanging out with Lucy and her dopey friends. Because these guys were acting like total idiots, tossing corn chips at one another and trying to catch them in their mouths. It was revolting. Also irritating, because they kept jostling the table, making it hard for those of us who had to eat one-handed to keep our food steady. I realize that football players are very large and maybe can't help shaking the table, but
still, they could have showed a little restraint.

“Hey,” I said when one of the corn chips landed in Catherine's applesauce. “Cut it out, you guys.”

Lucy, poring over a magazine article about how to get perfect thighs—which Lucy, of course, already had—went, in a bored voice, “Geez. Just because she's getting a medal, she thinks she's all that,” which is totally unfair, because what was I supposed to do, just meekly accept the whole corn-chip-in-the-applesauce thing?

Catherine stared at me, wide-eyed. “You're getting a medal, too? You're teen ambassador to the UN
and
you're getting a medal?”

Unfortunately so. A presidential medal of valor, to be exact. The ceremony was going to be held in December, when the White House was decorated all Christmasy, for optimum photogenic effect.

But I didn't have time to reply. That's because my second slice of pie suddenly disappeared and traveled down the row of football players like a Frisbee in a game of keep-away.

“MAY I PLEASE HAVE MY PIE BACK?” I yelled, because I'd been planning on giving the extra piece to Jack.

Lucy, of course, didn't know this. She just went, “God, it's just a piece of pie. Believe me, you do not need the extra calories,” a typically Lucy remark to which I started to respond, until I was distracted by an all-too-familiar voice behind me.

“Hello, Samantha.”

I turned to see Kris Parks—looking like the perfect class president that she was, clad in Benetton from head to toe, including a pink cashmere sweater thrown oh-so-casually across her shoulders—simpering down at me.

“Here's the invitation to my party,” Kris said, handing me a piece of folded paper. “I really hope you can come. I know we've had our differences in the past, but I'd really like it if we could bury the hatchet and be friends. I've always admired you, you know, Sam.
You really, really, um, stick to your convictions. And I didn't mind paying for the drawings. Really.”

I just stared up at her. I couldn't believe any of this was happening. Really, out of all of it—the caseloads of soda, the Thank-you-beary-much! bears, having dinner at the White House—the fact that Kris Parks—
Kris Parks
—was sucking up to me was the strangest thing of all. I was starting to know how Cinderella probably felt after the prince finally found her and got the shoe to fit. Her stepsisters had probably sucked up to her pretty much the same way Kris Parks was sucking up to me.

The thing was, though, like Cinderella, I totally didn't have the heart to tell Kris where to go. I should have. I know I should have.

But it was like this: Why? I mean, what was the point? So she'd been nasty to me her whole life. Like my being nasty back to her was going to teach her a lesson? Nastiness was all she knew.

Kindness. That was what Kris Parks needed. An example to follow. Someone whose gracious behavior she could emulate.

“I don't know,” I said, slipping the invitation into my backpack, instead of following my instincts and tossing it into the nearest trash receptacle. “I'll have to see.”

Leave it to Lucy to ruin everything by going, without taking her gaze off the magazine in her hands, “She'll be there.”

Kris sucked in her breath excitedly. “You will? Great!”

“Actually,” I said, shooting Lucy a glare that she missed because she was studying an article about proper cuticle maintenance, “I'm not sure I can go, Luce.”

“Sure you can,” Lucy said, flipping the page. “You and David and Jack and I can all go together.”

“David?”
I echoed. “Who said anything about—”

“I just think it is so sweet,” Kris said with a sigh. “About you and the president's son, and all. When Lucy told me, I nearly
died
.”

“When Lucy told you what?” I demanded.

“Well, about the two of you going out, of course,” Kris said, in some surprise.

I really could have killed Lucy then. I mean, you should have seen what happened when Kris uttered these words. Catherine, who'd been gnawing on a chicken leg, watching the whole little drama unfold before her, dropped the chicken leg into her lap. All the cheerleaders stopped gossiping and turned to look at me like I was some kind of new sparkly nail polish, or something. Even Jack, who by then had gotten back my piece of pie, paused with a bite of it halfway to his lips and said, “No freakin' way.”

I mean, it was a little upsetting.

“Right,” I said. “Jack is absolutely right. No freakin' way. I am not going out with him. Okay? I am not going out with the president's son.”

But Kris was already babbling, “Don't worry about it, Sam, I am the soul of discretion. I won't say a word to anyone. Do you think reporters will show up, though? I mean, at my party? Because if anyone wants to interview me, you know, that's all right. They can even take my picture. If you want me to sign a waiver, or whatever…”