All-American Girl Read online

  All this, while Lucy just sat there, flipping through her magazine. I couldn’t believe it. And I had thought the thing with the drawing lessons was bad?

  “Hey,” Lucy said, for once noticing by my expression that I wasn’t exactly happy with her. “Don’t blame me. You’re the one who went all frisson on the guy, not me.”

  “I do not,” I said, darting a look at Jack, to make sure he was listening, “like David. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Lucy said. “Don’t get your panties in a—Ow!”

  Really, if anybody deserved to be pinched, and on a daily basis, it was my sister Lucy.

  Top ten ways you can tell that you have suddenly become one of the In Crowd:

  10. Kris Parks invites you to one of her notorious make-out parties.

  9. In PE, Coach Donnelly picks you as team captain for the first time all year, and when it comes to choose players, all the good athletes actually beg to be on your team.

  8. A lot of the freshman girls reappear after lunch in new, all-black outfits fresh from the Gap.

  7. The Adams Prep Red Steppers—who perform at halftime during games—ask if you know of a musical selection they might choreograph their next dance number to.

  And when you suggest “Pink Elephant,” by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies, they actually take you seriously.

  6. In Deutsch class, when you admit you did not finish your homework, someone hands you theirs.

  5. You begin to notice that a lot of girls who used to wear their hair like your sister’s are now teasing their hair into these giant mushroom clouds that look not unlike the one that is sprouting from your own head.

  4. Everyone in the hallway, instead of painfully averting their gazes as you pass by, like they used to, goes, “Hi, Sam!”

  3. You notice your name (scrawled next to Katie Holmes’s) across the front of a freshman boy’s notebook—with hearts around it, no less.

  2. The whole Mrs. Krebbetts/peanut butter pie thing.

  And the number-one way you can tell you are now a member of the In Crowd:

  1. At the sophomore class meeting last period, when the student advisor asks how the surplus funds in the tenth grade account ought to be spent, and you raise your hand and say, “On new paintbrushes and other supplies for the art department,” your suggestion is seconded, put to the general assembly for a vote…

  And wins.

  14

  It only took about two hours for it to get all the way around John Adams Preparatory School that I was bringing the president’s son with me as my date to Kris Parks’s party on Saturday night.

  For some reason this was more interesting to people than the fact that I had stopped a bullet from entering the skull of our nation’s leader, or that I was the country’s new teen ambassador to the UN. While I could not help but be thankful that I was no longer constantly being complimented on my bravery—all the more upsetting because I truly did not believe what I had done had been all that brave—it was somewhat disconcerting that everyone was, instead, making jokes about what might or might not have gone on between the president’s son and me in the Lincoln Bedroom.

  “Look, you’re taking this the wrong way,” Lucy said when I remarked upon this at the kitchen table after school. “The fact that you and this David dude are an item—DO NOT PINCH ME AGAIN—is only going to elevate your already sky-high stock. You, Sam, are the new It Girl of Adams Prep. If you would just give up the whole black-on-black thing, you could be voted prom queen like that.” Lucy snapped her fingers in the air, and Manet hurried over, thinking she might have dropped some of the chocolate chip cookies Theresa had made and that we were all now chowing down on.

  “Well, I don’t want to be prom queen,” I said. “I just want things to be back to normal.”

  “I’m going to take a wild guess that that’s not going to happen real soon,” Jack said. He pointed to the reporters we could see holding their cameras up over the backyard fence, hoping to snap a picture of us through the glass atrium.

  “Jesu Cristo,” Theresa said, and she went to the phone to call the police again.

  I sunk my chin down into my hand and went, “I just don’t see why you had to tell everybody that. I mean, it is so far from the truth.” I said this very clearly, so that Jack would hear. I mean, I wanted to make sure he knew that, if ever he changed his mind about Lucy, I was still available.

  “How was I supposed to know what the truth is?” Lucy asked primly. “You won’t tell me where the two of you disappeared to last night.”

  I couldn’t believe she would even bring any of that up in front of Jack. Although seeing as how Lucy was unaware of Jack’s status as my soul mate, I guess I couldn’t really blame her.

  “Because it isn’t any of your business!” I cried. “I mean, you don’t tell me every single thing you and Jack do together.”

  “Ha!” Lucy stabbed a finger at me, her smile triumphant. “I knew it! You two are going out!”

  “No, we aren’t,” I said. “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yes, you did. You just admitted it. You said, ‘You don’t tell me every single thing you and Jack do together,’ which must mean you and David are going out just like Jack and I are.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I said. “It doesn’t mean that at all—”

  My extremely lucid argument was interrupted, however, by Theresa, who, having gotten off the phone with the police, had then gone to intercept a package that had arrived by special delivery.

  “For you,” she said, setting the package down in front of me. “From the White House, the man said.”

  We all looked down at the package.

  “See,” Lucy said. “It’s from David. I told you that you two are going out.”

  “It isn’t from David,” I said, opening it. “And we aren’t going out.”

  The package turned out to be a packet of information about my new role as teen ambassador.

  Lucy, seeing this, turned back to her magazine, clearly disappointed. But Jack got quite excited, reading all the little pamphlets and stuff.

  “Look at this,” he said. “Hey. There’s going to be an international art show. From My Window, it’s called. The show will feature teen artists from around the world, depicting, in a variety of mediums, what they see every day from their windows.”

  Rebecca, who was going over her spreadsheets down at the other end of the table, went, “What about teens who don’t have windows? Such as the teen aliens who are being held against their will in Area 51? I don’t think they’re going to be represented, are they? Is that very fair?”

  As usual, everyone ignored her.

  “Hey,” Jack said, getting excited. Anything involving art excited Jack. “Hey, I’m going to enter this. You should, too, Sam. They’re going to display each participating country’s winning entry at the UN for the month of May. That’s some great exposure. And it’s New York. I mean, you get something displayed in New York, you’ve got it made.”

  I was reading the letter that had come along with the From My Window pamphlet.

  “I can’t enter,” I said with some astonishment. “I’m a judge.”

  “A judge?” Jack was delighted to hear it. “That’s great! So I’ll enter, and you pick my painting, and I’ll be breaking into the New York City art scene in no time.”

  Rebecca looked up from her spreadsheets and stared at Jack in disbelief. “Sam can’t do that,” she said. “That would be cheating!”

  “It’s not cheating,” Jack said, “if my painting is the best.”

  “Yeah, but what if it’s not?” Lucy wanted to know. She is the worst girlfriend. I never saw anyone so unsupportive of the man she supposedly loves!

  “It will be,” Jack said with a shrug of his big shoulders, like that settled that.

  Jack was right, of course: his painting would be best. Jack’s paintings were always the best. They had been good enough to get him into every single art show he’d ever applied to. There wasn’t any doubt in my mind that n
ext fall, in spite of his bad grades, lack of extracurriculars, and poor attendance record, Jack would get into one of the top art schools in the country, Rhode Island School of Design or Parsons or even Yale. He was just that good.

  And my opinion had nothing to do with the fact that I happened to be madly in love with him.

  I pretty much managed to forget the whole David thing until Catherine called later that evening, while I was trying to do my Deutsch homework.

  “So,” she said. “Are you going to Kris’s party?”

  “No way.”

  “Why not?”

  “Um, because Kris Parks is the spawn of Satan,” I said in some surprise. “You know that better than anybody.”

  There was this pause. Then Catherine said, slowly, “Yeah. I do know that. But I’ve always wanted to go to one of her parties.”

  I couldn’t believe it. I actually took the phone away from my face and stared at it for a few seconds before putting it back up to my ear and going, “Cath, what are you talking about? After the way she’s always treated you?”

  “I know,” Catherine said, sounding miserable. “But everyone always talks about Kris’s parties afterwards, like about how fun they were. I don’t know. She gave me an invitation, too. And I was kind of thinking of going. If you were going, that is.”

  “Well, I am not going,” I said. “Even Larry Wayne Rogers could not force me to go there if he threatened to make me listen to ‘Uptown Girl’ fifty million times and break BOTH my arms.”

  There was a pause. Then Catherine said the most surprising thing. She went, “Well, I still kind of want to go.”

  I was speechless. If Catherine had said she was thinking of shaving her head and joining the Hare Krishnas, I would not have been more surprised.

  “You want to go to Kris Parks’s party?” I said it so loudly that Manet, who’d been sleeping on my bed with his head in my lap, woke up and looked around, startled. “Catherine, have you been using those fruit-scented markers again? Because I thought I told you that they make you all—”

  “Sam, I’m serious,” Catherine said. Her voice sounded very small. “We never do stuff normal kids do.”

  “That is so totally untrue,” I said. “Just last month we went to the Drama Club’s production of The Seagull, didn’t we?”

  “Sam, we were, like, the only people in the audience who weren’t actually related to someone who was in the play. I just really want, for once in my life, to see what it feels like. To be, you know, part of the In Crowd. Haven’t you ever wondered?”

  “Cath, I already know. I live with one of them, remember? And it isn’t pretty. There is a lot of hair gel involved.”

  Catherine’s voice sounded small. “It’s just that I may never get another chance, you know?”

  “Cath,” I said. “Kris Parks has been nothing but mean to you the whole time you’ve known her, and now you want to go to her house? I’m sorry, but that is just—”

  “Sam,” Catherine said, still in that same small voice. “I met a boy.”

  I nearly dropped the phone. “You what? You met a what?”

  “A boy,” Catherine said, really fast, like if she didn’t get it all out at once, she’d never say it. “You don’t know him. He doesn’t go to Adams. He goes to Phillips Academy. His name is Paul. My parents know his parents from church. He’s always at Beltway Billiards when my brothers and I are there. He’s really nice. He has high score on Death Storm.”

  I guess I was in shock or something, since all I could think of to say was, “But…what about Heath?”

  “Sam, I have to face reality about Heath,” Catherine said, sounding braver than I’d ever heard her. “Even if I ever did get to meet him, no way is he going to go out with a high school girl. Besides, most of the time he lives in Australia. When am I ever going to be in Australia? My mom and dad barely even let me go to the mall by myself.”

  I was still in shock. “But they’re going to let you go out with this Paul guy?”

  “Well,” Catherine said. “Paul hasn’t exactly asked me out yet. I think he’s shy. That’s why I was thinking I’d ask him out. You know. To Kris’s party.”

  I completely failed to see the logic behind this. “Cath, why don’t you ask him to go see a movie with you or something? Why do you have to take him to Kris’s party?”

  “Because Paul only knows me from church,” Catherine said. “And from Beltway Billiards. He doesn’t know I don’t hang with the In Crowd. He thinks I’m cool.”

  I didn’t know quite how to put this next part, but I figured I had to say it. That’s what best friends are for, after all. “But, Cath,” I said. “I mean, he’s going to know you don’t hang with the In Crowd when you walk through Kris’s front door and she says one of her typically nasty things to you in front of him.”

  “She won’t do that,” Catherine said, more confident than I’d ever heard her.

  “She won’t?” I was very surprised to hear this. “Do you know something about Kris that I don’t know? Has she undergone a religious conversion, or something?”

  “She won’t say anything mean to me if you’re there,” Catherine said. “And you bring David.”

  I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it.

  “David?” I cried. “Cath, I am not going to Kris’s party, and even if I did, I would never bring David. I mean, I don’t even like him. You know I don’t. You know who I like.” I couldn’t say the name out loud, though, just in case Lucy picked up the extension, which she did frequently, to complain that I’d been on too long and that she needed to make a call.

  I didn’t have to say his name, though. Because Catherine knew who I was referring to.

  “I know, Sam,” Catherine said. Her voice sounded small again. “Only…well, I just thought…I mean, if you think about it, he’s kind of like your Heath, you know? Jack is. I mean, he doesn’t live in Australia, but…”

  …my chances of ever getting him were, like, nil. She didn’t have to say it. I knew what she was thinking.

  Except that Catherine was wrong. Because I was going to get Jack someday. I really was. If I was just patient, and played my cards right, he’d look around one day and realize that I was—that I always had been—the perfect girl for him.

  It was just a matter of time.

  Top ten signs that Jack loves me and not my sister Lucy and just hasn’t realized it yet:

  10. Whenever he sees me, he asks if I’ve read the latest issue of Art in America. He never asks Lucy if she’s read it, because he knows all Lucy ever reads are fashion magazines and the Star Track section of Parade magazine’s Sunday supplement.

  9. He burned that CD for me. And true, all it had on it was whale music, which is what Jack likes to listen to while he paints, but the fact that he went to the trouble is indicative of his yearning for us to make an emotional connection.

  8. He paid for my double cheeseburger meal that time at the mall when I forgot my wallet.

  7. He let me have all the yellow ones out of his box of Jujubes when we all went to see the Harry Potter movie (even though technically Jack is opposed to the commercialization of children’s book characters; he just went because the Jackie Chan movie playing at the theater next door was sold out).

  6. He said he liked my pants that one time.

  5. He complains that Lucy takes too long putting on her makeup. He told me he prefers a girl who wears no makeup. Um, that would be me. Well, except for concealer. And mascara. And lip gloss. But other than that, I wear no makeup at all.

  4. When I told him my theory about how all left-handers were once part of a pair of twins, he said that made sense; he is left-handed, too, and has always felt a sense of aloneness in the world. Rebecca’s theory—that we are all descended from a race of aliens who accidentally crash-landed on this planet and lost all their advanced technological knowledge in the ensuing fiery conflagration of the mother ship—did not impress him nearly as much. And Lucy’s theory—that Mr. PiBB and Dr Pepper are th
e same drink, just with different packaging—impressed him not at all.

  3. When the Drama Club needed volunteers to paint scenery for the production of Hello Dolly!, Jack and I both signed up, and later ended up painting the same plywood street lamp (he did the trim, I did the highlights). If that was not kismet, I don’t know what is.

  2. Jack is a Libra. I am an Aquarius. Libras and Aquarians are known for getting along. Lucy, who is a Pisces, should really be going out with a Taurus or Capricorn.

  And the number-one sign that Jack loves me and just doesn’t know it yet:

  1. Fight Club is his favorite book, too. Right after Catch-22 and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

  15

  On Tuesday, when Theresa drove up to the corner of R and Connecticut, across from the Founding Church of Scientology, you couldn’t even see Capitol Cookies. You couldn’t see Static, either.

  That’s because so many reporters were standing on the corner, waiting to interview me as I made my way into Susan Boone’s.

  Don’t even ask me how they found out what time my drawing lessons were. I guess they figured out when David’s were, since they knew he and I were in the same class (that had been in the papers when they’d explained how I’d happened to be standing on the same street corner at the same time as Larry Wayne Rogers and the president).

  Whatever. It didn’t really matter how they’d found out. The fact was, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I mean, they were everywhere, these reporters. Outside our house. Outside Adams Prep. Outside the Bishop’s Garden when I made the mistake of going to walk Manet there. Outside Potomac Video, for crying out loud, where they’d practically ambushed me and Rebecca the other day when we’d been returning her favorite movie, Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

  And while I could fully appreciate that they had a deadline or whatever and needed a story, I could not for the life of me fathom why that story had to be about me. I mean, all I did was save the president. It’s not like I have anything to say.