All-American Girl Read online

  Finally, Mr. White gave up, and I showed Candace all the paintings, including Angie Tucker’s. I said Angie’s painting was very nice and all, but that my choice had been Maria Sanchez’s.

  “And is it true, Samantha,” Candace asked me on camera, just as we’d rehearsed earlier that day, when she’d met with me after I’d called her station, “that the president told you that you were going to have to choose another painting, one with a less political angle?”

  I said the line I had been practicing all morning. “The truth is, Miss Wu, that I think the president may not be aware that American teens aren’t only interested in what the number-one video in the country is right now. We have concerns. We want our voices to be heard. The From My Window international art show being sponsored by the United Nations is a perfect forum in which teens around the world can express their concerns. It would be wrong, I think, to stifle those voices.”

  To which Candace replied, just as she’d said she would, in exchange for my giving her network exclusive world rights to my one and only televised interview, “You mean, the man whose life you so heroically saved will not even allow you to make your own decisions in your capacity as the U.S. teen ambassador?”

  I replied, tactfully, “Well, maybe there are national concerns we aren’t privy to, or something.”

  After which Candace made a slashing motion beneath her chin and then went, “Well, boys, that’s a wrap. Let’s pack up and get over to the hospital,” which was where we were all going next, on account of my cast coming off that day.

  “Wait a minute,” the White House press secretary said, hurrying up to us. “Wait just a minute here. I am sure there is no need for you to show that segment. I am sure we can work something out with the president….”

  But Candace hadn’t gotten to where she had in the cutthroat news anchorwoman business by waiting around for things to be worked out. She had Marty and the other camera guys pack up, and then she was hustling all of us out of there before you could say “We’ll be right back after this message.”

  It wasn’t until we’d come back to my house after getting my cast off, and Candace was filming what she called some “filler” shots of me and Manet romping on my bed, that the phone rang and Theresa came in looking excited and whispered, “Samantha. It is the president.”

  Everyone froze—Candace, who’d been sharing beauty tips with Lucy, who seemed way fascinated by the whole news anchorwoman thing, a job where you had to look good and got to express your opinions about things; Rebecca, who’d been taking notes on how to act more like a normal person from one of the lighting guys; the cameramen, who were taking, if you ask me, way too close an interest in my Gwen Stefani poster. Everyone seemed to hold his or her breath as I climbed down off the bed and took the phone from Theresa.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “Samantha,” the president cried, his hearty voice so loud I had to hold the receiver away from my face. “What’s this I hear about you thinking I don’t back your choice for that UN art show?”

  “Well, sir,” I said. “The fact is, I think the best painting we’ve received is the one from Maria Sanchez, of San Diego, but from what I understand, you—”

  “That’s the one I like,” the president said. “The one with the sheets.”

  “Really, sir?” I said. “Because you said—”

  “Never mind that now,” the president said. “You like that sheet painting, you have it packed up and sent right along to New York. And next time you’ve got a problem with anything like this, you come to me first, before you go to the press, all right?”

  I didn’t mention that I’d already tried to. Instead, I said, “Yes, sir. I will, sir.”

  “Great. Buh-bye now,” the president said. Then he hung up.

  And so when my exclusive interview with Candace Wu aired the next night—Wednesday—the whole part about Maria Sanchez’s painting not winning wasn’t in it. Instead, the San Diego news affiliate filmed a piece where they went to Maria Sanchez’s house and told her she was the winner. Maria turned out to be a dark-haired girl about my age who lived in a tiny house with six brothers and sisters. Like me, she was stuck right in the middle of all of them.

  I should have known there was some reason I liked her painting best.

  Anyway, when they told Maria she’d won, she started crying. Then, because they asked, she showed them the view out her window. It was just like in the painting, with the wash hanging from the line and the barbed-wire fence off in the distance. Maria really had painted what she saw, just as I’d thought she had, not just what she knew.

  And now she and her family were going to get to go to New York and see her painting on the wall at the UN with all of the other entries from around the world. And it looked like I was going to get to meet her, since Andy said the White House would be flying my whole family to New York for the show’s opening. I’d already asked my mom and dad if we could go to the Met while we were there, and see the Impressionists, and they said yes.

  I am betting Maria will want to go, too.

  The night Candace’s interview with me aired, we all sat in the living room and watched it…me, Lucy, Rebecca, Theresa, Manet, and my mom and dad. My mom and dad hadn’t really known all that much about it, since I’d conducted most of the interview after school, while my mom was in court and my dad was at his office. I’d had to skip Susan Boone’s on Tuesday in order to do it. But I’d been going to do that anyway, on account of that’s when Theresa had been going to take me to my appointment to get my cast removed.

  So Mom and Dad were kind of surprised when they showed the parts filmed in our house—particularly the segment shot in my room, which had been somewhat messy at the time. My mom went, in a horrified voice, as she watched the TV screen like someone transfixed, “Oh, my God, Samantha.”

  But I explained to her that Candace had asked me to leave my room the way it was, as it added authenticity. Candace was way into authenticity. Her goal in producing the segment had been to show an “authentic American hero.” According to Candace, the reasons I was an “authentic American hero” were:

  a) I had selflessly risked my life in order to save that of another.

  b) That other had happened to be the leader of the free world.

  c) I am an American.

  Candace’s view on the matter was, happily, shared by others. For instance, the doctor who sawed off my cast. He was very careful not to saw through any of the pictures I’d drawn on there. He warned me right before he took the cast off that, without it, my arm was going to feel very light and strange for a while, and it turned out he’d been right. As soon as he peeled off the cast, my arm floated upward about three inches, all on its own. Theresa and Candace and the doctor and the cameraman and I all laughed.

  Other people who thought I was an authentic American hero turned out to be the staff at the Smithsonian, where we went after getting my cast off. I’d decided that, instead of selling my cast on eBay, I would donate it to a museum, and the Smithsonian was the biggest museum I could think of. Fortunately, they wanted it. I was worried they would think it was gross, my giving them my old cast with Liberty Bells and Dolley Madison drawn all over it.

  But since it was, you know, a relic of sorts, denoting an important piece of American history, they claimed to be happy to have it.

  The segment about me closed with a piece Candace and I had discussed very carefully beforehand. One of the conditions of my letting her do the interview was that she had to ask this one particular question. And that was about my love life.

  “So, Samantha,” Candace said, leaning forward in her chair with a little smile on her face. “There’ve been some rumors…”

  The camera showed me looking all innocent, sitting on the very couch I was sitting on as I watched the interview being broadcast.

  “Rumors, Ms. Wu?” the TV me asked, with her eyes all wide.

  “Yes,” Candace said. “About you and a certain person…”

  Then they
started showing all this footage of David—you know, waving from the steps of Air Force One, ducking in and out of Susan Boone’s, in a suit at the International Festival of the Child. Then the camera came back on Candace, and she went, “Is it true that you and the first son are an item?”

  The TV me, turning red—turning red right there on television, and even though I had known perfectly well the question was coming—went, “Well, Ms. Wu, let’s put it this way. I’d like it to be true. But whether or not he feels the same way, I don’t know. I think I might have screwed it up.”

  “Screwed it up?” Candace looked confused (even though she knew exactly what I was going to say to this question, as well). “Screwed it up how, Samantha?”

  “I just,” the TV me said with a shrug, “didn’t see something that was right there in front of my face. And now I think it’s probably too late. I hope not…but I have a bad feeling it probably is.”

  That was when the real me—the watching-the-TV me—pulled the sofa cushion Manet had been sitting on out from under him and buried my face into it with a scream. I mean, I’d had to say it—I couldn’t think of any other way to say it that would make up for the horrible thing I had done—you know, the whole loving-David-the-whole-time-and-not-realizing-it-until-it-was-too-late thing.

  But that didn’t mean I wasn’t embarrassed about it. Or that I had even the remotest hope of it working.

  That’s why I was screaming.

  My dad, who’d been watching the interview with a kind of stunned expression on his face, went, “Wait a minute. What was that all about? Samantha…did you and David have a fight?”

  To which Theresa replied, “Oh, she blew it with him but good. But maybe if he sees this, he’ll give her another chance. I mean, it isn’t every day some girl goes on national television and tells the world that she wants to go out with you.”

  Even Rebecca looked at me with renewed respect. “That was pretty brave of you, Sam,” she said. “Braver even than what you did that day outside the cookie store. Not, of course, that it’s going to work.”

  “Oh, Rebecca,” Lucy said, hitting the mute button, since the interview was over. “Shut up.”

  It isn’t often that Lucy comes to my defense in familial battles, so I glanced up from the sofa cushion in amazement. It was only then that I realized what was bothering me about Lucy. What had been bothering me about Lucy for the past day or two.

  “Hey,” I said. “Where’s Jack?”

  “Oh,” Lucy said with a careless shrug. “We broke up.”

  Everyone in the room—not just me—stared at her in openmouthed astonishment.

  My dad recovered first. He went, “Alleluia,” which was a strange sentiment coming from an agnostic, but whatever.

  “I knew it,” Theresa said, shaking her head. “He went back to that ex-girlfriend of his, didn’t he? Men. They are all…” And then she said some bad words in Spanish.

  “Oh, God,” Lucy said, rolling her eyes. “Puhlease. He didn’t cheat on me, or anything. He was just such a jerk to Sam.”

  I would not have thought it possible for my jaw to sag any more than it already had, but somehow, I managed.

  “Me?” I squealed. “What are you talking about?”

  Lucy looked heavenward. “Oh, you know,” she said, sounding impatient. “That whole painting thing. He was being such a tool. I told him to—what’s it called again, Rebecca?”

  “To never again darken your doorway?” Rebecca offered.

  “Yeah,” Lucy said. “That’s it.” Then Lucy, who had been channel surfing the whole time she’d been speaking, went, “Oooh, look. David Boreanaz,” and turned the volume up.

  I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. Lucy and Jack, broken up? Because of me? I mean, I will admit, I had been fantasizing about this moment for months. But in my fantasies, Lucy and Jack always broke up because Jack finally came to his senses and realized that I was the girl for him. They never broke up because Lucy happened to spy Jack being a jerk to me.

  And they certainly never broke up after I’d realized I didn’t love Jack anymore…had maybe never really loved him in the first place. Not the way you’re supposed to love someone.

  This was not the way things were supposed to go. This was not the way things were supposed to go at all.

  “Lucy,” I said, leaning forward. “How can you…I mean, after all the time you two have spent together, how can you just dump Jack like that? I mean, what about the prom? Your senior prom is coming up. Who are you going to go with, if not Jack?”

  “Well,” Lucy said, her gaze riveted on David Boreanaz’s abs, “I have narrowed it down to about five different guys. But I am thinking of asking my chem partner.”

  “Greg Gardner?” I all but shrieked. “You are going to go to the prom with Greg Gardner? Lucy, he is, like, the biggest nerd in school!”

  Lucy looked annoyed, but only because all my shrieking was drowning out the dulcet tones of Mr. Boreanaz. “Dude,” she said, “duh. But nerds are totally in right now. I mean, you should know. You’re the one who started the trend.”

  “Trend? What trend?” I demanded.

  “You know.” A commercial had come on, so Lucy put the TV on mute again, rolled over on her back, and looked at me. “The whole dating-a-nerd thing. You set it off by bringing David to that party. Now everyone is doing it. Kris Parks is going out with Tim Haywood.”

  “The national science fair winner?” I gasped.

  “Yeah. And Debbie Kinley dumped Rodd Muckinfuss for some geek from Horizon.”

  “Really.” My mother, who was still in the room, listening to our conversation with growing annoyance, finally couldn’t take it anymore. “Listen to you girls! Geeks! Nerds! Don’t you realize that you are talking about people? People with feelings?”

  Like my mom, I was getting more and more upset as well. But not for the same reason.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Wait just a minute here. Lucy, you can’t break up with Jack. You love him.”

  “Well, sure,” Lucy said simply. “But you’re my sister. I can’t go out with a guy who’s mean to my sister. I mean, what do you think I am?”

  I just stared at her. I really couldn’t believe it. Lucy—my sister Lucy, the prettiest, most vacuous girl at Adams Prep High School—had dumped her boyfriend, and not because he’d been two-timing her, or because she’d grown tired of him. She’d dumped him for me, her reject little sister. Me, Samantha Madison. Not the Samantha Madison who’d saved the life of the president of the United States. Not Samantha Madison, teen ambassador to the UN.

  No. Samantha Madison, Lucy Madison’s kid sister.

  That’s when the guilt came rushing in. I mean, here Lucy had made this enormous sacrifice—okay, maybe not so enormous for her, but whatever, still a sacrifice—and what kind of sister to her had I been? Huh? I mean, for the longest time, all I had done was wish—no, pray—for Lucy and Jack to break up so that I could have him. Then it finally happens, and why?

  Because, according to Lucy, she loves me more than she could ever love any boy.

  I was the worst sister in the world. The lowest of the low. I was scum.

  “Lucy,” I said. “Really. Jack was just upset the other day. I totally understood. I really don’t think you should break up with him just because…just because of me.”

  Lucy looked bored with the conversation. Her show had come back on. “Whatever,” she said. “I’ll think about it.”

  “You should, Luce,” I said. “You really should. I mean, Jack’s a great guy. A really great guy. I mean, for you.”

  “All right,” Lucy said, looking irritated. “I said I’ll think about it. Now shut up, my show is on.”

  My mom, realizing a little belatedly what was going on, went, “Um, Lucy, if you want to date this other boy—your chemistry partner—that’s really quite all right with your father and me. Isn’t it, Richard?”

  My dad hastened to assure Lucy that it was.

  “In fact,�
� he said, “why don’t you bring him home after school tomorrow? Theresa won’t mind, will you, Theresa?”

  But the damage was already done. I knew Lucy and Jack would be back together before lunch tomorrow.

  And I was glad. Really glad.

  Because I didn’t love Jack. I had probably never loved Jack. Not really.

  The only problem, of course, was that I was pretty sure the person I did love didn’t feel the same way about me.

  Though I had a good feeling I was going to find out for sure, one way or another, at Susan Boone’s tomorrow.

  25

  “Do you see this skull?” Susan Boone held up a cow skull, bleached white by sun and sand. “All the colors of the rainbow are in this skull. And I want to see those colors on the page in front of you.”

  She put the skull down on the little table in front of us. Then she went to go chastise Joe the crow, who had already successfully stolen a wad of my hair before I’d gotten a chance to don my daisy helmet.

  I sat straddling my drawing bench, keeping my gaze carefully averted from the person sitting next to me. I had no idea whether David was happy or sad to see me, or if he simply didn’t care either way. I had not spoken to or seen him—except on TV—since the night of the Beaux Arts Trio and our argument about Jack. I had no idea if he’d seen my interview or knew that I had, in fact, exercised my freedom of speech, the way he’d suggested. Or that I’d basically admitted, right there in front of twenty million viewers, that I loved him.

  I quizzed Rebecca about it at length, seeing as how she went to his school. But being eleven, Rebecca had no classes with David. She even had a different lunch period. She didn’t know if he’d seen it or not.

  “Don’t worry,” Lucy kept saying. “He saw it.”

  And Lucy, of course, would know. Lucy knew everything there was to know about boys. Hadn’t she gotten Jack back, as casually as she’d dumped him? One day they were broken up, and the next day they were sitting in the cafeteria together at school like they’d never been apart.

  “Oh, hey, Sam,” Jack said when I walked by their table, headed for my own. “Listen, sorry about that art show thing. I hope you aren’t, you know, mad at me, or anything. I was just kind of disappointed.”