All American Girl

A lot of people did take her picture—and mine—as we walked out of our house and down to the station wagon (the Secret Service had suggested that for the next few weeks or so, it might not be such a good idea for Lucy and I to take the bus to school, so Theresa was driving us). So Lucy had been right about that, anyway.

What she wasn’t right about was that there was anything going on between me and David.

“. . . chummy,” she finished, snapping the compact shut. “Didn’t you think they looked chummy, Theresa?”

Theresa, who is not the world’s greatest driver, and who had been completely unnerved by all the photographers who had thrown themselves across the hood of the car in an effort to get my picture, only said a bunch of Spanish swearwords as the car ahead of us cut her off.

“I think you looked chummy,” Lucy said. “Definitely chummy.”

“There was nothing chummy about it,” I said. “We just ran into each other on the way out of the bathroom. That’s all.”

Rebecca, seated in the front seat, remarked, “I detected a frisson.”

Lucy and I both looked at her like she was crazy. “A what?”

A frisson,“ Rebecca said. A tremor of intense attraction. I detected one between you and David last night.”

I was flabbergasted. Because of course there’d been no such thing. I happened to be in love with Jack, not David.

Only of course I couldn’t say that. Not out loud.

“There was no frisson. There was absolutely no frisson. Where would you even get an idea like that?”

“Oh,” Rebecca replied, mildly. “From one of Lucy’s romance novels. I’ve been reading them, in an effort to improve my people skills. And there was definitely a frisson between you and David.”

No matter how many times I denied the existence of any frisson, however, both Rebecca and Lucy swore they’d seen one. Which doesn’t even make sense, since I highly doubt frissons, if they even exist, are detectable to the human eye.

And while David is cute and everything, I am totally one hundred per cent committed to Jack Slater, who, OK, does not exactly seem to love me back, but he will. One of these days, Jack will fully come to his senses, and when he does, I will be waiting.

Besides which, David so fully doesn’t like me that way. He was just being nice to me because I saved his dad. That’s all. I mean, if they’d heard the way he’d been teasing me about the whole pineapple thing, they so totally would give up on this frisson business.

But whatever. Everyone, it seemed, was determined to make my life a living hell: my sisters; the reporters staked out on my lawn; the manufacturers of certain brands of popular soft drinks, who would not stop delivering samples of their products by the caseload to my home; my own family. Even the President of the United States.

“What exactly does the teen ambassador to the United Nations do?” Catherine asked me later that day. We were standing in the lunch line, where we had stood together every weekday of my life, with the exception of my pre-K days, summers, national holidays, and that year I had spent in Morocco.

But unlike all the rest of those times, today everyone standing around us was staring at me and speaking in reverently hushed tones. One particularly shy freshman girl had come up and asked if it would be all right for her to touch my cast.

Oh, yeah. Nothing like being a national hero.

I was trying to downplay the whole thing. Really, I was. For instance, in direct defiance of Lucy’s orders, I had not risen an hour earlier for school in order to apply horse conditioner to my hair. I had not donned any of my new slacks from Banana Republic. I had on my normal, everyday, midnight-black clothes, and my hair was its normal, everyday, out-of-control mess.

Still, everyone was treating me differently. Even the teachers, who made jokes like, “For those of you who weren’t dining at the White House last night, did you happen to see the excellent documentary on Yemen on PBS?” and “Please open your textbooks to page two hundred and sixty-five—those of you who did not break your arm saving the life of the President, that is.”

Even the cafeteria workers were in on it. As I stepped up with my tray, Mrs. Krebbetts gave me a conspiratorial wink and said, “Here, honey,” then slipped me an extra piece of peanut-butter pie.

In the history of John Adams Preparatory School Mrs. Krebbetts has never slipped anyone an extra piece of peanut-butter pie. Everyone is scared of Mrs. Krebbetts, and with good reason: aggravate her, and she might deny you pie for a year.

And here she was, giving me extra pie. The world as I had once known it came crashing to an end.

“I mean, you must do something.” Catherine, having recovered from the pie incident, followed me to the table we traditionally shared with a number of girls who, like Catherine and I, were on the outer fringes of popularity—like the frozen tundra of the social geography of Adams Prep. Too anti-establishment to join the student council and not athletic enough to be jocks, most of us either played instruments or were in the drama club. I was the only artist. We were all just trying to get through high school so we could hurry up and get to college, where, we’d heard, things were better.

“I mean, teen ambassador to the UN. What are you in charge of? Is there a committee, at least?” Catherine wouldn’t let it go. “On world teen issues, or something?”

“I don’t know, Catherine,” I said, as we sat down. “The President just said he was appointing me as representative from the US. I assume there are representatives from other countries. Otherwise, what would be the point? Does anybody want an extra piece of pie?”

No one responded. That’s because everyone at the table was staring, but not at the pie. Instead, they were all staring at Lucy and Jack, who had suddenly plunked their trays down at our table.

“Hey,” Lucy said, breezily, as if she sat down at the unpopular girls’ table every day of the week. “What’s up?”

“How’d you get that extra piece of pie?” Jack wanted to know.

The thing of it was, Lucy and Jack weren’t the only ones from, you know, the other side of the caf who sat down at our table. To my astonishment, they were joined by about half the football team and a bunch of other cheerleaders too. I could see that Catherine was completely unnerved by this invasion. It was as if a bunch of swans had suddenly taken over the duck pond. All of us mallards weren’t quite sure what to do with ourselves in the face of so much beauty.

“What are you doing?” I whispered to Lucy.

Lucy just shrugged as she sipped her Diet Coke. “Since you won’t come to us,” she said, “we came to you.”

“Hey, Sam,” Jack said, whipping a pen out from the pocket of his black trenchcoat. “I’ll sign your cast for you.”

“Ooh,” cried Debbie Kinley, her pom-poms twitching excitedly. “Me, too! I want to sign her cast too.”

I yanked my arm out of their reach and went, “Uh, no, thanks.”

Jack looked crestfallen. “I was just going to draw a disaffected youth on it,” he explained. “That’s all.”

A disaffected youth would have been cool, I had to admit. But if I let Jack draw on my cast, then everybody would want to, and soon all that lovely whiteness would be a big old mess. But if I said only Jack could draw on it, then everyone would know about my secret crush on my sister’s boyfriend.

“Um, thanks anyway,” I said. “But I’m saving my cast for my own stuff.”

I felt bad about being mean to Jack. He was, after all, my soulmate.

Still, I wish he’d hurry up and realize it, and quit hanging out with Lucy and her dopey friends. Because these guys were acting like total idiots, tossing corn chips at one another and trying to catch them in their mouths. It was revolting. Also irritating because they kept jostling the table, making it hard for those of us who had to eat one-handed to keep our food steady. I realize that football players are very large and maybe can’t help shaking the table, but still, they could have shown a little restraint.

“Hey,” I said, when one of the corn chips landed in Catherine’s apple sauce. “Cut it out, you guys.”

Lucy, poring over a magazine article about how to get perfect thighs—which she, of course, already had—went, in a bored voice, “Geez. Just because she’s getting a medal, she thinks she’s all that,” which is totally unfair, because what was I supposed to do, just meekly accept the whole corn-chip-in-the-apple-sauce thing?

Catherine stared at me, wide-eyed. “You’re getting a medal too? You’re teen ambassador to the UN, and you’re getting a medal?”

Unfortunately so. A presidential medal of valour, to be exact. The ceremony was going to be held in December, when the White House was decorated all Christmassy, for optimum photogenic effect.

But I didn’t have time to reply. That’s because my second slice of pie suddenly disappeared and travelled down the row of football players like a frisbee in a game of keep-away.

“MAY I PLEASE HAVE MY PIE BACK?” I yelled, because I’d been planning on giving the extra piece to Jack.

Lucy, of course, didn’t know this. She just went, “God, it’s just a piece of pie. Believe me, you do not need the extra calories,” a typically Lucy remark to which I started to respond, until I was distracted by an all-too-familiar voice behind me.

“Hello, Samantha.”

I turned to see Kris Parks—looking like the perfect class president that she was, clad in Benetton from head to toe, including the pink cashmere sweater thrown oh-so-casually across her shoulders—simpering down at me.

“Here’s the invitation to my party,” Kris said, handing me a piece of folded paper. “I really hope you can come. I know we’ve had our differences in the past, but I’d really like it if we could bury the hatchet and be friends. I’ve always admired you, you know, Sam. You really, really, um, stick to your convictions. And I didn’t mind paying for the drawings. Really.”

I just stared up at her. I couldn’t believe any of this was happening. Really, out of all of it—the caseloads of soda, the Thank You Beary Much bears, having dinner at the White House—the fact that Kris Parks—Kris Parks—was sucking up to me was the strangest thing of all. I was starting to know how Cinderella probably felt after the Prince finally found her and got the shoe to fit. Her stepsisters had probably sucked up to her pretty much the same way Kris Parks was sucking up to me.

The thing was, though, like Cinderella I totally didn’t have the heart to tell Kris where to go. I should have. I know I should have.

But it was like this: why? I mean, what was the point? So she’d been a bitch to me her whole life. Like my being a bitch back to her was going to teach her a lesson? Bitchiness was all she knew.

Kindness. That was what Kris Parks needed. An example to follow. Someone whose gracious behaviour she could emulate.

“I don’t know,” I said, slipping the invitation into my backpack instead of following my instincts and tossing it into the nearest trash receptacle. “I’ll have to see.”

Leave it to Lucy to ruin everything by going, without taking her gaze off the magazine in her hands, “She’ll be there.”

Kris sucked in her breath excitedly. “You will? Great!”

“Actually,” I said, shooting Lucy a glare that she missed because she was studying an article about proper cuticle maintenance, “I’m not sure I can go, Luce.”

“Sure you can,” Lucy said, flipping the page. “You and David and Jack and I can all go together.”

“David?” I echoed. “Who said anything about—”

“I just think it is so sweet,” Kris said with a sigh. “About you and the President’s son and all. When Lucy told me, I nearly died.”

“When Lucy told you what?” I demanded.

“Well, about the two of you going out, of course,” Kris said, in some surprise.

I really could have killed Lucy then. I mean, you should have seen what happened when Kris uttered these words. Catherine, who’d been gnawing on a chicken leg, watching the whole little drama unfold before her, dropped the chicken leg into her lap. All the cheerleaders stopped gossiping and turned to look at me like I was some kind of new sparkly nail polish, or something. Even Jack, who by then had gotten my piece of pie back, paused with a bite of it halfway to his lips and said, “No freakin‘ way.”

I mean, it was a little upsetting.

“Right,” I said. “Jack is absolutely right. No freaking way. I am not going out with him. OK? I am not going out with the President’s son.”

But Kris was already babbling, “Don’t worry about it, Sam, I am the soul of discretion. I won’t say a word to anyone. Do you think reporters will show up, though? I mean, at my party? Because if anyone wants to interview me, you know, that’s all right. They can even take my picture. If you want me to sign a waiver, or whatever . . .”

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. OK?”

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

Really, if anybody deserves to be pinched, and on a daily basis, it’s 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 O’Donnell picks you as team captain for the first time all year, and when it comes to choosing players, all the good athletes actually beg to be on your team.

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

7. The Adams Prep Red Steppers—who perform at half-time 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 paint brushes and other supplies for the art department,” your suggestion is seconded, put to the general assembly for a vote . . .

And wins.

It only took about two hours for it to make it 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 may or may 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 soulmate, 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 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 media, what they see every day from their window’.”

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 next 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 German 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 kind of want to go.”

I was speechless. If Catherine had said she was thinking of shaving her head and joining the Hari 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 confidently 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 does frequently, to complain that I’ve been on too long and that she needs 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 had always 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 is 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 theatre 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 make-up. He told me he prefers a girl who wears no make-up. Um, that would be me. Well, except for concealer. And mascara. And lip gloss. But other than that, I wear no make-up 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 the 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. Libra and Aquarius 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 favourite book too. Right after Catch-22 and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

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 favourite 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.

“Excuse me,” Theresa yelled. She double-parked (it was unlikely the car was going to get towed with half a dozen cameramen draped over it) and, shielding me with her leopard-print raincoat, and using her elbows and purse as battering rams, ran with me to the studio door.

“Samantha,” the reporters yelled as we went barrelling through them. “How do you feel about the fact that Larry Wayne Rogers has been judged incompetent to stand trial due to mental illness?”

“Samantha,” someone else screamed. “What political party do your parents belong to?”

“Samantha,” another one called. “America wants to know: Coke or Pepsi?”

“Jesu Cristo” Theresa yelled at someone who made the mistake of tugging on her purse to keep us within microphone reach a little longer. “Hands off the bag! That’s Louis Vuitton, in case you didn’t notice!”

Then we burst into the bottom of the stairwell leading up to Susan Boone’s . . .

... practically running over David and John, who had apparently come in just seconds ahead of us, though I hadn’t noticed them in the crowd.

Theresa was so mad about someone having touched her purse, she couldn’t say anything except Spanish swearwords for a whole minute. John, David’s Secret Service agent, tried to calm her down by saying that he had called for police back-up and an officer was going to escort her back to her car. Also that the reporters would be held back by barricades when we came out again.

I looked at David, and noticed that he was smiling his secret little smile again. He had on a Blink 182 T-shirt under his brown suede jacket today, indicating that his musical taste was not, as I sometimes feared mine was, too restrictive. The shirt was black, which somehow seemed to bring out the green in his eyes more than ever. Either that, or it was just the lighting in the stairwell, or something.

“Hey,” David said to me, the secret smile getting a little wider.

I don’t know why, but something about that smile made my heart do this weird skittering thing.

But that, of course, was impossible. I mean, I don’t even like David. I like Jack.

Then for some reason I remembered Rebecca and her stupid frisson thing. Was that it? I wondered. Was it frisson when you saw a guy smile and it made your heart act all weird?

All I could say was, I was glad David didn’t go to Adams Prep and so hadn’t heard all the Lincoln Bedroom stuff that had been going around. I mean, it was bad enough I felt frisson for the guy. The last thing I needed was him knowing everyone in my entire school seemed to know it.

Just the thought that I could feel frisson for anyone but Jack put me in a really bad mood.

Or maybe it had been all the reporters. In any case, instead of saying hi or whatever to David, I went, “Doesn’t all that bother you?” I jerked my cast in the direction of the reporters. “I mean, that’s just scary, and you’re smiling.”

“You think the press is scary?” David asked. Now he wasn’t just smiling. He was laughing. “Aren’t you the girl who jumped on the back of a crazy man who was holding a gun?”

I blinked at him. Laughing, I couldn’t help noticing, David looked even better than when he was smiling.

But I quickly squelched any such notion and said, in a business-like way, “That wasn’t scary. It was just what I had to do. You’d have done it, if you’d been there.”

“I wonder,” David said, thoughtfully.

And then Theresa opened the door to go back out again, and all chance of having a conversation in the stairwell was lost in the shouts of the reporters. John kind of herded us up the stairs, and we went in and there were the benches, exactly as they’d been the last—and only—time I’d been there. The only real difference was that the fruit that had been on the table in the middle of the circle of benches was gone. Instead there was just this white egg sitting there. I thought maybe Susan Boone had forgotten part of her lunch, or something. Either that or Joseph was really Josephine and nobody had bothered to mention it to me.

“So,” David said, as we settled on to our benches and got our drawing pads all ready and stuff. “What’s it going to be today? Pineapple again? Or are you going to try for something a little more seasonal. . . squash, perhaps?”

“Would you shut up already,” I said, not loudly enough for anyone else to hear, “about the pineapple thing?” I couldn’t believe I had actually experienced frisson for a guy who did nothing but tease me.

“Oh, sorry,” David said, but he didn’t look very sorry. I mean, he was still smiling. “I forgot about you being a sensitive artist and all.”

“Just because I’m not willing,” I muttered, glaring at Susan Boone, who was over at the slop sink rinsing out some brushes, “to have my creative impulses stamped out by some art dictator doesn’t mean I am overly sensitive.”

Both of David’s eyebrows went up at the same time. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

“Susan Boone,” I said, sending a dirty look in the Elf Queen’s direction. “This whole draw-what-you-see thing. I mean, it’s bogus.”

“Bogus?” David had finally stopped smiling. Now he just looked confused. “How is it bogus?”

“Because where would the art world be,” I whispered, “if Picasso only drew what he saw?”

David blinked at me. “Picasso did only draw what he saw,” he said. “For years and years. It was only after he’d mastered the ability to draw whatever he was looking at with absolute precision that Picasso began experimenting with perceptions of line and space.”

I stared at him. “What?” I asked intelligently. I hadn’t understood a word he’d said.

David said, “Look, it’s simple. Before you can start trying to change the rules, you have to learn what the rules are. That’s what Susan is trying to teach us. She just wants you to learn to draw what you see first, before you move on to cubism, or pineapple-ism, or whatever-ism it is you choose eventually to espouse.”

It was my turn to blink. This was all news to me. Jack had certainly never said anything about getting to know the rules before trying to break them. And Jack knew all about breaking the rules. I mean, wasn’t that what he was always doing in order to show people—like his dad, and all those people at the country club, and Mr. Esposito, back at school—the error of their ways?

Then Susan Boone stepped away from the sink and clapped her hands.

“OK,” she said. “As I’m sure all of you know by now, there was some excitement last week after class—” This caused some laughter from Gertie and Lynn and the others. “—maybe a little more excitement for some of us than others—” Susan Boone smiled meaningfully at me. “But we’re all here now, and thankfully unscathed . . . well, for the most part. So let’s get back to work, shall we? See this egg?” Susan Boone pointed to the egg on the table in front of us. “Today I want you all to paint this egg. Those of you who are unaccustomed to paint may use coloured pencils or chalk.”

I looked at the egg on the table. It was sitting on a piece of white silk. I looked down at the handful of coloured pencils she had dropped on to my bench. There wasn’t a single white one.

I sighed, and raised my hand.

Well, what was I supposed to do? I mean, this woman had practically blackmailed me into coming back to her class and then, when I get there, she doesn’t even give me a white-coloured pencil . . . yet she expects me to draw what I see? What gives? I mean, I am all for learning the rules before I break them, but this didn’t seem like it was even on the rule list.

“Yes, Sam,” Susan said, coming over to my bench.

“Yeah,” I said, putting my hand down. “I don’t have a white-coloured pencil.”

“No, you don’t,” Susan Boone said. Then she just smiled down at me and started to walk away.

“Wait,” I said, conscious that David, who was sitting next to me, was probably listening. He looked pretty absorbed in his own painting, which he’d started as soon as Susan Boone put the egg down, but you never knew.

“How am I supposed to draw a white egg sitting on a white sheet when I don’t have a white pencil?” I didn’t mean to sound whiny, or anything. I really couldn’t figure out what it was Susan Boone wanted. I mean, was I supposed to work with negative space, or something? Just put in the shadows and leave the rest white? What?

Susan Boone looked at the egg. Then she said the most astonishing thing I had heard in a while, and I had heard some pretty astonishing things lately, not the least of which was that I was a hero, and my best friend Catherine wanted to be part of the In Crowd:

“I don’t see any white there,” Susan Boone said mildly.

I looked at her like she was crazy. Why, that egg and that sheet were as white as ... well, as white as the hair streaming down her shoulders.

“Um,” I said. “Excuse me?”

Susan bent down so that she was looking at the egg on my same eye level.

“Remember what I said, Sam,” she said. “Draw what you see, not what you know. You know there is a white egg on a white sheet in front of you. But do you really see any white there? Or do you see the pink reflected from the sun in the window? Or the blue and purple of the shadows beneath the egg? The yellow of the overhead light, where it is reflected on the top curve of the egg. The faint green where the silk meets the table. Those are the colours I see. No white. No white at all.”

It didn’t seem to me that, in any part of this speech, there was anything remotely smacking of an attempt to stamp out my natural creativity and style. You have to learn the rules, David had pointed out, before you can break them. Susan Boone was really trying, just as he had said, to get me to see.

So I looked. I looked hard. Harder, really, than I’d ever looked at anything before.

And I saw.

It sounds dumb, I know. I mean, I’ve always been able to see. I have twenty-twenty vision.

But suddenly, I saw:

I saw the purple shadow beneath the egg.

I saw the pink light from the sun outside the window.

I even saw the little yellow moon of light reflected on the top of the egg.

And so, moving really fast, I picked up the first pencil I could reach, and started sketching.

Here is what I love about drawing:

When you are drawing, it is like the whole world around you ceases to exist. It is just you and the page and the pencil, and maybe the soft classical music in the background or whatever, but you don’t actually hear it because you are so absorbed in what you are doing. When you are drawing, you are not aware of time passing, or what is happening around you. When a drawing is going really well, you could sit down at one o’clock and not look up again until five, and not even have any idea that so much time has gone by until someone mentions it, because you have been so caught up in what you are creating.

There is really nothing in the world, I have found, that is like it. Watching movies? Reading? Not really. Not unless the story is really really good. And very few are. When you are drawing, you are in your own world, of your own creation.

And there is no world better than that.

Which is why, when you are that deeply engrossed in a drawing and something happens to bring you out of that world, it is about a hundred times as annoying as when you are doing Geometry or something and your sister comes barging into your room to ask if she can borrow a scrunchie or whatever. When you are drawing and someone does something like that, I think it would be almost justifiable to murder that person.

Of course, if the person is a big black crow, you would be even more justified.

“SQUAWK,” Joe the crow yelled in my ear as he yanked a half dozen hairs from the top of my head, then took off, his wings flapping noisily.

I screamed.

I couldn’t help it. I had been so involved in my drawing, I had been completely unaware of the bird’s approach, totally oblivious to his sneak attack. I didn’t scream so much because what he’d done hurt—although it did—but because I just wasn’t expecting it.

“Joseph,” Susan Boone cried, clapping her hands. “Bad bird! Bad bird!”

Joe fled to the safety of his cage, where he dropped my hairs and let out a triumphant, “Pretty bird!”

“You are not a pretty bird,” Susan Boone corrected him, like he could actually understand her. “You are a very bad bird.” Then she turned around and said to me, “Oh, Samantha, I am so sorry. Are you all right?”

I touched the raw place on my scalp Joe had created. As I did so, I looked around and noticed something: the light had changed. It was no longer pink. The sun had set. It was already after five, but to me, only about two minutes seemed to have passed since I’d started drawing, not nearly two hours.

“I forgot to lock his cage,” Susan was saying. “I’ll have to remember to do that every time you’re here. I have no idea why he is so obsessed with your hair. I mean, it is very bright, but. . .”

It was around this time that I began to notice that the bench next to mine was shaking. I looked over there to see if David was having a seizure or something, then realized he wasn’t seizing at all. He was laughing.

He noticed my gaze and said, between gasps from laughing so hard, “I’m sorry! I swear, I’m sorry! But if you could have seen your face when that bird landed on you . . .”

I can take a joke as well as the next person, but I did not happen to think this one was particularly funny. It hurts when someone—or something—pulls out your hair. Not as much as breaking your wrist, maybe, but still.

David, whose shoulders—not as big as Jack’s but still undeniably impressive as guys’ shoulders go—were still shaking with laughter, went, “Come on. You gotta admit. That was funny.”

Of course he was right. It had been funny.

But before I had a chance to confess this, Susan Boone was at my side, looking down at my drawing. Since she was looking at it, I looked at it too. I had, of course, been looking at it all afternoon. But this was my first chance to sit back and really see what I had done.

And I couldn’t believe what I saw. It was a white egg. Sitting on a piece of white silk. It looked exactly like the white egg and the white silk in front of me.

But I hadn’t used a single bit of white.

“There,” Susan Boone said, in a satisfied voice. “You’ve got it. I knew you would.”

Then she patted me on the head in a distracted way, right on the tender spot where her crow had stolen my hair.

But it didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt at all. Because I knew Susan Boone was right: I had got it.

I had begun, finally, to see.

Top ten Duties of the US Teen Ambassador to the UN, as Perceived by Me, Samantha Madison:

10. Sit around in the White House press secretary’s office and listen to him gloat over how high the President’s public approval rating has shot in the wake of the botched assassination attempt on him.

9. Also listen to the press secretary moan about how the city is complaining about all the cops they keep having to dispatch to my house to keep away the press, and why can’t I just go on Dateline or 60 Minutes and get interviewed already. Then after they show it a million times, everybody will get sick of me and leave me alone.

Yeah. Like I have anything to say that the American viewing public will find even remotely interesting. As if.

8. Make photocopies of the rules and regulations of the international From My Window art show for all of my artistic friends, of which I have one, my sister’s boyfriend and my soulmate, Jack Slater.

7. Autograph photos of myself for all the kids who are writing in asking for signed photos of me. Though why anyone would want to hang a photo of me in their room is completely beyond me.

6. Read my fan mail (after it has been irradiated and checked for razor blades and explosives). An enormous segment of the population seems to feel the need to write to me to tell me how brave they find me. Some of them even send me money. Unfortunately, this money is immediately put into a trust fund to send me to college, so it is not like I can buy CDs with it.

I also supposedly get a lot of letters from pervs but I don’t even get to see those. The press secretary keeps all those in a special file and won’t let me bring them to school to show Catherine.

5. In spite of the fact that the UN is in New York, no one has shown any sign of actually taking me there. To New York, I mean. Apparently, actually going to the UN isn’t really part of the top ten duties of the Teen Ambassador to the UN.

4. Bouncing a Superball off the side of the wall of the press secretary’s office, while it helps to pass the time while I am stuck in there, which I am supposed to be every Wednesday afternoon, is not technically a duty of the Teen Ambassador to the UN and only serves to annoy the press secretary and his staff, who confiscated the ball and told me I could have it back when my tenure as Teen Ambassador was over. Apparently they are unaware of the fact that you can buy Superballs on just about every street corner, and for less than a dollar.

3. Teen Ambassadors to the UN are not encouraged to roam around loose in the White House hallways, however familiar with the layout they might be, as they could inadvertently, while checking to see if there happened to be a portrait of Dolly Madison hanging in the Vermeil Room, stumble across a peace summit.

2. It is strongly advised that Teen Ambassadors to the UN do not dress all in black, as this, according to the White House press secretary, may give the public the false impression that the United States’s Teen Ambassador is a practising witch.

And the number one duty of the United States Teen Ambassador to the UN, so far as I can tell:

1. Sit still. Keep quiet. And let the press secretary do his work.

“He said yes!”

That was how Catherine greeted me at school Thursday morning. I had just fought through a throng of about a hundred reporters to get from the car to the front entrance of John Adams Preparatory School, so I have to admit my ears were kind of ringing from all the yelling (“Samantha, what do you think of the situation in the Middle East?” “Coke or Pepsi, Samantha?” etc.). But I was pretty sure this was what Catherine had said.

“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 about Catherine having 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. 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 I had: 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 OK 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 (fifteen, the age I am now; twenty-one, the age I’d like to be; and eight, 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 hoe down?”

“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 would have to hold a gun to my head before I’d 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, saving the President’s life kind of helped, but 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 any more. 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 lying to your parents 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. “OK? 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—”

“OK,” I said.

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

“OK.” I wasn’t happy about it, but what could I do? She was my best friend. “OK, 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. “OK? 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 White-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 you 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 OK, 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 window sill. “It’s perfect!”

It was perfect too. Later that day, when Joe hopped on to 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 colour in a white egg on Tuesday, our challenge today was to draw something that had every colour in the rainbow in it but still retained 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. I couldn’t help noticing that when David laughed, he looked even cuter than when he was smiling. 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 window sill 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 Dolly Madison. Plus getting me that burger. Oh, and carving my name on the window sill.

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.

AndAnd the number one—and most likely—reason I asked David to Kris’s party:

1. To make Jack jealous, of course. Because it is entirely possible that if he sees me with another boy, he will realize that he could, if he does not act soon, lose me, and that might galvanize him into admitting his true feelings for me at last.

At least, I hope so.

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 OK 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 hint 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 some day, 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 ride a Harley (again, I’m only guessing here, but it seems unlikely), he is the son of the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.

OK? 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 that 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 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 licence in the District of Columbia). Then I pointed out how we were going to go eat somewhere ALONE before the 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 am seriously considering flunking German, just to get back at them.

The way they’ve been acting lately, though, they’ll 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.”

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 barrelling 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 behaviour.

“That’s OK,” 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 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 on to 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 colour 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 OK 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:

1) him

2) you and him

3) 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 on to 34th 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. I mean, 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 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 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 ways 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 burnt 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 DC, and how much he hates Horizon where everyone is super competitive and all the emphasis is on science and not the arts, and people who like to draw, like him, are 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 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 OK?”

“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.

“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, “OK.”

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. She 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 honour 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 fliers for him.”

“Thanks,” David said, still smiling, only beginning to look like he might have wanted 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, being part of the unpopular set? Houses bursting to 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 the 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 a laundry room.

And wouldn’t you know it? My sister and Jack were in there, making out on top of the dryer.

Lucy let out a squeal and hopped down from the dryer.

“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.”

By girls, of course, she meant the rest of the cheerleading squad.

“Luce,” I said. “Come on. Not tonight.”

“Oh, don’t be such a spoilsport,” Lucy said. “Stay here with Jack, I’ll be right back. There’re some people who are dying to meet the real live son of an actual President . . .”

And before I could say another word, she’d taken off, leaving me alone with Jack.

Who regarded me thoughtfully over the plastic cup he’d just drained.

“So,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“Good,” I said. “Surprisingly good. Thursday, Susan Boone, she made us draw this huge chunk of meat, and it was really cool because I’d never really looked at meat before, you know? I mean, there is a lot going on in meat—”

“That’s great,” Jack said, apparently not realizing he was interrupting me, even though the music wasn’t nearly as loud in the laundry room. “Did you get my painting?”

I looked up at him, uncomprehending. “What painting?”

“My entry,” he said. “In the From My Window contest.”

“Oh,” I said. “No. I mean, I don’t know, I’m sure they got it. I just haven’t seen it yet. I haven’t seen any of the paintings.”

“Well, you’re going to love it,” Jack said. “It took me three days. It’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”

Then Jack started describing the painting to me in great detail. He was still going on about it a few minutes later when David showed up in the doorway.

I brightened when I saw him. I couldn’t help it. Even though the object of my affections was standing right there beside me, I was glad to see David. I told myself it was only because that story about the salad-serving utensils had been so cute. It had nothing to do with the whole frisson thing. Nothing at all.

“Hey,” David said, with the grin I now realized was practically his trademark. “I wondered where you’d disappeared to.”

“David,” I said. “This is my sister Lucy’s boyfriend, Jack. Jack, this is David.”

David and Jack shook hands. Standing together, I saw that actually they looked a lot alike. I mean they were both over six feet tall, and dark-haired. There I guess the resemblance sort of ended though, since Jack’s hair was shoulder-length, while David’s only just hit his collar. And Jack, of course, had the ankh earring, while both of David’s lobes were unpierced. Of course Jack also had on his party clothes—Army fatigues with a long black coat—while David was dressed pretty conservatively.

I guess they didn’t look that much alike after all.

“David’s in my art class,” I said, to break the awkward silence that immediately followed their handshake.

Jack crumpled up his plastic cup and said, “Oh, you mean your conformity class?”

David looked confused. And no wonder. Jack is a very intense person, who needs some getting used to.

I said, hurriedly, “No, Jack, it turns out it’s not like that. I was totally wrong about Susan Boone. She just wants me to learn to draw what I see before I go off, you know, and do my own thing. You have to learn what the rules are, you see, before you can go around breaking them.”

Jack, staring at me, went, “What?”

“No, really,” I said, sensing he wasn’t getting what I was saying. “I mean, you know Picasso? He spent years learning to draw, you know, whatever he saw. It wasn’t until he’d totally mastered that that he started experimenting with colour and form.”

Only Jack, instead of finding this particular fact endlessly interesting, as I had, looked scornful.

“Sam,” he said. “I can’t believe you, of all people, would fall for that pedagogic bull.”

“Excuse me?” David sounded kind of mad.

Jack raised both his eyebrows. “Uh, I don’t think I was talking to you, First Boy.”

“Jack,” I said, a little shocked. I mean, Jack is an amazingly artistic person, and having that kind of, you know, creative energy bouncing around inside can be exhausting (as I well know). But that’s no reason to call anybody names. “What is wrong with you?”

“What is wrong with me?” Jack laughed, but not like he actually thought anything was very funny. “That’s not the question. The question is, what is wrong with you? I mean, you used to think for yourself, Sam. But now all of a sudden you’re falling for all this “draw what you see” crap like it’s been handed down from the gods on a freaking stone tablet. What happened to questioning authority? What happened to making up your own mind about the creative process and how it functions?”

“Jack,” I said. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I mean, Jack had always said it was imperative for artists to be open to all new things so that they could soak in knowledge like a sponge. Only Jack certainly wasn’t acting very sponge-like. “I did make up my own mind. I—”

“Hey, you guys.” Lucy suddenly reappeared, a posse of cheerleaders, each one wearing more body glitter and Lycra than the next, trailing along behind her. “Oh, hey, David, I’ve got some friends who want to meet—”

But I was still trying to make Jack understand.

“I looked it up, Jack,” I said. “David’s right. Picasso was a technical virtuoso before he began experimenting with line and—”

“David,” Jack said, rolling his eyes. “Oh, yes, I am sure David knows all about art. Because I’m sure he’s had paintings publicly exhibited before.”

Lucy looked from Jack to David to me, as if trying to figure out what was going on. When she spoke, it was to Jack. “Like you have?” she asked, with one raised eyebrow.

Lucy really is the most unsupportive girlfriend I have ever seen.

“Yes,” Jack said. “As a matter of fact I have had my paintings exhibited—”

“In the mall,” Lucy pointed out.

Jack didn’t even look at Lucy, though. He was looking at me. I could feel his pale-blue eyes boring into me.

“If I didn’t know better, Sam,” he said, “I’d think it wasn’t your arm you broke that day you saved this guy’s dad, but your brain.”

“OK,” David said. There was no trace of that secretive little smile on his face now. “Look, dude, I don’t know what your problem is, but—”

“My problem?” Jack jabbed a finger at himself. “I’m not the one with the problem, dude. You’re the one who seems so perfectly willing to let your individuality be sapped by a—”

“OK,” Lucy said in a bored voice, slipping between Jack and David and laying both hands on the front of Jack’s long black coat. “That’s it. Outside, Jack.”

Jack looked down at her as if noticing her for the first time. “But,” he said, “Luce, this guy started it.”

“Right,” Lucy said, pushing Jack backwards towards a door that seemed to lead into the backyard. “Sure he did. Let’s just step outside and get some air. How many beers have you had, anyway?”

Then they were gone, leaving David and me alone. With Lucy’s cheerleading squad.

David looked down at me and went, “What’s with that guy, anyway?”

Still looking after Jack—whom I could see through the screen door, gesturing wildly to Lucy as he explained his side of the story—I murmured, “He’s not so bad. He just, you know. Has the soul of an artist.”

“Yeah,” David said. “And the brains of an orangutan.”

I glanced back at him, sharply. I mean, that was my soulmate he was talking about.

“Jack Slater,” I said, “happens to be very, very talented. Not only that, but he is a rebel. A radical. Jack’s paintings don’t just reflect the plight of the urban youth of today. They make a powerful statement about our generation’s apathy and lack of moral rectitude.”

The look David gave me was a strange one. It seemed equal parts disbelief and confusion.

“What?” he said. “Do you like that guy or something, Sam?”

Lucy’s friends, who were listening—and watching—closely, tittered. I could feel colour rush into my cheeks. I was hotter now than I’d been back in the restaurant.

But it was weird. I couldn’t tell whether I was blushing because of David’s question, or the way he was looking at me. Really. Not for the first time that night, I was having trouble meeting those green eyes of his. Something about them ... I don’t know . . . was making me feel really uncomfortable.

I couldn’t tell him the truth, of course. Not with the entire Adams Prep varsity cheerleading team standing there, staring at us. I mean, the last thing I needed was the whole school knowing that I’m in love with my sister’s boyfriend.

So I went, “Duh. He’s Lucy’s boyfriend, not mine.”

“I didn’t ask you whose boyfriend he was,” David said, and I realized with a sinking heart he wasn’t going to let me off as easy as all that. “I asked if you like him.”

I didn’t want to, but it was like I couldn’t help it. Something made me lift my gaze to meet his.

And for a minute, it was like I was looking at a guy I had never met before. I mean, not like he was the President’s son, but like he was a really cute, funny guy who happened to be in my art class and was into the same kind of music I was and happened to like my boots. It was kind of like I was seeing David—the real David—for the very first time.

I had opened my mouth to say something—I have no idea what; something lame, I’m sure; I was pretty freaked by the whole thing, most especially by how sweaty my palms had got all of a sudden, and how hard my heart was beating—but I never got a chance to. That’s because somebody behind the cheerleaders called out, ‘There you are!“ and Kris Parks came bearing down on us with like sixty people in tow, all of whom, she claimed, were just dying to meet the son of the President of the United States.

And David, exactly the way a politician’s son should, went to shake their hands, without another single glance at me.

“It’s not your fault,” Catherine, across the room on my couch, said. “I mean, you can’t help that you’re in love with Jack.”

I was curled up in my bed, Manet snoring softly at my side.

“You met Jack first,” Catherine said, through the darkness all around us. “What does David think, anyway? You were just supposed to wait around and not fall in love with anybody else until he rode up on his big white horse? I mean, it’s not like you’re Cinderella, or something.”

“I think,” I said, to the ceiling, “that David kind of thought if I was asking him to some party that there was a possibility I might like him, and not some other guy.”

“Well, that was very old-fashioned of him,” Catherine said firmly. Now that Catherine had been on her first date, and it had turned out to be a successful one—Paul had kissed her goodnight on my very front porch. On the lips, she’d informed me proudly afterwards—she seemed to think she was some kind of expert on love. In between worrying that her parents were going to find out. Not so much about Paul, I think, as about the black jeans and the party.

“I mean, you are an attractive and vital girl,” Catherine went on. “You can’t be expected to just stick with one man. You have to play the field. It’s absurd that at the age of fifteen you should settle down with just one guy.”

“Yeah,” I said, with a short laugh. “Especially one who is in love with my sister.”

“Jack only thinks he is in love with Lucy,” Catherine said firmly. “We both know that. What happened tonight was just evidence that he is finally becoming aware of his deep and abiding affection for you. I mean, why else would he have been so mean to David if it wasn’t for the fact that the sight of you with another man drove him into a jealous rage?”

I said, “I think he just had one too many beers.”

“Not true,” Catherine said. “I mean, that might have been part of it, but he was definitely threatened. Threatened by what he perceived as your happiness with another.”

I rolled over—disturbing Manet, who went on snoring, not at all—and stared at Catherine’s dim form in the darkness of my bedroom.

“Have you been reading Lucy’s Cosmo again?” I asked.

Catherine sounded guilty. “Well. Yes. She left one in the bathroom.”

I rolled back over to stare at the ceiling. It was kind of hard to tell what I should be thinking about everything that had happened that night when the only person with whom I could safely discuss it was spouting advice she’d garnered from the Bedside Astrologer.

“So did he kiss you goodnight?” Catherine asked shyly. “David, I mean?”

I snorted. Yeah, David had really felt like kissing me after that whole thing with Jack and the Adams Prep cheerleading squad. In fact, he had barely spoken to me for the rest of the night. Instead, he’d gone around making the acquaintance of half the student population of my school. Evidently not by nature a shy sort of person, David hadn’t seemed to mind a bit being the centre of attention. In fact, he’d looked like he was having a pretty good time as Kris Parks and her cronies hung on his every word, laughing like hyenas every time he made a joke.

It wasn’t until around eleven-thirty—Theresa, who was babysitting while my parents were at a dinner party they hadn’t left for until after David picked me up, had given us a twelve o’clock curfew—that he finally looked around for me. I was sitting by myself in a corner, looking through Kris’s mom’s copies of Good Housekeeping (who said I don’t know how to have a good time?) and trying to ignore the people who kept coming up to me and asking if they could have my autograph (or, conversely, if they could sign my cast).

“Ready?” David asked. I said I was. I went and told Catherine that we were leaving, then found Kris—I noticed I didn’t have to look very far; she was practically tracking David’s every move—and said thanks and goodbye. Then David and John and I headed back out to the car.

Cleveland Park isn’t really all that far from Chevy Chase, where Kris lives, but I swear that ride home was one of the longest in my life. Nobody said anything. Anything! Thank God for Gwen, singing her heart out over the stereo.

Still, I noticed that for the first time ever, the sound of Gwen Stefani’s voice didn’t exactly make me feel better. The worst part was, I didn’t even know what I had to feel so badly about. I mean, OK, so David knew I liked Jack. Big deal. I mean, is there some kind of federal law that prohibits girls from liking their sister’s boyfriend? I don’t think so.

By the time we pulled up to my house, however, the silence in the car (aside from Gwen) was oppressive. I turned to David—God knew I didn’t expect him to walk me to the door or anything—and went, “Well, thanks for coming with me.”

To my very great surprise, he opened his car door and went, “I’ll walk you up.”

Which I can’t say exactly thrilled me, or anything. Because I had a feeling he was going to let me have it.

And, halfway up the steps to the porch, he did.

“You know,” he said. “You really had me fooled, Sam.”

I glanced at him, wondering what was coming next, and knowing I probably wasn’t going to like it. “I did? How?”

“I thought you were different,” he said. “You know, with the boots and the black and all of that. I thought you were really ... I don’t know. The genuine article. I didn’t know you were doing it all to get a guy.”

I stopped in the middle of the steps and stared up at him, which was kind of hard, since the porch light was on, and it was burning in my eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Well, isn’t that it?” David asked. “I mean, wasn’t that why you asked me to the party too? It had nothing to do with wanting to help your friend to feel like she fits in. You were using me to try to make that Jack guy jealous.”

“I was not!” I cried, hoping he, too, was being blinded by the porch light. That way he wouldn’t be able to see that my cheeks were on fire, I was blushing so hard. “David, that’s ... I mean, that’s just ridiculous.”

“Is it? I don’t think so.”

We’d reached my front door. David stood looking down at me, his expression unreadable . . . and not because I was being blinded by the porch light any more, but because he really had no expression—no expression at all on his face.

“It’s too bad,” he said. “I really thought you weren’t like any of the other girls I know.”

And with a polite goodnight—that’s it, just a ‘Goodnight’—he turned around and went back down to the car. He didn’t even look back. Not once.

Not that I could blame him, I guess. Despite Catherine’s assertion that boys ought to know girls our age are ‘playing the field’ (which sounds pretty funny coming from her, Miss-I-Just-Went-Out-With-A-Boy-For-The-First-Time-Ever-Tonight), I imagine it might kind of suck to find out the person who’d asked you out really liked someone else—would even rather have been out with that person, instead.

I don’t know. I guess I could see why David was kind of peeved with me.

But come on. I’d asked him to a party, not to marry me, or anything. It was just a party. What was the big deal?

And what was all that junk about being wrong about me being different from all the other girls he knew? How many other girls did he know who’d saved his dad’s life lately? Uh, not that many, I was willing to bet.

Still, the evening wasn’t a total washout. Some of my celebrity must have rubbed off on Catherine, because other people at the party finally started talking to her. She had stood there, beaming, Paul at her side, and had all of her popular-girl fantasies realized. Someone even invited her to another party, the following weekend.

“You know,” Catherine, the new It Girl of Adams Prep said, from the couch. “I really think Jack was jealous.”

I blinked up at the ceiling at this piece of information. “Really?”

“Oh, yes. I heard him tell Lucy that he thinks David is pompous and that you could do better.”

Pompous? David was the least pompous person I had ever met. What was Jack talking about?

When I mentioned this out loud, though, all Catherine said was, “But, Sam, I thought that was what you wanted. To make Jack realize that you are a vital, attractive woman, desired by many.”

I admitted that this was true. At the same time, however, I didn’t like the idea of anybody—even my soulmate—calling David names. Because David was a very nice person.

Only I didn’t want to think about that. You know, about David being so nice, and me treating him the way I had. I mean, that kind of behaviour is all very well for readers of Cosmo, but I’m really more of an Art in America kind of girl.

Knowing that sleep was a long way off, but aware that Catherine, by the sound of her steady breathing, was no longer available, I got out my flashlight and opened the book the White House press secretary had given me, on the lives of the First Ladies.

Top ten Little Known Facts about Dolley Ptyne Todd Madison, Wife of the Fourth President of the United States of America:

10. She spelled her name Dolley, not Dolly.

9. Born in 1768, she was raised as a Quaker, eschewing colourful bonnets and clothes, as Quaker tradition dictated.

8. She was married once before to a Quaker lawyer who died in a yellow-fever epidemic.

7. After marrying James Madison in 1794, Dolley acted as “unofficial first lady” during the presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who was a widower.

6. It was apparently around this time that Dolley decided God didn’t care if she wore bright colours, because she is described as having worn a gold turban with an ostrich feather tucked into it at her husband’s inaugural ball.

5. The fact that Dolley abandoned her Quaker ways is further illustrated by the fact that during her husband’s presidency, she became the belle of Washington society. She was best known for her Wednesday evening receptions, where politicians, diplomats and the general public gathered. These gatherings helped to soothe some of the tensions between Federalists, who were like today’s Republicans, and Republicans, who were like today’s Democrats, in a time of intense party rivalries.

4. During the War of 1812, Dolley saved not only George Washington’s portrait, but she also saved tons of important government documents by pressing them against the sides of trunks. The day before the British attacked, she filled a wagon with silver and other valuables and sent them off to the Bank of Maryland for safekeeping, which just goes to show she was not only brave, but also proactive.

3. But the majority of US citizens in 1814, when this all happened, were not very appreciative of Dolley’s actions, since they all hated her husband for starting the war in the first place. In fact, as the White House was burning down, Dolley went to the neighbours and knocked on the door, looking for sanctuary, and they told her to get lost. She didn’t find a place to stay until she lied about who she was.

2. As if this was not enough, one of her sons turned out to be a profligate, which means loser, whose out-of-control spending nearly bankrupt the family.

And the number one little known fact about Dolley Madison:

1. She wasn’t really very attractive.

The next week was Thanksgiving. Susan Boone had class on Tuesday, but it was cancelled on Thursday, on account of the holiday.

I figured that when I saw David in the studio on Tuesday, I would say I was sorry for what had happened at Kris’s. I mean, even though Catherine insisted I hadn’t done anything wrong, and part of me felt like she was right, another part of me—a bigger part of me—disagreed. I figured at the very least I owed David an apology. I was going to ask him if he wanted to go bowling with me and Catherine and Paul the following Friday. I knew Lucy had a game that night, so there wouldn’t be a chance of us running into Jack. That way David would know I’d asked him out for him, and not to make Jack jealous.

I didn’t know why it was so important to me that David understood he was wrong . . . that I wasn’t like the other girls he knew, that I wasn’t trying to impress anyone, especially a guy. Especially my sister’s boyfriend. That I liked to wear black. That the daisies on my boots had been my idea.

I just really wanted to make everything between us OK again.

Except that David didn’t come to class on Tuesday.

David didn’t come to class, and it wasn’t like there was anybody there that I could ask why. You know, like if he was sick or not. I mean, Gertie and Lynn weren’t friends with David. I was. And I didn’t know why he wasn’t there. Was he sick? Had he left early for Camp David, where he and the rest of his family were going to spend Thanksgiving, according to the news and the folks in the press office? I didn’t know.

All I knew was, as I sat there drawing the gourds Susan Boone had arranged on the table in front of us, my daisy helmet on my head to guard against aerial crow assaults, I felt pretty stupid.

Stupid because of how disappointed I was that David hadn’t showed. Stupid because I actually thought it would be that simple—I’d just apologize and that would be the end of it.

But most of all, I felt stupid that I even cared. I mean, I didn’t even like David. Oh, sure, as a friend I liked him all right.

And yeah, there was that freaky frisson thing that happened every once in a while when I was around him.

But it wasn’t like just because of that, I was going to forget all about Jack. OK, yeah, he had acted like a jerk at Kris’s party. But that didn’t mean I’d fallen out of love with him, or anything. I mean, when you have loved someone as much and for as long as I have loved Jack, you totally see beyond jerky behaviour and that kind of thing. The way I felt about Jack was deeper than that. Just like, I knew, the way he felt about me was deeper than the way he felt about Lucy.

He just didn’t know it yet.

Anyway, if David thought just by blowing off Susan Boone’s on Tuesday he’d be rid of me, he had, as Theresa would say, another think coming. Because, as Teen Ambassador to the UN, I am at the White House every Wednesday. So what I figured I’d do was, if David hadn’t left for the holidays yet, I’d just go, you know, find him. Sometime the Wednesday before Thanksgiving when Mr. White, the press secretary, wasn’t paying attention.

Only that didn’t work out too well, either, because Mr. White was totally paying attention that day. That was on account of the fact that entries for the From My Window contest at the UN were pouring in. We were getting paintings from as far away as Hawaii and as close as Chevy Chase (Jack’s entry). Mr. White was doing a lot of complaining because there were so many paintings, we had nowhere to put them all. We could only pick one to send on to the US Ambassador to the UN in New York.

Some of the paintings were very bad. Some of them were very good. All of them were very interesting.

The one that interested me most was one that had been painted by a girl named Maria Sanchez, who lived in San Diego. Maria’s painting depicted a backyard with freshly laundered sheets hanging from a washline. Between the sheets hanging from the line, which were fluttering in an unseen breeze, you could catch glimpses of this barbed-wire fence, a pretty far ways away . . . but not far enough away that you couldn’t see that there were people sneaking through this hole they had cut in the wire. Some people had already got through the hole, and they were running away from men in brown uniforms, who had guns and sticks and were chasing them. Maria called her painting Land of the Free?— with a question mark.

Mr. White, the press secretary, hated this painting. He kept going, “This contest is not about making political statements.”

But I felt kind of differently about it.

“The contest is about what you see from your window,” I said. “This is what Maria Sanchez of San Diego sees from her window. She is not making a political statement. She is painting what she sees.”

Mr. White ground his teeth. He liked this painting that had come from Angie Tucker of Little Deer Isle, Maine. Angie’s painting was of a lighthouse and the sea. It was a nice painting. But somehow, I didn’t believe it. That that was what Angie sees every day from her window. I mean, a lighthouse? Come on. Who was she, anyway—Anne of Green Gables?

For that reason, I didn’t think Angie’s painting was as good as Maria’s.

Neither, surprisingly, was Jack’s.

Oh, Jack’s was good. Don’t get me wrong. Like all his paintings, Jack’s entry to the From My Window contest was brilliant. It depicted three disillusioned-looking young guys standing around in the parking lot outside of the local Seven Eleven, stamped-out cigarettes at their feet and broken beer bottles lying around, the shards of glass sparkling like emeralds. It spoke eloquently of the plight of the urban youth—of the hopelessness of our generation.

It was a good painting. A great painting, actually.

Except that guess what?

It was so not what Jack sees out of his window.

I know this for a fact. That’s because the closest Seven Eleven to Jack’s house is all the way out in Bethesda. And no way could you see it from his window. Jack lives in a great big house with lots of tall leafy trees around it and a long circular driveway out front. And while I admit the real view out of Jack’s window might be a bit on the boring side, in no way could I reward him for basically lying. Much as I loved him, I couldn’t, you know, let that affect my judgement. I had to be fair.

And that meant that Jack’s entry was effectively out of the running.

Mr. White and I had reached an impasse. I could tell he was bored of the argument and just wanted to get out of there. It was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and all. I thought I’d give him a break and went, “Well, Mr. White. Listen. What do you say we cut our little visit short this week? I was thinking of stopping by the family quarters and just saying hi to David, you know, before he leaves for the holiday . . .”

Mr. White shot me a look.

“You aren’t stopping anywhere,” he said. “We still have a ton of work to do. There’s the International Festival of the Child coming up this Saturday. The President particularly wants you there . . .”

I perked up upon hearing this. “Really? Will David be there?”

Mr. White looked at me tiredly. Sometimes I got the feeling that Mr. White cursed the day I’d stopped Larry Wayne Rogers from killing his boss. Not that Mr. White wanted the President dead. Not at all. Mr. White worshipped the ground the guy walked on. It was me I think he would have been happy to be rid of.

“Samantha,” he said, with a sigh. “I don’t know. There will, however, be representatives from over eighty countries in attendance, including the President, and it would really help if you would, just this once, dress up a little. Try to look like a young lady and not a video jockey.”

I looked down at my boots, black tights, the kilt that had once been red plaid that I had dyed black, and my favourite black turtleneck.

“You think I look like a VJ?” I asked, touched by this unexpected compliment.

Mr. White rolled his eyes and asked if there was anything I could do about my cast. It was looking a little worse for wear. As I’d told David I would, I’d decorated it in a patriotic motif, with eagles and the Liberty Bell and even a tiny celebrity portrait—of Dolley Madison. Fourteen girls had already asked me if they could have the cast when it came off. Theresa had suggested I auction it off on the Internet.

“Because,” she said, “you could probably get thousands of dollars for it. They auctioned off chunks of the Berlin Wall after it fell. Why not the cast of the girl who made the world safe for democracy?”

I didn’t know what I was going to do with my cast when it came off, but I figured I had time to think about that. It wasn’t due to come off for another week.

I could see Mr. White’s point, though. The cast had gotten kind of dirty and parts of it were sort of crumbling off where I’d gotten it wet (it was very hard to wash my hair one-handed).

“Maybe your mother could rig something up,” he said, looking kind of pained. “A nice sling to, um, hide it.”

If I hadn’t already known from his attitude about the whole painting contest, I would have known it from the way he was eyeing my cast: Mr. White had no appreciation for art.

By the time he was done yammering on about all the people who would be at the International Festival of the Child, it was five o’clock and time to go home. No way was I going to be able to sneak off to find David now. I’d missed him once again.

This didn’t exactly put me in a real festive holiday mood, know what I mean? I didn’t even care that we had four whole days off from school. Ordinarily, four days of being Deutsch-free would have delighted me. But for some reason this year it wasn’t so exciting. I mean, technically it meant that if David didn’t show at the International Festival of the Child, it would be five whole days until I saw him again. I could have called him, I guess, but that wasn’t the same. And I didn’t have his email address.

Even the fact that Theresa was in the kitchen baking when I got home didn’t cheer me up. It was just pumpkin pies (blech) for tomorrow. And they weren’t even for us. They were for Theresa’s own kids, and grandkids too. What with being with us all week, the only chance Theresa had to get ready for Thanksgiving was when she was at our house. My mom didn’t mind. We always had Thanksgiving at my grandma’s in Baltimore, anyway, so it wasn’t like she needed the oven, or anything.

“What’s the matter with you?” Theresa wanted to know when I came into the kitchen, dropped my coat and backpack and started right in on the Graham Crackers without even complaining about how come we only got the good stuff when Jack came over.

“Nothing,” I said. I sat down at the kitchen table and stared at the back of the novel Rebecca was reading. She’d apparently abandoned romance for sci-fi once again, since she held the latest installment in the Jedi Academy saga. I felt, all things considered, that she had made a wise decision.

“Then stop with the sighing already.” Theresa was tense. Theresa was always tense before the holidays. She said it was because she never knew which one of his ex-wives Tito was going to show up with ... or if he’d show up with an entirely new one. Theresa said it was more than any mother should be forced to bear.

I sighed again and Rebecca looked up from her book.

“If you’re upset because Jack’s not here,” she said in a bored voice, “don’t be. He and Lucy’ll probably be rolling in in a few minutes. They just walked down to the video store to get a copy of Die Hard. You know that’s Dad’s favourite holiday movie.”

I sniffed. “Why would I be upset about Jack not being here?” I demanded. When Rebecca just rolled her eyes, I went, in maybe a louder voice than I ought to have, “I don’t like Jack, you know, Rebecca. In that way, I mean.”

“Sure, you don’t,” Rebecca said—but not like she believed it—and went back to her book.

“I don’t,” I said. “God. As if. I mean, he’s Lucy’s boyfriend.”

“So?” Rebecca turned a page.

“So I don’t like him like that, OK?” God, was I going to have to spend the rest of my life denying my true feelings to everyone I knew? I mean, at school everyone was all, Sam and David, Sam and David. Even the press, since our big ‘date’ had been all, Sam and David, Sam and David. There’d been something about it on the news. The national news. Not like the lead story, or anything, but like one of those little human interest things five minutes before the news hour was up. It was totally humiliating. The reporters were all, “And Christmas isn’t the only thing in the air here in the Capital. No, young love seems to be in the air, as well.”

It was totally revolting. I mean, it was no wonder David hadn’t shown up to Susan Boone’s. The place had been crawling with reporters, a bunch of whom had yelled, as I’d darted past them, “Did you and David have a nice time at the party, Sam?”

Which reminded me of something. I looked at Rebecca and went, in the snottiest voice I could, “Besides, if I supposedly like Jack so much, what’s with this frisson thing you said you sensed between me and David? Huh? How can I have frisson with one guy if I’m supposedly in love with someone else?”

Rebecca just looked at me and went, “Because you are completely blind to what’s right in front of you,” then went back to her book.

Blind? What was she talking about, blind? Thanks to Susan Boone, I had never seen better in my life, thank you very much. Wasn’t I drawing the best eggs in the studio? And what about those gourds I’d done yesterday? My gourds had been better than anyone’s. My gourds had blown everyone else’s gourds out of the water. Even Susan Boone had been impressed. During critique at the end of class, she’d even said, “Sam, you are making enormous strides.”

Enormous strides. How could a blind person be making enormous strides in ART class?

I mentioned this to Rebecca, but she just went, “Yeah? Well, maybe you can see eggs and gourds, but you sure can’t see anything else.”

I said the only thing then that an older sister can say to a younger one who is acting like she thinks she is all that. Lord knows, Lucy has said it to me often enough.

After I said it, Theresa sent me to my room.

But I didn’t care. I liked it better in my room anyway. In fact, if I had my way, I’d never come out of my room again, except maybe for meals and, of course, for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But that’s it. Because every time I leave my room, it seems like I just get into trouble. I’m either saving people from getting assassinated or getting into arguments about Picasso or being told I’m blind.

Well, that’s it. I’m staying in my room for ever. And nobody can stop me.

They fully made me come out of my room to go to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving dinner.

I tried to lock myself right back in there the minute we got back, but unfortunately there was a message on the machine from Mr. White, reminding my parents about the International Festival of the Child, at which my attendance was required. Apparently, if I wasn’t there some crisis of world proportions would break out, so my mom said I had to go.

But that didn’t mean I had to like it.

I mean, let’s face it, this Teen Ambassador thing was getting old. It was worse than German, practically. Every time Jack saw me he was all, “So where’s my ticket to New York?” which is of course what the winner of the From My Window contest got—an all-expenses-paid trip to New York. Plus, you know, international fame and celebrity.

And I had to pretend to be all, “Ha ha ha! A winner has yet to be announced, Jack.”

To which Jack would reply, “Yeah, but it’s me, right?”

And then I would be all, “We’ll see.”

We’ll see. Even though I knew good and well the winner wouldn’t be him. But what could I say? I mean, I didn’t want to be the one to break the news to him. I knew how much this contest meant to him.

So I just said nothing. I smiled and said nothing. While inside, I wept.

Well, OK, not wept, but you know what I mean. I was bummed.

Anyway, Saturday night I show up at the stupid International Festival of the Child, which was at the White House, and which as far as I could tell was just some bogus concert and a dinner. There weren’t even any kids there, that I could see. I was the only one!

And the music, no surprise, wasn’t that exciting. The Beaux Arts Trio. That’s who they booked. I guess Alien Ant Farm wasn’t available.

The Beaux Arts Trio wasn’t that bad, though. They only played classical music, like the kind we listened to on the radio in Susan Boone’s studio. And while it wasn’t exactly Gwen Stefani, it was still nice, in its own way.

Nothing else about the evening was, though. Nice, I mean. For one thing, I fully had to get dressed up. Mr. White had expressly asked my mother to make sure I didn’t wear any of my own clothes. Instead, I had to wear this new dress Mom picked out for me at Nordstrom’s.

On the plus side, it was black. On the minus side, it was made out of velvet and was very scratchy and looked stupid with my now raggedy old cast. My mom tried to make a sling for me out of this big lace shawl of hers, but it kept coming untied, so finally I just left it on my chair.

Plus I had to wear pantyhose. Black pantyhose, but still.

You would think there’d be something a little exciting about attending a private concert at the White House, in the Vermeil Room, which is all gold, with the President and the First Lady, the Prime Minister of France and his wife, and some other important foreign supporters of the rights of children. You would think so, but you would be wrong. It was all extremely boring. The White House wait staff were walking around serving glasses of champagne—7-Up for those of us who weren’t yet twenty-one, of which I appeared to be the only one—and these gross hors d’oeuvres.

I joked that the 7-Up was a particularly fine vintage, but nobody got it, everybody there being pretty much humourless . . .

Except for David, of course. But I didn’t notice he was there until after I’d told my little joke. And when I did, of course—notice David, I mean—I practically spat a mouthful of 7-Up at the Ambassador to Sri Lanka.

He—the ambassador—looked at me like I was crazy. But that was better than how David was looking at me, which was like I was something furry that had crawled across his salad plate. His mom, I saw, had made him dress up too. But since he had no stupid cast on one of his arms, David actually looked good. Really good. In fact, in his dark suit and tie, he looked hot.

When I realized I was thinking this, however, I almost started choking again. David? Hot? Since when had I started thinking of David that way? I mean, sure, I’d always thought of him as cute. But hot?

And then all of a sudden I felt hot—though whether it was because I’d realized I thought of David as hot, or because I was merely experiencing the consummate embarrassment a girl feels when she bumps into a guy she’d used to try to make another guy jealous—I couldn’t say. All I know is, my face turned about as red as my hair. I know because I caught a glimpse of myself in one of the gilt-framed mirrors on the wall.

Was this, I wondered, part of the whole frisson package? Because if it was, I wanted nothing more to do with it. Rebecca could have her stupid frisson back. It sucked as much as the hors d’oeuvres.

David, of course, was too mature, and too much of a gentleman, to snub me. He came up and said, with another one of those smiles that was just polite, nothing else, “Hi, Sam. How are you doing?”

I had to choke back what I wanted to say—which was ‘Terrible, thanks. And you?“—and just give him the standard, ”Fine, thanks,“ since I didn’t think it would be too cool to get into the whole thing—you know, my apology—in front of all the celebrants for the International Festival of the Child.

“How about you?” I asked. “We missed you on Tuesday at Susan’s.”

David’s green eyes were cool. “Yeah,” he said. “Couldn’t be there. Prior commitment.”

“Oh,” I said. Which wasn’t what I wanted to say at all. What I wanted to say was, David, I’m sorry! I’m sorry, all right? I mean, I know what I did was horrible. I know I’m a terrible person. But could you please, please, please forgive me?

Only I couldn’t say that. For one thing, it would smack—just slightly—of grovelling. For another, David’s dad came up to the front of the room and asked us all to take our places as the concert was about to begin.

So we all filed into the room where the concert was and sat down. I ended up sitting behind and sort of off to the side of David. So I had a pretty solid view of him through the whole thing. Well, of his left ear, mostly, but still.

And I swear, I didn’t hear a note those famous musicians played. All I could think, as I stared at the back of David’s left ear, was: how am I going to make this right? It kind of surprised how much I wanted to. Make it right, I mean. But I did.

After the concert, everyone went up and shook hands with the Beaux Arts Trio. The President introduced me to them as the girl who had saved his life and the US Teen Ambassador to the UN. The cellist raised my hand to his lips and kissed it. It was the first time any guy outside of my immediate family had ever kissed any part of my body. It felt weird. But that was probably only because he was so old.

“And what,” the pianist wanted to know, “does the Teen Ambassador to the UN do?”

The President told him about the From My Window contest. Then he added, with a laugh, “And she’s been giving Andy a run for the money.”

Andy was the first name of Mr. White, the press secretary. And I had not been giving him a run for the money, that I knew of. In fact, I had surrendered all of my Superballs to him, and had even stopped begging to look at the perv letters.

“Apparently,” the President said, in a jokey voice, “there’s some disagreement over which entry to the art contest best represents American interests.”

This surprised me. I had not been aware before that David’s dad knew what was going on in the press office.

“There’s no disagreement,” I said, even though the President hadn’t exactly been talking to me, and also, there most certainly was a disagreement. “Maria Sanchez’s painting is the best one. It’s my pick for winner.”

I wasn’t, you know, trying to start an international incident or anything. I didn’t even really think about what I was doing. You know, arguing with the President of the United States. It—the thing about Maria Sanchez—just sort of came out before I stopped to think about it.

The President said, “If Maria Sanchez is the artist of that painting with the illegal aliens, it is not the one going to New York.”

Then he turned and said something in French to the Prime Minister, who laughed.

And I forgot all about David looking like such a hottie in his suit. I forgot all about how I wanted to apologize to him, and how rotten I felt over the way I’d treated him. I forgot all about my uncomfortable dress and pantyhose. All I could think about was the fact that the President had given me this one thing to do—this teen ambassador thing—supposedly as a reward or something for saving his life . . .

And I was happy to do it, even though, you know, I kind of was beginning to feel like I was being under-utilized. I mean, there were a lot more important issues out there for teens that I could have been bringing international attention to than what kids see out their window. I mean, instead of sitting in the White House press office for three hours after school every Wednesday, or attending International Celebration of the Child concerts, I could have been out there alerting the public to the fact that in some countries, including this one, it is still perfectly legal for men to take teen brides—even multiple teen brides! What was that all about?

And what about countries like Sierra Leone, where teens and even younger kids routinely get their limbs chopped off as ‘warnings’ against messing with the warring gangs that run groups of diamond traffickers? And hello, what about all those kids in countries with unexploded land mines buried in the fields where they’d like to play soccer, but can’t because it’s too dangerous?

And how about a problem a little closer to home? How about all these teenagers right here in America who are taking guns to school and blowing people away? Where are they getting these guns, and how come they think shooting people is a viable solution to their problems? And why isn’t anybody doing anything to alleviate some of the pressures that might lead someone to think bringing a gun to school is a good thing? How come nobody is teaching people like Kris Parks to be more tolerant of others, to stop torturing kids whose mothers make them wear long skirts to school?

These are important problems that I, as US Teen Ambassador, should have been addressing. But what did they have me doing instead? Yeah, that’d be counting paintings.

And you know, it was starting to occur to me that the whole teen ambassador thing had just been made up; a way for the President—who I was starting to think cared more about his image than he did about the teens of this country—to look good. You know, giving a high-profile job to the girl who’d saved his life, and all.

But I didn’t say all that. I should have. I totally should have.

But I was conscious of all these people—the Beaux Arts Trio; the French Prime Minister; the Ambassador to Sri Lanka; not to mention David—standing there, listening. I couldn’t make a speech like that in front of all those people. I mean, I couldn’t even talk to the reporters who hounded me every day, and all they wanted to know was which I liked better, Coke or Pepsi.

I had a lot of views about stuff—that was certainly true. What I did not have was a lot of confidence about expressing them to anyone but my family and friends.

But there was one thing I knew I had to do. I had to get Maria’s painting into the From My Window show in New York. I had to.

And so I put my hand on the President’s arm and said, “Excuse me, but that painting has to go to New York. It is the best painting. Maybe it doesn’t show America at its best, but it is the best painting. The most honest painting. It has to be entered in the show.”

There was a kind of silence after I said this. I don’t think every single person in the room was looking at me. But it sure felt like it.

The President said, looking very surprised, “Samantha, I’m sorry, but that isn’t going to happen. You’re going to have to pick another painting. How about the one with the lighthouse? That’s a good representation of what this country’s all about.”

Then he started talking to the Prime Minister some more.

I couldn’t believe it. I had just been dismissed. Just like that!

Well, you know what they say about redheads. What happened next, I couldn’t stop. I heard myself saying the words, but it was like some other girl was saying them. Maybe Gwen Stefani was saying them, because I sure wasn’t.

“If you didn’t want the job done right,” I said to the President, loudly enough so that it seemed to me that a lot of the waiting staff and most of the other guests, including the Beaux Arts Trio, turned to look at me, “then you shouldn’t have given it to me. Because I am not going to pick another painting. All the rest of the paintings are of what people know. That painting—Maria’s painting—is of what one person sees, every day, from her window. You may not like what Maria sees, but keeping everyone else from seeing it isn’t going to make it any less real, or make the problem go away.”

The President looked down at me like I was mentally deranged. Maybe I was. I don’t know. All I know is, I was so mad, I was shaking. And I imagine my face was a very attractive shade of umber.

“Are you personally acquainted with the artist, or something?” he asked.

“No, I don’t know her,” I said. “But I know her painting is the best.”

“In your opinion,” the President said.

“Yes, in my opinion.”

“Well, you’re just going to have to change your opinion. Because that painting is not going to represent this country in any international art show.”

Then David’s dad turned his back on me and started talking to his other guests.

I didn’t say anything more. What could I say that I hadn’t said already? Besides, I had been dismissed.

David, who had come up behind me without my noticing, went, “Sam.”

I looked up at him. I had forgotten all about David.

“Come on,” he said.

I guess if I hadn’t already been so shocked about what had happened—between me and the President, I mean—I might have been more shocked that David was actually speaking to me. Speaking to me, and apparently trying, at least, to make me feel better about what had just happened. At least that’s what I had to conclude when he led me out of the Vermeil Room and back into the room where we’d sat that very first night I’d come to dinner, where he’d carved my name into the window sill.

“Sam,” he said. “It’s not that big a deal. I mean, I know it is to you. But it’s not, you know, life and death.”

Right. It wasn’t Sierra Leone or Utah. Nobody was getting their hands chopped off or being forced to marry, at the age of fourteen, a guy who already had three wives.

“I realize that,” I said. “But it’s still wrong.”

“Probably,” David said. “But you have to understand. There’s a lot of stuff we don’t necessarily know about that they have to consider.”

“Like what?” I wanted to know. “My choosing that painting is going to compromise national security? I don’t think so.”

David was taking off his tie like it had been bothering him.

“Maybe they just want a happy painting,” he said. “You know, one that shows the US in a positive light.”

“That’s not what the contest is about,” I said. “It’s supposed to show what a representative of each country sees from his or her window. The rules don’t say anything about what the person sees having to reflect positively on his or her country. I mean, I could see someone in China or something not being allowed to show a negative aspect of his nation, but this is America, for crying out loud. I thought we were guaranteed freedom of speech.”

David sat down on the arm of my chair. He said, “We are.”

“Right,” I said, very sarcastically. “All except the Teen Ambassador to the UN.”

“You have freedom of speech,” David said. He said it with a funny sort of emphasis, but at the time I was too upset to realize what he meant.

“Do you think you could talk to him, David?” I asked, looking up at him. Once again, he hadn’t turned on any lights in the room. The only light there was to see by spilled in from the windows, the bluish light coming in from the Rotunda. In its glow, David’s green eyes were hard to read. Still, I plunged on. “Your dad, I mean. He might listen to you.”

But David said, “Sam, I hate to disappoint you, but the one thing I make it a point never to discuss with my dad is politics.”

Even though David said he hated to disappoint me, that’s exactly what he ended up doing. Disappointing me, I mean.

“But it’s not fair!” I cried. “I mean, that painting is the best one! It deserves to be in the show! Just try, David, OK? Promise me you’ll try to talk to him. You’re his kid. He’ll listen to you.”

“He won’t,” David said. “Believe me.”

“Of course he won’t, if you don’t even try.”

But David wouldn’t say he’d try. It was like he didn’t even want to get involved. Which only made me more peeved. Because he was acting like it didn’t matter. He obviously didn’t understand how important it was. I thought he would, being an artist, and all. But he didn’t. He really didn’t.

I was so frustrated that I couldn’t help blurting out, “Jack would try.”

And even though I’d been saying it mostly to myself, David overheard.

“Oh, sure,” he said, in a mean way. “Jack’s perfect.”

“At least Jack is willing to take a stand,” I said, hotly. “You know, Jack shot out the windows of his own father’s medical practice with a BB gun in protest of Dr Slater using medications that had been tested on animals.”

David looked unimpressed. “Yeah?” he said. “Well, that was a pretty stupid thing to do.”

I couldn’t understand how David could say such a thing. How he could even think such a thing.

“Oh, right,” I said, with a bitter laugh. “Pretty stupid of him to take a stand against cruelty to animals.”

“No,” David said coolly. “Pretty stupid of him to protest against something that saves lives. If scientists don’t test medications on animals, Sam, before they use them on humans, they might make people sicker, or even kill them. Is that what Jack wants?”

I blinked at him. I hadn’t actually thought of it that way before.

“But hey,” David went on, with a shrug. “Jack’s a—what was it you called him? Oh, yeah. A radical. Maybe that’s what the radicals of today are rebelling against. Making sick people better. I wouldn’t know. I’m obviously too lacking in moral rectitude.”

And then David, like he couldn’t stand to be around me a second longer—like I was one of those gross hors d’oeuvres—turned around and left me sitting there. In the dark. Like the blind person Rebecca had accused me of being.

And the really sad part was, I was beginning to think she might be right. Because despite what Susan Boone had said, I had a feeling I wasn’t seeing anything. Anything at all.

When I got home from the White House that night, I was shocked to find Lucy in the living room, thumbing through a copy of Elle.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted out, before I was able to restrain myself. I couldn’t help it. I hadn’t seen Lucy home on a Saturday night since her twelfth birthday. “Where’s Jack?”

Had they, I thought, broken up at last? Had seeing me with another guy at Kris Parks’s party finally made Jack realize his true feelings for me?

But the bigger question was, if it had, why didn’t I feel happier about it? I mean, why would it actually make me feel sick to my stomach? Unless that was the result of that one hors d’oeuvres I accidentally scarfed before I realized how gross they were . . .

“Oh, Jack’s in the TV room,” Lucy said in a bored voice. She was, I saw, doing her numerology chart. “He has to read some book for English class . . . Wuthering Heights. The report’s due Monday, but of course he never read it. And they told him if he flunks English, they won’t let him graduate in May.”

I took off my coat and the lace sling and flopped on to the couch beside her. “So he’s reading it now? At our house?”

“God, no,” Lucy said. “It’s on TV He’s upstairs watching it. I tried, and even though it’s got Ralph Fiennes, I just couldn’t take it. What do you think of this skirt?” She flipped to a page in the centre of the magazine.

“It’s nice, I guess.” My mind seemed to be working at a very sluggish pace, even though all I’d had to drink at the International Festival of the Child was 7-Up. “Where’re Mom and Dad?”

“They’re at that thing,” Lucy said, turning back to her magazine. “You know. Some benefit for North African orphans, or whatever. I don’t know. All I know is, Theresa cancelled because Tito broke his foot moving a refrigerator, so I’m stuck here making sure Miss ET Phone Home doesn’t blow the house up. Oh my God.” Lucy lowered the magazine. “You should see it. Rebecca has a little friend over, spending the night. Remember when you used to have Kris Parks spend the night, and you two would play Barbies until the crack of dawn, or whatever? Well, guess what Rebecca and her friend are doing? Oh, just creating a DNA strand out of Tinkertoys. Hey, what about this suit?” Lucy showed me the suit. “I was thinking we could get you one like it for your medal ceremony. You know. We’ve only got about two weeks left to get you a really hot outfit. I told Mom we should have hit the outlets on the way home from Grandma’s—”

“Luce,” I said.

I don’t know what made me do it. Talk to my sister Lucy, of all people, about my problems.

But there it was, all coming out. It was like lava, or something, pouring out of a volcano. And there was absolutely no way I could stuff it all back up once it came oozing out.

The weirdest part of it was, Lucy put the magazine down and actually listened. She looked me right in the eye and listened, and didn’t say a word for like five minutes.

Normally, of course, I don’t share details about my personal life with my big sister. But since Lucy is an expert on all things social, I thought she might be able to shed some light on David’s weird behaviour—and possibly my own. I didn’t mention anything about Jack, you know, being my soulmate and all. Just the stuff about the party, and how mean David had been to me at the International Festival of the Child, and the weird frisson and stuff like that.

When I was through, Lucy just rolled her eyes.

“God,” she said. “Come to me with a hard one next time, OK?”

I stared at her. “What?” I mean, I had just revealed my soul to her—well, most of my soul, anyway—and she seemed disappointed that my problems weren’t juicier. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s totally obvious what’s going on with you and David.” She swung her slippered feet up on to the coffee table.

“It is?” Strangely, my heart had started speeding up again. “What, then? What’s going on between us?”

“Duh,” Lucy said. “I mean, even Rebecca figured it out. And her own school admits she has like zero people skills.”

“Lucy.” I was trying very hard not to scream in frustration. “Tell me. Tell me what is going on between David and me, or I swear to God, I’ll—”

“God, chill,” Lucy said. “I’ll tell you. But you have to promise not to get mad.”

“I won’t,” I said. “I swear.”

“Fine.“ Lucy looked down at her fingernails. I could see that she’d just gotten a new manicure. Each nail was a perfect oval, with a clean white tip. My own nails, of course, had never looked that clean, being almost constantly embedded with pencil dust from drawing.

Lucy took a deep breath. Then she let it out and said, “You love him.”

I blinked at her. “What? I what?”

“You promised not to get mad,” Lucy said warningly.

“I’m not mad,” I said. Though of course I was. I had poured my heart out to her, and this is what she came up with? That I was in love with David? Could there be anything further from the truth? “But I don’t love David.”

“God, Sam,” she said, rolling her head against the back of the couch with a groan. “Of course you do. You say when he smiles at you, your heart feels like it’s flipping over. And that when you’re around him, your face always feels hot. And that since he’s been so mad at you for parading him around Kris’s party like a prize trout you’d caught in some dating fishing stream, you’ve felt miserable. What do you think all of that is, Sam, if not love?”

“Frisson?” I suggested, hopefully.

Lucy picked up one of the satin sofa pillows and hurled it at me. “That’s what love is, you idiot!” she yelled. “All that stuff you feel when you look at David? That’s what I feel when I look at Jack. Don’t you get it? You love David. And if I am not mistaking the signs, I think it’s a pretty safe bet to say he feels the same way about you. Or at least he used to, before you, you know, screwed it all up.”

I couldn’t tell her that she was wrong, of course. I couldn’t tell her that it was impossible for me to be in love with David, since I’d been in love with her boyfriend from almost the first time she’d brought him home.

But I had to admit, it did sound a little . . . possible. I mean, given the whole frisson thing. Much as I loved Jack, I had to admit my heart didn’t start beating faster when I saw him. Not like it did with David. And I never had trouble meeting Jack’s gaze—even though his pale-blue eyes were every bit as beautiful as David’s green ones. And while I blushed around Jack, well, the truth is, I’m a redhead: I blush around everybody.

But the person I blush around most is David.

And what about that thing David had pointed out? I mean about Jack’s urban rebellion being kind of ... well, bogus? Because it was bogus, now that I thought of it, for him to shoot out the windows of his dad’s medical practice in protest of something that, yeah, might hurt animals, but which helped sick people.

And the time he’d skinny-dipped at the Chevy Chase Country Club? What had he been protesting then? The country club’s restrictive bathing-suit rule? You know, I bet there are a lot of people at the Chevy Chase Country Club you wouldn’t want to see swimming nude. So wasn’t a bathing-suit policy a good thing, then?

So what did it all mean? Was it possible Lucy was right? Was such a thing even remotely likely? That I had somehow fallen out of love with Jack, and into love with David, without even being aware of it myself . . . until now?

And how could I, Samantha Madison, who for so long had thought she’d known everything, have turned out to know so very, very little?

I was still trying to figure it out when, five minutes later, I’d left Lucy (feeling satisfied that she had solved all of my problems) in the living room, and gone into the kitchen for a snack, since the food at the party had hardly been satisfying.

You can imagine my discomfort when, as I was biting into a turkey sandwich I’d just made (with mayo, nothing else, on white bread) Jack came in.

“Oh, hey, Sam,” he said, wandering over to the refrigerator. “I didn’t know you’d gotten home. How was the party?”

I swallowed the hunk of sandwich I’d been jamming into my mouth just as he’d walked in. “Um,” I said. “Fine. Wuthering Heights over?”

“Huh?” He was busy peering into the fridge. “No, not yet. Commercial. Hey, so what’s the deal, Sam?” He took a carrot out of the vegetable crisper and bit into it noisily. “Is my painting going to New York or what?”

I had known I was going to be having this conversation sooner or later. I’d just hoped it would be later.

But I might as well, I figured, get it over with.

“Jack,” I said, putting down my sandwich. “Listen.”

Before I could get the words out of my mouth, however, Jack was going, with a look of total disbelief, “Wait a minute. Wait. Don’t say it. I can tell by the look on your face. I didn’t win, did I?”

I took a deep, steadying breath, preparing myself for the pain I knew was going to come flooding in when I said the word that would hurt him so much.

“No,” I said.

Jack, who had left the refrigerator door hanging wide open, took a single step backwards. Clearly, I had hurt him. And for that, I would be eternally sorry.

But incredibly, no hurt came. Really. I’d been ready for it. I’d been totally prepared for it to come pouring over me, this intense sorrow for having hurt him.

But it didn’t come. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I was sorry to hurt his feelings, but doing so caused me no hurt whatsoever.

Which was weird. Very weird. Because how could I hurt the man I loved—my soulmate, the man I was destined to be with for ever—and not feel his pain throbbing along my every nerve ending?

“I can’t believe it,” Jack said, finding his voice at last. “I cannot freaking believe this. I didn’t win? You’re seriously telling me I didn’t win?”

“Jack,” I said, still stunned by the fact that I didn’t feel even a tremor of his pain. “I’m really sorry. It’s just that there were so many great entries, and—”

“This is unbelievable,” Jack said. He didn’t say it, exactly. He sort of yelled it. Manet, who had come into the kitchen as soon as he’d heard the fridge open, as was his custom, lifted both ears upon hearing Jack’s raised voice. “Un-freaking-believable!”

Jack,“ I said. ”If there’s any way I can make it up to you—”

“Why?” Jack demanded, his bright-blue eyes very wide and very indignant. “Just tell me why, Sam. Can you do that? Can you tell me why my painting didn’t get chosen?”

I said, slowly, “Well, Jack. We got a lot of entries. I mean, a whole lot of them.”

Jack, so far as I could tell, wasn’t even listening. He went, “My painting was too controversial. That’s it. It has to be. Tell the truth, Samantha. The reason it didn’t win was because everyone thought it was too controversial, didn’t they? They don’t want other countries to see how apathetic the youth of America are today, is that it?”

I said, shaking my head, “No, not exactly . . .”

But of course I should have been just like, Yes, that was it. Because that would have been more acceptable to Jack than the real reason, which I lamely revealed a second later, when he demanded, “Well, why, then?”

“It’s just,” I said, wanting to make him feel better, but at the same time wanting him to understand, “that you didn’t paint what you saw.”

Jack didn’t say anything at first. He just stared down at me. It was like he couldn’t quite process what he’d heard.

“What?” he said, finally, in a tone of utter disbelief.

I should have known. I should have gotten the hint. But I didn’t, of course.

“Well,” I said. “I mean, Jack, come on. You have to admit. You didn’t paint what you see. You go around making these paintings of these disenfranchised kids—and they are really great, don’t get me wrong. But they aren’t real, Jack. The people you paint aren’t real. You don’t even know people like that. It’s like . . . well, it’s like me sticking that pineapple in. It’s nice, and everything, but it isn’t honest. It isn’t real. I mean, you can’t see a Seven Eleven parking lot from your bedroom window. I doubt you can even see a garbage can.” I did not, of course, know for a fact what Jack can see from his bedroom window. I was only guessing about the garbage can.

Still, I must have hit pretty close to the truth, since I managed to thoroughly enrage him.

“Didn’t paint what I see?” he bellowed. “Didn’t paint what I see? What are you talking about?”

“W-well,” I stammered, taken aback by his reaction. “You know. What Susan Boone said. About painting what you see, not what you know—”

“Sam!” Jack yelled. “This isn’t a damned art lesson! It’s my chance for my artwork to make it to New York! And you ruled my painting out because I didn’t paint what I see? What is wrong with you?”

“Hey.” A familiar voice broke the tense silence between Jack and me. I looked over and saw Lucy standing in the doorway, looking annoyed.

“What’s going on?” she wanted to know. “I could hear you yelling all the way across the house. What is with you?”

Jack pointed at me. Apparently, he was so upset he couldn’t even find the words to explain to his own girlfriend what I’d done.

“Sh-she . . .” he sputtered. “Sh-she says I d-didn’t paint what I see.”

Lucy looked from Jack to me and then back again. Then she rolled her eyes and went, “Oh, God, Jack, would you get over yourself, please?”

Then she stomped up, took him by the arm and started steering him from the kitchen. He let her, like a man in a daze.

But Jack wasn’t the only one who felt dazed. I did too.

And not because of the way he’d yelled at me. Not even because, soulmates though we might be, I did not, even for a second, feel Jack’s pain as he heard the bad news.

No. The reason I felt dazed was because of what happened when Jack first came sauntering into the kitchen, when I’d been cramming that sandwich into my mouth, totally not expecting to see him. He’d come into the room, filling the doorway with his big shoulders . . .

And my heart hadn’t flipped over.

My pulse hadn’t gotten any quicker.

I had no trouble at all breathing, and not even a hint of a blush crept over my cheeks.

None of the things that happened when I saw David happened when Jack came strolling into the kitchen. There was no frisson. There was not the slightest hint of frisson.

Which could mean only one thing:

Lucy was right. I am in love with David.

David, whose Dad even can’t stand me, on account of the way I don’t agree with him over the whole painting thing.

David, who got me the daisy helmet and said he liked my boots and carved my name in a White House window sill.

David, whom I’m pretty sure never wants to see me again on account of how I used him to try to make Jack jealous.

David, who all along has been the perfect guy for me, and I was too stupid—too blind—to see it.

Suddenly the turkey sandwich I’d been chowing down on didn’t taste all that good. In fact, it tasted wretched. And the bits I’d swallowed down felt like they might come right back up.

What had I done?

What had I done?

More importantly ... what was I going to do?

Top ten Reasons I Am Most Likely to Die Young (not that that would be such a tragedy, under the circumstances):

10. I am left-handed. Studies show that left-handed people die ten to fifteen years sooner than right-handers, due to the fact that the entire world, from automobiles to those desks you take the SATs at to cash machines at the bank, is slanted towards the right-handed. Finally, after a while, we lefties just give up the struggle and croak rather than try one last time to write something in a spiral-bound notebook with all those wires poking into our wrist.

9. I am red-headed. Redheads are eighty-five per cent more likely to develop terminal skin cancer than anyone else on the planet.

8. I am short. Short people die sooner than tall people. This is a known fact. No one knows why, but I assume it has something to do with short people like me being unable to reach bottles of vital antioxidants at the General Nutrition Centre because they always put them on the highest shelves.

7. I have no significant other. Seriously. People in a romantic relationship just plain live longer than people who are single.

6. I live in an urban area. Studies show that people who live in areas of dense population, such as Washington, DC, tend to perish sooner than people who live out in the country, like in Nebraska, thanks to higher emissions of carcinogens like bus exhaust and random gunfire from urban gang warfare.

5. I eat a lot of red meat. You know what group of people live the longest of anyone? Yeah, that would be this tribe of people who hang out in like Siberia somewhere, and all they eat is yogurt and wheatgerm. Seriously. I don’t think they are vegetarians, I think they just can’t find any meat because the cows all froze to death. Anyway, they all live to be like a hundred and twenty years old.

I can’t stand yogurt, let alone wheatgerm, and I eat hamburgers at least once a day. I would eat them more often if I could get someone to make them for me. I am so dead.

4. I am a middle child. Middle children die sooner than their older and younger siblings due to being routinely ignored. I have never seen documented proof of this, but I am sure it is true. It is a story just waiting to be busted wide open by 60 Minutes or whatever.

3. I have no religious affiliation. My parents have completely ignored our religious upbringing, thanks to their own selfish agnosticism. Like just because they aren’t sure of the existence of God, we aren’t allowed to go to church. When, meanwhile, there is statistical evidence that churchgoers live longer and have happier lives than non-churchgoers.

And just where is my memorial service going to be performed when I die? I wish my parents had thought about these things before they went with this whole, “Let the kids decide for themselves what they want to believe‘ thing. I could very well be dead before I ever even get to explore all my religious options. Though at the moment I am leaning strongly towards Hinduism because I am totally into reincarnation. On the other hand, I doubt I could give up beef, so this might be a problem.

2. I am a dog-owner. While pet owners in general live longer than non-pet owners, cat owners live the longest. It is entirely likely that thanks to Manet being a dog, I could perish five to ten years sooner than if he were a cat.

And the number one reason I am likely to die young:

1. My heart is broken.

It really is. All the signs are there. I can’t sleep, I can’t eat—not even burgers. Every time the phone rings, my pulse leaps . . . but it’s never for me. It’s never him.

I realize it is my own fault—I messed everything up myself. But that doesn’t make it feel any better. Self-inflicted wound or not, it’s still there.

And the fact is, human beings can’t really function with a broken heart. I mean, sure, I could live without David. But what kind of life would it be? An empty shell sort of a life. I mean, I had a perfect chance at love, and I blew it. BLEW IT! Due to the fact that even though my eyes were open, I was not seeing. I wasn’t seeing anything at all.

I give myself two weeks before I croak.

I stood on Susan Boone’s front porch, feeling lame. But then, since I’ve pretty much felt lame my entire life, this was no big surprise.

On the other hand, usually I feel lame for no particular reason. This time I really had a reason to feel lame.

And the reason had to do with the fact that I was standing on Susan Boone’s front porch, uninvited and probably unwanted, on a Sunday afternoon, waiting for someone to answer the door, only no one was coming.

And it seemed to me like if someone did come, they would be all, “Um, don’t you know better than to come over to someone’s house without calling first?”

And they would be perfectly in their right to say this, since I hadn’t, of course, called first. But I’d been afraid if I called first, Susan would have been like, “Can’t we just talk in class on Tuesday, Sam?”

But I couldn’t wait until Tuesday. I had to talk to Susan today. Because my heart was breaking, and I needed someone to tell me what I should do about it. My mom and dad were no use. The whole thing just seemed to confuse them. And Lucy was no good. She just went, Tut on a tight little skirt and go over there and say you’re sorry. God, what are you, retarded?“ Rebecca just pressed her lips together and said, ”I told you so,“ and Theresa was still over at Tito’s. There was no point in even asking Catherine. Her head was filled with nothing but Paul.

So I was standing on Susan Boone’s front porch without having called first. It is much harder not to see someone when they are already standing on your front porch than when they call on the phone. I know this thanks to all the reporters who have been trying to talk to me.

There really is no worse feeling than standing around, waiting for someone to answer the door when you know they are probably just going to slam it in your face . . .

. . . with the possible exception of standing around waiting for them with five loaves of French bread in your backpack. I would have felt bad enough without the French bread, but the bread helped.

It was just that I had to bring something. I mean, you can’t just show up at someone’s house uninvited and not even bring them a present. And yeah, I had to admit, the bread was kind of a bribe. Because I have never heard of anyone turning down a piece of the Bread Lady’s bread. I was hoping that whoever answered the door would get a whiff of it and be all, “Oh, come right on in.”

And it wasn’t like I hadn’t gone through hell, practically, to get my hands on these loaves. I’d had to get up extra early in order to drag Manet out for his morning walk in the opposite direction than we normally go in, something he really did not appreciate. He kept trying to drag me back towards the park, while I was trying to drag him back towards the Bread Lady’s house. My arms were sore all the rest of the day. Manet weighs almost as much as I do, I think.

Also it turns out the Bread Lady doesn’t get up before eight on Sunday mornings. She answered the door in this very fancy negligee (for a married lady).

But she didn’t seem to think it was strange, me pounding on the door and commissioning French bread for later that afternoon. In fact, she seemed kind of pleased that someone liked her bread that much.

And she delivered on time, thank God. Five loaves of golden steaming French bread, the kind you can’t find anywhere in DC. The smell of them almost made me hungry. But only almost. People with broken hearts, it turns out, really have no appetite.

Then of course there was the whole riding-the-Metro-with-five-loaves-of-hot-out-of-the-oven-French-bread-sticking-out-your-backpack thing. Not an experience I care to repeat. Especially since the Junior National Geographic Society was in town, and the Metro cars were jammed with all these Midwestern families with like ten kids each, all wearing these bright yellow T-shirts that said, “Ask me about my Junior National Geographic Champ,” which I so thoroughly did not.

But all these blond kids kept going to their parents, “Mommy, why is that girl carrying all that bread?” To which their parents responded by telling them to, “Hush up, ya’ll.” Fortunately no one recognized me as the girl who saved the President because I was wearing one of Lucy’s Adams Prep baseball caps with my hair tucked all inside.

Still, one tiny Junior National Geographic Champion looked at me very suspiciously for a long time before leaning over to whisper to her friend, who also looked at me, then said something to her mom.

Fortunately by that time the train had pulled into Adams Morgan, where Susan Boone lived, so I got off fast, leaving the Junior National Geographic Society members to their fate, whatever it was.

It was a long walk from the Metro stop to Susan Boone’s house, but I used the time to reflect upon my misfortunes, which were many. By the time I got to the large blue house, with the whitewashed porch railings with all the wind chimes hanging from it, I was practically crying.

Well, and why not? Nothing but sheer desperation would have forced me to ask Susan Boone’s advice about anything. I mean, up until a couple of weeks ago, I had totally hated her. Or at least strongly disliked her.

Now, I had this weird feeling she was the only person I knew who could tell me what I’d done to mess up my life so thoroughly, and how I could make it right again. I mean, she had taught me how to see: maybe she could teach me how to cope with everything I was seeing, now that she’d opened up my eyes.

But I have to admit that in spite of this conviction, when I finally heard footsteps—and Joe’s familiar squawking—coming towards me from inside the house, I felt a little like running.

Before I could run away, however, I saw the lace curtain in the window by the front door jerk back a little and Susan Boone’s blue eyes looked out. Then I heard the locks on the door being undone. The next thing I knew, Susan Boone, in a pair of paint-spattered overalls and with her long white hair done up in braids on either side of her head, was standing in her doorway, staring at me.

“Samantha?” she said, in an astonished voice. “What are you doing here?”

Shrugging off my backpack and quickly showing her the bread, I said, “I was just in the neighbourhood, and I thought I’d say hi. Would you like some of this bread? It’s really good bread. A lady on my street makes it.”

OK, I’ll admit it: I was babbling. I just didn’t know what to do. I mean, I shouldn’t have come. I knew the minute I saw her that I shouldn’t have come. It was insane that I had come. Stupid and insane. I mean, what did Susan Boone care about my problems? She was just my drawing teacher, for crying out loud. What was I doing, going to my drawing teacher for advice about life?

On Susan’s shoulder, Joe screeched his usual greeting of ‘Hello, Joe! Hello, Joe!“ at me. I don’t think he recognized me with my hair hidden under the baseball cap.

Susan Boone, smiling a little, stepped back and said, “Well, come in, then, Sam. It’s very nice of you to, um, stop by with bread.”

I went into Susan’s house, and wasn’t surprised, as I crossed the threshold, to see that it was furnished in a manner very similar to the studio. I mean, there was a lot of old, comfortable-looking furniture, but mostly there were canvases stacked everywhere against the wall, and more than a hint of turpentine in the air.

“Thanks,” I said, coming inside and taking off my hat. As soon as I did so, Joe launched himself from Susan’s shoulder to mine with a happy cry of “Pretty bird! Pretty bird!”

“Joseph,” Susan Boone said warningly. Then she invited me into the kitchen for a cup of tea.

I pretended like I didn’t want to put her out or anything, and said I was sorry for bothering her and really, I was only going to stay a minute. But Susan just looked at me with a smile, and I had no choice but to follow her into her bright, sunshiny kitchen, the walls of which were painted blue—the same blue as her eyes. She insisted on making tea, and not in a mug in the microwave, either, but the old-fashioned way, with a kettle on the stove. As the water was boiling, she examined the baguettes I had brought and seemed pretty pleased with them. She got out some butter and a little jar of home-made jam and put it on the butcher-block table in the centre of her big, old-fashioned kitchen. Then she broke off one end of a loaf, just to taste it, and looked very surprised as the crust, which was already pretty buttery without anything spread on it, melted on her tongue.

“Well,” Susan said. “It’s very good bread. I haven’t had French bread like this, as a matter of fact, since the last time I was in Paris.”

I was pleased to hear this. I watched as she broke off yet another piece, then ate it.

“So,” I said. “How was your Thanksgiving?” It seemed like a stupid thing to ask—something only, you know, boring people, not artists, talked about. But what else was I supposed to say? And fortunately, she didn’t seem to take offence.

“It was fine, thanks,” she said. “How was yours?”

“Oh,” I said. “Good.”

There was this silence. Not really an awkward one, but you know. Still a silence. It was filled only with the sound of the kettle starting to boil, and Joseph muttering to himself as he ran a beak through his feathers, preening a little.

Then Susan said, “I came up with a big plan for what to do with the studio this summer.”

“Really?” I said, relieved someone, at least, was talking.

“Really. I am thinking of keeping the studio open every day, from ten until five, for people like you and David to come in and sketch all day, if you want to. Like art camp, or something.”

I didn’t say anything about how I doubted David would be showing up—not if he knew I was going to be there. Instead, I went, “Great!”

Right then the kettle started to whistle. Susan Boone got up and made the tea. Then she handed me a dark-blue mug that said Matisse on it, and kept a yellow mug that said Van Gogh on it for herself. After she’d sat back down at the butcher block, she said, holding the mug in both hands so the steam came up and framed her face in smoky tendrils, “Now. Why don’t you tell me what you’re really doing all the way out here on a Sunday afternoon, Samantha.”

I thought, you know, about not telling her. I thought about being like, “Really, I’m on my way to my Grandma’s,” or some other lie like that.

But something about the way she was looking at me made me be honest. I don’t know what it was, but suddenly, as I sat there messing with the little tag to my teabag, the whole story poured out. Just poured out of me, all over that butcher block, while Joe sat on my shoulder and, somewhere in the house, I could hear the faint strains of some classical music.

And when I had gotten it all out—everything, about David, and about Jack, and about the From My Window contest and Maria Sanchez and David’s dad—I finished with, “And to top it all off, I found out last night that Dolley Madison’s only kid who lived past infancy was from her first husband. She didn’t even have any kids with James Madison. So I’m not related to her. Not even one tiny bit.”

Finished with my long speech, I sat there and stared down into my tea. I couldn’t see it all that well, since my eyes were sort of moist. But I was determined not to cry. To do so would have been perfectly ridiculous, even more ridiculous than riding the Metro with five loaves of French bread sticking out of my backpack.

Susan, who’d listened to my entire recitation of my many problems in silence, now took a sip of her tea and said, in a very calm voice, “But, Samantha. Don’t you see? You know what it is you have to do. David already told you.”

I lifted my gaze from my cup of tea and stared at her from across the table. On my shoulder, Joe picked up a strand of my hair, pretending just to be casually holding on to it, though we both knew that when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, he would try to yank it out and make his escape.

“What are you talking about?” I said. “All David said was that he wouldn’t talk to his dad about Maria Sanchez.”

“He said that, yes,” Susan said. “But you didn’t really listen to him, Sam. You heard him, but you didn’t listen. There is a difference between listening and hearing, just as there is a difference between seeing and knowing.”

You see? This is why I knew I’d had to come. I didn’t know this. The difference between hearing and listening, I mean. Any more than I’d known the difference between seeing and knowing.

“David,” Susan said, “told you that you have the right to free speech, just as much as any other American.”

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “So?”

“So,” Susan said, with an emphasis I didn’t understand. “You have the right to free speech, Samantha. Just as much as any other American.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I got that part. But I don’t see what that has to do with—”

And then, suddenly, I did. I don’t know how, or why. But suddenly, Susan’s—and David’s—meaning sunk in.

And when it did, I couldn’t believe it.

“Oh, no,” I said, with a gasp—and not just because Joe had finally made his move and yanked out a strand of my hair, then taken off in triumphant flight for the top of the refrigerator. “Ow. You don’t think he really meant that, do you?”

Susan said, breaking off another piece of bread, “David tends to mean what he says, Sam. He’s no politician. He isn’t a bit likely to follow in his father’s footsteps. He wants to be an architect.”

“He does?” This was news to me. I was beginning to realize I really knew nothing about David at all. I mean, I knew he liked to draw and that he was good at it. And I knew about the giant serving fork and spoon, of course. But there seemed to be a lot I didn’t know, as well.

And that made me feel worse. Because I had this very bad feeling that it was too late for me to find out about them. The things I didn’t know about David, I mean.

“Yes,” Susan Boone said. “I think it’s easy to understand why he wouldn’t necessarily want to get involved in his father’s business. He certainly wouldn’t want his father involved in his.”

“Wow,” I said, because I was still reeling from her earlier revelation. “I mean . . . wow.”

“Yes,” Susan Boone said, leaning back in her chair. “Wow. So you see, Sam. It’s been there, all along.”

I frowned. “What has?”

“What you wanted,” she said. “You just had to open your eyes a little to see it. And there it was.”

And there it was.

And there I still was ten minutes later—not quite believing that I was there at all—chatting with Susan Boone, a woman who’d once accused me of knowing but not seeing, when the back door to the kitchen banged open. A large man with his long hair pulled back into a ponytail and his arms filled with grocery bags came in. He looked at us with surprise on his handle-bar moustached face.

“Well,” he said, looking at me with friendly, but curious, light blue eyes. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I said, wondering if this was Susan Boone’s son. He seemed to be about twenty years younger than she was. She had never mentioned kids or a husband before. I had always thought it was just her and Joe.

But then maybe I had only been hearing, and not really listening.

“Pete,” Susan Boone said. “This is Samantha Madison, one of my students. Samantha, this is Pete.”

Pete put the grocery bags down. He was wearing jeans, over which were fastened a pair of leather chaps, like cowboys and Hell’s Angels wear. When he reached out to shake my hand, I saw that his arm had the Harley Davidson logo tattooed on it.

“Nice to meet you,” he said, pumping my left hand, on account of the cast still being on my right. Then his gaze fell on the French bread. “Hey,” he said. “That looks good.”

Pete pulled up a chair and joined us. And it turned out he wasn’t Susan’s son at all. He was her boyfriend.

Which just goes to show that Susan was right about one thing, anyway: what you want is right in front of you. You just have to open your eyes to see it.

I chose Candace Wu.

Lucy thought I should have gone with someone more famous, like Barbara Walters or Katie Couric. But I liked Candace, because she’d been so nice that time I’d fallen off the podium into her lap during my press conference at the hospital.

And Candace turned out to be pretty tough. She didn’t take any guff from anyone. When Andy, the White House press secretary, said under no circumstances could she bring her film crew into his office to shoot footage of Maria Sanchez’s painting, she said that the White House wasn’t private property. It belonged to the people of the United States of America, and that as American citizens, she and the film crew had just as much right to be there as he did.

Unless of course he had something to hide.

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 practising all morning. “The truth is, Miss Wu, that I think the President may not be aware that American teens aren’t just 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 US 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, she hadn’t gotten to where she had in the cut-throat 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 human 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 come 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 arid 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 reason I was an ‘authentic American hero’ was that:

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

That other had happened to be the leader of the Free World.

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 upwards 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 rumours . . .”

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

“Rumours, 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, 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 may 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 one watching the TV me—pulled the sofa cushion Manet had been sitting on out from under him and buried my face in it with a scream. I mean, I’d had to say it—I couldn’t think of any other way 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 defence 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 that 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 open-mouthed 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.