The Wrong Side of Right (17 page)

19

Friday, July 25

Winging Our Way to the City of Angels

102 DAYS UNTIL THE GENE
RAL ELECTION

My birthday was the same week as the Republican National Convention.

When Meg found out, her first reaction was, “Oh no!” followed by an anxious, “And what’s on your birthday list this year?”

I was already getting what I wanted. This year’s GOP convention was in Los Angeles. For weeks, I’d been alternating between cold panic and breathless excitement at the thought of this visit. On the one hand, we were all preparing to step onto the biggest stage of our lives in front of an audience of millions of viewers, the fate of the country hanging in the balance. On the other hand, I’d have nine whole days back home. The scales were balanced as far as I was concerned.

Penny had been counting down to my arrival for weeks. “You’d better come straight over, or I’m going to kidnap you. I don’t even care if Secret Service is listening right now. Consider this your warning.”

I promised her I’d see her first, even though I knew I’d still be scheduled to within an inch of my waking life. Probably
my sleeping life too. There had to be pockets of time I could steal, though, and maybe even times that Penny could tag along, see what the campaign was like. I couldn’t wait.

When we boarded the plane, Meg presented me with a stack of books that she was careful to say were
not
birthday gifts, just something for our long plane and bus rides. The titles were familiar, some because they were classics, and the others because I’d heard them mentioned recently—by Andy and Jake and Lucy.

Meg had bought me the Farnwell Prep summer reading list.

I wondered what it meant, but didn’t quite know how to ask. I just thanked her and started to read. The books were almost, but not quite, interesting enough to keep my mind off the trip ahead—and the Shawna Wells interview.

It had aired yesterday while we were “getting an early night,” as per Meg’s orders. I knew Meg well enough to have already suspected we wouldn’t be gathering with a bowl of popcorn to gawk at ourselves on the Coopers’ flat screen. And for once, Nancy had agreed with Meg.

“You did great, now let it go,” she said, echoing Lou’s advice from back in June. “Trust me—the more you watch yourself on TV, the more it changes you. And we want you to stay exactly the way you are!”

Judging by the cheery attitude of the campaign staff who’d boarded the Cooper for America plane with us, it had gone well. I told myself that that was all I needed to know and almost, sort of, kind of believed it. At least this week would be full of distractions.

As our flight descended, I leaned over Gabe to get a view of the wide crescent of the Pacific coast, the endless buildings like tiles in a mosaic, the mountains in the distance, the beautiful smog. Yep. I’d even missed the smog.

My home for the next nine days would be very different from the little house I’d shared with my mom. The campaign was housed downtown in a high-rise hotel across the street from the convention. The staffers had rooms all over the hotel, but the sprawling penthouse suite was ours. It had three bathrooms with Jacuzzis, oil paintings on the gilded walls, a chandeliered dining room that the campaign staff immediately claimed as an office. Gazing over the city from my own private balcony, I promised myself I’d invite Penny to join me here this week. Maybe she could even stay the night for my birthday.

Once we’d checked in, we had two hours to kill before the first afternoon event. After I’d explained my solemn vow, the senator laughed and agreed to let me visit Penny. It wasn’t until I said I’d take the Metro that he started to worry.

“Where does she live?” he asked. “I didn’t even know there was a subway in LA.”

“Of course there is!” I chirped. “I can hop on the Gold Line. Atlantic’s only like eight stops from here.”

From his bemused squint, I realized he was thinking only of Beverly Hills, Brentwood, places he’d visited on donor calls.

“And this is a safe neighborhood?”

I just kept smiling. “It’s where I used to live?”

He sighed, defeated. “Back by five. No subway. James will escort you.”

I giggled on the ride over, picturing Penny’s face when I rolled up in a Town Car with my very own Secret Service agent. But as we rounded the corner onto her street, gliding past a familiar row of faded bungalows with dry, carefully tended lawns, I was the one whose mouth fell open.

Between two spindly palms in her front yard, a giant banner read “Welcome Home, Kate!” and under it, at least two dozen people were gathered. At the sight of the car, they jumped in celebration.

I smiled so wide my cheeks burned, spotting friends from school I hadn’t spoken to since I left—Kevin, my old lab partner and sophomore semi-formal date; Irina, my gorgeous Latvian friend who still wore her crazy hair in pigtails; Chester, who was much taller than I remembered; Topes and his little sister, Angie; the still teensy Eva; and was that Enrico? I hadn’t seen Penny’s big brother since he’d joined the marines two years ago.

And there in the middle of it all was Miss Penelope Diaz, black hair braided prettily and eyes welling up, her parents standing behind her.

The moment I got one foot out of the car, they swarmed me. I glanced nervously back at James, but he was busy trying to stifle an unprofessional smile.

“Look at you!” Penny released me from a bear hug and clapped her hands under her chin. “You’re still in costume! That. Is. Awesome.”

I glanced down, realizing I was still wearing the photo-op floral dress from the airplane. In my rush to get down
here, I’d forgotten to change into something less ridiculous. Enrico’s eyes were wide.

“You’ve grown up, Skinny Kate,” he said, making me blush.

By the time Penny’s mom made her way over to gather me up in a plush hug, my friends were all around me, asking a million questions a minute, mostly “What’s your dad like?” and “How are you
doing
with all this?” I answered as well as I could, overwhelmed and delighted. And then Penny’s little sister, Eva, tugged on my wrist with her own question.

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

Everybody laughed—and, at my dumbstruck reaction, laughed harder. “I—Um . . . not really.”

Penny narrowed her eyes. “Not
really
?”

“There’s a boy,” I admitted, to general whooping. “But it’s not really anything.”

Penny’s mouth fell open, her hands landing on her hips. This was an act, I knew—over-the-top indignant—designed to mask her hurt that I’d withheld such crucial information. I’d be hearing about this later.

Enrico put his hands out like a bodyguard, quieting the group. “No more questions. Kate’s probably dating, like, the president’s kid. It’s top secret—classified. If she tells you, she’ll have to kill you.”

My friends cracked up, not noticing that all the blood had just left my face. Except Penny. Her suspicious squint had only deepened. Enrico nudged me.

“Just messin’ with you, K.”

Faking a laugh, I punched him in the arm. His beer spilled
and something flashed. At first I thought it was lightning, but we never got thunderstorms here. The voices of the group fell lower, confused, and Penny stood up on tiptoes, peering past the crowd.

It was a photographer, his head poking out of the driver’s-side window of a car idling on the other side of the street. And from the other direction, a news van had just shown up, the crew rushing out to get a shot.

I groaned. “Let’s just pose for them, then they’ll go away.”

“Why are they here?” Mr. Diaz shook his head, bewildered. “Did they follow you?”

“Maybe.” I grinned, pointing. “Or maybe it’s the ginormous sign. You tipped them off, Mr. Diaz.”

“This is, like, normal for you now?” Irina asked. “People following you around to take your picture?”

She pinched the flouncy skirt of my dress and I wondered with a start whether she was jealous of the attention. She was Miss Drama Club in school, hoping to start auditioning professionally as soon as her conservative mother would allow it. But for now, she was just another high school junior, languishing in obscurity. Didn’t she know I’d swap places with her in a heartbeat?

Except for the Coopers. Them I’d keep.

We gathered the group into a goofy pose and sure enough, the photographer thanked us and drove on. The film crew rushed in, ready for an interview, but I wasn’t going to sign on for that, not without Nancy here to okay it.

“I’d better go,” I sighed, hugging Penny. “But I’ll be back.”

“Every day, right?” She had her arms crossed to show me she meant it.

I grabbed her pinkie with my own. “As much as I can.”

As we drove away, I watched the light become more golden, dustier, noticed the lawns growing first greener, then gated and sprawling, talked James out of taking the freeway, got stuck in traffic anyway, and made it back for the first event just in time, feeling like Cinderella—except for the whole covered in dirt thing.

Or so I thought.

That photo was everywhere. In less than five hours, it hit the web, the evening papers, the top right corner of every cable news station. And not just the posed photo—video too. That crew had managed to get an impressive amount of party footage, mostly of me trying to ignore them.

Elliott was inexplicably livid. He stormed into the living room of our suite with his finger pointed at the TV like he was going to stab it, yelling, “Why wasn’t I told about this?”

“Whoa—what?” I muttered, my own temper flaring.

“You need to keep a better handle on her!” he yelled, never so much as glancing at me.

“Lay off, Elliott,” Nancy snapped. Seeing her blanch, I remembered that day back in South Carolina when he told her that I was her responsibility.

The senator stepped between them, while Meg positioned herself in front of me. I appreciated the protective gesture, but it wasn’t necessary. I wasn’t the one Elliott
was furious at. It was the one up on the screen, the one who went off-plan to visit friends in a “bad” part of town.

“Just lower your voices and look,” the senator said, calmly motioning to the TV. “This is not a crisis.”

“
Kate Quinn celebrated her return to her hometown of Los Angeles by paying a visit to old friends
,” the busty cable anchor was saying. So far so bland. What was Elliott so pissed off about? “
But some are wondering whether this is a move by the Cooper campaign to pander to Hispanic voters. We have with us Carlos Muños, Professor of . . .”

My mouth fell open. “‘
Pander’
? What the—”

Elliott whirled on me. Oops.
Really
should have kept my mouth shut.

“Everything. We do. Has. Impact.
Everything!
” He paced away. “Why am I explaining this to her, it’s a waste of—” He pointed to Nancy. “Do your job!”

And he stormed out of the suite.

The senator sighed, putting his hands up in response to Nancy’s death-glare. “I’ll talk him down.”

Why?
I wondered, and not for the first time. Elliott was disrespectful, bad-tempered, arrogant. No one liked him, as far as I could tell. And he’d never even pretended to be nice to me—not for a second. So why not fire him?

He must be really good. Which means—he must be right.

I gulped and looked at the carpet. “Well, that was awkward.”

“Out of line is what that was. Elliott . . .” Meg sighed, not finishing the thought. She wrapped an arm around me. “But listen—you’re learning. We all are. Deep breaths.”

• • •

When she called that night, I thought Penny might be reeling from her first dose of media exposure. But she had other things on her mind.

“You gonna tell me about the president’s kid?”

I crept off my hotel bed and quietly shut the door. Then, with an extra burst of paranoia, I slid two pillows along the bottom of the doorframe.

“You can’t tell anybody,” I whispered.

“What could I tell? You haven’t told me
anything
!”

“There’s nothing really
to
tell.” I didn’t know until I said it how much of a lie that was. My heart started thudding. “He’s a friend, but it’s obviously not a great idea, so it’s a secret.”