All-American Girl (8 page)

“First things first,” she said. “Let's do something about that hair.”

It was only because I was in such a weakened physical state, what with my sleepless night and the cast and all, that Lucy got the upper hand in that bathroom. I mean, I just didn't have the strength to fight her. I did scream once, but I guess the Secret Service guys couldn't hear me over the sound of the shower, since they didn't come busting in, guns drawn, to save me this time.

But it would have taken a troop of commandos to stop Lucy. She had been waiting for this moment since the day I hit puberty, practically. Finally she had me in a position where I was powerless to stop her. She had brought with her not only a complete set of clothes for me but a small arsenal of beauty products that she seemed intent upon squirting at me as I stood trapped in the shower stall, my broken arm, in its plaster cast, sticking out like a tree branch.

“This is awapuhi,” Lucy informed me, shooting something that smelled vaguely fruity at my head. “It's a special Hawaiian ginger extract. Use it to wash your hair. And this is an apricot body scrub—”

“Lucy,” I yelled as awapuhi got in my eyes, and I couldn't, having
only one free hand, get it out. “What are you trying to do to me?”

“Saving you,” Lucy explained. “You ought to be thanking me.”

“Thanking you? For what? Permanently blinding me with Hawaiian ginger extract?”

“No, for attempting to transform you into something resembling a human being. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is for me to have people calling me—all night, they were calling me—going, ‘Hey, isn't that your sister? What happened to her? Is she in some kind of cult?'”

When I opened my mouth to protest this unfair statement, Lucy just squeezed Aquafresh into it. While I choked, she went on, “Here, use this conditioner, it's the kind groomers use on their horses right before a show.”

“I”—shampoo still in my eyes, I couldn't see Lucy, but I swung at her with my cast anyway—“am not a horse!”

“I realize that,” Lucy said. “But you genuinely need this, Sam. Consider it an intervention…an emergency beauty intervention.” Lucy reached into the shower and shoved me back under the spray. “Rinse and repeat, please.”

By the time Lucy was done with me, I'd been scrubbed, plucked, exfoliated, and blow-dried within an inch of my life.

But I had to admit, I looked pretty good. I mean, I'd been kind of offended by the intervention comment. But under Lucy's careful supervision—and detachable defuser—my hair soon lost its copper wire stiffness, and instead of sticking straight up from the top of my head was curling loosely to my shoulders. And though she didn't quite manage to make my freckles disappear, Lucy did do something that made them not stand out so much.

I didn't mind the Hawaiian ginger extract, the apricot scrub, or the horse conditioner. I could handle the mascara and the foundation and the lip gloss.

But I fully drew the line when Lucy whipped, from her gym bag, a bright blue blouse and matching skirt.

“No way,” I said, as adamantly as I could for someone who was wearing nothing but a hospital towel, and not even a very big one. “I will wear your lipstick. I will wear your eyeliner. But I am
not
wearing your clothes.”

“Sam, you don't have any choice.” Lucy was already holding up the blouse. “All of your clothes are black. You can't appear in front of Middle America dressed all in black. People are going to think you're a Satan worshiper. You are going to dress like a normal person for once in your life, and you are going to
like it
.”

On the words
like it
, Lucy jumped me. I would just like to point out that she had an unfair advantage over me because:

• a) she was two inches taller and about ten pounds heavier, and
  
• b) she was not impaired by having one arm in a cast, and
  
• c) she did not have to worry about clutching a towel around her, and
  
• d) she has many, many years of reading
  Glamour
  magazine's Dos and Don'ts section behind her, lending her style convictions superhuman strength.
  

Really. Those were the only reasons I gave in. There was also the fact that Lucy had not brought any of my own clothes for me to wear, and the ones I had worn the day before had been taken away by the Secret Service for testing, since there was apparently gun powder residue on them from Mr. Uptown Girl's shooting spree.

When I finally emerged from that bathroom, I was wearing my sister's clothes, my sister's makeup, and my sister's hair products. I basically looked nothing like my usual self. Nothing at all.

But that was okay. Really, it was. Because I didn't really feel like
my usual self, either, on account of the no sleep and the people with the signs down on the street and all the Thank-you-beary-much! bears, but also thanks to the awapuhi and all.

So when I came out of that bathroom, I was already pretty weirded out. In fact, I didn't think things could get much weirder than they already were.

And that was when my mom, who was standing there looking kind of nervous amid all of the flowers and the balloons, went, “Um, Samantha, there's someone here to see you,” and I turned around and there was the president of the United States.

Even though
I have lived in Washington, D.C., all my life—except for that year our family spent in Morocco—I have hardly ever seen the president of the United States—and there have been four of them since I was born—in person.

Oh, I have seen him driving past in motorcades, and of course I have seen him on TV. But except for the day before, at Capitol Cookies, I had never seen the president up close.

So seeing him then, standing in my hospital room with my mom and my dad and Lucy and Rebecca and Theresa and the Secret Service agents and all the flowers and the balloons and stuff…

Well, it was pretty strange.

Plus, standing there beside him was his wife, the first lady. I had never seen the first lady in person before, either. I had seen her on TV, and on the cover of
Good Housekeeping
magazine, touting her prizewinning brownies and all, but never in person. Up close, both the president and the first lady looked bigger than they do on TV.

Well, duh. Of course. But they also looked…I don't know.

Sort of older, and more real. Like, you could see wrinkles and stuff.

“So you're the little lady who saved my life.” That's what he said. The president of the United States. Those were the first words the president said to me, in that deep voice I am forced to hear practically every night when my parents make me change the channel from
The Simpsons
to the news.

And how did I reply? What did I say in response to the
president of the United States?

I went, “Um.”

Behind me, I heard Lucy heave this satisfied sigh. That was because she was relieved she'd finished her beauty makeover on time. A few minutes earlier, and I might still have had bed head.

It apparently did not matter to Lucy that I
sounded
like an idiot. All she cared about was that I did not
look
like one.

“Well, I just had to stop by and ask if it was all right for me to shake the hand,” the president went on in his big voice, “of the bravest girl in the world.”

Then he stuck out his big right hand.

I stared at that hand. Not because it was any different from anybody else's hand. It wasn't. Well, it was, of course, because it belonged to the president of the United States. But that wasn't why I was staring at it. I was staring at it because I was thinking about what the president had said, about how I was the bravest girl in the world.

And interestingly, even though many of the notes my mother had read off the flowers and balloons and teddy bears had mentioned something along the same line, this was the first time I actually thought about it. Me being brave, and all.

And the thing was, it simply wasn't true. I hadn't been brave. Being brave is when you have to do something because you know it is right, but at the same time you are afraid to do it, because it might hurt or whatever. But you do it anyway. Like me defending Catherine from Kris Parks when she starts in on her about her Laura Ingalls Wilder dresses or whatever, knowing that Kris is just going to start in on me next. Now,
that's
brave.

What I did—jumping onto Mr. Uptown Girl's back—hadn't been brave, because I hadn't really thought about the consequences. I had just done it. I saw the gun, I saw the president, I jumped. Just like that.

I wasn't the bravest girl in the world. I was just a girl who'd happened to have the misfortune to be standing next to a guy who meant to assassinate the president. That's all. I hadn't done anything anyone else wouldn't have done. Not at all.

I don't know how long I would have stood there and stared down at the president's hand if Lucy hadn't poked me in the back. It really hurt, too, because Lucy has these really long nails that she files into points practically every night.

But I didn't let it show that my big sister had just stabbed me in the back with one of her talons. Instead, I went, “Gee, thanks,” and stuck out my own hand to shake the president's.

Except, of course, the hand I stuck out to shake was my right hand, the one in the cast. Everyone laughed like it was this hilarious joke, and then the president shook my left hand, the one not encased in plaster.

Then the first lady shook my hand, too, and said that she hoped my family and I would join her and the president for dinner at the White House sometime “when things settled down a little” so that they could really show their appreciation for what I'd done.

Dinner?
At the White House?
Me?

Thank God my mother took over then, saying that we would be delighted to join the first family for dinner sometime.

Then the first lady turned and kind of noticed someone standing in the doorway to my hospital room. And her face brightened up even more than it already was, and she went, “Oh, there's David. May we introduce our son, David?”

And into the room walked David, the president's son.

Who also happened to be David from my drawing class with Susan Boone. Save Ferris David. “Nice boots” David.

And now I knew why he'd looked so familiar.

Well
, how was I supposed to know he was the son of the president of the United States?

He didn't look anything like the guy I was used to seeing on the news, the geeky one who'd trailed along after his parents on the election campaign.
That
guy had never worn a Save Ferris T-shirt, much less a pair of combat boots.
That
guy had never seemed interested in art.
That
guy had always been dressed in dweeby-looking suits, and had mostly just sat around looking interested in what his dad had to say, which was basically a lot of stuff that bored me very deeply and usually caused me to change the channel…although I know that as a citizen of this country and a member of this planet I should be a lot more politically aware than I actually am.

Anyway, the fact is, after David's dad became president, and David started going to school here in Washington, well, every time they showed him on the news he was in the goofy uniform all the kids who go to Horizon have to wear every day: khaki pants (skirt for girls), white shirt, navy blue blazer, red tie.

And although David certainly looked way better in his uniform than most Horizon attendees, with that dark curly hair and those green eyes and everything, he was still, you know, this huge geek. I mean, there wasn't the slightest chance that this guy was going to be on the cover of
Teen People
every other month, like Justin Timberlake. Not unless he started windsurfing shirtless in the Chesapeake Bay this summer, or something.

Even as I stood there staring at him, it was hard to believe this
was the same guy who, only a few days ago, had said he liked my boots.

Then again, maybe it wasn't so hard to believe. Because, you know, seeing him like this—up close and not on TV, waving from the door of a plane, or in a still photo, looking up at his father from a seat off to the side of some dais in Kentucky—he looked much more like the cool guy in the Save Ferris T-shirt who'd liked my boots than he did the president's geeky son.

I really couldn't say which of us, between the two, was more astonished to see the other. David seemed pretty astonished, and I don't think it was because it was such a weird coincidence…you know, that we knew each other from drawing class. It wasn't actually all that weird: obviously the reason the president had been in the area had been to meet David after class. The whole stopping-at-Capitol-Cookies thing had just been because the commander-in-chief must have a little sweet tooth….

No, David wasn't staring at me because he couldn't place me. I think he was trying to figure out what had
happened
to me. I mean, last time he'd seen me, I'd been all in black, with daisy-studded combat boots and copper wire hair and no makeup. Now here I was, in my sister's skirt and Cole Haan loafers, with nicely smooth hair and lips that were supposed to look utterly kissable…at least that's the result promised on the tube of gloss Lucy had smeared all over my mouth.

No wonder he was staring: I looked just like Lucy!

“Uh,” David said, for which I didn't blame him one bit. “Hi.”

I came right back at him with a bitingly witty reply: “Um. Yeah. Hi.”

David's mom looked from him to me, and then back again. Then she went, in a curious voice, “Do you two know one another already?”

“Yeah,” David said again. He was smiling now. It was a nice smile. Not as nice as Jack's, of course, but nice just the same. “Samantha is in my drawing class at Susan Boone's.”

That was when it hit me.

Samantha is in my drawing class at Susan Boone's.

This guy could totally blow the one thing I'd managed, so far, to keep my parents from finding out: the whole skipping-art-class thing.

And yeah, okay, what was the big deal, right? So my parents were going to find out I skipped drawing class. So what?
I had saved the life of the president.
That had to be a get-out-of-jail-free card, if anything was.

And it probably would work on my parents. They are not exactly the sternest disciplinarians on the planet.

But it would never, ever work on Theresa, to whom I'd given my solemn word I wouldn't skip class. Much as Theresa esteems the president of this country that she has come to love so dearly, the minute she heard I'd disobeyed her, my life was going to be over with a capital O. No more Entenmann's chocolate doughnuts for me after school. It would be granola bars and graham crackers from here on out. Theresa could forgive just about anything—bad grades, missed curfews, lost homework, dirt tracked in from the park all over her newly washed kitchen floor—but lying?

No way. Even if it had been for a totally good cause, such as preserving my creative integrity.

Which was why I did what I did next, which was throw David a pleading look, hoping against hope that he would understand. I didn't see how he possibly could. I mean, he wasn't wearing his Horizon uniform, but he still had on a button-down shirt and these pants with pleats in them. He looked like a guy who had never, not once in his life, disobeyed his parents, much less his extremely strict housekeeper. How could he possibly relate?

Still, if there was any chance, any chance at all, that I could get him, like his dad's Secret Service agents, not to mention that I hadn't been in class last night…

“Oh, you have her at Susan Boone's?” the first lady asked my mother brightly. “Isn't Susan
wonderful
? David just loves her.” She reached out and touched her son's shoulder in a gesture that was surprisingly momlike for a lady who was married to the most important man in the free world. “I'm just so glad David was late leaving the studio last night. Who knows what could have happened if he had walked out just as—”

She couldn't finish that sentence. I guess she meant who knows what could have happened if David had walked out just as Mr. Uptown Girl started shooting. But the fact is, nothing would have happened. Because I had been there. And I had stopped it.

Please, David.
I was sending thought waves at him as hard as I could.
Please do not say anything about my not being there last night. Please just for once in your button-down shirt, son-of-a-politician life, try to open your mind and receive my plea. I know you can do it; you love Save Ferris, and so do I, so perhaps we can, on that level, communicate with one another. Don't say anything, David. Don't say anything. Don't say any—

“I know exactly what you mean,” my mom said, reaching out and touching my shoulder exactly the way the first lady had touched David's. “I don't want to think about what could have happened if the Secret Service agents hadn't disarmed him so quickly.”

“I know,” the first lady said. “Aren't they marvelous?”

Amazingly, the conversation appeared to be turning away from Susan Boone. Well, except for the somewhat startling revelation that John—the middle-aged guy who couldn't draw at all and who I'd thought was wearing a hearing aid—was, in actual truth, David's own personal Secret Service agent, which was a little weird.

But how weird must David have found it to walk into the hospital
room of the girl who'd saved his dad from an alleged assassin, only to find
me
there?

Except that after the initial shock had worn off, David seemed pretty okay with it. In fact, he seemed to find it kind of amusing. Like he was trying not to smile, but he couldn't help it. Probably he was thinking about that pineapple. Just remembering it made my cheeks start heating up.

Oh, my God. That stupid pineapple. Why me? I told myself I'd had a perfect right to draw that pineapple. That pineapple, I thought, had come from my heart, just like Jack had said.

Only if that were true, why did I still feel so embarrassed about it?

Finally, after what seemed like twenty more minutes of awkward chitchat, the president and his wife and David left, and we were all alone again.

As soon as the door had closed behind the first family, my mom exhaled very gustily and sagged against my bed, which she'd hastily made while I'd been in the shower.

“Was that surreal,” she wanted to know, “or what?”

Theresa was more in shock than anybody. “I cannot believe,” she kept murmuring, “that I just met the president of the United States.”

Even Rebecca had to admit it had been interesting. “I can't believe I didn't get a chance to ask the president about Area 51,” she said ruefully. “I'd really like to know why the government feels it necessary to hide from us the truth about extraterrestrial visitations to this planet.”

Lucy's thoughts on the matter were much less esoteric than Rebecca's.

“Dinner at the White House,” she said. “Do you think it would be okay if I brought Jack?”

“NO!” both my parents said, loudly and at the same time.

Lucy sighed dramatically. “That's okay. It'll be more fun to go without him. I can flirt with that Dave guy. He's hot.”

You see? You see how little Lucy deserves a guy like Jack? I sucked in my breath, filled with indignation on Jack's behalf….

“Hello,” I said. “Don't you have a boyfriend?”

Lucy just stared at me like I was nuts. “So?” she said. “Does that mean I can't ever look at another guy? Did you get a load of David's green eyes? And that butt—”

“That's it,” my dad said. “No butts. There will be no discussions of anyone's butt while I am in the room. And preferably while I am out of it, as well.”

“That goes double for me,” Mom said.

I heartily concurred. Imagine, Lucy looking at another guy's butt when she already had Jack's to look at whenever she wanted!

But Lucy seemed completely oblivious to her own selfishness and disloyalty. She just shrugged and said, “Whatever,” before wandering over toward the window….

“Stay away from the window!” both my mom and I yelled.

But it was too late. A huge roar went up from the crowd standing outside. Lucy, startled at first, soon got over it and started waving like she thought she was the pope, or somebody.

“Hello,” she called, even though there was no way they could hear her. “Hello, all you little people. Hello, Peter Jennings! Hello, Katie Couric!”

It was kind of funny that at that moment the door opened and a lady in a blouse with ruffles at the neck—who introduced herself as Mrs. Rose, the hospital's chief administrator—went to Lucy, “Miss Madison? Are you ready for your press conference?”

Lucy, her eyes wide, spun around.

“Not me,” she said. “Her.” And she stabbed one of her pointy nails in my direction.

Mrs. Rose looked at me.

“Oh,” she said. “Fine. Are you ready, then, dear? They just want to ask you a few questions. It will only take five minutes. And then you'll be free to go home.”

I looked at my mom and dad. They smiled at me encouragingly. I looked at Theresa. She did the same. I looked at Lucy. She went, “Whatever happens, don't touch your hair. I finally got it perfect. Don't mess it up.”

I looked back at Mrs. Rose.

“Sure,” I said. “I'm ready, I guess.”