All-American Girl (15 page)

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 U.S. 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 soul mate, Jack Ryder.
  
• 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 it finds me. Some of these people 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 Dolley Madison hanging in the Vermeil Room, stumble across a peace summit.
  
• 2. It is strongly advised that teen ambassadors to the UN not dress all in black, as this, according to the White House press secretary, might give the public the false impression that the U.S.'s teen ambassador is a practicing witch.
  

And the number-one duty of the U.S. 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 that 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 that Catherine had a date, at the same time, I felt kind of weird about it. I mean, what she had done—calling a boy and asking him out—seemed way braver to me than what I'd done—stopping an assassination attempt on the president, I mean. All I'd risked was my life…which, if I'd lost it, would be no big deal, since, you know, I'd be dead, and wouldn't even know it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Catherine looked at me like I was a mental case.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I looked at her like she was nuts.

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

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

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

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

“Okay,” I said.

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

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

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

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

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay? I mean it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or the burrito I'd had for lunch?

“I figured it was exactly what a girl like 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 okay, as I had a lot of hair to cover.

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

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

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

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

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

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