All-American Girl Read online

  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.

  No Doubt. David was a No Doubt fan.

  I should have known, of course. I mean, anybody who likes Reel Big Fish has to like No Doubt. It’s, like, a law.

  Still, it freaked me out when I realized David had Gwen in the car stereo. Because you know if I had a car, that’s who would be in my stereo, too. Gwen, I mean.

  And the weirdest part was, my heart did that thing again. Really. That flippy thing, as soon as I heard Gwen’s voice. Only not because, you know, of Gwen. No, it was because I realized then
that David liked Gwen. Was that what Rebecca had been talking about? Was that frisson?

  But how could I feel frisson for one person when my heart belonged to someone else? It didn’t make any sense. The only reason I had asked David out in the first place was to make Catherine happy. And maybe to make Jack jealous. I mean, I was completely and irrevocably in love with my sister’s boyfriend, who would one day realize that I, and not Lucy, am the girl for him.

  So what was with the frisson already?

  Figuring if I ignored it, maybe it would go away, I commenced to doing so. And you know what? For a while, I thought it did. I mean, not that we didn’t have a good time, or anything. Jake’s, the place we went to for dinner, was totally my kind of joint…a dive in Foggy Bottom, with sticky tabletops and dim lighting. Nobody there paid the slightest bit of attention to the fact that I was the girl who saved the president and that David was his son. In fact, I don’t think anybody looked at us at all, except the waitress, and of course John and the other Secret Service agents, who sat at a table a little way from ours.

  And even though I’d been worried about what to talk about, it turned out I didn’t have to fall back on Lucy’s rules at all. David started telling me these funny stories about the crazy things that people who come to tour the White House have left behind—like retainers, and one time a pair of corduroy pants—and after that, the conversation just flowed.

  And when the burgers came, they were a little burned on the outside, just the way I like them, and no one had put fresh vegetables, like tomatoes or onions or lettuce, on or anywhere near them. The fries were the skinny crispy kind, too, not the fat soggy kind, which taste all gross and potato-y.

  Then David told me this story about how when he was a little kid, and his mom and dad would ask him to set the table, as a joke he would set one place with the giant oversized fork and spoon that were supposed to be used to serve salad.

  And every single time, he said, his parents would laugh, even though he did it practically every night.

  Inspired by this, I told him about the time in Morocco I tried to flush my dad’s credit cards down the toilet. Which is actually something I’ve never told anybody before, except for Catherine. It wasn’t as cute as the giant serving spoon and fork story, but it was all I had.

  Then David told me about how much he resented having to leave his old friends and move to D.C., and how much he hated Horizon, where everyone was supercompetitive and all the emphasis was on science and not the arts, and people who liked to draw, like him, were looked down on. I so knew where he was coming from with that one, only of course at Adams Prep it’s all about athletics.

  So then I told him how I had to go to speech and hearing, and how everyone thought I was in Special Ed. And then for some reason, I told him about the celebrity drawings, too, and how because of them I’d ended up with a C-minus in German and a mandatory trip to Susan Boone’s.

  It was at some point during this part of the conversation that David’s knees accidentally touched mine underneath the table. He apologized and moved them out of the way. Then, about five minutes later, it happened again.

  Only this time, he didn’t move them. Or apologize. I didn’t know what to do. Lucy had not mentioned this on her list of things that could possibly happen.

  But I noticed the frisson starting to come back. Like, all of a sudden, I was conscious of the fact that David was a boy. I mean, of course I’d always known he was a boy, and a good-looking one, too. But somehow when his knees touched mine like that beneath the table—and stayed there—I became really, really aware that David was a boy.

  And suddenly I felt shy and couldn’t think of anything to say—which was weird because like, two minutes before I’d been having no trouble in that department. I couldn’t meet his eyes, either. I don’t know why, but it was like they were too green, or something. Plus all of a sudden I felt hot, even though it was perfectly comfortable inside the restaurant.

  I couldn’t figure out what was happening to me. But I knew none of it had been going on before his knees touched mine. So I moved around a little in my seat, thinking maybe if I broke, you know, the contact, things would be better.

  And they sort of were, but I guess not really, since David looked at me—no secret smile on his face at all now—and went, “Are you okay?”

  “Sure,” I said, in a voice that was way more high-pitched than my usual one. “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, those two green eyes searching my face in a manner I found infinitely alarming. “You look kind of…flushed.”

  That’s when I had the brilliant idea of looking at my mermaid Swatch and going, “Oh, my God, would you look at the time? We better go if we want to get to the party.”

  I kind of got the feeling that David would have been happy to skip the party entirely. But not me. I wanted to get there, and get there fast. Because at the party I’d be safe from frisson.

  Because at the party would be Jack.

  18

  “Oh my God, you came!”

  That’s what Kris Parks said when she opened the door and saw David and me standing there on her front porch. She actually didn’t say it. She screamed it.

  I should have known, of course. I should have known this was going to be how she—and everyone—would react.

  In the car on the way over, David had been all, “Now, whose party is this?” and I had tried to explain, but I guess I didn’t do a very good job—most likely on account of the frisson, which was not, unfortunately, going away—since he went, “Let me see if I can get this straight. This is a party being given by a person you don’t like, at which will be a lot of people you don’t know, and we’re going…why?”

  But when I explained that we had to go on account of how I’d promised my best friend, Catherine, he just shrugged and went, “Okay.”

  And even though he showed not the slightest sign of being aware that every single person in Kris’s house fell silent when we walked in, then started whispering like crazy, he knew. I knew he knew. And not because of the frisson, either. No, I knew it because that little grin of his came creeping back…like he was trying not to laugh. I think he was trying not to laugh at all the morons from Adams Prep who couldn’t seem to stop staring at him.

  At least he could laugh about it. The only thing I seemed capable of doing was just blushing more and more deeply. What I couldn’t figure out was why. I mean, it wasn’t as if I liked him, or anything. As more than just a friend.

  “Hi, I’m Kris,” Kris said, thrusting her hand out at David. Kris was wearing a denim minidress. Like it wasn’t thirty degrees outside.

  “Hi,” David said, shaking the hand of the girl who daily made life for me and so many others a living hell. “I’m David.”

  “Hi, David,” Kris said. “I can’t thank you enough for coming. It really is an honor to meet you. Your dad is doing such a good job of running this country. I was too young to vote, you know, in the election, but I want you to know that I totally handed out flyers for him.”

  “Thanks,” David said, still smiling, only beginning to look like he might want his hand back. “That was nice of you.”

  “Sam and I are just the best of friends,” Kris said, still pumping his fingers up and down. “Did she tell you? Since kindergarten, practically.”

  I could not believe this bald-faced lie. I would have said something, only I didn’t get a chance to, since right then Catherine came rushing up to us.

  “Omigosh, am I glad to see you,” she whispered to me after introductions had been made. “You have no idea. Paul and I have just been standing here. No one will talk to us. No one at all! I am so embarrassed! He must think I am a complete social leper!”

  I glanced at Paul. He didn’t appear to be thinking any such thing. He was gazing adoringly at Catherine, who looked totally cute in the black jeans and silk top she’d borrowed from Lucy.

  I turned back to David—who’d finally pried his hand loose from Kris’s—and asked, “
Want a Coke, or something?”

  “What?” he asked, unable to hear me over the music, which was not, needless to say, ska.

  “Coke?” I asked.

  “Sure,” he yelled back. “I’ll get it.”

  “No,” I said. “I invited you. I’ll get it.” I looked over his shoulder, at John, who was leaning against a wall and trying to blend in. “I’ll get one for John, too. You stay here, or we’ll lose each other.”

  Then I started to fight my way through the crowd in the direction that I suspected the beverages were located, as that was where the throng was thickest. I had to admit, I was relieved to be escaping David’s presence. I mean, it was just so weird, this thing that was going on between us. I didn’t know what it was, exactly, but I knew one thing:

  I didn’t like it.

  As I waded through the laughing, gyrating crowd, I thought to myself, This is what I’ve been missing by being part of the unpopular set? Houses bursting at the seams with loud, obnoxious people and head-pounding music you can’t even understand the lyrics of? Frankly, I’d have preferred to be home watching Nick at Nite and eating spumoni.

  But I guess that was just me.

  When I got to where I thought the drinks were, all I found was a keg. A keg! Smooth move, Kris. I mean, she had known perfectly well David was coming and that he’d be bringing Secret Service with him. Hmm, she wasn’t going to get too busted or anything.

  And you know what? Couldn’t say I felt too sorry for her, either.

  The soda, someone informed me, was in a cooler in a room off the kitchen. So I plunged back into the hordes, until I emerged into the room off the kitchen.

  And wouldn’t you know it? My sister and Jack were in there, making out.

  Lucy let out a squeal, “You came!” she cried. “How’s it going? Where’s David?”

  “Out there, somewhere,” I said. “I’m getting us sodas.”

  “Idiot,” Lucy said. “He’s supposed to get you the sodas. God. Stay here a minute. I want to get the girls.”