The Wrong Side of Right (5 page)

He said “good experience,” “see the country,” and then, at last, “chance to get to know each other.”

I said, “Of course,” “This is great,” “I’d be happy to do anything I can for the campaign for as long as you need me to.”

He got the check and we left, both of us taking greedy gulps of air as soon as we hit the parking lot.

The triumvirate was waiting for us in a clown-car of a Mercedes just outside the restaurant, where James had dropped us off. Elliott Webb opened the passenger door and the senator shot him a quick nod.

Elliott winced a smile. “Great. Now we can get to work.”

6

Monday, June 16

Officially Joining the Campaign

141
DAYS
UNTIL
THE
GENERAL
ELECTI
ON

I knew that as of Monday morning, everything was going to change. What I didn’t expect were headlights blazing through my bedroom window at 6:00
A.M.
, and an army of campaign aides clustered on the senator’s front drive.

Peeking out, I watched light spill over the porch, the front door opening wide. Everyone in the crowd fell silent. But it was Meg who stepped onto the driveway, hands on hips.

“Despite any
new developments,
” she announced wryly, “this house will remain a no-work zone for the rest of the campaign. Got it? Thanks! Now go.”

As the sun came up, the grumbling staff left in a slow procession for the campaign office, and when the senator got in the last car, an opaque brick of an SUV, I scrambled downstairs just in time to get in with him.

Nancy was waiting in the front seat next to James. She leaned past her chair to pat me on the knee. “So glad you said yes, sweetie,” she said.

The senator gave me a playful nudge with his elbow like I’d seen him do with Gracie. He was trying. But there was something about the effort of it that made me feel both thrilled and embarrassed.

As the iron gates glided open, Nancy rapped on the window.

“Photo op?” Her finger paused on the window controller, bottom right—the one that opened
my
window. Outside the dark glass, the press mob was shouting, cameras ready. I tucked my hair behind my ears and held my breath, bracing for the onslaught of flashes that I’d been protected from all weekend.

The senator hesitated. “Not yet. Let’s wait to see what Elliott’s thinking.”

Nancy nodded and I exhaled, watching the press recede behind us. She passed back a mussed copy of this morning’s
Washington Post
.

“What’re they saying today?” The senator scanned the front page. I tried not to gape, but there it was, that same awful picture of me. Hadn’t Nancy mentioned leaking another one?
Any
other one?

Nancy pulled out her notes.

“Munson on Fox News is with us on this—the word
heroic
is out there.” She looked over her shoulder, gauging the senator’s reaction.

“But that’s Fox.”

“That’s Fox,” she repeated, riffling through the pages of a legal pad. “
Wall Street Journal
published poll results—total rush job, we need to call them out on that . . .”

“And?” The senator looked up from the newspaper.

She cleared her throat. “Sixty-two percent disapprove. Values. But like I said . . .”

“Not a viable poll—make sure we get that out there.”

“Ferris was on
Meet the Press
.”

“How’d he do?”

“He was okay. Lots of generalities, but that’s all we can do right now.” She turned to a new page. “We actually got a good quote out of Tom Bellamy.”

The senator leaned forward. “They cornered a Supreme Court Justice over this?” He sat back as if disgusted. Then he raised an eyebrow. “What’s the sound bite?”

She read. “‘I’ve known Mark Cooper since he was a law student of mine at Yale. He’s a stand-up guy and Kate is one lucky girl to have him as her dad.’”

I snuck a peek at the senator, curious to see his reaction to that word,
dad
—for me so loaded. But his mind was elsewhere.

“
Lucky
’s good. We can use that. Remind me to call and thank him.”

Nancy scribbled.

“New York Times?”

She glanced up. “Mixed. One article on sinking approval, but they’re not calling for you to step down yet.”

He chuckled. “How refreshing.”

“CNN had . . .”

They continued like that as the drive went on, more and more rapid-fire, like a debate team warm-up exercise. I could probably have climbed onto the roof to get a better view and they wouldn’t have noticed. Instead, I watched the horizon as we zipped down the Capital Beltway and crossed a forest-lined river that had to be the Potomac. I felt a twinge of disappointment not to see any obelisks or domed buildings or white houses whatsoever. But the day was bright, and this
place was new to me, so I kept my eyes open, lulled by the surprising greenness of the road. Then a word snapped me back to attention. Or rather, a name.

“Anything from Lawrence?”

Lawrence. As in Mitchell Lawrence.
President Mitchell Lawrence
.

Nancy smirked. “Nada. They don’t know how to spin this any more than we do.”

“Nancy?” The senator sighed musically. “That does not inspire confidence.”

She spun in her seat to face the road. “I apologize, sir.”

Campaign headquarters was a two-story building in an industrial park just across the Virginian border. There were signs and banners everywhere, a parking lot crammed with cars, from Porsches to beaters in worse shape than my hand-me-down Buick back in South Carolina, many of them bearing
Cooper for President
bumper stickers.

I held my breath as we crossed to the brightly bannered entrance, picturing the entire building full of Tim the Sullen Campaign Aide—Tim in suits, Tim in dresses, Tim in puffy campaign sweatshirts.

A middle-aged woman in an actual puffy campaign sweatshirt held the door for us. Her eyes widened when they reached mine, but she smiled anyway. So far so good.

The first room we entered looked like the inside of a piñata, red-and-blue banners everywhere printed with “The America We Know!” I wasn’t quite sure what America they were all in agreement about, but this probably wasn’t the best time to ask. I spotted a wide room with long tables, more than a
dozen people gathered stuffing campaign bags. Each of them wore an oversized button bearing a more straightforward slogan: “Cooper for America.”

As curious eyes started to dart upward, Nancy quickly ushered us into the noisy hall. Every room we passed crackled with its own charge of activity. In the space of thirty seconds, I spotted four agitated phone calls, one closed-door meeting, two heated arguments, and a clutch of young staffers leaning over a computer screen laughing nervously. And that was before we reached the main room, a wide space packed with occupied desks, no one pausing their phone dialogue or frenzied typing even as the senator walked through. It was busy here. An active campaign.

And an anxious one.

The air was thick with it. It sunk into me like cement, not helpful given how uncomfortable I felt already. I drew a silent breath as we reached the back of the command center and slid into a huge conference room— Where approximately
forty
staffers were waiting for us.

Oh. God.

The long table in the center was full to bursting, the edges of the room jammed with aides forced to stand while taking copious notes on laptops, tablets, or notepads. Who
were
all these people?

“Kate!” Elliott rose from the table with a Cheshire Cat grin. “We were
just
talking about you!”

The table laughed and the standers shot each other tepid smiles. I didn’t get the joke until my eyes landed on the mounted TV and took in the paused news report showing,
once more, dear God, that horrible, painful—
how did my forehead get even shinier?
—yearbook shot.

I clutched Nancy’s arm. “Do you think we could take another photo? I’m ready when you are!”

Nancy started to reply, but Elliott cut her off. “We’ll take a lot more photos. Have a seat.”

Who was he talking to? This seemed like a strategy meeting. Two people at the table stood and shuffled to the edges of the room, where the standers shifted to accommodate them. Two seats. For the senator and . . .

“I’ll leave you guys to it.” The senator patted my back.
Oh no.
“Lou?”

Louis got up from the far side of the table, gathering his laptop and notes. He winked so mischievously as he passed that I half expected him to hand me a four-leaf clover. Instead, he followed the senator out of the room, shutting the door behind him with a dull thud.

Feeling forty sets of eyes boring into my back, I turned. Nancy was relaxing into one of the empty leather swivel chairs. She patted the table encouragingly. I took the seat next to her—and nearly slid right off as it rolled backward.

Elliott blinked. Recovered. I tried to do the same.

Someone in the back coughed. I spotted Tim standing awkwardly in the corner, even grumpier than the last time I saw him, and felt a petty twinge of gratitude that he wasn’t important enough to sit at the conference table.

Elliott tapped one of a long row of whiteboards with a capped marker.

“As your
dad
told you, Kate . . .” He smirked, like there
were air-quotes around the word
dad
. “Your big debut is in a few days.
Four
days and three hours from now, to be exact.”

Actually, my “dad”
hadn’t
told me. Meg had. This Friday, I would be introduced to the world via live press conference, my first official public appearance alongside Meg, Gracie, Gabe, and the senator himself. Cameras, reporters, smiling, waving. Fielding questions. I felt my heartbeat ratchet up to jackhammer mode and shoved the thought away.

“So we’re gonna take today to get to know you. And
brand
you.”

Everyone on the edges of the room started scribbling.

“Brand me?”
Like a cow?

“We’ve already got a lot to work with.” Nancy beamed. “You’re a good student, well-liked by your peers. You’ve stayed out of trouble.”

“Of course she has!” An African American staffer down the table snorted through an impressive mustache. “She’s sixteen. The scandals don’t start till they hit college.”

“Not true,” another table guy piped up. He looked like he was in college himself, with his tousled hair and Ivy League outfit, rolled sleeves and loosened stripy tie. He pointed at Elliott. “Andy Lawrence.”

Elliott pointed back, turned eagerly to the whiteboard, and scrawled the name while the room murmured.

Andy Lawrence. The president’s son.

I tried to picture him, recalling that image from the news the other day, but what popped up more vividly was the inside of Lily Hornsby’s locker door, a magazine cut-out taped neatly to its top right corner. Lily had a crush on Andy Lawrence.
That tall kid—I still couldn’t remember his name—teased her about it over lunch one day and I remembered suspecting he was jealous of a photo from
US News and World Report
.

I’d peeked one morning as we were getting our books out, taking in blond hair, a flash of teeth, a raised hand. Honestly, I wasn’t all that impressed.

“That’s good, Cal.” Nancy leaned forward, grinning. “We juxtapose Kate and Andy, we’ll win every time.”

“Wait,” I interrupted. “What’s wrong with the president’s son?”

“Good,” Elliott barked, marker raised. “Go.”

I opened my mouth and shut it. Was he talking to me?

“The cow prank at Farnwell Prep,” the mustached aide said.

“Too long ago,” Elliott countered.

Ivy League lazily raised his hand. “Sexy Ronald Reagan.”

Elliott wrote it down like the marker was on fire and several people along the edges started to laugh. Catching my bemused expression, Nancy leaned closer.

“Halloween party last year, Andy Lawrence wore Baywatch trunks and a Ronald Reagan mask. It went viral within hours—
very
poor judgment.”

She seemed to smirk and sniff at the same time. It didn’t seem like that big a deal to me, but I knew better than to say so out loud, especially given the obsession these guys seemed to have with Reagan.

A skinny Asian staffer in a gray suit raised his hand. “He was shit-faced at the Correspondents’ Dinner.”

“Whoa,” I blurted.

I knew the Correspondents’ Dinner from clips online. It was a press event, part dinner party, part political roast, so not exactly the most serious occasion. But to show up drunk would be pretty shocking, especially if you were the son of the president,
especially
especially if you were the
underage
son of the president. It wasn’t as though alcohol had never passed my lips. Mom used to let me have a glass of wine at Christmastime, and I’d sampled the occasional warm beer at a party or two (blech)—but not with the entire country’s press corps watching. It couldn’t possibly have been true.