All-American Girl Read online

  2. While you are waiting for the cast guys to come and fix your arm, you switch on your private room’s TV and see that on every channel there is a Breaking News bulletin. Then Tom Brokaw comes on and says that an attempt has been made on the life of the president. Then he says that the attempt was thwarted by the heroic act of a single individual. Then they show the picture of you from your school ID.

  The one where you were blinking just as the photographer took the picture. The one where your hair was looking particularly bushy and out of control. The one you have never showed to anyone for fear of being publicly mocked and ridiculed.

  And the number-one way you can tell your life will never be the same:

  1. You scream so loudly when you see your hideous school photo on national television that about thirty Secret Service agents burst into your room, pistols drawn, demanding to know if you’re all right.

  7

  I guess, even then, it didn’t really hit me.

  I mean, I knew. You know, that I had jumped on Mr. Uptown Girl’s back and kept him from firing that gun in the direction he’d meant to.

  But it didn’t hit me that in doing so I had actually saved the life of the leader of the free world.

  At least, it didn’t hit me until my parents came bursting into my hospital room a little while later, after the cast was on (and after I’d seen my face all over the major networks, as well as CNN, Headline News, and even Entertainment Tonight), both of them freaked beyond belief.

  “Samantha!” my mom cried, falling all over me and jostling my busted arm, for which, I might add, no one had so much as offered me an aspirin. You would think that a girl who saved the life of the president would rank some painkillers, but apparently not. “Oh, my God, we were so worried!”

  “Hi, Mom,” I said, all faintly—you know, the way you talk when you’re faking sick. Because I hadn’t figured out whether the Secret Service guys had ratted me out yet about skipping my drawing class, so I wasn’t sure how much trouble I was in. I figured if they thought I was in a lot of pain, they’d lay off.

  But they didn’t seem to have a clue about my skipping out on Susan Boone.

  “Samantha,” my mom kept saying, sinking down onto the edge of my bed and pushing my hair around on my forehead. “Are you all right? Is it just your arm? Does anything else hurt?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just my arm. I’m fine. Really.”

  But I still said it all faint, and stuff, just in case.

  I needn’t have bothered. They were both completely clueless about the whole drawing lessons thing. They were just glad I was all right. My dad was able to joke about it, a little.

  “If you wanted more attention from us, Sam,” he said, “all you had to do was ask. Throwing yourself in the path of a speeding bullet really wasn’t necessary.”

  Ha ha ha.

  The Secret Service guys gave us about five minutes for our tearful reunion before pouncing. It turns out there’d been a lot of stuff they’d wanted to ask me, but because I’m a minor, they’d had to wait to interview me until my parents got there. This is just a small sample of some of the things they asked me about:

  SECRET SERVICE: Did you know the man who was holding the gun?

  ME: No, I did not know the guy.

  SECRET SERVICE: Did he say anything to you?

  ME: No, he did not say a word to me.

  SECRET SERVICE: Nothing? He didn’t say anything as he was pulling the trigger?

  ME: Like what?

  SECRET SERVICE: Like “This is for Margie,” or something like that.

  ME: Who’s Margie?

  SECRET SERVICE: That was just an example. There is no Margie.

  ME: He didn’t say anything at all.

  SECRET SERVICE: Was there anything unusual about him? Anything that caused you to pay special attention to him, out of all the people who were on the street?

  ME: Yes. He had a gun.

  SECRET SERVICE: Other than him having a gun.

  ME: Well, he seemed to like the song “Uptown Girl” quite a bit.

  And so on. It went on for hours. Hours. I had to describe what had happened between me and Mr. Uptown Girl like five hundred times. I talked until I was hoarse. Finally, my dad was like, “Look, gentlemen, we appreciate that you are trying to get to the bottom of this, but our daughter has been through a very traumatic event and needs to get some rest.”

  The Secret Service guys were very nice about it. They thanked me and left…but a couple of them stayed around, just outside the door to my room, and wouldn’t leave. My dad told me after he came back with a Quarter Pounder for my dinner, since I absolutely could not bring myself to eat the food the hospital provided, which was some kind of stew with peas and carrots in it.

  Like people in a hospital don’t feel sick enough already. This is what they give them to eat?

  I wasn’t too happy about having to spend the night at the hospital when the only thing wrong with me was a broken wrist, but the Secret Service guys kind of insisted on it. They said it was for my own protection. I said, “I don’t see why. You caught the guy, right?”

  But they said Mr. Uptown Girl (only they didn’t call him that; they called him The Alleged Shooter) was invoking his right to remain silent, and they weren’t sure if he belonged to some terrorist organization that might choose to avenge itself against me for sabotaging its scheme to assassinate the president.

  This, of course, caused my mother to flip out and call Theresa and tell her to make sure the front door was locked, but the Secret Service guy said not to worry, they had already posted agents around the house for our protection. These agents, I later found out, were also keeping the hordes of press away from our front porch. This was somewhat distressing to Lucy, with whom I spoke on the phone a little before midnight.

  “Ohmigod,” she gushed. “All I did was try to slip the folks from MSNBC a more flattering photo of you. I mean, they keep showing that hideous shot from your school ID. I was all, ‘Dudes, she is way more attractive than that,’ and I tried to give them that photo Grandma took at Christmas—you know, the one where you’re in that Esprit dress, which used to be cute until you dyed it black, but whatever. Anyway, I open the door and go out on the porch with the photo, and all these flashbulbs start going off and all these people start yelling, ‘Are you the sister? Would you care to comment on how it feels to be the sister of a national heroine?’ and I was all set to say that it feels great, when these two suits practically push me back inside the house, telling me it is for my own protection. I am so sure. What I want to know is, is plastering that hideous photo of you all over the television for my protection? I mean, really, people are going to think I am related to a hideous freak—which is how you look in that photo, Sam, no offense—and believe me, that is not going to do anyone any good whatsoever.”

  It was good to know that however much some things might change, one thing, at least, always remained the same: my sister Lucy.

  So anyway, they made me spend the night in the stupid hospital. For observation, they said. But that wasn’t it. I’m sure they were still checking to make certain I didn’t secretly belong to any radical antigovernment groups, and wanted to keep an eye on me in case I tried to escape and join my comrades, or whatever.

  I tossed and turned quite a bit, unable to find a comfortable position to fall asleep in, because usually I sleep on my side, but it turns out the side I sleep on is the side I had the cast on, and I couldn’t sleep on the cast because it was all hard and lumpy, and besides, if I put any weight on it my arm would throb. Plus I missed Manet, which is kind of funny because he is so hairy and smelly you wouldn’t think I’d miss him stinking up my bed, but I totally did.

  I had finally managed to doze off when my mom—who didn’t seem to have any problem at all sleeping in the bed beside mine, and who woke looking fresh as a daisy—got up and threw back the curtains to my hospital room window, letting the morning light in. Then she went, in a manner that, to someone who ha
s hardly gotten any sleep and besides which has a very sore arm, might be somewhat irritating, “Good morning, sleepyhead.”

  But before I had time to ask what was so good about it (the morning, I mean), Mom went, in a shocked voice as she looked out the window, “Oh…my…God.”

  I got out of bed and came to see what my mom was Oh-my-God-ing about, and was shocked to see that there were about three hundred people standing along the sidewalk in front of the hospital, all looking up in the direction of my room. The minute I appeared in the window, there was this roar, and all these people started pointing up at me and waving these posters and screaming.

  My name. They were screaming my name.

  My mom and I stared at each other, slack-jawed, then looked down again. There were news vans with huge satellite dishes on their roofs, and reporters standing around with microphones, and police officers everywhere, trying to hold back the huge crowd of people who had shown up, apparently just hoping to catch a glimpse of the girl who’d saved the life of the president.

  Well, they caught a glimpse of me, all right. I mean, even though I was, like, three stories up, they sure didn’t seem to miss me. Possibly that’s because I was in two hospital gowns and had this great big wad of red bed head coming out of my scalp, but whatever. They caught a glimpse of me, all right.

  “Um,” my mom went as the two of us stood there, looking down at the big mess below. “I guess you should…I don’t know. Wave?”

  That sounded like a reasonable suggestion, so I lifted my good arm and waved.

  More cheers and applause rose from the crowd. I waved again, just to make sure it was all because of me, but there was no doubt about it: those people were cheering. Cheering for me. Me, Samantha Madison, tenth grader and celebrity drawing aficionado.

  It was incredible. Like being Elvis, or something.

  It was after I’d waved the second time that there was a knock on my door, and a nurse came in and went, “Oh, good, you’re up. We thought so when we heard the screaming.” Then she added, with a sunny smile, “A few things arrived for you. I hope you don’t mind if we bring them in now.”

  And then, without waiting for a response from us, she held the door open. A stream of candy stripers holding floral arrangements—each one bigger than the last—came pouring into my room, until every last available flat surface, including the floor, was covered with roses and daisies and sunflowers and orchids and carnations and flowers I could not identify, all overflowing from these vases and making the room smell sickly sweet.

  And there weren’t just flowers, either. There were balloon bouquets, too, dozens of them, red balloons, blue ones, white ones, pink ones, heart-shaped and metallic ones with “Thanks” and “Get Well Soon” written on them. Then came the teddy bears, twenty at least, of all different sizes and shapes, with bows at their throats and signs in their paws, signs that said things like JUST GRIN AND BEAR IT and THANK YOU BEARY MUCH!

  Seriously. I watched them come in and pile this stuff up, and all I could think was, Wait. Wait. There’s been a mistake. I don’t know anyone who would send me a Thank-you-beary-much! bear. Really. Not even as a joke.

  But they just kept coming, more and more of them. The nurses, you could tell, thought it was pretty funny. Even the Secret Service guys, standing in the doorway, seemed to be smirking behind the reflective lenses of their sunglasses.

  Only my mom seemed as stunned as I was. She kept running to each new bouquet and tearing open the card and reading the writing on it out loud in tones of wonder:

  “Thank you for your daring act of bravery. Sincerely, the U.S. Attorney General.”

  “We need more Americans like you. The mayor of the District of Columbia.”

  “For an angel on Earth, with many thanks. The people of Cleveland, Ohio.”

  “With much appreciation for your bravery under fire. The prime minister of Canada.”

  “You are an example for us all…the Dalai Lama.”

  This was way upsetting. I mean, the Dalai Lama thinks I’m an example? Um, not very likely. Not considering all the beef I have consumed in my lifetime.

  “There’s a lot more downstairs,” one of the candy stripers informed us.

  My mom looked up from a card written by the emperor of Japan. “Oh?”

  “We’re still irradiating most of the cards and running the fruit and candy through the X-ray machines,” the Secret Service guys informed us.

  “X-ray machines?” my mom echoed. “Whatever for?”

  One of the agents shrugged. “Razor blades. Tacks. Whatever. Just in case.”

  “Can’t be too careful,” the other agreed. “Lot of whackos out there.”

  My mom looked as if she didn’t feel too good after that. All her daisy freshness drained right out of her. “Oh,” she said faintly.

  It was right after this that my dad showed up with Lucy and Rebecca and Theresa in tow. Theresa gave me a knock on the back of the head for the scare I’d given her the day before.

  “Imagine how I felt,” she said, “when the policeman told me I could not get through to pick you up because there’d been a shooting. I thought you were dead!”

  Rebecca was more philosophical about the whole thing. “Sam’s not a member of the group with the highest risk of death from gun violence—males ages fifteen to thirty-four—so I wasn’t particularly worried.”

  Lucy, however, was the one with the most urgent need to see me…and alone.

  “C’mere,” she said, and pulled me into the room’s private bathroom, where she immediately locked the door behind her.

  “Bad news,” she said, speaking low but fast—the same way she spoke to her fellow squad members when she felt they hadn’t been showing enough spirit during the human pyramid. “I overheard the chief hospital administrator ask Dad when you would be ready for your press conference.”

  “Press conference?” I sat down hard on the toilet. I really thought for a second I was going to pass out. “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “Of course not,” Lucy said matter-of-factly. “You’re a national hero. Everyone is expecting you to give a press conference. But don’t worry about it. Big sister Lucy has it all under control.”

  With that, she slung her gym bag into the sink. Whatever was inside it—and I was pretty sure it was probably the entire contents of the medicine cabinet she and I shared—clanked ominously.

  “First things first,” she said. “Let’s do something about that hair.”

  It was only because I was in such a weakened physical state, what with my sleepless night and the cast and all, that Lucy got the upper hand in that bathroom. I mean, I just didn’t have the strength to fight her. I did scream once, but I guess the Secret Service guys couldn’t hear me over the sound of the shower, since they didn’t come busting in, guns drawn, to save me this time.

  But it would have taken a troop of commandos to stop Lucy. She had been waiting for this moment since the day I hit puberty, practically. Finally she had me in a position where I was powerless to stop her. She had brought with her not only a complete set of clothes for me but a small arsenal of beauty products that she seemed intent upon squirting at me as I stood trapped in the shower stall, my broken arm, in its plaster cast, sticking out like a tree branch.

  “This is awapuhi,” Lucy informed me, shooting something that smelled vaguely fruity at my head. “It’s a special Hawaiian ginger extract. Use it to wash your hair. And this is an apricot body scrub—”

  “Lucy,” I yelled as awapuhi got in my eyes, and I couldn’t, having only one free hand, get it out. “What are you trying to do to me?”

  “Saving you,” Lucy explained. “You ought to be thanking me.”

  “Thanking you? For what? Permanently blinding me with Hawaiian ginger extract?”

  “No, for attempting to transform you into something resembling a human being. Do you have any idea how humiliating it is for me to have people calling me—all night, they were calling me—going, ‘Hey, isn’t that
your sister? What happened to her? Is she in some kind of cult?’”

  When I opened my mouth to protest this unfair statement, Lucy just squeezed Aquafresh into it. While I choked, she went on, “Here, use this conditioner, it’s the kind groomers use on their horses right before a show.”

  “I”—shampoo still in my eyes, I couldn’t see Lucy, but I swung at her with my cast anyway—“am not a horse!”

  “I realize that,” Lucy said. “But you genuinely need this, Sam. Consider it an intervention…an emergency beauty intervention.” Lucy reached into the shower and shoved me back under the spray. “Rinse and repeat, please.”

  By the time Lucy was done with me, I’d been scrubbed, plucked, exfoliated, and blow-dried within an inch of my life.

  But I had to admit, I looked pretty good. I mean, I’d been kind of offended by the intervention comment. But under Lucy’s careful supervision—and detachable defuser—my hair soon lost its copper wire stiffness, and instead of sticking straight up from the top of my head was curling loosely to my shoulders. And though she didn’t quite manage to make my freckles disappear, Lucy did do something that made them not stand out so much.

  I didn’t mind the Hawaiian ginger extract, the apricot scrub, or the horse conditioner. I could handle the mascara and the foundation and the lip gloss.

  But I fully drew the line when Lucy whipped, from her gym bag, a bright blue blouse and matching skirt.

  “No way,” I said, as adamantly as I could for someone who was wearing nothing but a hospital towel, and not even a very big one. “I will wear your lipstick. I will wear your eyeliner. But I am not wearing your clothes.”

  “Sam, you don’t have any choice.” Lucy was already holding up the blouse. “All of your clothes are black. You can’t appear in front of Middle America dressed all in black. People are going to think you’re a Satan worshiper. You are going to dress like a normal person for once in your life, and you are going to like it.”