All-American Girl (16 page)

Top ten
reasons I might have asked David to Kris Parks's party on Saturday night:

• 10. Complete and utter lunacy brought on by inhaling too much turpentine.
  
• 9. Out of a sense of solidarity with Catherine, who seems to have developed a bad case of Stockholm syndrome, as she appears to have a desire to bond with the very same people who for so many years tormented her mercilessly—so much so that she is willing to risk the wrath of her parents by sneaking out to attend a party, given by the ringleader of this group, with a boy she hardly knows.
  
• 8. His eyes.
  
• 7. How nice he had been that night at the White House, telling me about Dolley Madison. Plus getting me that burger. Oh, and carving my name on the windowsill.
  
• 6. How nice he'd
  looked
  that night at the White House, with his kind of messy thick hair and long eyelashes and big hands.
  
• 5. He can draw. He really can. Not as well as Jack, but almost as well as me. Maybe even better than me, only in a different style.
  Plus you can tell he really
  likes
  to draw, that he feels the same way about it that Jack and I do, that it sucks him in the way it does us. Most people—like my sister Lucy, for instance—never get that feeling about anything.
  
• 4. The daisy helmet.
  
• 3. Because he has to go everywhere with the Secret Service; that means there will be adults in attendance, and so my parents will have to let us go.
  
• 2. Everybody already thinks we are going out anyway.
  

And the number-one—and most likely—reason I asked David to Kris's party:

• 1. To make Jack jealous, of course. Because it was entirely possible that if he saw me with another boy, he would realize that he could, if he did not act soon, lose me, and that might galvanize him into admitting his true feelings for me at last.
  At least, I hope so.
  

I began
to regret having asked David to Kris's party almost immediately. Not because I didn't think we'd have a good time together, or whatever. I mean, except when he was teasing me about being a sensitive artist, David was an okay sort of guy.

No, I regretted it because of everyone's reaction to the news when I told them.

 

Reaction Number One: Lucy

“Oh, my God, that is just so great! You two make the cutest couple, because he's so tall and you're so little, plus both of you have way sticky-outty hair, and you both like that stupid big band music. This is going to be so cool. What are you going to wear? I think you should wear my black leather mini and green cashmere V-neck, with black fishnets and my black knee-high boots. You can't wear your combat boots with a mini, they'll make your calves look fat. Not that you have fat calves, but calves always look fat in combat boots and minis. Fishnets might be too much for a sophomore, though. Maybe you should stick to tights. We could get you a pair of the ribbed kind, though. That would be all right. Want to meet with the rest of the squad and go shopping Saturday before the party?”

 

Reaction Number Two: Rebecca

“Ah, I see that the seed I planted about the frisson has germinated and produced a fragile, flowering bud.”

 

Reaction Number Three: Catherine

“Oh, Sam, that is so great! Now Paul will have someone to talk to at the party, because he won't know anyone there, either, just like David. Maybe he and David can hang out while you and I work the room? Because I hear it is important at parties like this to mingle. I figure if you and I mingle, we might be able to get invitations to other parties, like maybe even senior parties, although I know this is probably asking a lot. But you know if we got invited to senior parties, we'd definitely be as popular as Kris in no time.”

 

Reaction Number Four: Theresa

“
You
asked
him
? How many times have you heard me tell your sister, Miss Samantha, that if you chase boys, you are going to come to no good end? Look what happened to my cousin Rosa. I better not catch you calling him. You let
him
call
you
. And none of this instant messaging, either. It is best to be mysterious and aloof. If Rosa had been mysterious and aloof, she would not be where she is today. And where is this party, anyway? Are this girl's parents going to be there? Will alcohol be served? I am telling you, Miss Samantha, if I find out you or your sister have been to a party where there is alcohol, you will both be scrubbing toilets from here until you start college.”

 

Reaction Number Five: Jack

“The president's kid? He's not a narc, is he?”

 

Reaction Number Six: My Parents (I saved the worst for last)

“Oh, Sam, how wonderful! He's such a nice boy! We couldn't dream up such a lovely date for you. If only Lucy showed as much
prudence as you do in picking her boyfriends. What time is he coming to get you? Oh, we have to make sure we have film for the camera. Just a
few
pictures, that's all. Well, we have to memorialize the event. Our baby, going out with such a sweet boy. So well-mannered. And you know he goes to Horizon, so that means he's tested in the ninety-ninth percentile. In the country. The whole
country
. He's really going to make something of himself someday, maybe even follow in his father's footsteps and go into politics. Such a nice, nice boy. If only Lucy could find a boy that nice, instead of that awful Jack.”

 

It was completely humiliating. I mean, trust me to get stuck going out on my first date with the kind of boy parents love. Not only does David not have any tattoos (at least, so far as I know) or drive a Harley (again, I'm only guessing here, but it seems unlikely), he is the son of the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

Okay? Could there BE anything geekier? I know we can't help who our parents are, but come on. Instead of the single welfare mom or convicted felon who would really have driven my parents around the bend, I end up going out with a guy whose parents are not only still married but are also, like, the most influential couple in the country.

Life is so unfair.

I tried my best to enrage them (my parents, I mean) by dropping little hints about how David was coming to pick me up in his CAR (not really, of course; John would be driving, since David, at seventeen, was not old enough for a license in the District of Columbia). Then I pointed out how we were going to go eat somewhere ALONE before the party (again, not strictly true, since the Secret Service would be there), as David had suggested, as we were leaving Susan Boone's, that we grab something before the party.

But neither Mom nor Dad bit. It's like just because the guy is the first son, or whatever, they completely trust him! In a million years they would never let Lucy go to a party with Jack—not without a huge fight beforehand. The only reason they capitulated this time and let her go was because they knew I would be there, too…well, with David and the Secret Service. But still.
Me!
Her
little sister
! I am supposedly the good one! In spite of everything I have done to try to convince them of the contrary—like dress entirely in black for a year, or my whole under-the-counter celebrity-drawing enterprise—they persist in thinking of me as the responsible one!

And my saving the president from being assassinated and being named teen ambassador to the UN certainly didn't help things, let me tell you.

I was seriously considering flunking German, just to get back at them.

The way they'd been acting lately, though, they'd probably just be all, “Sam got an F in German, isn't that the most adorable thing you ever heard?”

Anyway, the night of the party, Mom and Dad followed through with their threat and were standing there in the living room with the camera when David rang the bell at seven sharp. Catherine had already come and gone, having been transformed by Lucy into a
Seventeen
magazine fashionplate. She was meeting Paul at Beltway Billiards, and then the two of them would meet us at Kris's house in time for the party.

“Please,” I whispered urgently to David as I opened the door, “forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

David, who was in jeans and a black sweater, looked a little alarmed, but after he came all the way in and saw my parents, he relaxed.

“Oh,” he said, like the parents of the girls he goes out with come
at him with an Olympus every day—and maybe they do. “Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Madison.”

As if my mom and dad weren't bad enough, prancing around with the zoom lens, Manet, excited at the prospect of meeting someone new, came barreling in from the kitchen—all eighty pounds of him—and immediately buried his nose in David's crotch. I tried to pull the dog away, apologizing for his bad behavior.

“That's okay,” David said, giving Manet a pat on his shaggy head. “I like dogs.”

Then Lucy had to get in on the act, floating down the stairs in her party outfit like she thought she was Susan Lucci or somebody, and then going, “Oh, David, it's you. I thought it might be my boyfriend, Jack. You'll meet Jack, of course, at the party. I think you two will really get along. Jack is an artist, too.”

Then Rebecca wandered in, looked up at David and me, and went, “Oh, yes. Definite frisson,” before heading upstairs to her room, most likely in order to attempt to contact the mother ship.

If my family had tried on purpose to embarrass me as fully as possible, I do not think they could have done a better job.

Once we'd successfully escaped to the safety of the porch, David looked at me and asked, “What's frisson?”

“Oh, ha, ha, ha.” I laughed like a dork. “I don't know. It must be something she picked up at school.”

David frowned a little. “I go to the same school she does, and I never heard of it before.”

To distract him, in case he was thinking of going home after the party tonight and looking the word up, I squealed over his car. Although I had not taken Lucy's advice on my ensemble—I was wearing my own clothes, a black skirt that went all the way down to my daisy-dotted boots, coupled with a sweater that, though
V-neck, was also black—I did remember a few of her pointers, one of which had been: “Make a big deal out of his car. Guys totally have this thing about their cars.”

Except I am not sure it applies to all guys, because after I'd squealed about how much I liked his black four-door sedan, David looked at it kind of dubiously.

“Um. It's not mine,” he said. “It belongs to the Secret Service.”

“Oh,” I said. Then I noticed that John from our art class was standing next to it. Also that an almost identical car was parked behind it, with two other Secret Service agents in it.

I said, feeling like some sort of explanation was necessary, “My sister told me guys like it when you get excited about their car.”

“Really?” David didn't sound very surprised. “Well, she looks like someone who would know.”

It was at that moment that a reporter neither of us had noticed before jumped out from behind the bushes and went, “Samantha! David! Over here!” and snapped a few thousand photos.

I couldn't really see what happened next, since all the flashes blinded me for a few seconds, but I heard a firm voice go “I'll take that,” and then a grunt and a smashing sound and the flashes were gone.

When I could see again, I realized that the firm voice belonged to a Secret Service agent—not John, another one—who was climbing back into the car parked behind David's. The reporter was standing a few feet away on the sidewalk, looking chagrined, his camera in several different pieces in his hands. He was muttering something about freedom of the press…but not loudly enough for the Secret Service agent to overhear.

John opened one of the back doors to the first sedan and said, looking apologetic, “Sorry about that.”

I climbed into the backseat without saying anything, because
what was there, really, to say?

David got in on the other side and shut the door. The inside of the Secret Service's car was very clean. It smelled new. I hate new car smell. I thought about rolling down the window, but it was pretty cold out.

Then John slid behind the wheel and said, “We all set?”

David said, “I'm all set.” He looked at me. “You all set?”

“Um,” I said. “Yes.”

“We're all set,” David said, to which John replied, “All right, then,” and we started to move. I kept my face averted from the window, since I noticed that my parents had come out onto the front porch and were standing there, waving to us. A reporter who hadn't gotten his camera smashed took a picture of that, since taking pictures of David and me was so obviously
verboten
. I hoped my mom and dad would enjoy seeing a big color photograph of themselves in tomorrow morning's
USA Today
, or whatever.

Inside the car, it was very quiet. Too quiet. “There are only three things it's okay to talk to guys about,” Lucy had instructed me, earlier in the day, though I had not, actually, consulted her about this. “Those things are:

“One: him.

“Two: you and him.

“Three: yourself.

“Start by talking about him. Then slowly introduce the topic of you and him. Then swing the conversation around to yourself. And keep it there.”

But for some reason I couldn't bring myself to say any of the things Lucy had advised me to say. I mean, the first thing, about complimenting his car, hadn't really gone over all that well. I realized that, in going out with the president's son, I was crossing into
uncharted territory, the kind even Lucy had never before encountered. I was on my own here. It was a little scary, but I figured I could handle it.

I mean, it wasn't as if he were
Jack
.

“Um,” I said as John pulled onto Thirty-Fourth Street. “Sorry about my parents.”

“Oh,” David said with a laugh. “No problem. So where to? What do you feel like eating?”

Since I only ever feel like eating one thing—hamburgers—I was not certain how to answer this question. Fortunately, David went on, “I made reservations at a couple of places. There's Vidalia. It's supposed to be pretty nice. And the Four Seasons. I didn't know if you'd ever been there. Or there's Kinkead's, though I know how you feel about fish.”

I listened to this in growing panic. Reservations? He'd made
reservations
? I hardly ever found anything I liked to eat in restaurants that required reservations.

I don't know if David was able to read the trepidation in my face, or if it was my silence that was more telling. In any case, he went, “Or we could blow the reservations off and get a pizza, or something. There's some place I hear a lot of people go to, Luigi's, or something?”

Luigi's was where Lucy and her crowd would be going before Kris's party. While I knew we were going to see all of them in a few hours anyway, I didn't think I could handle sitting at a table in front of all of them with David, knowing the whole time that we were all anyone in the restaurant was talking about. I doubted I'd be able to keep anything down. Besides, Jack would be there. How would I be able to pay attention to a thing David was saying when Jack was anywhere in the nearby vicinity?

“Or,” David said, with another glance at my face, “we could just
grab a burger somewhere—”

“That sounds good,” I said, hoping I sounded appropriately nonchalant.

He gave one of those little secretive smiles. “Burgers it is, then,” he said. “John, make it Jake's. And could we have a little music, please?”

John said, “Sure thing,” and hit a button in the dashboard.

And then Gwen Stefani's voice filled the car.