All-American Girl Read online

  “Who said yes?” I asked her as she fell into step with me on my way to my locker.

  “Paul!” Catherine was clearly hurt that I didn’t remember. “From church! Or Beltway Billiards. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. The point is, I asked him out, and he said yes!”

  “Whoa, Cath,” I said. “Way to go.”

  Only I didn’t mean it. Well, I did and I didn’t. It wasn’t very nice of me, I guess, and I would never have said so out loud, or anything. But the fact was, happy as I was that Catherine had a date, at the same time, I felt kind of weird about it. I mean, what she had done—calling a boy and asking him out—seemed way braver to me than what I’d done—stopping an assassination attempt on the president, I mean. All I’d risked was my life…which, if I’d lost it, would be no big deal, since, you know, I’d be dead, and wouldn’t even know it.

  Catherine had risked so much more than me: her pride.

  The fact was, I was probably never going to get up the guts to ask out the boy of my dreams. I mean, for one thing, he was dating my sister. And for another, well, what if he said no?

  “Is it okay if I tell my mom that I’m spending the night at your house?” Catherine wanted to know. “I mean, I know they like Paul—my mom and dad, I mean—but you know they think fifteen is too young to date.”

  “Sure,” I said. “After you guys go out, come on over. And if you want to borrow something to wear—I mean, you know, if your own stuff won’t cut it—come over beforehand and we’ll let Lucy do a makeover on you. You know she loves that stuff.”

  Catherine’s face was shining. I had never seen her so happy. It was kind of nice. I mean, even though I was jealous and everything, I couldn’t help feeling glad for her.

  “Oh, Sam, really?” Catherine cried. “That would be so great!”

  “It’ll be fun. So what are you two going to do?” I asked her. “I mean, on the big date.”

  Catherine looked at me like I was a mental case.

  “We’re going to Kris’s party, of course,” she said. “Duh. What did you think I invited him to do?”

  I was doing the combination to my locker at that point. But when Catherine said that—about going to Kris’s party—the numbers (15, the age I am now; 21, the age I’d like to be; and 8, the age I never want to be again) went clean out of my head.

  “Kris’s party?” I hung on to the lock, staring at her. “You’re taking him to Kris’s party?”

  “Yeah,” Catherine said, ignoring someone who’d walked by and, seeing her long skirt, went, “Hey, where’s the hoedown?”

  “Of course I invited him, Sam,” Catherine said. “We’re going, aren’t we? You and me and Paul and David?”

  “What?” Now I didn’t just forget my locker combination. I forgot my class schedule, what I’d had for breakfast, you name it. I was shocked. “Catherine, are you high? I never said I was going to Kris’s party. In fact, I distinctly remember saying Larry Wayne Rogers could break both my arms and I still wouldn’t go.”

  Catherine’s pretty face, which a moment before had been shining like a new penny, crumpled with disappointment and—I did not think I could be mistaken about this—hurt. Yes, actual hurt.

  “But, Sam,” she cried. “You have to go! I can’t go to Kris’s party without you! You know Kris only invited me because she thought you were going—”

  “Yeah, and Kris only invited me because she thought I’d bring along a bunch of reporters, and she could get her rat face on TV. Not to mention, she thought I’d bring David.” I couldn’t believe Catherine was trying to pull this on me. Catherine, my best friend since the fourth grade! “Which I’m not going to do. Because I don’t like David that way. Remember?”

  “Sam, I can’t go without you,” Catherine wailed. “I mean, if I show up at Kris’s without you, people are going to be like, ‘What are you doing here?’”

  “Well, you should have thought about that,” I said, wrenching open my locker door—I had finally managed to remember the combination—“before you asked Mr. High Score on Death Squad to go with you.”

  “Death Storm,” Catherine corrected me, her dark eyes bright. “And I wouldn’t have asked him at all, Sam, if I’d known you really weren’t going.”

  “I said I wasn’t going. Remember? And hello, my mom and dad totally put the kibosh on it. Lucy’s not even allowed to go.”

  “Yes,” Catherine said. “But she’s going to go anyway. You know she is. She’s just going to tell them she’s going somewhere else.”

  “Duh,” I said. “But that doesn’t make it right. Besides, I am still on thin ice because of the whole C-minus-in-German thing. I mean, don’t think they aren’t still totally on my case—”

  “Sam,” Catherine interrupted, her voice sounding kind of funny, like it was clogged. “Don’t you get it? Because of what you did—saving the president like that—everything can be different for us.” She looked around to make sure no one was listening, then took a step closer to me and said in a low, urgent voice, “We don’t have to be rejects anymore. We have a chance to hang out with Lucy’s friends. We finally have a chance to see what it would be like to be Lucy. Don’t you want that, Sam? Don’t you want to know what it’s like to be Lucy?”

  I looked at her like she was nuts.

  “Cath, I know what it’s like to be Lucy,” I said. “It’s about doing backflips in the rain at football games and reading nothing but fashion magazines and separating your eyelashes with a safety pin.” Having gotten the notebooks I needed and put away my coat, I slammed my locker door shut. “I am sorry, but I have way better things to do than that.”

  “Yeah,” Catherine said, her dark eyes so bright, I realized at last, because they were filled with tears. “Right. That’s fine for you, Sam. But what about me? I mean, Kris Parks has never taken the time to find out what the girl inside these stupid clothes is actually like.” Catherine fingered her prairie skirt. “Well, now is my chance, Sam. My chance to show them all that there is a person in here. This is the one time when they actually might listen. All I’m asking is that you let me have it.”

  I stared at her. The bell had rung, but I didn’t move. I couldn’t move. “Catherine,” I said, shocked more by what she’d said than by the tears that accompanied it. “Are you…I mean, do you really care what they think?”

  She reached up to wipe her wet cheeks with a lace-trimmed sleeve. “Yes,” she said. “Okay? Yes, Sam. I’m not like you. I’m not brave. I care what people say about me. All right? I care. And all I’m asking is that you give me this one chance to—”

  “Okay,” I said.

  Catherine blinked up at me tearfully. “Wh-what?”

  “Okay.” I wasn’t happy about it, but what could I do? She was my best friend. “Okay, I’ll go. All right? If it means that much to you, I’ll go.”

  A slow smile spread across Catherine’s face. Her brown eyes were warm again.

  “Really?” She gave a little hop. “Really, Sam? You mean it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Okay? I mean it.”

  “Oh!” Catherine flung both her arms around my neck and gave me a joyful squeeze. Then she pulled away and said, “You won’t regret it! You will have a great time, I promise! I mean, Jack will be there!”

  Then she ran down the hallway, since she was late for bio.

  I should have run, too, since I was late for Deutsch class. But instead I just stood there, wondering what I had just gotten myself into.

  I was still wondering, all the way up until I walked into Susan Boone’s later that day, got to my drawing bench, and saw what was sitting on it.

  That’s because sitting on my bench was an army helmet dotted with Wite-Out daisies.

  “Like it?” David wanted to know. He was grinning again. And for the second time in two days, the sight of that grin did something to me. It seemed to make my heart flip over in my chest. Frisson?

  Or the burrito I’d had for lunch?

  “I figured it was exactly what a girl like yo
u needed,” David said. “You know, as long as you were continually getting assaulted by crows and armed assassins.”

  It couldn’t be heartburn. It was too much of a coincidence that my heart had done that weird flippy thing at the exact moment David had smiled at me. Something else was going on. Something I did not like at all.

  Trying to ignore my staggering heart, I put the helmet on. It was way too big for me, but that was okay, as I had a lot of hair to cover.

  “Thanks,” I said, peering out from beneath the brim. I was touched—really touched—that he’d gone to the trouble. It was almost as cool as having my name carved into a White House windowsill. “It’s perfect!”

  It was perfect, too. Later that day, when Joe hopped onto my shoulder, interrupting my drawing—which was of a shoulder of raw beef Susan Boone had brought from the butcher’s shop, telling us that, after having found color in a white egg on Tuesday, our challenge today was to draw something that had every color in the rainbow in it, but still retain its context as a whole—I didn’t mind, because this time, Joe didn’t hurt me. In fact, he just sat there, looking kind of puzzled, pecking occasionally at the helmet and letting out little interrogative whistles.

  Everybody laughed, including David. He looked like the kind of guy who didn’t let stuff bug him. He looked like the kind of guy who could put up with a hundred Kris Parkses.

  Which is the only explanation I can give for how it was that I found myself leaning over to him right before we all got up to put our drawings on the windowsill for critique, and going softly—so softly I was worried he might not be able to hear me over the sudden pounding of my heart—“Hey, David. Do you want to go with me to this party on Saturday night?”

  He looked surprised. For one pulse-stopping moment, I thought he might say no.

  But he didn’t. He smiled and said, “Sure. Why not?”

  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.

  17

  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 t
he 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.”