All-American Girl (10 page)

I blinked at her. “What,” I said, speaking slowly because my tongue felt like it was dead weight all of a sudden. “Are. You. Talking. About.”

Lucy looked heavenward, then flopped down onto my bed beside Manet and me.

“Your new social agenda, silly,” Lucy said. “I'm handling all your public appearances from now on, okay? You don't even have to worry about it. Not that it's going to be easy. Don't get me wrong. I mean, let's face it, your stock is pretty low. And it doesn't help that you hang around with Catherine, who is nice, and all, but talk about fashion challenged. We might be able to overcome it if, you know, you just stop talking to her during school hours, or whatever. Now, the only thing I want to know is, did you dye
all
your clothes black? Are you sure you don't have any holdouts?”

“Lucy,” I said. I couldn't believe this was happening. I really couldn't. “Get out of my room.”

Lucy tossed around some of her long, silky hair. “Now, Sam, come on. Don't be that way. Opportunities like this don't come around all that often. You really have to grab them when they do. You know, like that brass ring, or whatever it is Dad's always talking about. Although I can tell you, some guy offers me a ring made out of brass, I will so be, like, ‘See ya.'”

“LUCY!” I shrieked, picking up one of my shoes and hurling it at her. “GET OUT OF MY ROOM!”

Lucy ducked, then, looking offended, stood up to leave.

“God,” she said. “Try to do a person a favor. See if I ever help you again.”

Then, to my very great relief, she stomped from the room, leaving me alone in my unpopularity.

Top ten
things Gwen Stefani would never be caught dead doing:

• 10. Gwen Stefani would never, ever allow her sister to pick out her clothes for her. Gwen Stefani has devised her own unique and identifiable style. Gwen finds charming little shirts in thrift shops and makes them look sporty and cool by tying them into a halter top, or whatever. Gwen would never, ever wear the three pairs of navy, gray, and tan slacks her sister spent three hundred and sixty-five dollars on for her at Banana Republic.
  
• 9. If Gwen's sister told her she was going to have to dump her best friend because of the bad clothes her mother made her wear, Gwen would probably just laugh dismissively, not throw a shoe at her.
  
• 8. It is quite unlikely that Gwen Stefani, in an effort to avoid the reporters staked out in her front yard when it came time for her to walk her dog, would sneak out the back of her house in a hooded sweatshirt, sunglasses, and a pair of her father's khakis with the legs rolled up. Gwen would have strolled boldly out amongst the reporters and used their tireless interest in her as a vehicle with which to promote ska.
  
• 7. I highly doubt that Gwen Stefani would turn bright red if the man she secretly loved—who happened to be her sister's boyfriend—told her that she looked nice in her dad's rolled-up khakis.
  
• 6. Also, Gwen Stefani has too much integrity ever to fall in love with her sister's boyfriend.
  
• 5. Probably, if Gwen Stefani had saved the president of the United States from being assassinated, she wouldn't hide in her house, embarrassed by the hordes of people telling her how brave she was. Gwen would write a song about it, filled with searing wit and self-deprecation. The video would probably feature Gwen's ex, Tony Kanal, as the president, and that weird naked drummer as Larry Wayne Rogers.
  But it would still never get higher than number 5 on
  Total Request Live
  , as ska is seriously underappreciated by Middle America.
  
• 4. If Kris Parks called Gwen Stefani, like she did me just now, and went, “Oh, hi, Gwen. So can you come? I mean, to my party next Saturday?” Gwen would probably say something witty and charming, not what I said, which was, “How did you get my new number?” forgetting, of course, that my sister Lucy had e-mailed our new number to practically everyone in the whole school for fear she might otherwise miss out on one of the many crucial social events taking place this weekend, such as pizza at Luigi's or an all-night Pauly Shore filmfest at Debbie Kinley's house.
  
• 3. I am thinking that if anybody ever tried to stifle Gwen's creative impulses, she would never agree, even with the threat of blackmail, to go along with it.
  
• 2. Gwen Stefani would definitely never spend her Sunday afternoon, instead of doing the German homework her best friend had brought over for her, composing a letter to her sister's boyfriend, outlining all the reasons why he should be with her and not her sister, then rip the letter into little pieces and flush it down the toilet instead of giving it to him.
  

And the number-one thing Gwen Stefani would never, ever do?

• 1. Wear a navy blue suit her mom had bought her from Ann Taylor to dinner at the White House.
  

I have
been to the White House many times. I mean, if you live in the Washington, D.C., area, starting in, like, the third grade they make you tour the White House practically once a year, then write a stupid report on it. You know,
My Trip to the White House
. That kind of thing.

I have been to all the rooms they show you on the tour: the Vermeil Room, the Library, the China Room, the Map Room, the East Room, the Green Room, the Blue Room, the Red Room, yadda yadda yadda.

But Sunday night was the first time I'd ever been to the White House not as part of a tour but as an actual guest.

It was pretty weird. Everyone in the whole family was feeling the weirdness of it, except maybe for Rebecca. But since Rebecca had just gotten a new shipment of
Star Trek
books from Amazon.com, this was only to be expected.

Besides, I suspect Rebecca is secretly a robot and therefore immune to human emotion.

The rest of us, however, were totally freaked. I could tell my mom was especially nervous, because she wore her power suit and her pearls, the ones she only wears to court, and she took away my dad's cell phone
and
his Palm Pilot, so he couldn't try to use one of them during dinner. Theresa—who, as an important part of our family, was of course invited as well—was in her Sunday best, which included purple high heels with sparkle clips on them, and didn't yell at any of us once, not even when Manet came barreling
in from outside and shook out his fur and sprayed rainwater all over the newly vacuumed living room rug. Even Lucy spent about two hours longer than usual on her beauty regimen, and emerged looking like someone going to guest star on
V.I.P.
and not someone about to enjoy a nice meal with a family who lived, if you thought about it, only a little way down the street from us.

“Now, whatever you do, Sam,” Lucy said as we pulled out of the driveway—which was no mean feat, since there were still hordes of reporters hanging around, trying to photograph our every move. They liked to do things like dive onto the hood of the station wagon to snap a quick one of Dad on his way to the 7-Eleven for more milk. Backing out of the driveway had gotten perilous because there were always two or three of them darting out from behind the car. “Do not try to hide the food you don't like under your plate.”

“Lucy!” I was nervous enough as it was. I fully did not need her making it worse. “God, I know how to act at a dinner party, okay? I am not a child.”

The thing is, at home when we have stuff I don't like at dinner, I fully slip it under the table to Manet, who'll eat anything—carrots, eggplant, peas, cantaloupe, chicken sausage, you name it. The first family does not have a dog. They are cat people. Cats are nice, and everything, but they are no help to finicky eaters like me. I highly doubted the first cat was going to chow down on any cauliflower heads I slipped under the table.

So the question was, what
was
I going to do if they served broccoli (gag me) or, worse, anything involving tomatoes or fish, two things I really cannot abide and that tend to show up at most fancy meals? I knew I couldn't hide stuff under my plate. Supposing somebody picked it up and saw all the food under it? That would be almost as embarrassing as having drawn a pineapple where there wasn't supposed to be one.

It was weird turning onto Pennsylvania Avenue. Normally the part in front of the White House is completely closed off to cars. The only way you can go up to the fence in front of the president's house is on foot.

But since we were special guests, we got to drive right up to the big barricade that blocks off the street. A bunch of policemen were there, and they checked our license plate and my dad's ID, and then they lowered the barricade into the ground, and we drove over it.

Then we were in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, which is the address of the White House.

But we weren't the only people there, by any means. For one thing, there were cops all over the place, on horseback and bikes, as well as on foot. They were all standing around, talking to one another. They looked at our car curiously as we drove by. Lucy waved. Most of them waved back.

Cops weren't the only ones standing around in front of the White House, though. There were guys selling FBI T-shirts and hats, and other guys with the life-size cardboard cutouts of the president that you could stand next to while you got your picture taken.

And even though it was dark out, there were plenty of tourists, whole families, all asking one another to snap photos of them in front of the big black wrought-iron fence that surrounded the president's house.

There were protestors, too. Some of them had obviously been there a long time, since they had made a little shantytown of tents and plywood shacks, with banners about their cause strung in front of them.
NO MORE NUKES
, one said. Another said,
LIVE BY THE BOMB, DIE BY THE BOMB
. I have to admit that, as far as radicals went, they did not look like a very impressive bunch.

Then again, it was pretty cold out, and raining a little. Who wants to protest in drizzle?

Lastly, there were the reporters. There were a lot of reporters. Almost as many as had been standing in front of our house when we'd left. Only the White House had set aside a special place on the lawn for the reporters crowding its front yard. They had huge lights and all these stands with microphones set up, one for each network. When they saw our station wagon as we pulled up to the Northwest Appointment Gate—where the cops back by the first barricade had directed us to go—the reporters started surging forward, the camera people shining bright lights at our car.

“There she is!” I could hear them saying, even though all of our windows were up. “It's her! Get the shot! Get the shot!”

The reporters weren't the only ones trying to get pictures of our car, and us in it. All the tourists standing around in front of the wrought-iron fence turned around when they heard the commotion, and they started snapping shots of us, too. It was kind of like pulling up in a limo in front of the Oscars, or whatever. Except that we were in a Volvo station wagon, and Joan and Melissa Rivers were nowhere to be seen.

A couple of guys in uniform came out of the little house behind the gate and looked over their shoulders at the horde of stampeding reporters. One of them stepped forward to block the path they were beating toward the car, while the other one waved us through the slowly opening gate.

While this was happening, my mom turned around in the front passenger seat and went, in a low, urgent voice: “Lucy, I would appreciate it if, just this once, you would not spend the entire meal talking about clothes. Rebecca, I know you have some questions you'd like to ask the president about the cover-up at Roswell, but I am personally requesting that you keep them to yourself. And Samantha. Please. I am begging you: do not pick at your food. If you don't like something, simply leave it on your plate. Do not sit
there rearranging it for half an hour.”

I thought this unfair. When you rearrange your food, most people think you have eaten at least some of it.

Then we were driving through the open gates, past the reporters and the camera flashes and klieg lights, up to the front door of the White House.

When you are in front of it, even back where the iron fence is, on Pennsylvania Avenue, the house where the president lives actually looks quite small. That is because the Rotunda, which is the round thing with all the pillars that sticks out of the White House, is actually in the back of the house. The front, where the driveway is, isn't nearly so impressive. In fact, whenever I saw it, I was always kind of, How do they fit all those rooms into such a small space, anyway?

But then you see a shot of the back of the house, which is the one they always show on the news or in movies and stuff, and you go, Oh, yeah, that's how.

When we pulled up to the front of the house, a uniformed man who was standing at the front door snapped to attention, while another man came down to open my mom's door.

Then we all stepped out onto this red carpet, and the front door of the house opened, and there was the first lady, saying “Hello!” and “Welcome!” Right behind her stood the president, who shook my dad's hand and said, “How are you doing, Richard?” to which my dad replied, “Fine, thanks, Mr. President.”

Then the president and his wife ushered us into the White House as casually as if we had just stopped by for a backyard barbecue, or something. Except, of course, you don't wear panty hose and a navy blue suit from Ann Taylor to a backyard barbecue. I have to admit, even though everyone was being so welcoming and all, I felt pretty uncomfortable. Not just because of my stupid cast, either, or the
fact that Lucy had made me use the horse conditioner again, so my hair felt unnaturally smooth, or even because I knew, just knew, that somehow or other cauliflower was going to end up on my plate.

No, I was freaking out because no matter how casual the president and his wife acted, we were in
the White House
.

And not in the parts you get to see on the public tour, either, but in the private family parts you never see, except on TV, and even then it is some set director's idea of how he
thinks
the family's private quarters look, and not the real thing. The decor actually looked to me a lot like a bed-and-breakfast, like one we once stayed in in Vermont. But then I thought maybe that wasn't fair, since the president and his family had only been living there for a little less than a year, and maybe hadn't really had a chance to settle in.

And besides, it wasn't like this was their
real
house.

Then we were in the living room, and the first lady was saying “Sit down” and “Let me get you something to drink,” and I sat down, and in walked David….

And he looked exactly like he had that day in Susan Boone's studio! He had on a Reel Big Fish T-shirt instead of Save Ferris. But other than that, it was like that other David, the one with the pants with the creases in them, didn't even exist.

“Oh, David,” his mom said in dismay when she saw him. “I thought I told you to change for dinner.”

But David just grinned and reached for some of the mixed nuts in a bowl on the coffee table in front of me. “I
did
change for dinner,” he said.

I noticed that he took only salted cashew nuts and left the Brazil nuts in the bowl. I could relate to this. Brazil nuts are gross.

Then dinner was ready. We ate in one of the formal dining rooms. I could tell Lucy was very pleased by this, since her outfit, which was royal blue, went better with the decor in the
formal dining room than with that of the private one. Theresa, too, was excited, because of the place settings. They were the formal White House china, and they had real gold rims. Theresa said you can't put gold-rimmed plates in the dishwasher but have to do them by hand. The idea that someone was going to have to hand wash her plate when she was done eating made Theresa very happy.

I was probably the only unhappy person in the room. That is because as soon as we sat down, I knew I was in big trouble, since the first thing they served us was a salad with these big cherry tomatoes in it. Fortunately, the dressing was all right, it was just regular Ranch, so I ate all the lettuce around the tomatoes and hoped no one would notice that they were still sitting there.

Only unfortunately, I was seated in a place of honor right next to the president, and he totally noticed. He leaned over and went, “You know, those tomatoes were imported all the way from Guatemala. If you don't eat them, there could be an international incident.”

I was pretty sure he was joking, but it wasn't very funny to me. I didn't want anyone to think I didn't fully appreciate that they were having this nice dinner for us, or whatever.

So what I did was, when no one was looking, I flicked the tomatoes off my plate and into the cloth napkin I had on my lap.

This worked surprisingly well. So well that when the next course came, and it turned out to be New England clam chowder, I ate all the chowder parts and then, again when no one was looking, I dropped all the clammy bits into my napkin.

By the time dessert was going to be served there was about a pound of food in my napkin, including one piece of flounder stuffed with crabmeat; a vegetable medley of peas, carrots, and baby onions; some scalloped potatoes; and a piece of onion foccacia.

It was very easy to hide all this food without anyone seeing me do it because the adults were having a very boisterous conversation about the economic situation in North Africa. The only thing I absolutely could not get away with not eating was a tomato cut up to look like a rose, which was served as a garnish on the dish of scalloped potatoes, and which the first lady scooped up and put on my plate.

“A rose for a rose,” she said with a nice smile.

What could I do? I had to eat it. Everyone was looking at me. I choked it down as best I could in one swallow, then gulped down about half of my glass of iced tea, which was what the under-twenty-one crowd got to drink. When I put the glass down, I saw Rebecca, who had started watching me very intently the minute the first lady put the tomato on my plate, do the strangest thing: she lifted up her hands and pretended like she was applauding. Sometimes she does cute things like that, which makes me suspect she might not be a robot after all.

It was right about then I realized something horrible: my napkin was leaking. All the food in it hadn't stained my skirt yet, but it was about to. I had no recourse but to excuse myself, pretending like I was going to the ladies' room. Then I slyly took my napkin with me, just crumpled loosely in my hand, like I had forgotten it was there.

Everywhere you go in the White House, there are Secret Service agents standing around. They are actually very nice men and women. When I came out of the dining room, I asked one of them where the nearest bathroom was, and she walked me there. Once I was safely locked inside, I dumped my dinner into the toilet and flushed it away. I felt kind of bad, wasting all that food, when there are people starving, you know, in Appalachia and all.